Accommodating Toward Your Audience: Do Native Speakers of English Know How to Accommodate Their Communication Strategies Toward Nonnative Speakers of English?

The study seeks to add to the current debate on English as a lingua franca by analyzing the role of the native speakers of English in intercultural business negotiations and to what extent they effectively accommodate lingua franca speakers. The data, gathered from a sample of 14 native English speakers and 13 nonnative English speakers, consist of interactions collected through a discourse completion task and a short questionnaire. The results showed that the native speakers in this sample used a wider range of linguistic devices than the nonnative speakers. The majority of the native speakers attempted to accommodate nonnative speakers, but there was significant variation in the way that individual participants chose their strategies and approached accommodation. The most striking finding was the imbalance between the native speakers’ understanding of the issues of intercultural communication and their inability to effectively accommodate nonnative speakers. The implications are discussed.