Abstract
This dissertation provides evidence for how English speakers from the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), who use English as a lingua franca (ELF), employ communication strategies (CSs) in their social practice to arrive at shared understanding. The participants were 20 ELF speakers from nine ASEAN countries, who were international students at Hungarian universities. They were categorized into subgroups according to the research questions of the study. The data mainly included video recordings of naturally occurring ELF interactions and retrospective interviews. The analysis indicates that the ASEAN ELF speakers used different types of CSs, among which code-switching, asking for clarification, lexical support, asking for confirmation, and non-linguistic strategies helped them arrive at understanding of each other. These findings are in line with previous studies such as Deterding (2013), Kaur (2010, 2011a, 2011b), Kirkpatrick (2007b), Mauranen (2006) and Pietikäinen (2018). The study indicates that the CSs used by the EFL sub-group, the ESL sub-group, and the mixed group of EFL and ESL were generally the same, and the closeness between speakers in each dyad did not influence their CS use. Regarding frequency, non-linguistic strategies were found to be the most used CSs that facilitated the speakers’ understanding. Among the non-linguistic strategies, pointing was the most used, and in some cases, non-linguistic strategies were used as complementary to another CSs. The study reveals that such uses of CSs work well in ELF interactions and thus should be included in explicit teaching, and ELF speakers prioritized comprehensibility rather than high competence in English, findings which are in line with previous literature. This study fills a gap in current ELF research, especially in the ASEAN context.