Browsing by Author "Járosi, Eszter"

Due to globalization people from diverse language and cultural backgrounds get in contact with each other. These contact situations require participants to use a lingua franca, a connecting language, to be able to successfully communicate with one another. Such a contact situation is a meeting of international students, when they use English as a lingua franca (ELF). However, participants not only use the connecting language, but they utilize all languages at their disposal. In such contact situations, interlocutors attain communicative success by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies. Canagarajah created a framework where they differentiate four macro strategies: envoicing, recontexualization, interactional, and entextualization. By adopting these strategies interlocutors may express their uniqueness, negotiate meaning and rules in the contact situation, focus on the teamwork in communication, as well as ensure that they convey their intended messages. The first part of the current study focuses on what translingual negotiation strategies are used by international students in meetings in Helsinki. By using Canagarajah’s theory, an audio-recorded meeting data is analysed. By gaining insight into international students’ language use and way of communication, effective ELF materials may be created in the future. The second part of this research is divided into two sections. Both sections are based on interview data collected from 4 volunteers. These interviewees took part in the meeting analysed in the first part of the study. Their attitudes towards using ELF and their opinions on the effects of language diversity on communicative success were scrutinized. The results showed that the meeting participants used all four macro strategies suggested by Canagarajah. They reported that they feel good about using ELF and they thought that language diversity has a positive effect on communicative success.