Understanding Each Other: Strategies for Accommodation in a Virtual Business Team Project Based in China

Abstract

The use of accommodation strategies between native and nonnative interlocutors of English in the rapidly increased virtual and global work contexts remains underresearched. Contextualized in a Chinese IT outsourcing company where English is used as a lingua franca, this study focuses on how accommodation strategies are used by both on- and offshore team project members in their virtual meeting exchanges. The article argues that the actual linguistic exchange appears to be scaffolded and facilitated by a series of what the authors call “extratextual accommodation strategies” such as the use of detailed minutes of tasks set and completed, and an agreed meeting format. While “intratextual accommodation strategies,” that is, those relating to specific linguistic behaviors in English in the exchanges are also used by interlocutors to accommodate to each other’s speech; the article argues, therefore, that both extra- and intratextual accommodation strategies appear to work in a symbiotic way to ensure successful exchange in business virtual meeting contexts.