The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) provides an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the main theories, concepts, contexts and applications of this rapidly developing field of study. Including 47 state-of-the-art chapters from leading international scholars, the handbook covers key concepts, regional spread, linguistic features and communication processes, domains and functions, ELF in academia, ELF and pedagogy and future trends. This handbook is key reading for all those engaged in the study and research of English as a lingua franca and world/global Englishes within English language, applied linguistics and education. Jennifer Jenkins holds the Chair of Global Englishes at the University of Southampton where she is also founding director of the Centre for Global Englishes. Will Baker is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Englishes and convenor of MA Global Englishes, University of Southampton. Martin Dewey is Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, where he is Programme Director for the MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT. Contributors: Michaela Albl-Mikasa, Nuha Alharbi, Ishamina Athirah Gardiner, Mariko Baird, Robert Baird, Will Baker, Yasemin Bayyurt, Beyza Björkman, Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo, Suresh Canagarajah, Alessia Cogo, James F. D’Angelo, David Deterding, Martin Dewey, Susanne Ehrenreich, Michele Salles El Kadri, Rinelle Evans, Nicola Galloway, Telma Gimenez, Maria Grazia Guido, Christopher Hall, Luke Harding, Bruce Horner, Juliane House, Julia Hüttner, Niina Hynninen, Masakazu Iino, Jennifer Jenkins, Christopher Jenks, Anne Kankaanranta, Daisuke Kimura, Andy Kirkpatrick, Diane Larsen-­ Freeman, Constant Leung, Jo Lewkowicz, Haibo Liu, Enric Llurda, Leena Louhiala-­ Salminen, Tim McNamara, Anna Mauranen, Sonia Morán Panero, Kumiko Murata, Ruth Osimk-Teasdale, Laura Patsko, Kaisa S. Pietikäinen, Marie-Luise Pitzl, Patricia Pullin, Elina Ranta, Chittima Sangiamchit, Barbara Seidlhofer, Tamah Sherman, Elana Shohamy, Nicos Sifakis, Ute Smit, Anna Solin, Ayako Suzuki, Christa van der Walt, Ying Wang, Henry Widdowson, Ursula Wingate, Sue Wright, Melissa H. Yu and Lin Zheng. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics provide comprehensive overviews of the key topics in applied linguistics. All entries for the handbooks are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics are the ideal resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students. For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooksin-Applied-Linguistics/book-series/RHAL The Routledge Handbook of English for Academic Purposes Edited by Ken Hyland and Philip Shaw The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication Edited by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Tereza Spilioti The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies Edited by Jennifer Rowsell and Kate Pahl The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting Edited by Holly Mikkelson and Renée Jourdenais The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics Edited by Manel Lacorte The Routledge Handbook of Educational Linguistics Edited by Martha Bigelow and Johanna Ennser-Kananen The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics Edited by Malcolm Coulthard and Alison Johnson The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca Edited by Jennifer Jenkins, Will Baker and Martin Dewey First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2018 selection and editorial matter, Jennifer Jenkins, Will Baker and Martin Dewey; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jennifer Jenkins, Will Baker and Martin Dewey to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-85532-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71717-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements Permissions List of contributors Introduction PART I Conceptualising and positioning ELF 1 Conceptualising ELF Anna Mauranen ix x xi xii xiii 1 5 7 2 English as a lingua franca and intercultural communication Will Baker 25 3 Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca Susanne Ehrenreich 37 4 Complexity and ELF Diane Larsen-Freeman 51 5 English language teaching: pedagogic reconnection with the social dimension Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz 61 6 Cognitive perspectives on English as a lingua franca Christopher J. Hall 74 7 Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation Barbara Seidlhofer 85 8 Historical perspectives on ELF H.G. Widdowson 101 v Contents PART II The regional spread of ELF 9 ELF and the EU/wider Europe Tamah Sherman 113 115 10 English as a lingua franca in the Gulf Cooperation Council states Nuha Alharbi 126 11 The development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN Andy Kirkpatrick 138 12 Chinese English as a lingua franca: an ideological inquiry Ying Wang 151 13 The status of ELF in Japan James F. D’Angelo 165 14 ELF in Brazil: recent developments and further directions Telma Gimenez, Michele Salles El Kadri and Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo 176 15 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans 186 PART III ELF characteristics and processes 199 16 Analysing ELF variability Ruth Osimk-Teasdale 201 17 The pragmatics of ELF Alessia Cogo and Juliane House 210 18 Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF interactions: an analysis of initial clusters Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding 224 19 Creativity, idioms and metaphorical language in ELF Marie-Luise Pitzl 233 20 Grammar in ELF Elina Ranta 244 21 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken English as a lingua franca interactions: revisiting linguistic variety Beyza Björkman vi 255 Contents 22 Language norms in ELF Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin 267 23 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters Christopher Jenks 279 PART IV Contemporary domains and functions 293 24 Translingual practice and ELF Daisuke Kimura and Suresh Canagarajah 295 25 ELF in the domain of business—BELF: what does the B stand for? Anne Kankaanranta and Leena Louhiala-Salminen 309 26 ELF in social contexts Kaisa S. Pietikäinen 321 27 Humour in ELF interaction: a powerful, multifunctional resource in relational practice Patricia Pullin 333 28 ELF in electronically mediated intercultural communication Chittima Sangiamchit 345 29 ELF and multilingualism Alessia Cogo 357 30 ELF and translation/interpreting Michaela Albl-Mikasa 369 PART V ELF in academia 385 31 Beyond monolingualism in higher education: a language policy account Ute Smit 387 32 EMI in higher education: an ELF perspective Kumiko Murata and Masakazu Iino 400 33 Written academic English as a lingua franca Bruce Horner 413 34 Transforming higher education language and literacy policies: the contribution of ELF Ursula Wingate 427 vii Contents PART VI ELF, policy and pedagogy 439 35 ELF and teacher education Martin Dewey and Laura Patsko 441 36 ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development Nicos Sifakis and Yasemin Bayyurt 456 37 ELF and ELT teaching materials Nicola Galloway 468 38 ELF and Content and Language Integrated Learning Julia Hüttner 481 39 ELT and ELF in the East Asian contexts Ayako Suzuki, Haibo Liu and Melissa H. Yu 494 40 Language as system and language as dialogic creativity: the difficulties of teaching English as a lingua franca in the classroom Sue Wright and Lin Zheng 41 English language teachers and ELF Enric Llurda PART VII ELF into the future: trends, debates, predictions 506 518 529 42 English as a lingua franca: changing ‘attitudes’ Robert Baird and Mariko Baird 531 43 ELF in migration Maria Grazia Guido 544 44 Global languages and lingua franca communication Sonia Morán Panero 556 45 Language assessment: the challenge of ELF Luke Harding and Tim McNamara 570 46 ELF and critical language testing Elana Shohamy 583 47 The future of English as a lingua franca? Jennifer Jenkins 594 Index 606 viii Figures 10.1 19.1 28.1 30.1 35.1 36.1 Map of the Gulf Cooperation Council states Idiom building and re-metaphorization A wolf in sheep’s clothing Bibliometric analysis as at 31 December 2015 Example task created for the input session on ELF The three phases of ELF-aware teacher education 127 237 352 371 447 462 ix Tables 15.1 15.2 18.1 18.2 18.3 21.1 21.2 25.1 25.2 27.1 35.1 37.1 40.1 40.2 44.1 44.2 44.3 45.1 45.2 45.3 x Spread of English across provinces Spread of English across racial groups Classification of factors that caused the 321 tokens of misunderstandings to occur Tokens with simplified initial clusters that are not understood Misunderstood words with changed initial clusters and no simplification Feature overlap reported in WE varieties and in ELF usage in general linguistic categories Feature overlap between ELF usage reported in 59 WE varieties Characteristics of business knowledge as perceived by practitioners CoP dimensions in relation to the characteristics of and perspectives to business knowledge Contexts of examples of humour in authentic interactions IATEFL and TESOL conference sessions with an explicit focus on ELF Global Englishes language teaching (GELT) Course content in 2001 Course content in 2016 Example of global languages ranking by L1 population indicator Example of global languages ranking by internet users Example of rankings by estimated figures of non-native speaker ‘learners’ Illustrative studies addressing ELF concerns in language assessment Features