English as a lingua franca (ELF) speakers use general extenders (GE) -like and so on, et cetera, something like that- in intercultural communication in academic contexts to convey intersubjectivity in different ways, like marking hesitation and politeness, and to textually arrange their speech via exemplification, paraphrasing, and quoting. GE do not engender misunderstandings, but enable interlocutors to attain pragmatically efficient but explicit ELF exchange.