ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of research into the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca. It begins with an exploration of the initial work on the pragmatics of ELF, which focused on empirical studies of talk among non-native students of English, in controlled environments. The chapter explores current work, which focuses on accommodation processes and pragmatic strategies, including multilingual aspects. This more recent work delves into the intercultural nature of lingua franca communication, where more attention is dedicated to working towards pragmatic understanding, focusing on how speakers construct and negotiate understanding and how they solve miscommunication problems. An overview of this work includes the areas of negotiation of meaning, the use of interactional elements, discourse markers, idiomatic expressions and multilingual resources. The chapter also explores pragmatic strategies in two specific domains, namely business and higher education, while addressing the relation between pragmatic aspects and issues of culture and identity.