of a purpose-built ELF assessment task Competence areas for a holistic rubric 187 187 227 229 230 258 259 315 317 335 452 472 512 514 558 558 559 573 577 578 Acknowledgements The editors would like above all to thank the authors of the chapters of this handbook for committing to this project from the start, and (in most cases!) sending us their contributions in good time. Together they have made this first ever Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca a rich and comprehensive resource that will remain so for years to come. We would also like to thank Louisa Semlyen and Laura Sandford at Routledge for their encouragement and support throughout all stages of the handbook’s development. Jennifer Jenkins Will Baker Martin Dewey xi Permissions The authors, editors and publisher would like to thank the following copyright holders for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpt from ‘Little Gidding’ from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. Copyright 1940 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright renewed 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All Rights Reserved. Evans, Vyvyan, an extract from ‘Does emoji spell the death of language?’, 21stcentury. co.uk, 7 December 2015, reproduced by kind permission of the author and Clifford White, the editor. Galloway, Nicola, a table from N. Galloway and H. Rose 2015, Introducing Global Englishes, Reproduced by kind permission of Routledge. Harding, Luke, two tables from ‘Adaptability and ELF communication: The next steps for communicative language testing?’ In J. Mader and Z. Urkun, eds, 2015. Language testing: Current trends and future needs. IATEFL TEASIG. Reproduced by kind permission of the author. Kirkpatrick, Andy, a set of principles drawn from Kirkpatrick, Andy (2012) ‘English as an Asian lingua franca: The lingua franca approach and implications for language education policy’. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1 (1): 121–140. Reproduced by kind permission of De Gruyter Mouton. Extract from The Kingman Report: Report of the Committee of the Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 1988. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-governmentlicence/version/3/ Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. xii Contributors Michaela Albl-Mikasa is Professor of Interpreting Studies at ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Her research and publications focus on ITELF (interpreting, translation and English as a lingua franca), the cognitive foundations of (consecutive) interpreting, the development of interpreting expertise, and medical interpreting. Nuha Alharbi is Assistant Professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She holds a PhD in Language, Discourse and Communication from King’s College London. Her main research interest is intercultural communication in business settings (Saudi multinational corporations), particularly through the use of BELF. Mariko Baird is a Subject Manager of Language and Literature for International Baccalaureate. Her research interests lie in the areas of language and identification, conceptualisations of language and grounded perspectives on English as a lingua franca. Robert Baird is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton. He is one of the founding members of the Centre for Global Englishes there and is editor of their working papers, ‘Englishes in Practice’. His research interests revolve around complexity and performativity in ELF, intercultural communication, academic literacies and language education. Will Baker is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Englishes and convenor of MA Global Englishes, University of Southampton. He is co-editor of the book series ‘Developments in English as a Lingua Franca’ and author of the monograph Culture and Identity through English as Lingua Franca (2015; both De Gruyter Mouton). Yasemin Bayyurt, PhD, is a Full Professor of Applied Linguistics at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. Her research focuses on EIL/ELF-aware pedagogy, ESOL teacher education, intercultural communication and mobile language learning. Her publications include articles in international refereed/indexed journals, book chapters and edited books. Beyza Björkman is Associate Professor of English, at the Department of English at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her general research interests include the use of English as a lingua franca for academic purposes, spoken academic discourse in general, academic literacy, linguistic equality, language change and language policy. Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo is a Professor at the State University of Maringá, Brazil and holds a PhD in Language Studies from the State University of Londrina, Brazil. Her research interests include teacher education, foreign language teaching and learning, communities of practice and English as a lingua franca. xiii Contributors Suresh Canagarajah is Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at Pennsylvania State University. His recent monograph, Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations (Routledge, 2013), has received outstanding book awards from the American Association for Applied Linguistics, British Association for Applied Linguistics and Modern Language Association. Alessia Cogo works as Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her current research concerns ELF pragmatic and multilingual practices in professional and academic contexts, and implications for language teaching and teacher education. She is co-founder and co-convenor of the AILA REN on ELF (english-lingua-franca.org). James F. D’Angelo is Professor and Chair of the Department of World Englishes, Chukyo University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Routledge’s Asian Englishes, His work has appeared in World Englishes, English World-Wide, and edited book collections. He holds an MBA from Boston University and a PhD from North-West University, South Africa. David Deterding is a Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam where he teaches phonetics, Malay-English translation, forensic linguistics and the history of English. His research has focused on describing the pronunciation of English in South-East Asia and analysing misunderstandings in ELF. Martin Dewey is Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, where he is programme director for the MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT. His research focuses on ELF and the globalisation of communication, particularly exploring the impact of ELF on language teacher education. He has presented and published widely on this work. Susanne Ehrenreich is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. Her research interests and publications about ELF include international business, communities of practice, pragmatics and the pedagogical implications of ELF. She is co-editor of the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca special issue on ‘Teaching (B)ELF and/or Intercultural Communication?’ (2015). Michele Salles El Kadri is a Professor in the Foreign Language Department at the State University of Londrina (Brazil) and holds a doctorate and master’s degree in Language Studies. Her research interests include teacher education, English as a lingua franca (co-teaching, co-generative dialogue) and technologies in the teaching of English. Rinelle Evans is an Associate Professor and Rated Researcher in the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria (South Africa) and holds a doctorate in curriculum and instructional design. She obtained a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages from the University of Birmingham, UK and has published several textbooks and support material for English second-language learners. Nicola Galloway is a Lecturer at The University of Edinburgh, where she teaches a course on Global Englishes for Language Teaching. Nicola holds a PhD from the University of Southampton and is co-author of Introducing Global Englishes (Routledge, 2015; with Heath Rose). xiv Contributors Ishamina Athirah Gardiner conducted her PhD research on misunderstandings by Bruneians when talking to people from elsewhere, and much of her research involves analysis of the pronunciation of English in Brunei. She is now an Adjunct Lecturer at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Telma Gimenez is an Associate Professor at the State University of Londrina, Brazil, and is currently serving as the International Relations Advisor to the President of the university. Her research interests are in the area of globalisation, educational policies and English language teaching. Maria Grazia Guido is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Salento (Italy), where she is Director of the master’s course in ‘Intercultural and Interlingual Mediation in Immigration and Asylum Contexts’ and the international PhD programme (with the University of Vienna) in ‘Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures’. Christopher J. Hall is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Linguistics at York St John University, where he also leads the Language and Identities in InterAction (LIdIA) Research Unit. Luke Harding is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. His research interests are mainly in language assessment. He has published on listening assessment, pronunciation assessment, language assessment literacy and diagnostic language assessment. Bruce Horner is Endowed