Pragmatic Failure in ELF-Mediated IT Workplace Communication: A Mixed-Methods Study of Multicultural Development Teams
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22302965
Abstract
This article reports an empirical mixed-methods investigation into pragmatic failure among information technology (IT) professionals communicating in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) within multicultural, distributed development teams. Drawing on Thomas’s (1983) pragmalinguistic–sociopragmatic distinction and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework, the study combines a structured questionnaire (N = 58) with semi-structured critical-incident interviews (n = 11) to map the frequency, genre distribution, and perceived causes of pragmatic failure across code review comments, asynchronous chat, stand-up meetings, bug reports, and client correspondence. Findings indicate that pragmatic failure is reported most frequently in text-based, asynchronous genres, where prosodic and visual mitigation cues are unavailable, and that sociopragmatic rather than pragmalinguistic failure predominates. Interview data reveal that professionals develop largely unsystematised, experience-based repair strategies, and that the majority regard their prior English for Specific Purposes (ESP) training as adequate for grammar and vocabulary but inadequate for pragmatic competence. The study argues for the explicit, genre-based integration of ELF pragmatics into IT-ESP curricula.
Keywords:
Pragmatic failure English as a Lingua Franca IT professional discourse sociopragmatic competence mixed-methods research ESP pedagogy multicultural teamsReferences
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