Creating common ground: The role of metapragmatic expressions in BELF meeting interactions

Highlights

• It examines the role of metapragmatic expressions in creating common ground in BELF meeting interactions.

• The data is drawn from the VOICE.

• MPEs are identified as pre-emptive or corrective strategies in interactions.

• MPEs are employed to construct emergent common ground to achieve mutual understanding.

Abstract

Business English as a lingua franca (BELF) is gaining popularity in international business and research domains. In the framework of the socio-cognitive approach, this article examines the role of metapragmatic expressions (MPEs) in creating common ground (CG) in BELF meeting interactions. Based on the data from one business meeting drawn from the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English, it is found that the speakers mainly employ four types of MPEs, i.e. commentaries, speech-action descriptions, message glosses and evidentials, as pre-emptive or corrective strategies when they are aware of potential or actual problems or difficulties in interactions. MPEs are intended to activate shared sense (e.g. previous agreement, mutual experiences and company policy) and current sense (e.g. different or new perspectives, evaluations and sympathy) to construct emergent CG of knowledge and emergent CG of affiliation to achieve mutual understanding in BELF meeting interactions.

Introduction

In English as a lingua franca (ELF) research, effectiveness of communication is characteristically defined in terms of achieving mutual understanding through co-creating meaning (e.g. Cogo and Dewey, 2006, Hülmbauer, 2009, Jenkins et al., 2011). ELF speakers use various explicitness strategies to both pre-empt and resolve problems of understanding (see Mauranen, 2007, Mauranen, 2012). This article explores the role of metapragmatic expressions (MPEs) in creating common ground (CG) to achieve mutual understanding in business ELF (BELF) meeting interactions. MPEs are linguistic expressions, such as I will tell you the details, this is an interesting point, and what I meant is, which explicitly display the speaker's reflexive awareness of language use in meaning co-creation.

There have been a number of studies on metapragmatics over the past few decades. Caffi's (1993) division of three senses lays the foundation for metapragmatics research, and this article addresses the third sense, i.e., “the investigation of that area of the speaker's competence which reflects the judgments of appropriateness on one's own and other people's communicative behavior” (Caffi, 1993:2461). Metapragmatics in this sense is concerned with the speaker's actual management of discourse (Caffi, 1993:2461).

Little research has been done concerning metapragmatic awareness and metapragmatic indicators in BELF interactions. Some focus on the scope and level of metapragmatics (e.g. Caffi, 1984, Hübler, 2011, Mey, 1993/2001, Silverstein, 1993, Verschueren, 1999/2000, Verschueren, 2000). Others are concerned with the linguistic features and functions of particular metapragmatic indicators, mostly in everyday settings, and some in educational, political, media and computer-mediated contexts (for a review, see Hübler and Bublitz, 2007, Kleinke and Bös, 2015). In addition, previous studies have identified different types of metapragmatic indicators (e.g. Verschueren, 2000, Penz, 2007, Ran, 2013) and metadiscourse markers (e.g. Kopple, 1985) in daily, academic or other institutional settings. Furthermore, prior studies have not gone far enough to examine the functioning of MPEs in creating CG, although Caffi (2007) mentions common knowledge as a basis of discourse management, and others (e.g. Silverstein, 1993, Verschueren, 1999/2000, Penz, 2007, Caffi, 2007, Hübler and Bublitz, 2007) have pointed out the “regimenting”, “stipulative”, “monitoring”, “problem-solving”, and “interfering” functions of metapragmatic indicators. It seems there is a lack of account of metapragmatic awareness and its indicators in BELF interactions.

“Due to its lingua franca nature, BELF is essentially different from any native speaker English in many ways,” and a high level of strategic competence is necessary for coping with the communicative challenges posed by global business interactions involving diverse languages and cultures (Ehrenreich, 2016:137–138). The employment of MPEs is presumed to be explicit linguistic means or strategies to cope with these challenges and difficulties. A perspective combining social and cognitive aspects can provide a more comprehensive picture of MPEs in BELF interactions due to their complexity and high-stake nature. Thus this article adopts the socio-cognitive approach (SCA), particularly, its common ground theory, proposed and developed by Kecskes, 2008, Kecskes, 2010, Kecskes, 2013 and Kecskes and Zhang, 2009, Kecskes and Zhang, 2013. Guided by previous research, based on the data from one business meeting interactions, I will identify major categories of MPEs present in the data, and then examine their role in creating CG, that is, how MPEs participate in CG construction to facilitate or shape ongoing interactions. I argue that MPEs are selected as explicit linguistic means to activate shared sense and current sense, which contribute to the creation of emergent CG to achieve mutual understanding in BELF meeting interactions. This article is expected to add to our knowledge of metapragmatic awareness and its indicators in BELF.