Chair in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville. His recent books include Rewriting Composition: Terms of Exchange (2016) and the co-edited collections Cross-language Relations in Composition (2010) and Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition: Global Interrogations, Local Interventions (2014), all published by Southern Illinois Press. Juliane House is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Hamburg University and Distinguished Professor at Hellenic American University. She holds honorary doctorates from Finnish and Spanish universities. Besides ELF, her research interests are contrastive pragmatics, discourse analysis, politeness and translation. She has published widely in all these areas. Julia Hüttner is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton. Her main research interests lie in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English medium instruction (EMI), and teacher cognition. Her publications include a monograph, edited volumes and numerous journal articles (e.g. in Classroom Discourse, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, System). Niina Hynninen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. She has published on spoken academic ELF, with particular focus on language regulation (including a monograph with De Gruyter Mouton in 2016). Her current research focuses on the regulation of English-medium research writing. xv Contributors Masakazu Iino, PhD (University of Pennsylvania) is a Professor of Sociolinguistics at the School of International Liberal Studies and the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo. Jennifer Jenkins holds the Chair of Global Englishes at the University of Southampton where she is also founding director of the Centre for Global Englishes. She has been researching ELF since 1988 and has authored three monographs and numerous papers on the subject. She is also founding co-editor of the book series Developments in ELF (De Gruyter Mouton). Christopher Jenks teaches at the University of South Dakota. His research interests are related to the global spread of English. He is currently writing a book that examines race and racism in the ELT profession in South Korea. Anne Kankaanranta, PhD, MSc (Econ), works as Senior University Lecturer at the Department of Management Studies of Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. Apart from BELF, her research interests include language matters in MNCs and international corporate communication. Daisuke Kimura is a doctoral candidate at Pennsylvania State University. Having learned, used, and taught English in various international settings, he now explores the global spread of English and its interplay with multilingual and nonverbal resources from qualitative research perspectives. Andy Kirkpatrick is Professor in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith University. His publications include World Englishes: Implications for ELT and International Communication (Cambridge University Press, 2007), English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model (Hong Kong University Press, 2010) and (with Xu Zhichang) Chinese Rhetoric and Writing (Parlor Press, 2012). He is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (Routledge, 2010), and (with Roly Sussex) English as an Asian Language: Implications for Language Education (Springer, 2012). Diane Larsen-Freeman is Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and former Director of its English Language Institute. She is also a Professor Emerita at the SIT Graduate Institute. Currently she is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Constant Leung is Professor of Educational Linguistics in the School of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His research interests include additional/second language curriculum and assessment, language policy and teacher professional development. He is joint editor of Language Assessment Quarterly. Jo Lewkowicz is a visiting lecturer at King’s College, London, and advisor to Warsaw University’s Council for the Certification of Language Proficiency. Her primary research interest is in language testing and assessment and how these impact on and are impacted by the teaching and learning of languages. xvi Contributors Haibo Liu is a college English lecturer in Capital Normal University in China. Before starting her teaching career, she completed a doctorate on language policy and practice from a global Englishes perspective at the Centre of Global Englishes, University of Southampton. Enric Llurda, PhD, teaches at the University of Lleida. He has edited and co-authored five books, and has published several papers and book chapters in applied linguistics. His research interests include non-native language teachers, English as a lingua franca, language attitudes, multilingualism, translanguaging, and language education and policy in higher education institutions. Leena Louhiala-Salminen, PhD, MSc (Econ), works as Senior Fellow and Program Director at the Department of Management Studies of Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. Apart from BELF, her research interests include the various genres of business and corporate communication. Tim McNamara is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. He is President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics for 2017–2018. His research interests are in language testing and language and identity. Anna Mauranen is Professor of English at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on ELF, spoken language, corpus linguistics and academic discourses. She is co-editor of Applied Linguistics, founding co-editor of JELF and director of ELFA and WrELFA corpora language and brain project ‘Chunking in language: units of meaning and processing (CLUMP)’. Her major publications include Exploring ELF (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Sonia Morán Panero is a postdoctoral member of the Centre for Global Englishes research at the University of Southampton. She recently completed a PhD on symbolic aspects of the spread and variability of English as a global language. She has also taught on MA programmes in Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton. Kumiko Murata is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the School of Education and the Graduate School of Education, Waseda University. Her most recent edited book is Exploring ELF in Japanese Academic and Business Contexts (2016, Routledge). Ruth Osimk-Teasdale has published on segmental intelligibility in ELF and the challenges of categorising and annotating ELF data. As a researcher for the VOICE project she co-developed a methodology for a part-of-speech tagged version of the corpus (released 2013) completing her PhD in the topic at the University of Vienna in 2015. Laura Patsko is Senior ELT Research Manager for a major publisher and a former English teacher and teacher trainer. Her research interests are in the fields of English as a lingua franca, pronunciation teaching and teacher development Kaisa S. Pietikäinen has recently submitted her PhD at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include contextual differences in ELF, multilingualism, conversation analysis, and pragmatic development in long-term ELF contexts. She has previously published on multilingual practices and misunderstandings in social ELF. xvii Contributors Marie-Luise Pitzl is Postdoc/Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna. She is one of the compilers of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), co-founder of the AILA research network on ELF and member of the JELF editorial board. She has published on many ELF topics, including miscommunication, BELF, creativity, idiom, metaphor, corpus building and intercultural understanding. Patricia Pullin is an Associate Professor at the School of Business and Engineering Vaud, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland. Within the Interdisciplinary Institute for Business Development (IIDE), she is currently working on oral ELF discourse. She has published in journals such as JELF and the Journal of Business Communication. Elina Ranta earned her PhD from the University of Tampere on universal features in the grammar of spoken ELF. She has also published on ELF at school contexts and on the use of corpora in ELF research. Chittima Sangiamchit is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT) and also a member of the Centre for Global Englishes of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, UK. Her research interests include English as a lingua franca (ELF), intercultural communication, electronically mediated intercultural communication (EMIC) and English language teaching (ELT). Barbara Seidlhofer, Professor at the University of Vienna, is the founding director of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and founding editor of JELF. Her research and teaching focus on ELF, intercultural communication and multilingualism and their implications for teacher education. Tamah Sherman is a researcher at the Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research takes a sociolinguistic approach to multilingual institutions and individuals in the Czech Republic, most recently including foreign-owned multinational companies and Vietnamese immigrants. Elana Shohamy is a Professor at Tel Aviv University where she researches co-existence and rights in multilingual societies within language testing, language policy, migration and linguistic landscape. She edited the Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 7 (Springer, 2009 and 2017); authored The Power of Tests (Longman, 2001); Language Policy (Routledge, 2006); was editor of the journal Language Policy (2006–2014); and currently edits the journal Linguistic Landscapes. Nicos Sifakis is an Associate Professor at the School of Humanities of the Hellenic Open University, Greece and directs its MEd in TESOL programme. He holds a PhD in language and linguistics from the University of Essex, UK. He has published extensively on ESOL teacher education, language teaching methodology and distance education. Ute Smit is Associate Professor at the Department of English Studies, University of Vienna. Her research and recent publications focus on ELF in academia, English-medium instruction in higher education and content-and-language-integrated learning (CLIL). She is co-founder of the AILA Research Network on CLIL and Immersion Education. xviii Contributors Anna Solin is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. Her research to date has focused on discourse studies and genre and particularly the study of genre change. She currently directs a research project entitled ‘Language regulation in academia: The shifting norms of English use’. Ayako Suzuki is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language Education, Tamagawa University, Japan, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate students English for Academic Purposes, Sociolinguistics and Multicultural Education. Her research interest includes ELF and teacher education, language attitude, and teacher development and study abroad. Christa van der Walt is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She received the prestigious Von Humboldt fellowship twice and is editor of the journal Per Linguam. She is author of the books Multilingual Higher Education: Beyond English-Medium Orientations (2013), and Multilingual Universities in South Africa (2014), co-edited with Liesel Hibbert, both published by Multilingual Matters. Ying Wang is Lecturer in Global Englishes at the University of Southampton. Her research interests include global Englishes, English as a lingua franca and language ideologies, with particular focus on sociolinguistic issues of English in relation to China and Chinese users in the context of globalisation. H. G. Widdowson is Professor Emeritus, University of London, and Honorary Professor at the University of Vienna. He is a founding editor of the journal Applied Linguistics and for 30 years the Applied Linguistics Adviser to Oxford University Press. His main interest has been the relationship between linguistic description and language pedagogy. Ursula Wingate is Senior Lecturer in Language in Education and works in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London. Ursula’s research interests are in academic literacy, English language policies and practices and language teaching methodology. Her recent publications are concerned with the impact of formative feedback on academic writing, the teaching and learning of argumentation and genre-based approaches to academic literacy instruction. Sue Wright is Professor of Language and Politics at the University of Portsmouth. She is the author of numerous books, articles and chapters on language policy, language choice and language spread. Her most recent publication is the revised second edition of Language Policy and Language Planning (2016, Palgrave). She is co-editor of the trilingual journal, Sociolinguistica and of the long-running Palgrave book series, Language and Globalisation. She is a member of International Panel on Social Progress (ipsp.org). Melissa H. Yu has extensive experience as an EFL teacher in Taiwan and course tutor at UK universities. Currently, she teaches at Newcastle University London. Her research explores TESOL, classroom discourse and international communication in various professional contexts. Lin Zheng is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. She holds an MBA and a PhD in Transnational Higher Education. She teaches business and intercultural communication related subjects to home, EU and international students. Her research interests are mainly inter-cultural communication and ELF. xix Introduction The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca, or ELF, as it is more often called, begins where it ends: by looking back to ELF’s earliest days. The very final chapter of the handbook, ‘The future of English as a lingua franca?’, starts by outlining ELF’s development from its beginnings – including the first time the acronym ‘ELF’ was actually used in public – to the present day, before gazing into ELF’s hypothetical future. Nobody, myself included, had any idea in those early days that ELF research, let alone the acronym that was then so often met with amusement and comments about ‘little green men’, would grow so rapidly into the vast, widely known and largely accepted research field that it is nowadays and is likely to remain into the foreseeable future. On its journey, ELF has attracted established scholars from a range of other fields, initially and most notably Barbara Seidlhofer and Anna Mauranen, two of the three ‘founding mothers of ELF’ (Jenkins being the third), and compilers of the first two ELF corpora (see Mauranen 2003; Seidlhofer 2001), as well as a plethora of newer ELF scholars, many of whom focused on ELF in their doctoral research and subsequently became established ELF researchers themselves – not least my two co-editors of this handbook, Martin Dewey and Will Baker. Meanwhile, scholars in a range of other language-related disciplines, including several contributors to this handbook, have incorporated ELF into their thinking and research into areas such as language assessment (see Harding and McNamara, Chapter 45 this volume), complexity theory (see Larsen-Freeman, Chapter 4 this volume), and literacy practices (see Wingate, Chapter 34 this volume), to name just three. This is not to suggest that ELF, the phenomenon, did not exist a long time prior to the start of the research that has explored it. As is well-documented (e.g. Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011), English has served as a lingua franca at many times and in many places in its long history, stretching right back to the start of British colonialism in the sixteenth century. Nor is English by any means the only, or even the first, language to serve as a lingua franca, or in other words, a language used for communication among those who do not share a first language (see Morán Panero, Chapter 44 this volume). Various languages have served this purpose over the centuries, including Arabic, French, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish, and several continue to do so. What is different about ELF is the extent of its 1 Introduction current reach both geographically and in respect of the domains in which it is used, to which the chapters of this ELF handbook are testimony. It is also not to suggest that ELF research has been uncritically accepted and gone unchallenged. Any kind of change tends to attract anxieties, and change relating to language often more so than any other. And ELF, because it promotes such radical change in the way we think about English as well as language more broadly, has received perhaps more than its fair share of criticism. In its earlier days, ELF research was most criticised from two more or less opposing positions: World Englishes and ELT. Somewhat confusingly, while World Englishes scholars tended to argue that ELF researchers were promoting a monolithic kind of English, ELT professionals took the opposite view, that ELF was promoting the idea that ‘anything goes’, with no standards whatsoever (see Seidlhofer, Chapter 7 this volume). Both positions were of course wrong, and it is pleasing to note that many of those who promoted them have, to a great extent, reconciled themselves to ELF thinking over the intervening years. Inevitably, there will always be some who, because ELF does not fit neatly into their own sometimes narrow view of linguistic life, are not able to make the conceptual leap and acknowledge the validity of the ELF paradigm. And there will always be others who simply do not take the trouble to read the ELF literature properly, if at all, before pronouncing on it. To paraphrase the words of the politician, Senator Patrick Moynihan, some of these commentators seem to believe that they are entitled not only to their own opinions, but also to their own facts. Nevertheless, while myths such as ‘ELF excludes native English speakers’ still circulate from time to time, they seem at last to be in decline. Meanwhile, others who have had entirely legitimate concerns about ELF, particularly in its early days when there was talk of ELF ‘varieties’ and ‘codification’, have made substantial contributions to the development of ELF researchers’ thinking. Such scholars have played an important role in reinforcing what was being found in empirical ELF data and contributing to moving ELF research on, for example, to the recognition of variability as a key feature of ELF interactions (see Kimura and Canagarajah, Chapter 24 this volume), and more recently of multilingualism as ELF’s overarching framework rather than one of its characteristics, with translanguaging seen as an intrinsic part of ELF communication. The work of García and Li Wei on translanguaging (e.g. 2014), and research into the multilingual turn, such as the contributions to May (2014), have been particularly