On the Non-Fatal Nature of Trouble: Sense-Making and Trouble-Managing in Lingua Franca Talk

1.0 The basis of this paper is a simple observation: lingua franca talk happens; that is to say, two parties speaking different native languages communicate via a third language of which neither is a fluent speaker. In many areas of the world, lingua franca talk is an ordinary aspect of everyday life; it is a routine occurrence that people speak to each other in languages other than their own and in doing so conduct some sort of business. What we find remarkable is that persons who are deficient in language competence, who share a language imperfectly spoken by all participants, nevertheless turn out to be experts in locating, avoiding, replacing, fixing, ignoring, talking about and otherwise dealing with troubles arising in such situations. We are here concerned with the kind of work that gets done in order to accomplish the business at hand in the face of potential misinterpretation, lack of competency, impending non-talk and so on. Since such problems are recognized by the speakers as ever-present possibilities, in fact as pervasive features of this kind of talk, we find ourselves interested