Higher Seminar: Multilingual Translanguaging and Strategic Silence in ELF Interactions

In this presentation, guest Professor Saya Ike demonstrate how strategic silence contributes to meaning-making and group decision-making through a multimodal analysis of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) interactions. She examines how silence, often associated with linguistic difficulty or lack of confidence, can also serve as a resource for managing participants’ stances, including disagreement, uncertainty, and reluctance to commit to a position.

Her analysis shows how participants strategically withhold or display their stances through silence and other semiotic resources, including speech, embodied conduct, and physical assembly. Rather than having a fixed meaning, silence can serve different functions depending on how it interacts with other resources and how the interaction develops.

Saya Ike argues that interaction can be understood as an ongoing assembly of semiotic resources through which participants dynamically negotiate meaning and work towards mutual agreement. The presentation highlights the importance of recognising silence and physical assembly as legitimate forms of participation in ELF interactions.