influential in these latter respects. Turning now to the 47 chapters of this first ELF handbook, these are divided into seven sections. Part I, ‘Conceptualising and positioning ELF’, consists of eight chapters in five of which leading ELF researchers and commentators, Mauranen (Chapter 1), Baker (Chapter 2), Ehrenreich (Chapter 3), Seidlhofer (Chapter 7), and Widdowson (Chapter 8), consider ELF from a range of perspectives. Meanwhile scholars from different areas of language and linguistics, Larsen-Freeman (Chapter 4), Leung and Lewkowicz (Chapter 5), and Hall (Chapter 6), explore ELF in relation to their own specialisms. The second section of the handbook turns to the regional spread of ELF. By this, the authors do not mean that ELF communication is defined by its geographical position: it is always the case that who is speaking with whom is what counts most in ELF rather than where in the world the speakers happen to be situated. However, in line with Mauranen’s notion of similects (see Chapter 1), it is also evident that speakers of different first (and other) languages are influenced, albeit to a greater or lesser extent, by their language backgrounds. The seven chapters of Part II thus consider how, and how far, ELF is used in the regions on which their chapters focus, along with how it is regarded within their education systems. These chapters range widely, covering Europe (Sherman, Chapter 9), the Gulf States (Alharbi, Chapter 10), the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Kirkpatrick, Chapter 11), China 2 Introduction (Wang, Chapter 12), Japan (D’Angelo, Chapter 13), Brazil (Gimenez, El Kadri and Calvo, Chapter 14), and South Africa (Van der Walt and Evans, Chapter 15). Part III is concerned with ELF characteristics and processes. It begins with OsimkTeasdale’s chapter on ELF’s variability, moves on to explore the role of pronunciation in miscommunication (Gardiner and Deterding, Chapter 18), then turns to the issue of creativity in ELF (Pitzl, Chapter 19), grammar (Ranta, Chapter 20), and morphosyntactic variation (Björkman, Chapter 21). The final two chapters of Part III consider the question of ELF norms (Hynninen and Solin, Chapter 22) and the rarely discussed issue of uncooperative ELF encounters (Jenks, Chapter 23). We then turn to ELF’s domains and functions. Part IV begins with Chapter 24 by Kimura and Canagarajah in which they examine similarities and differences in approaches taken by scholars researching translingual practices and ELF across a range of domains. Kankaanranta and Louhiala-Salminen (Chapter 25) turn to ELF in the domain of business, or BELF as it has become widely known, and Pietikäinen (Chapter 26) explores ELF in social contexts, focusing specifically on close relationships. The final four chapters of this section relate to humour in ELF (Pullin, Chapter 27), ELF in electronically mediated communication (Sangiamchit, Chapter 28), ELF and multilingualism (Cogo, Chapter 29), and ELF in translation and interpreting (Albl-Mikasa, Chapter 30). Part V is then devoted to one specific domain: ELF in university settings. This section consists of four chapters. First, Smit (Chapter 31) considers academic ELF from the perspective of language policy. Next, in Chapter 32, Murata and Iino consider English medium instruction with a particular focus on Japan. In Chapter 33, Horner tackles the still under-researched area of written academic ELF, and in the final chapter of the section, Wingate (Chapter 34) considers ELF in relation to literacy in higher education. Part VI, which will be of particular interest to readers involved in ELT, then turns our attention to language pedagogy, starting with ELF in, respectively, teacher education (Dewey and Patsko, Chapter 35), and teacher development (Sifakis and Bayyurt, Chapter 36), while Galloway explores ELF in teaching materials (Chapter 37). Hüttner then focuses on the role of ELF in content and language integrated learning, or CLIL (Chapter 38), and is followed by Chapter 39 by Suzuki, Liu and Yu, which looks at ELT and ELF specifically in three Asian contexts, Japan, China and Taiwan. Part VI ends with two wider-ranging chapters. In the penultimate chapter of the section, Wright and Zheng (Chapter 40) consider the difficulty of introducing ELF into the classroom, while Llurda (Chapter 41) ends Part VI by exploring ELF from the teacher’s perspective. The handbook concludes with six chapters that consider a number of trends and debates, and look into the future of ELF. In Chapter 42, Baird and Baird take a critical look at ELF attitude research and propose new ways of framing ELF attitudes. This is followed by Chapter 43, in which Guido discusses a particularly topical issue: migration, and the role of ELF in (mis)communication in immigrant ELF encounters. The focus is turned by Morán Panero in Chapter 44 to ELF among other global languages/lingua francas. We then move on to two chapters that explore in different ways the controversial issue of ELF in respect of language assessment. First, in Chapter 45, Harding and McNamara consider the challenges presented by ELF and suggest possible ways forward, and second, in Chapter 46 Shohamy discusses ELF in respect of critical language testing. Finally, the handbook ends with my own chapter (Chapter 47), in which I take stock of the distance ELF research has travelled since its beginnings, and evaluate a number of predictions about the future of ELF. With such a rich and wide-ranging collection of chapters written by so many key scholars in ELF and from other related areas, it remains only for me to wish you, on behalf of all 3 Introduction three handbook editors, an enlightening and engrossing read, whether you choose to study the handbook’s contents in detail from beginning to end, or simply to dip into those chapters that align most closely with your own interests. Jennifer Jenkins January 2017 References García O. and L. Wei (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jenkins, J., A. Cogo and M. Dewey (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44 (3), pp. 281–315. Mauranen, A. (2003). The corpus of English as a lingua franca in academic settings. TESOL Quarterly 37 (3), pp. 513–527. May S. ed. (2014). The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case of a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), pp. 133–158. 4 Part I Conceptualising and positioning ELF 1 Conceptualising ELF Anna Mauranen Introduction The two remarkable things about English today are that it has spread around the globe like no other language before, and that it is spoken by people for whom it is a second or additional language more than by those for whom it is a first language. Under either of those conditions, let alone both together, one would expect a language to become unusually heterogeneous and variable. This is exactly what we find with English. It is therefore not surprising that we have long been talking about ‘Englishes’ in the plural in English studies (I alone have four books called World Englishes in my bookshelf – not to speak of volumes on ‘global’ or ‘international’ Englishes). At the same time, the latest wave of globalisation has meant an enormous growth in the volume and kinds of mobility – and thereby in language contact. In this, too, English leads the way: it stands out from any other language in having become the global default lingua franca. This has inspired studies of language contact and contact languages in the last few years, with English at the centre (e.g. Schreier and Hundt 2013), or as part of a wider multilingual contact environment (e.g. Siemund, Gogolin, Schultz and Davydova 2013). The significance of ELF transcends the contact of any particular individual or group with English. ELF is not just a contact language where English is a domestic language or otherwise especially salient in a given community, but a non-local lingua franca, the means of communicating between people from anywhere in the world. Neither is its global weight restricted to elite usages in politics, international business or academia, but it is also employed by tourists, migrant workers, asylum seekers and just anyone in their daily lives over digital media. There is not even need to move around physically to be in contact with English. The term lingua franca is normally used to mean a contact language, that is, a vehicular language between speakers who do not share a first language. While some lingua francas are pidgins or jargons that have no native speakers but arise in contact situations as a mixture of two separate languages, others are existing natural languages used for vehicular purposes. Pidgins typically arise for restricted purposes, but any broad-purpose natural language can be used as a lingua franca if speakers have access to it, with no restriction on the uses or functions it can be put to. Although the term lingua franca is today commonly used for natural 7 Anna Mauranen languages that are particularly widespread, especially, sometimes even exclusively, English, it is worth keeping in mind that any language, however small, can equally well be used as a lingua franca. Lingua francas need not even be ‘living’ languages: ‘dead’ languages also serve as vehicular languages, usually for a limited range of purposes like religion or learning, as in the cases of classical Arabic or mediaeval Latin. Two kinds of widespread definitions of ELF circulate in the field of applied linguistics, one that takes it to apply only to people for whom it is not a first language, to