ABSTRACT
The totality of English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions encompasses a great diversity. Users carry with them unique repertoires of experience. Contexts and purposes vary, as thus do the attendant roles, institutions, and membership categories. With greater individual mobility, these interactions occur more and more in groupings that are temporary or transient.
This paper analyses naturally occurring interactions from three distinct settings in Japan where English is used as a lingua franca among participants from a wide variety of linguistic and educational backgrounds, describing participants’ linguistic and pragmatic contributions to ELF interactions while giving heightened attention to the diversity (and resulting asymmetries) in access to participatory roles, in availability of linguistic and pragmatic resources, in attitudes towards communication, and also in the strategies employed to deal with asymmetries (by proficient and less experienced communicators).
Asymmetries are found to play a role in participants’ contributions vis-à-vis establishing roles in an interaction, mitigating face-threats, and in directly dealing with (with or without explicit mention) a mismatch of proficiency or experience. The linguistic and pragmatic resources drawn on include direct and indirect turn-management, explicit repetition, ‘control’ of interlocutors’ contributions, the use of laughter, and the use/avoidance of titles, pronouns, and modality markers.
