Competing for the floor towards a common goal: a focus on the functions of adversative markers in simultaneous sequences in BELF encounters

Abstract It is well established in Conversation Analysis (CA) that overlapping sequences are a common occurrence in spoken interactions. These often occur near Transition Relevance Places (TRP) in turn-taking management but are used also for cooperative and non-cooperative purposes. The former includes backchanneling and collaborative completion, whereas the latter involves competition for the floor, topic change, or expression of disagreement or strong opinions. This study aims to expand on existing investigations of cooperative and competitive overlaps in Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) interactions. The analysis was carried out on nine speech events of the Professional Business section of the VOICE corpus, focusing on simultaneous sequences including a number of selected pragmatic markers. A Conversation Analysis approach was adopted to analyze the resulting occurrences and identify the functions and purposes of overlaps in BELF communication. Findings show that overlaps may have multiple purposes, both cooperative (agreement, backchannelling, collaborative completion) and competitive, where disagreement is expressed and clarifications and corrections are made. Such overlaps, however, do not appear to be perceived as face-threatening by other participants, reinforcing the unmarked quality of disagreement and stance expression in high-stakes business interactions.