“It’s made by chili, not curry.” Supra-understanding of Foreign Friendship Talks in ELF
In America, I found that many speakers of English as a lingua franca (ELF) experience misinterpretations involving loanwords, culturally-specific locutions, creative wordplay, or individual idiolects. Accordingly, in my talk for the celebration of 75 years of Fulbright, I proposed the concept of supra-understanding to explicate how ELF speakers can develop a critical sociolinguistic awareness of ethnocentric language usages and worldviews, thereby avoiding the misunderstandings of alien and idiosyncratic utterances in intercultural communication. To illustrate this concept, I present two scenarios to demonstrate how these adept ELF speakers achieve supra-understanding by re-deploying their semiotic resources, repositioning their perspectives, and re-negotiating meanings. The poster for my Fulbright talk Anecdote 1: It’s made by chili, not curry. Pat, a visiting scholar from India, invited me for dinner at his apartment.[1] He cooked some rice, vegetables, and soup. Like most Indians, Pat likes very spicy food, but the dishes he prepared for me were much milder than those he usually makes for himself. I was surprised by the reddish-brown color of the soup, having long associated Indian food with the yellow color of turmeric powder, but I instantly realized my misconception. My Indian friend cooked delicious dishes for our dinner Then I asked Pat
