Learning through languaging in ELF service encounters

This chapter will present data on workplace interaction in which English is used as a lingua franca to supply information to tourists. Analysis of the data shows that the well-attested ability of ELF speakers to negotiate interactional difficulties using accommodation skills is heightened in the workplace, where there is greater pressure towards resolving areas of misunderstanding even in very brief transactions. As well as illustrating specific cases of accommodation by ELF speakers in the workplace, the chapter identifies specific pedagogical roles that speakers take on during interaction. Skilled ELF users in the workplace are seen to act not only as “learners”, in as much as they calibrate their own language in accordance with their assessment of the competence of their interlocutor (Firth 2009), but also as “teachers”, by making areas of language misunderstanding explicit to their interlocutors during interaction. It is argued that these “languaging” techniques (Swain and Watanabe 2012) are part of the specific interactional competence of the ELF speaker, and that this “teach/learn-as-you-go” style is a distinctive feature of ELF workplace interaction.