Is It All Greek to You? An Analysis of Communication Strategies among Erasmus Students

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate English as a lingua franca (ELF), a phenomenon that has attracted much attention in the last twenty years. Specifically, it aims to analyse the communicative strategies non-native speakers of English employ with a view to securing understanding. To achieve this, informal ELF conversations among Erasmus students at the University of Graz are investigated. This study deploys qualitative methods, i.e., semistructured interviews with Erasmus students were tape-recorded and transcribed. Therefore, communication strategies that contribute to mutual understanding are presented along with examples and their frequency of usage in the data. Furthermore, the numerous functions of communication strategies are mentioned along with possible explanations of their use. The findings show that Erasmus students employ various strategies with the aim of achieving mutual understanding and preventing possible communication problems.

Keywords

• English as a lingua franca
• Erasmus students
• self-initiated communicative strategies
• other-initiated communicative strategies