the exclusion of native speakers (e.g. Firth 1996; House 1999), and another that accepts native speakers as part of the mix (e.g. Seidlhofer 2004, 2011; Jenkins 2007; Mauranen 2012). The latter view is adopted here, since a categorical division of speakers into native and non-native has been seriously questioned in ELF, as it has been in World Englishes. The more comprehensive definition also reflects the reality of English today: English is spoken in situations with widely varying combinations of participants, including first-language speakers of different varieties. So briefly, I take English as a lingua franca to mean a contact language between speakers or speaker groups when at least one of them uses it as a second language. This is a short working definition, and will do for the present. A number of things could be further specified, but I hope this chapter will throw light on some of the remaining issues, as other chapters certainly do in this volume. We can approach ELF from a number of perspectives, but for achieving a holistic notion I suggest a simple division: the macro, the meso and the micro. These perspectives are based on the scale of a social unit, from the largest to the smallest, and like any categorisation, it is an abstraction and inevitably inattentive to much of the rich detail of reality. I nevertheless believe it to be relevant for capturing the big picture. The division draws on earlier distinctions by scholars dealing with language contact from different traditions. The first is the classic treatise of language contact by Weinreich (1953/1963) who suggested two relevant levels for the occurrence of what he called language transfer: the individual, or the level of speech, and society, or the level of language. A recent psycholinguistic division by Jarvis and Pavlenko (2007) adopts a very similar view, distinguishing the levels of the individual (who shows cross-linguistic influence), and society (where transfer can be observed). In a similar vein, variationist sociolinguists such as Milroy (2002) or Trudgill (1986, 2011) also posit two key levels, the societal and the individual. However, in the sociolinguistic case the individual refers to individuals in interaction, in effect making interaction the other pivotal level. Interaction, that is, the micro-social or meso level is also crucial to many social and linguistic theories: social network theory (Granovetter 1973; Urry 2007) and its applications in language change analysis (Milroy and Milroy 1985; Raumolin-Brunberg 1998); it is also key to language use in conversation analysis, interactional sociology, interactional linguistics and more recently in neurolinguistic approaches (see section ‘ELF from the meso perspective’ below for more detail). Increasingly in the last decade or so, language has been viewed from Complexity Theoretical perspectives; in these accounts, adaptive, self-organising systems are perceived as emergent at different scales. In these accounts, two levels of language systems are recognised, the individual (idiolects) and the communal language; the crucial relationship between the two is emergence, which results from interactions between speaker idiolects. In brief, then, the present three-perspective approach combines principal elements from previous approaches, and is oriented to variation, change and contact. In this chapter, I apply the three-pronged approach, and look at the consequences of each on the concept of ELF. At the end, I take up some integrative issues that cut across all three perspectives, which would be awkward to discuss separately at every point. 8 Conceptualising ELF ELF from the macro perspective A macro-social perspective on English as a lingua franca involves two central domains: the linguistic and the societal. Let us begin from the linguistic, since language is our main focus. The scale of communication and mobility in the contemporary world, and as I will argue, the complexity of language contact involving English, affect our perceptions of language deeply. The sheer amount of contact is unprecedented, since in principle speakers of any of the roughly 7,000 recognised languages of the world can be in some kind of contact with English. But it is the quality of contact that is even more interesting than the quantity. ELF bears certain recognisable affinities with dialect contact; both incorporate contact between speakers of mutually intelligible varieties. The term ‘variety’ has been problematised with regard to ELF both from outside, usually arguing it does not fulfil all requisite criteria to pass as a variety, and from the inside (e.g. Seidlhofer 2007; Jenkins 2015) for implying a settled, unified language form, complete with a speech community, that can be reliably described. While I would be inclined to apply the term more loosely, in analogy with its counterpart at lower level analysis, ‘variant’, have settled for the more neutral term ‘lect’. Lect coheres with sociolect, idiolect, etc., and is thus productive in a positive way. It also reflects the likeness of ELF with dialect, which is not insignificant. We can assume that processes discovered in dialect contact research, for example, those leading to dialect levelling, simplification, reallocation and interdialect (e.g. Britain 2013) will also be in evidence in ELF. A number of lects reflecting contact with English have been given jocular nicknames like Swinglish, Czenglish, Manglish or Dunglish. These nicknames reflect the fact that when speakers who share a first language learn a given second language, their idiolects display certain similarities in pronunciation or accent, in syntactic features, lexical choices and so on. These lects, then, with their similarities, which arise from contacts of a particular L1 with English, I would like to call ‘similects’. Similects arise in parallel, as speakers learn the same L2, but since they already share an L1, they normally use that for communicating with each other. This is also where similects part company with dialects. Dialects arise in local or regional speech communities where people speak to each other, and the specific features that arise in the community result from frequent interactions within that community. By contrast, similects are not lects of any speech community. Similects are parallel also in that they develop certain similarities even if they are learned in different classrooms, schools and locations, by people of different ages and generations, and at different times. Similects, therefore, remain first-generation hybrids. They do not go through developmental stages in the way community languages do, they do not diversify, change, develop sociolects, varieties or other products of social interaction in a living community. They nevertheless embody language contact. Clearly, the picture so far is simplified, but it is easier to make the case in a simplified form first, and then add complicating details. Here the important simplification is the abstraction away from multilingualism: many people learning English are bi-or multilingual already, which is why ELF contexts are inherently multilingual, as I have noted elsewhere (e.g. Mauranen 2013), and many users also obviously learn other languages alongside or after English. The similect concept is thus compatible with the notion of English as a multilingua franca that Jenkins (2015) has suggested as an important missing facet in the conceptualisation of ELF. We know from multilingualism studies (e.g. Jarvis and Pavlenko 2007; Pavlenko 2014) that all of a speaker’s languages are present at any time, and that they influence one another constantly. Another simplification is treating 9 Anna Mauranen everyone’s L1 repertoires as if more or less identical, even though this may not in fact be the case (e.g. De Bot, Lowie and Verspoor 2007). This discussion already veers towards cognition, which will be dealt with more thoroughly below. To remain a little while still at the individual level, it might well be argued that language contact takes place in language learners, and therefore similects are manifestations of learner language. However, similects do not fit under a general rubric of learner language. We may note occasional formal resemblance to typical L1-specific learner errors (carefully recorded in learner language studies, notably in the ICLE projects www.uclouvain.be/en-cecl-icle. html), but the main difference of learners and users is social. ELF lects are used far beyond any language teaching environment, in authentic second language use (SLU), by speakers in the real world from professionals to tourists and asylum seekers, and in the digital world by anyone anywhere. The sociolinguistic context of a language learning classroom is restricted and specific, with important repercussions to speaker identity and the relationship to language: for a learner, language use is ‘practice’, instrumental to learning, whereas in SLU language is used in its own right, for co-construction of meaning in interaction. One consequence is that while learners are not in a position to change the language it is their objective to learn, any user of a language can initiate changes. Surface similarities of learner errors and non-standard ELF forms thus hide deep incompatibilities (see further Mauranen 2012). ELF, then, embodies contact between speakers from different similects. Put in another way, speakers who use ELF as their means of communication speak English that is a product of language contact between their other languages and English; a