Promoting Cooperativeness Through Utterance Completion in English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract

As ELF (English as a lingua franca) communication takes place among speakers from a wide range of linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds, hybridity and variability are a common nature of ELF. Therefore, ELF speakers attempt to reduce the existing differences for facilitating communication and adeptly use convergence strategies to show cooperation and solidarity. This paper aims to explore how cooperation operates in ELF interactions. The study is particularly focused on the strategy of utterance completion, which is one of the effective pragmatic strategies for cooperation. Data findings show that ELF speakers often employed utterance completion when the interlocutor made hesitations or pauses. It is during these occasions utterance completion is accomplished in order to support the interlocutor’s word search moment by supplying the word or phrases the interlocutor is searching for and to facilitate the smooth flow of interaction. Also, connective words such as if or when can facilitate other speakers to predict and co-produce further talk based on the previously provided information. Since linguistic and cultural diversity and decreased predictability are common in ELF contexts, ELF speakers are more likely to cooperate and be mutually supportive to overcome possible comprehension problems and enhance efficiency.