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ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1996) 237-259 The discursive accomplishment of normality"On 'lingua franca' English and conversation analysis Alan Firth* Department of Languages, Aalborg University, Havrevangen 1, DK-9000 Aalborg, Denmark Abstract Lingua franca interactions in English - those exclusively involving nonnative speakers -are common, everyday occurrences worldwide, yet have not been studied by conversationanalysts. By examining the naturally-occurring, work-related talk of management personnelcommunicating in 'lingua franca' English, this paper explores a range of issues surroundingthe applicability of conversation analytic methodology to lingua franca talk-data. While con-versation analysis (CA) does provide a basic methodology through which we are able todescribe in detailed ways how such interactions are sequentially and thus socially constructed,consideration of the data type itself allows us to cast new light on some of CA's methods andworking assumptions. At the same time, the paper documents some of the various methodsthrough which participants do interactional and discursive work to imbue talk with an orderlyand 'normal' appearance, in the face of extraordinary, deviant, and sometimes 'abnormal' lin-guistic behaviour. 1. Introduction Conversation Analysis (hereafter, CA) has emerged as one of the most powerfuland influential methodologies hitherto developed to analyse talk and, in a widersense, social action. In its thirty-year development, beginning with Harvey Sacks'sfirst Lectures on Conversation in 1964 (see Sacks, 1992a,b), CA has accumulated anarray of findings on the nature and social organization of what Schegloff (1987) hasreferred to as its proper object of study: 'talk-in-interaction'. t Building upon eth-nomethodological foundations, work within CA has demonstrated that ordinary,interactive talk must properly be viewed as a locally and delicately accomplished* E-mail:
[email protected]; Fax: +45 98 13 80 86.Limitations of space obviate an exposition of CA's findings, concepts and working methods. Usefuland detailed overviews can be found in Heritage (1984: ch. 8), Zimmerman (1988) and Psathas (1995).Collections of CA studies include Schenkein (1978), Psathas (1979), Atkinson and Heritage (1984),Button and Lee (1987), Boden and Zimmerman (1991), Drew and Heritage (1992), and ten Have andPsathas (1995).0378-2166/96/$15.00 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII 0378-2 166(96)00014-8 238 A. Firth / Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1996) 237-259achievement, and that the 'normal' and 'routine' appearances of talk are the result ofthe participants' ceaseless and contingent application of complex though methodicpractices. Utilising transcripts of naturally-occurring talk, conversation analysts haveviewed as their major task both the explication of those methodic practices and thedetailed description of how talk is sequentially structured and interactively managed.Although practitioners have maintained that casual conversation is the 'basic','primordial' form, or 'bedrock', of all forms of talk (see, e.g., Sacks et al., 1974:730; Zimmerman, 1988:424 425; Drew and Heritage, 1992: 19), the epithet 'talk-in-interaction' informs us that the researchable domain of CA is not restricted to'casual' or 'mundane' conversation. Over the last decade in particular, a good dealof CA-based research has begun to examine a wide range of non-conversationalinteractions, most of which are located within institutional or workplace settings andpractices (e.g. classrooms, courtrooms, emergency services, doctors' surgeries, jour-nalistic interviews, and political speeches). 2 Yet there remains a large number of set-tings, talk-based practices and data types that have not been subjected to conversa-tion analytic scrutiny. Indeed, if we begin to examine the data types analysed instudies of 'casual' conversation or institutionally-anchored talk, a picture emerges ofan enterprise that has shown a remarkably consistent though restricted interest in thetalk of 'normal' adults who are members of the same culture 3 and who share and usethe same native language - in the majority of cases the English language. 4.5As I want to show here, the implications of this restricted focus are important fora number of reasons, though have rarely been addressed within the literature. A com-mon working assumption within CA, for example, is that the analyst is able to makeobservations on the data transcripts partly on the basis of his or her co-membership of the participants' linguistic-cultural community. Some of Sacks's earliest workwas based on the observer-analyst sharing - with the parties observed - access toculturally-based knowledge of such things as 'everyday' scenes and social roles:"we can use that information which we have as members of the same society thatthese ... people are in" (Sacks [Lecture 14, 1964], 1992a: 116). Co-membership,then, is a resource for both analysts and participants alike. It is on this basis that theanalyst's "intuitively plain observations" (Jefferson and Schenkein, 1978: 170, fn.2 For a recent review of this work, see the introductory chapter in Drew and Heritage (1992). The col-lected studies in Drew and Heritage (1992) are representative of current institution/work-related CAstudies.3 For the sake of the argument to be developed in this paper. I am at this juncture using the term 'cul-ture' as a commonsense notion that implies a community's shared "system of standards for perceiving,believing, evaluating, and acting" (Goodenough, 1971: 41). This is not to deny that such a 'system' islocally enacted and situationally motile.4 Some conversation analysts might claim that categorizations such as cultural membership are rele-vant only insofar as