In discussions in English as a lingua franca, maybe spoken by Japanese users of English to mitigate a speaker's assertiveness and fill the linguistic gap was found to serve in the process of enhancing hearers' understanding and clarifying what is said by participants to co-construct discourse and achieve a communication goal.
This paper investigates the use of English vague language occurring in English as a lingua franca (ELF) discussions in Asian countries in discourse co-construction to achieve their communication goals. English vague language (EVL) is prevalent and serves interactional functions. The study of EVL in ELF in academic discussions has been conducted, revealing its multifunctionality (Metsä-Ketelä 2016). However, light has not been shed on how EVL involves features of ELF discourse and its co-construction to achieve communication goals in discussions. The research question examined in the current paper is how EVL serves in the process of discourse co-construction, narrowing down its focus on maybe, amongst other EVL forms, used by Japanese users of English. The study employs the Asian Corpus of English (ACE 2020) and applies a qualitative analysis from pragmatic and discursive analytic perspectives. For the purpose of the current paper, the data that occurred in seminar discussions in the context of education, amongst various settings of interaction in the corpus, is taken into consideration. The analysis reveals that maybe in discussions functions to mitigate the speaker's assertiveness and to fill a linguistic gap. The results display the use of maybe in the process of enhancing hearers' understanding and clarifying what is said by one of the participants to achieve a communication goal in ELF discussions. The paper suggests pedagogical implications including the necessity of raising language teachers' awareness of functions of EVL in discourse co-construction in ELF. The findings could contribute to improving learners' strategies to achieve communication goals and engage in effective communication in ELF interaction.
ACE. (2020) The Asian Corpus of English. Director: Andy Kirkpatrick; Researchers: Wang Lixun, John Patkin, Sophiann Subhan. https://corpus.eduhk.hk/ace/index.html (Last accessed on 18 July 2021)
Metsä-Ketelä, Maria. (2016) Pragmatic vagueness: Exploring general extenders in English as a lingua franca. Intercultural Pragmatics. 13(3): 325-351.
