Saving and Maintaining Face: Metapragmatic Expressions in BELF Meetings

Abstract

English as a business lingua franca (BELF) has contributed to an increasing number of intercultural studies that aim to evaluate its complexities and participants’ pragmatic competence in this context. The worldwide use of BELF interactions is subject to multiple contextual factors, with metapragmatic expressions (MPEs) serving as one of the linguistic devices and pragmatic strategies. Based on BELF meetings from the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), this paper explores how MPEs are used to save and maintain face in order to promote the effectiveness of communication. It is found that the use of MPEs in BELF meetings can help speakers to accomplish their transactional goals by showing concern for face in this intercultural business context. Also, the use of MPEs dynamically reflects the participants’ interpersonal pragmatic competence in intercultural settings. The present study deepens the understanding of metapragmatic awareness and the mechanism of MPEs in BELF interactions.