they are made 'procedurally relevant' in the talk itself (see, e.g., Schegloff, 1991).However, in light of the remarkable uniformity of data types examined in CA, it appears that - implic-itly at least - such categorizations do have relevance for analysts, in their selections of data materials.5 Of the (relatively few) conversation-analytic studies undertaken on languages other than English, see,e.g., ten Have's (1987) work on the Dutch language, Moerman's (1988) and Bilmes's (1992) studies onThai. Bergmann (1987) on German, and Lindstr6m on Swedish (1994). A. Firth / Journal of Pragrnatics 26 (1996) 237-259 23910) are considered warrantable, the supposition being that, since I as an analyst'know' or 'belong' to the participants' linguistic and cultural community, I can war-rantably recognize situationally (ab)normal, (dis)orderly - and hence describable -ways of doing things.Moreover, the interactants whose talk is examined are presumed to share knowl-edge of, and equal access to, a common linguistic code, which is itself underpinnedby a shared and stable linguistic and interactional competence. Analysts have thusbeen able to propose the existence of 'standard' or 'patterned' deployment of con-versational phenomena [e.g. so-called 'change-of-state' tokens (Heritage, 1984) andproverbs (Drew, 1994)], and that parties 'share' knowledge of conversational prac-tices. Claims have been made that participants orient to 'standard' silences (of onesecond) (Jefferson, 1987), or have 'canonical' ways of opening (Schegloff, 1986)and closing telephone interactions (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973), taking and coordi-nating turns at talk (Sacks et al., 1974), doing 'repair work' (Schegloff et al., 1977),talking about 'troubles' (Jefferson, 1988), and more. It is through the social andlocal accomplishment of these (and other) practices, Michael Moerman (1988) hasargued, that people are able to enact, reproduce and confirm their common culturalmembership.It is not the intention of this paper to challenge the veracity of such work, for I amconvinced of the integrity of the findings made, and of the inherent soundness of theassumption of a commonality of individuals who for all practical purposes share lin-guistic and interactional competence. After all, as analysts have shown, such sharedcompetence is procedurally though tacitly demonstrated by the participants them-selves in their 'normal', 'routine', 'orderly', and 'recognizable' interactions with oneanother (on this, see esp. Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 290). What I want to do hereis to enter into the equation a data type that - at least in theory and, at certainmoments, in practice - renders problematic an assumption of a common communityof language users - professional analysts included - who share a developed and sta-ble linguistic and interactional competence. The data I am referring to is a type ofspoken interaction within which participants typically make unidiomatic and non-collocating lexical selections, and where the talk throughout its duration is com-monly 'marked' by dysfluencies, and by syntactic, morphological, and phonologicalanomalies and infelicities - at least as such aspects are recognized by native-speakerassessments. 6 This is the naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction produced by non-6 Two important caveats are in order. First, in making these cursory observations I do not wish to beseen to be making evaluative assessments of the data type to be considered here. Indeed, as I attempt toshow, although the non-native speaker data evidence various kinds of non-standard and 'marked' usage,a remarkable feature of these interactions is the fact that the participants are routinely able to overcomesuch apparent linguistic anomalies and accomplish their practical, work-related tasks. Second, I am not implying that all non-native speaker interactions are characterizable in this way. As explained below, theobservations made in this paper are restricted to a data corpus of naturally-occurring non-native speakerinteractions engaged in within two specific work settings. While acknowledging that some - indeed,many - non-native interactions may be hardly distinguishable from 'ordinary' native speaker interactionsin terms of observable linguistic and conversational competence, it is reasonable to regard the linguistic 240 A. Firth /Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1996) 237-259 native speakers of (in this case) English. Here, English is used as a 'lingua franca' - a 'contact language' between persons who share neither a common native tonguenor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign lan-guage of communication.7Although foreign-language, or lingua-franca, interactions are an extremely com-mon, even quotidian, occurrence in manifold settings throughout the world - andparticularly English lingua franca interactions8 - such interactions have been over-looked by conversation analysts (though see Jordan and Fuller, 1975). In light ofthis, a number of basic questions require attention. For example: are CA's workingassumptions (on, e.g., orderliness in talk) and findings (on, e.g., the sequentially-based management of talk) equally as applicable in linguafranca interactions as theyare in the analysis of monolingual talk? And is CA methodology amenable to theanalysis of linguafranca interactions?9 The argument developed in this paper is that,while CA does provide a basic methodology through which we are able to describein detailed ways how lingua franca interactions are sequentially and thus sociallyconstructed, consideration of the data type itself allows us to cast new light on CA'smethods and working assumptions. At the same time, an attempt is made to showthat addressing lingua franca interactions from a conversation analytic