Edinburgh Napier University

  There have been a number of studies that explores how people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds communicate. However, many of these investigations tend to focus on socio-pragmatic failures, communication breakdowns, and the negative consequences of intercultural communication. The study aims to present a positive aspect of communication across cultures. It analyzed transcriptions of naturally occurring spoken data that show how lingua franca speakers of English and their teacher handle a misunderstanding and turn it into an opportunity for building social relations. Using linguistic ethnography as a methodology, the findings of the study demonstrate that limited language proficiency and differences of discourse conventions can, indeed, lead to miscommunication. However, the results also suggest that if speakers collaboratively work to handle the repair, miscommunication can lead to a positive outcome.