Volume 7, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Spoken academic genres in the international university, Guest Editor: Beyza Bjorkman

This study qualitatively examines possible communicative functions of laughter in English-as-a-lingua-franca (ELF) interactional contexts. It particularly focuses on the sequences when students and their instructors deal with miscommunication in multilingual writing classrooms at a US university. Adapting perspectives from the multimodal turn, I conceive of laughter as part of the diverse multimodal interactional resources that speakers in ELF contexts can coordinate with speech and other nonverbal, embodied actions (e.g. smile and body orientation), but that are distinct resources from speech. Combining sequential, multimodal analysis with ethnographic information, the data analysis reveals that laughter can have various functions in ELF classroom interactions at miscommunication moments. Laughter often subtly signals nonunderstanding, which can then lead to interactional repair. Other possible functions of laughter include pre-empting miscommunication by marking a speaker’s problem related to vocabulary; teasing specific interlocutor(s); and building solidarity through shared laughter. Based on the analysis in this article, it can be argued that laughter may in fact be counterproductive in resolving misunderstanding in ELF classroom interactions due to its ambiguous, implicit nature. Findings suggest that ELF researchers benefit from developing a multimodal orientation by integrating nonverbal interactional resources into their discourse analyses in order to examine interlocutors’ complex communicative strategies in a way that meaningfully coordinates various semiotic modes such as laughter and smile. Such an approach would provide a more robust conceptualization of communicative competence or practice of interlocutors in ELF contexts.

This study investigates the uses and functions of laughter and humour in a corpus of nine PhD defences/vivas. The data include the PhD defences in their entirety, including monologic and dialogic talk by participants from a variety of research cultures. The defences were video-recorded and transcribed, and laughter episodes analysed according to who laughed, who the source of “the laughable” was, what the reason for laughing was and at what point laughter occurred. The analysis reveals that a majority of laughter was non-humorous, produced by one person, and had the function of mitigating face threats to speakers and others. Humorous laughter was usually produced by more than one person and had the function of relieving tension, creating a non-adversarial atmosphere and building a community. These results are connected to the communicative purposes of the participants; the participants’ mutual aim is to examine an academic work and confirm the candidate’s membership in their chosen specialisation, which requires cooperation from all parties. Furthermore, although the participants come from different research cultures where humour can have a different presence and function, this study shows that laughter and humour are frequent and fill an important function in ELF interactions in high-stakes academic situations.

This paper investigates the roles of disagreement and trust in multicultural teamwork on an English-medium master’s programme at an Austrian business university. The teamwork project – assigned by the content teacher – took place mostly outside the classroom and simulated business practice both in terms of the tasks and the multicultural context. Each team comprised two Austrian students and two international students, resulting in an English as a lingua franca (ELF) setting. The teams were observed and audio-/video-recorded, with the analysis focusing on an early stage of the project where they laid the groundwork for the team mental models in terms of establishing the team goals, relationships and communicative practices. Additionally, retrospective interviews were conducted at the end of the project with each of the team members and the lecturer to gain emic insights into the project. The findings suggest a symbiotic relationship between disagreement and trust, in which high levels of trust and the construction of a psychologically safe space allow the team members to disagree with and challenge each other without damaging their relationships, leading to better decisions. In turn, these decisions can contribute to a sense of shared success that strengthens the team’s joint identity.

Academic group work can involve challenging pragmatic acts, and chief among these is, arguably, disagreement. There is little known, however, about how disagreement is realised in ELF academic group discussion tasks, where the tendency towards greater cooperation and mutual support in ELF communication may be at odds with the need to achieve task goals through the expression of an oppositional stance. In addressing this issue, the current study sought to answer the research question: how do postgraduate students in a UK university setting express their disagreement in ELF academic group discussion? Twelve participants from ten different linguacultural backgrounds completed two different simulated discussion tasks: one targeting opinions, and the other consensus decision-making. The same participants also took part in retrospective stimulated-recall interviews using the video-recording of their discussions as a stimulus. Discourse analysis of the transcribed interactions revealed that the ELF participants used a wide range of verbal, nonverbal and interactional strategies in their disagreeing practices. Three salient strategies are presented in detail: focus shifts, complex turn-management (other-initiated disagreement turn dependence and turn-throwing/passing), and the use of gaze. Through these examples, we show that while the discourse produced in group discussion tasks was rich in disagreement, ELF participants used complex linguistic and interactional strategies to avoid explicit displays of their oppositional stance. Results are discussed with a view to developing theory around disagreement in ELF academic contexts.

