Topic Management in Cross-cultural Conversation

Abstract

This is a case study which examined the topic management behavior of three participants in a cross-cultural con- versation. The research questions were: 1) in what ways was the global topical move structured?; 2) Were there recurrent discourse patterns that implicated topic change? For the study, the participants' talk was recorded, transcribed and analyzed through conversational analysis. In global topic management, the native speaker of English had the most dominant role while the nonnative speakers served as passive recipients. The common topic change indicators in local topic management were questions, pause, and the discourse marker 'so.' In using these, some differences were observed among the participants, which might be attributable to crosscultural differences or the nonnative speakers' lack of confidence. The pedagogical implications were also discussed.