shared first language is the source of similect affinity, and English comes in as they have encountered it in their learning process. ELF, then, means contact between these hybrid, contact-based lects – that is, ELF is a higher-order, or second-order language contact. Therein lies its particular complexity. A macro-social perspective on ELF needs to address the notion of community. It must be one that fits the nature of a contact language in complex and varied situations, and therefore cannot rest on traditional understandings of a speech community, which is largely local, monolingual, as well as non-mobile. Such ‘sedentary’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) ideals of communities were widely assumed in traditional dialectology and sociolinguistics, even if also criticised (see, e.g. Chambers 1992; Milroy 2002), just as they have been in social sciences more broadly (Bauman 2000; Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2007). The challenge of conceptualising community for ELF research has been noted by almost all scholars who have theorised ELF, but no quite satisfactory solution has been reached yet, possibly because this has not been perceived as pivotal to understanding ELF, or perhaps in part also because the notion of community for ELF ought to be more complex than models considered so far. Communities where ELF is a dominant means of communication are not necessarily, perhaps not even very often, based on physical proximity between speakers. Neither are they close-knit communities with multiplex internal contacts. These are key characteristics distinguishing ELF from dialect communities and other similar communities as traditionally conceived in dialectology and sociolinguistic research. Clearly, traditional speech communities are on the whole getting rarer with exponential growth in contemporary multiplicity of mobilities (Urry 2007), including developments in the digital age, when contacts across distances and with the rest of the world are ubiquitous. Digital means of communication add to our experienced reality, with a consequent need for redefining ‘community’, and the associated mixing of languages and communication patterns. Mobile people change environments often, acquire connections in each, and at the same time maintain contacts with their local communities of origin or earlier residence, their families, relatives and friends. Individuals are simultaneously members of 10 Conceptualising ELF multifarious communities, and, for example, private and professional contacts need not use the same languages. Mobility, as Skeggs (2004) observes, is a resource not equally distributed among everyone. At present, we can observe an enormous scale of mobility from regions where warfare, poverty and political unrest drive groups of people towards regions that are perceived as safer and offering more opportunities. At the same time very different kinds of mobility pervade the ‘safe’ regions where modern means of transportation and communication are within everyone’s reach, albeit utilised in different ways and to different degrees by different individuals and groups. On the whole, people are more likely to use different languages, dialects and varieties in their diverse communities than has been the case in more stable and sedentary periods. They are, in other words, mobilising not only themselves but also their multilingual resources on an everyday basis, including varieties of the ‘same’ language. Clearly, we are not living the first period of large-scale mobility in history, but equally clearly we are amid one of those, perhaps one with the widest global reach, with community structures being reshuffled and reinterpreted as a result. The global scale, and the availability of digital means of communication add a specifically contemporary flavour to the mix. Much communication in ELF is ephemeral, and takes place in transient encounters. For these chance meetings the notion of community is often inappropriate. Jenkins (2015) suggests that Pratt’s (1991) notion of ‘contact zones’ could be a useful point of departure for depicting the temporary meeting and mixing of people from diverse backgrounds. This may indeed help account for the ephemeral end of ELF use, but it does not exhaust the variety in duration and stability that ELF groupings manifest. To gauge the effects of ELF on language change we must take the diversity of social formations on board, from transient like those formed for just one occasion, such as a chance conversation among strangers or an interview; through medium-span, like university courses or task forces; to regular but intermittent, such as conferences, or academic discourse communities; fairly permanent, like international organisations; to married couples who adopt ELF as their family language. If the purpose is to capture ELF as a whole, not just its diverse component communities, we can liken ‘the ELF community’ to a diffuse language community along the lines suggested in LePage and Tabouret-Keller (1985), that is, one where multiple sources of input prevail, which consists of many kinds of speakers with varying language identities and social ties and comparatively little agreement on what is shared in the language or the community. At a general level ELF groupings and communities are perhaps most like social networks that include more and less dense relations of interaction, or stronger and weaker ties (Granovetter 1973; Milroy and Milroy 1985; Milroy 2002). In this way, the general, diffuse ELF network also accommodates denser, more focused concentrations of communication patterns: some parts of the network develop and maintain closer mutual interactions, accommodate towards shared conventions, while other ties remain more sporadic. A network pattern would allow for a kind of community, then, where weak and strong ties intermingle in the whole, some getting stronger, reinforced by repetition, others remaining weak or weakening and getting lost through lack of renewal. Weak ties probably dominate ELF communication, imbuing ELF communities with what Urry (2007) calls ‘network sociality’, enabling the accumulation of ‘network capital’, a powerful type of social capital in a mobile world. In diffuse communities, where some parts will be more likely to become ‘focused’ than others, the time dimension is important: both the duration of a community and its frequency of internal communication are likely to support strengthening of ties and the emergence of communal focus – as in the case of discourse communities or communities of practice. An intriguing case is the European Union, which is fundamentally multilingual, but 11 Anna Mauranen whose established structures are maintained and reproduced largely in English, despite the official and factual presence of other languages, especially French. EU English use has assumed a few conventions of its own that depart from Standard English. Moreover, EU employees use English as the principal language of communication in their leisure time as well (Kriszán and Erkkilä 2014). How the EU linguistic community in Brussels develops after Brexit will be exciting to follow; it may, for example, start assuming more regulatory practices of its own. Among ELF communities towards the more focused end, some are like academic discourse communities (Swales 1990), which tend to be professionally oriented, long-lasting, and predominantly international, and where face to face meetings only involve segments of the communities at any given time or place. The intermittent meetings are, nevertheless, strongly binding for the maintenance of the community, along the lines that Urry (2007) posits for network sociality. In many cases ELF communities also bear likeness to Wenger’s communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), as noted first by House (2003), followed by Dewey (2007), Jenkins (2007) and Seidlhofer (2007). EU task forces, international research collaborations, international university programmes and military collaborations would all seem to fit the notion of a community of practice, “an aggregate of people coming together around a particular enterprise”, as defined by Eckert (2000: 35). A CoP is a real community (in contrast to imagined communities) in that it is based on members’ direct interaction with one another; these communities consist of people who know each other. Such comparatively focused communities are likely to develop conventions and norms of their own as members accommodate to each other and converge towards group norms (cf. Hynninen 2016). Linguistically this can be expected to add variation in what is regarded as ‘English’, but since linguistic preferences also tend to stabilise, we also notice language patterns that are very similar despite emerging from different groupings and situations (e.g. Mauranen 2012; Carey 2013). The global ELF-using ‘community’ is thus an umbrella community, a mesh of networks, which, apart from being largely diffuse, shares the feature with Anderson’s (1991) imagined communities (see Wang, Chapter 12 this volume) that the members may never meet each other in person, but maintain a general awareness of belonging to the community. The belonging may be perceived in the case of ELF perhaps above all as a category of speakers. An ELF identity is not as binding or strong as the national communities Anderson talks about, and it can be self-contradictory in comprising both positive and negative elements, as many studies of language ideologies show (Jenkins 2007; Wang 2012; Pilkinton-Pihko 