This paper focuses on the under-researched genre of PhD supervision meetings (but see Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2009a. Problems in the research problem: Critical feedback and resistance in academic supervision. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 53[2]. 185–201; Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2009b. Student-initiated advice in academic supervision. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42[2]. 163–190; Björkman, Beyza. 2015. PhD supervisor–PhD student interactions in an English-medium Higher Education [HE] setting: Expressing disagreement. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 3[2]. 205–229; Björkman, Beyza. 2016. PhD adviser and student interactions as a spoken academic genre. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw [eds.], The Routledge handbook of English for Academic Purposes , 348–361. Oxon: Routledge; Björkman, Beyza. 2017. PhD supervision meetings in an English as a Lingua Franca [ELF] setting: Linguistic competence and content knowledge as neutralizers of institutional and academic power. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 6[1]. 111–139) and investigates knowledge construction episodes in PhD students’ discussions with their supervisors on their co-authored papers. In these meetings, all supervisors and students use English as their lingua franca (ELF). Such supervision meetings are made up of “social negotiation” and “collaborative sense-making,” providing a good base for learning to take place (Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), which in the present context is the “enculturation” of the PhD student into the research community (Manathunga, Catherine. 2014. Intercultural postgraduate supervision: Reimagining time, place and knowledge . New York: Routledge). It is precisely these negotiation and collaborative sense-making practices that the present paper focuses on, in order to investigate knowledge construction practices. While there is an abundance of research in disciplinary knowledge construction and academic literacy practices from cognitive and behavioral sciences, knowledge about novice scholars’ knowledge construction practices is scant in applied linguistics (but see Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing 15[3]. 159–178). Even less is known about how PhD students may negotiate knowledge construction and engage in meaning-making practices in interaction with their supervisors. The material comprises 11 hours of naturally occurring speech by three supervisors and their students where they discuss the reviewers’ comments they have received from the journal. The predominant method employed here is applied conversation analysis (CA) (Richards, Keith & Paul Seedhouse [eds.]. 2005. Applying conversation analysis . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), which includes both local patterns of interaction as well as “the tensions between [these] local practices and any ‘larger structures’ in which these are embedded, such as conventional membership categories, institutional rules, instructions, accounting obligations, etc.” (Have, Paul ten. 2007. Doing conversation analysis . London: Sage 199). The analyses here aim to show how the PhD supervisors and students discuss the reviewers’ comments with reference to (i) their own disciplinary community of climate science, and (ii) the domestic discourse community of the target journals (see also Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing 15[3]. 159–178). The preliminary findings of the analyses show a tendency by the PhD students to focus more heavily on the domestic discourse community of the target journals, especially when justifying their methodological choices. The PhD supervisors, on the other hand, base their meaning-making on the conventions of the disciplinary community of climate science, pointing out broader disciplinary community practices. These findings, highlighting a need to focus on novice scholars’ meaning-making efforts, can be used to inform PhD supervision in general.

Formulaic sequences (e.g. on the other hand, for example, at the same time ) are pervasive in natural language use and play an important role in differentiating socially situated practices. This paper examines formulaic sequences signalling discourse organisation in academic ELF lectures from a disciplinary perspective. Most previous studies of this kind employ a frequency-based approach; however, the inherent limitations of the methodology (e.g. arbitrary operational criteria, difficulty in handling discontinuous units) mean that a great deal may have been overlooked. This may be particularly relevant to ELF communication, which involves a high degree of flexibility and adaptability. The present study aims to address this gap by taking a manual approach in the identification of formulaic sequences, continuous or discontinuous, in context. The results provide further evidence for disciplinary differences and variability in the use of formulaic language to signal discourse organisation by lecturers in academic ELF settings.

The current study investigates the phenomena of “superficial intersubjectivity” occurring in English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions at an international university dormitory in Japan. “Intersubjectivity” (Rommetveit, Ragnar. 1976. On the architecture of intersubjectivity. In Ragnar Rommetveit & Rolv Mikkel Blakar [eds.], Studies of language, thought, and verbal communication , 93–107. New York: Academic Press) refers to the shared perspective of the social world by the interlocutors. In ELF interactions where shared perspectives cannot be presumed, efforts to achieve intersubjectivity are critical. ELF research has explicated speakers’ efforts and cooperativeness to achieve intersubjectivity or avoid misunderstandings during interactions (Kaur, Jagdish. 2011a. “Doing being a language expert”: The case of the ELF speaker. In Alasdair Archibald, Alessia Cogo & Jennifer Jenkins [eds.], Latest Trends in ELF Research , 53–75. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing; Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2001. Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11[2]. 133–158). However, few studies have investigated cases where speakers display mutual understanding during a repair sequence even when the understanding is not accurate. Approximately 37 hours of naturally occurring ELF interactions were collected and analyzed using a standard conversation analysis followed by a post-analytic researcher observation. Detailed analyses of repair sequences regarding a word suggest that in non-institutional ELF interactions the accuracy of intersubjectivity is not always prioritized. Rather, statements made by the speaker positioned as the one with relatively stronger linguistic ability seem to hold influence over the repair sequence, which prompts the interlocutor with relatively weaker ability to agree with inaccurate candidate understandings. The study suggests a connection between the positioning of speakers regarding linguistic knowledge and the construction of intersubjectivity in ELF interactions.