This discourse analytical study focuses on ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) social talk interactions in intercultural setting to see how the participants from different background actually act in ELF interactions. There
are two types of data for this study. The one is experimental social talk conversation data and the other is the
comments obtained from the group discussions. As for the conversation data, Indian participants and Japanese
participants were asked to talk in English for about 30 minutes. The data were videotaped and audio recorded.
The total length of the conversation data is about three hours. As for the group discussion, three groups of
Indian people and two groups of Japanese people separately discussed their communication problems in the
branches of Japanese companies in India where Japanese and Indian people work together. The conversations
were analyzed based on the outcomes of group discussions. The conversation data and group discussion were
recorded in Southern India. The participants were Indian people working with Japanese people or working in
Japanese companies in India, and Japanese people working in branches of Japanese company in India. English
is used as a lingua franca in the data. All of the data were the first meeting conversations. Although English
is an official language in India, English is the second language for Indian people. Therefore, Indian people
speak English as a second language and Japanese people speak English as a foreign language. In this data,
participants’ L1 were Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi and Malayalam.
The comments from the group discussion shows that difficulties in their ELF interaction. Both Japanese participants and Indian participants claims that they have listening comprehension problems because of each other’s
strong accent. Moreover, both Japanese and Indian participants speak English whose vocabulary, grammar and
word orders are sometimes very different from standard English according to the individuals. They needed
to use repairs in conversations to try to understand try to understand on-going conversation. The research
questions are 1) How were the conversation repairs conducted? 2) What skills are required in ELF social talk
interactions? 3) Are there any different style between Japanese verbal behaviors and Indian verbal behaviors?
The discourse analysis shows that in the social interactions both Japanese and Indian participants did not claim
that they were not following the talk. They implied they had some difficulty in understandings. The participants
picked up particular words of problem sources for understanding and repeated it. Their backchannels clearly
marked their understandings. Indian people used repair systems (other-initiated repair) more skillfully compared to Japanese participants. They paraphrased the talk and ask questions when the current speakers’ talk is
unclear. The Japanese participants tend not to ask so many questions but they often acted that they were trying
to figure out what the current speaker was saying. Thus, both Japanese and Indian participants put priority in
maintaining social relationships as well as communicative effectiveness than the correct forms of English. The
data analysis also indicates length of overseas experience of Japanese participants.