Negotiating the meaning: BELF Pragmatics in Thai international corporations

Abstract

This research aims to explore the use of English as a lingua franca in business context (BELF; Louhiala-Salminen, Charles and Kankaanranta, 2005) between Thai business professionals and their business partners from other countries in Asian region in particular. Based on the approximately 9.30 hours of international business meetings and the semi-structure interviews with 23 meeting participants in three different international corporations in Thailand, the study seeks to find out how the participants achieve the successful communication through the use of English as a lingua franca.

The findings reveal a range of interactive strategies that were skilfully employed by BELF participants in their collaborative negotiation of the meaning. In addition, what emerged from the analysis were distinct from the deficit portrait of English, namely a call for (native) English competence, which has been extensively promoted in Thailand over the half decade in the wake of the inauguration of ASEAN community. In other words, the successful international meetings were achieved by the collaboration of BELF participants through a number of different discourse features; where English was perceived and used not as a language that they spoke but rather as a resource, or nearly a tool for the international meetings.

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