perspectivewill contribute to an improved general understanding of (1) the nature of conversa-tional competence, and (2) the linguistic and interactional resources deployed andrequired in order to conduct meaningful, orderly and indeed 'ordinary' discursivepractices.and interactional features observable in the current corpus as representative of a fair proportion ofcomparable naturally-occurring non-native interactions, at least amongst management personnel in the(non-English-speaking) industrialized world.7 In an earlier paper (Firth, 1990) I proposed a conceptual distinction between English as an intrana- tional "lingua franca' and as an international 'lingua franca'. The former refers to English used as a 'con-tact language' within national groups whose first languages are mutually incomprehensible (e.g. in Indiaand Nigeria), whilst the latter refers to English used amongst different nationality groups (e.g. the nativeDanish speaker interacting with a native speaker of Greek, a native speaker of Dutch and a Japanesenative speaker). While recognizing the rudimentary character of this dichotomy, and the number of bor-derline cases it invokes, the 'international' understanding of 'lingua franca' is nevertheless representedin a large number of clear-cut cases.8 Although here are at least 360 million native speakers of English world-wide, Sir Randolph Quirk,writing in The Sunday Times on 17 April, 1994, estimates that on a global basis non-native speakers ofEnglish now outnumber native speakers. This tells us very little of non-native competence in nor use ofEnglish, however. Certainly English is the world's most studied and geographically widespread lan-guage, the implications of which have only relatively recently begun to attract commentators' andresearchers' serious attention. Bryson (1990: 177) notes that "there are more people learning English inChina than there are people in the United States", and McCrum et al. (1987) claim that nearly half of allbusiness deals in Europe are conducted in English. Dinyon and Greaves (1989: 14) describe English asthe "lingua franca sine qua non" in the European Union's headquarters in Brussels.9 Suchquestions are not restricted to 'lingua franca' talk, but are likely to be of relevance for a rangeof (potentially) 'non-standard' linguistic-performance materials, including the talk of aphasics, the men-tally retarded, the senile, and very young children - to name but a few. A. Firth /Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1996) 237-259 241 2. Lingua franca data The point should be made from the outset that this paper is not addressing all potential 'lingua franca' interactions, and therefore does not claim to cover the man-ifold settings, activities and levels of proficiency within which such talk commonlyoccurs. Rather, the observations and discussions are restricted to a corpus of audio-recorded data from two Danish international trading companies. The discussionshere should thus be seen as initiatory and preliminary. The data examined are a col-lection of telephone calls involving Danish export managers and their internationalclients. In the Danish companies concerned, international communications areinvariably conducted in English. 10 Most frequently, such interactions are of the 'lin-gua franca' type; i.e., they exclusively involve normative speakers.The telephone calls comprising the present corpus are visibly 'business calls'.That is, through their discourse actions, the participants overridingly display an ori-entation to the work-related nature of their interactions, and by so doing reflexively accomplish the 'business-like' character of the calls. 11 The 'business' involves sell-ing and buying commodities (foodstuffs and micro-electronics).From a conversation analytic perspective, the notion of 'lingua franca interac-tions' is an analyst construct, potentially without procedural relevance (i.e. rele-vance that is demonstrable in the talk itself; see Schegloff (1991)) for parties so cat-egorized. The notion, then, is comparable to such categorizations as, say, 'women'sinteractions' or 'old aged persons' interactions'. And yet, as we shall witnesspresently, the notion does have some real-world (members') validity, in that partiesto lingua franca interactions on occasions do make the 'lingua franca' status 'proce-durally relevant' for the production and management of talk.As a conceptual categorization, however, the 'lingua franca' epithet does havesome advantages, particularly when contrasted with more ideologically-fused cog-nates such as 'foreigner talk', 'interlanguage talk', or 'learner interaction', t2 For incontrast to these latter-mentioned categorizations, the term 'lingua franca' attemptsto conceptualize the participant simply as a language user whose real-world interac-tions are deserving of unprejudiced description, rather - as these latter categories -than as a person conceived a priori to be the possessor of incomplete or deficientcommunicative competence, putatively striving for the 'target' competence of anidealized 'native speaker'.~o A study conducted in 1988 for the Danish Council of Trade and Industry (Hesselberg-M011er, 1988)reported that, for Danish companies, English is used in over 80% of all international business contactsand communications.ii This s not to claim that the calls do not contain phases of activity which are 'social' or 'non-work'related. On some occasions during some calls, parties engage in 'casual talk' (see Firth, 1995) on suchtopics as the weather and vacation plans. However, such topics are typically evanescent, and invariablyoccur at very early stages of the calls. They are, moreover, made to appear as 'preliminary' to the work-related reason for the call.12 Such studies include Gass and Varonis (1985), Long (1983), F~erch and Kasper (1983), andBialystok (1990).
