A Corpus-based Study Of Interruptions In International Business Meetings

Interruption is a kind of language phenomenon frequently used by business communicators.It reflects the intention of interrupters to control and claim for turn.However,according to previous studies,the importance of interruption has not been fully explored in business environment,especially in business meetings with multiperson discourse.Based on the discourse analysis theories and the power discourse theory,this study analyzes the types,frequency,causes and strategies of interruptions in international business meetings,and reveals the relationship between interruptions and power.The research corpus of this thesis comes from 4 business meetings in VOICE,with a total duration of more than 10 hours and near 10,0000 English words.Based on the previous scholars' classifications of interruptions,interruptions in international business meetings can be classified into cooperative interruption and intrusive interruption.The former can also be divided into: agreement,assistance and clarification;the latter can be divided into: disagreement,topic-changing and floortaking.In addition,the analysis of the causes of interruptions is to take various power factors in the meetings into account,including chair power,leader power,information power and culture power.Culture power is especially suitable for international business meetings.The specific findings are as follows:(1)On the whole,cooperative interruptions are more than intrusive interruptions.The former accounts for 59% while the latter for 41%.Assistance interruptions are the most common in international business meetings,followed by floor-taking interruptions,which often occur when different stakeholders in the meeting get the turn for their own to strive for more benefits.There are more disagreement interruptions than of agreement.Because when the interrupter does not agree with other people's views,he will say the specific reasons instead of verbal feedback.Topic-changing interruptions are the least common,because business meetings usually have fixed themes and topics.(2)Different types of interruptions in international business meetings result from different powers.When chair power owners,culture power owners and information power owners interrupt others,the interruption is usually cooperative,which is not to strive for the turn.Chairs in the meetings tend to use cooperative interruptions to proceed the meeting,while leader tend to use intrusive interruptions to show authority.Information power owners often interrupt others to help provide more effective information.Since culture power is extremely suitable for international business meetings,the interruptions caused by it account for a small proposition.(3)Interruption strategies include two parts: interruption timing and interruption skills.The most appropriate time to interrupt others is at current speaker's natural pause,but not at the speech in progress.Information power owners should pay more attention to seize the best interruption timing.The skills of interruption involve: direct and quick interruption,using connective words and using evaluative speech.The former one is mostly used by chair and leader power owners.Connective words are usually used by culture power owners and information power owners.Evaluative speech fits for all power owners.To sum up,although there are many interruptions in international business meetings and participants have different cultural backgrounds,cooperative interruptions and appropriate interruption strategies would proceed the meetings more effectively and harmoniously.