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Silence as a communicative act in face-to-face spontaneous interaction has been underinvestigated in linguistic politeness research in Thailand. With the recent increase in the influx of foreign students gaining admission into Thai universities yearly, the result is that such universities will be a coexistence of cultures. This study therefore aims to investigate the situational face-threat contexts where Thai students use silence as a politeness strategy. This aim is guided by the main research question of what different situational face-threat contexts could lead to the use of silence by Thai students in their foreign-peer interactions in a Thai multicultural university context. Twenty students' interactions were sampled using micro-socio-ethnographic technique, with data from observation, interview, and questionnaire. The main findings revealed that: uncertainty of language proficiency, expected hurting words from interlocutor, and unexpected negative change in hearer's mood, amongst others, were the main circumstances where Thai students use silence as a face-saving politeness strategy. The findings imply better intercultural awareness in multicultural university contexts.

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This paper discusses the commonly realised social speech act of refusal strategies in English among university students in the Southern part of Thailand, in explaining how they say 'no' to request and the effects of this speech act on the hearer's face. Using Discourse Completion Test (DCT) to collect oral data in naturally-occurring situations, together with a qualitative analysis of the transcribed data according to Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990) classification scheme of refusal, the study affirms that there are two major common ways of realising refusals to request in English among these students, namely: direct and, overwhelmingly, indirect refusal strategies. The findings also reveal that the last strategy of the classification scheme, adjuncts to refusals, was not found in the data. Similarly, not all the indirect refusal sub-strategies were found in the data. However, two novel sub-strategies: giving advice/explanation, and lack of empathy were found in the analysis. The findings have implications for better socio-cultural communication and interaction in a multicultural university context.

In examining how English as a second language (ESL) learners process English formulaic expressions in a nonnative English context, this study aims to investigate the strategies that learners use and how first language (L1) culture and conceptual knowledge could influence the use of the strategies. This study is guided by the research question of how francophone ESL learners in Thailand process formulaic expressions in situation-bound utterances (SBUs). Three Francophone Cameroonian learners of English in a university in Thailand (served as the experimental group) and two native English speakers (as the control group) participated in this study. Oral Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was employed to elicit data and evaluated based on 4 categories: (1) Native-like English; (2) Towards Native-like English; (3) Francophone English; and (4) Irrelevant English. The result showed that among the three francophone participants in the study whose native languages were French, 60% DCT responses were Towards Native-like (TNE), 30% were Francophone English (FE), 10% were Native-like English (NE). There was no response from the DCTs, according to the analysis, that was irrelevant English. A further analysis of the three categories revealed that the learners primarily used simplification, verbosity, literal salience, and L1 cultural transfer strategies in processing formulaic expressions. This study corroborates the seemingly weak connection of English linguistic proficiency and sociolinguistic competence in ESL learner's pragmatic knowledge, as well as the reliance on L1 conventionalized conceptualization in processing English formulaic expressions. Implications for teaching formulaic expressions in a nonnative English as a foreign language (EFL) context in general, and Thai context in particular are also discussed.