Making sure everybody is on the same page: interactional communication strategies in BELF encounters

Communication in business often comes with high stakes. To achieve successful communication and positive business outcomes in international and intercultural settings, it is necessary for participants to convey their message effectively and accurately. The success of BELF interactions relies heavily on cooperative behavior, which is essential to meaning negotiation and to the prevention or management of communication problems. Participants in international business interactions highlight the importance of “asking clarifying questions and of checking, double-checking, confirming, and reconfirming” (Louhiala-Salminen – Kankaanranta 2011: 256). This paper aims at exploring how BELF users interact with other participants to ensure intelligibility and comprehension. Specifically, the use of appeals for assistance and responses will be investigated, the use of which has already been attested in ELF. A qualitative approach will be adopted to analyze naturally-occurring BELF data drawn from business conversations and meetings in the Professional Business and Professional Organizational subsections in the VOICE corpus.