2013). Speakers nevertheless seem to have an awareness of themselves as users of ELF, which for many is a central ingredient of their language identity. In short, ELF communities are diffuse, network-based multilingual communities where English is a dominant lingua franca. ELF as a whole is not a focused variety or language, but as Laitinen (in press) points out, in this respect ELF is not unlike the English language for the best part of its history, in which focused varieties only arose as standardised varieties in the modern period. This did not prevent change or evolution in its lexicogrammatical structures before that period. Neither did it prevent people from describing it. ELF from the meso perspective The meso, or micro-social, view on ELF is concerned with language use in social interaction. Far from being just the necessary interface between the societal and the cognitive, the interactional aspect is pivotal to language. Interaction has been given 12 Conceptualising ELF pride of place in conversation analysis, and more recently in interactional linguistics (e.g. Selting and Couper-Kuhlen 2001); moreover, it has been perceived as vital from evolutionary (Lee, Miksell, Joaquin, Mates and Schumann 2009) and neurolinguistic (e.g. Bråten 2007) viewpoints, and it is a central ingredient in linguistic models emanating from complexity theory (e.g. De Bot et al. 2007; Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008; The ‘Five Graces Group’ 2009). Interactional sociology, in turn, following on Goffman’s work, posits interaction as an autonomous ‘interaction order’ (Goffman 1983), which is to be treated as a substantive domain in its own right. Interaction is deeply intertwined with both the social and individual. Innovations do not diffuse in society without individuals, while at the same time, individual cognition is crucially shaped in interaction with its social environment (e.g. Bråten 2007; Hari, Sams and Nummenmaa 2016). Secondary socialisation, typically in education, is imparted and absorbed through interaction. This does not preclude seeing interaction as autonomous in the Goffmanian sense, differentiated from both large-scale social institutions and individual actors (De Jaegher, Peräkylä and Stevanovic 2016), because in this interpretation we can view it as a self-organising system, which engages in exchanges with its adjacent systems at different scales (see also section ‘ELF from the micro perspective’). Macro-social accounts of language change tend to postulate mechanisms like accommodation for explaining the diffusion of features from one language group to another, for instance in dialect contact (Trudgill 1986; Britain 2013). In this perspective, accommodation functions as Croft (2000) describes it, as a response to speakers from outside one’s own community. Speakers accommodate to each other to compensate for the lack of common ground by adjusting their speech by means like elaborating content or simplifying grammar (Giles and Smith 1979). Although assumptions of this kind have usually proceeded from research on native speakers of a given language, accommodation would seem to be at least equally relevant to explaining what happens in successful ELF communication, as shown in Jenkins (2000) for phonology. Some examples of morphological and phraseological accommodation in on-going interaction are also discussed in Mauranen (2012). An important interactional process for establishing common ground is enhanced explicitness, or what in Translation Studies has become known as explicitation (Blum-Kulka 1986). Explicitation is prominent when differences in interlocutors’ backgrounds are perceived or anticipated, and it is one of the most strongly supported universals of translation (e.g. Mauranen 2007a). In conversation it can take the form of frequent paraphrasing, rephrasing and repetition, or syntactic strategies like fronting or tails. Explicitation is roughly equivalent to what Giles and Smith (1979) regard as accommodation by ‘elaborating the content’. However, this is not all there is to it: discourse adaptations of this kind can also become drivers of grammar. Usage-based models of grammar (e.g. Du Bois 2003; Ford et al. 2003) or acquisition (MacWhinney 2005) posit that linguistic structures reflect the demands of communication, not the other way round, with communication shaped by available linguistic structures. In line with this, we can assume that ELF is like any other domain of language use and therefore discourse, actual linguistic interaction, drives the development of its grammar. Tendencies of enhanced explicitness have been observed in ELF (Seidlhofer 2004; Cogo and Dewey 2006; Mauranen 2007b, 2012). In the long term, we can expect structural changes to follow from continued large-scale ELF interaction. These changes in English structures can perhaps above all be expected to alter preferences in the first instance, so that certain kinds of structures become proportionally more common, or preferred, while others get rarer. We can already see such processes going on in syntax, where certain preferences are either stronger or weaker in ELF compared to 13 Anna Mauranen equivalent L1 English discourse (Ranta 2013). Some kind of ‘communicative fitness’ in an element is likely to help it spread into common use and become preferred. Speakers tend to prefer structures that are easier to produce, and to avoid those that are hard to understand. These may also be communicatively advantageous by being more salient than their alternatives, as Ranta (2006) argues in the case of the notable preference for the progressive form in ELF. It is thus quite conceivable that the explicitation tendency in ELF drives grammar towards renewed preference patterns. As noted above, from a macro perspective one well-established expectation is that language contact results in structural simplification. In interactional terms, this could be understood as emanating from speakers’ search for the least common denominator and widely shared features as the likely ingredients of communicative success. Speakers of different similects will probably try out features that foster successful communication over features that do not (or are ‘ornamental’ cf. Szmresanyi and Kortmann 2009). These may be especially salient or particularly learnable features of a given language, and reflect ‘subjective simplicity’ (to adapt Miestamo’s (2009) notion of user-oriented or ‘subjective complexity’). It is an empirical question whether this reflects a parallelism between ELF and creoles, which according to McWhorter (2001) display relatively little overall grammatical complexity on account of their pidgin origins and therefore have little that is unnecessary to communication. Clearly, ELF does not originate in pidgins, nor is it functionally reduced; it is used for everything languages are normally used for. Structural simplification is nevertheless quite possible given the complex, ever-present multilingual contact in ELF. Processes such as morphological regularisation and a preference for the most frequent vocabulary are clearly indications of simplification, and likely to be enhanced in social interaction. However, simplification can be of many kinds, and possible trade-offs between those are hard to demonstrate (Nichols 2009), so an overall measure of simplicity may not be feasible. Simplification in some features is also quite compatible with simultaneous complexification in others, and certain interactional processes probably favour complex structures, like those that boost explicitation. ELF interaction manifests a large number of non-standard expressions, which usually present no major obstacles to communication. Since we can assume a certain fuzziness in processing language forms that are less well entrenched (see section ‘ELF from the micro perspective’), it is a reasonable assumption that ELF interaction leads to the strengthening of approximate forms in production. Many items in a listener’s repertoire may be comparatively weakly entrenched: if a hearer does not have a strong and well-defined notion of the standard form, he or she is not likely to find an approximation disturbing as long as it bears enough resemblance to a target to enable meaning construction. Thus approximate forms that are sufficiently recognisable probably result in communicative success. The interactional success in turn is apt to support the speaker’s acceptance of the approximation. The feedback loop that arises in spontaneous interaction is a crucial link in reinforcing and spreading expressions that might otherwise pass as random idiosyncracies (or even, in language pedagogical contexts, as lack of success, or errors). Frequency also plays a part here: the most frequent items of a language are on the whole most strongly entrenched. Clearly this must hold for L1 and L2 speakers alike, since these are the items they all are most likely to hear and use most often. Therefore, when speakers look for the least common denominator that would support interactional fluency, it is likely that the best guesses would be those that are the most widely shared. High-frequency items in the lingua franca are good candidates: they have the best chances of being known to both. Indeed, a distinct preference for the most frequent vocabulary has been attested in ELF 14 Conceptualising ELF (Mauranen 2012; Gilner 2016). We may therefore anticipate that very frequent items beyond lexis are also well represented in ELF discourse. It has commonly been assumed that ELF speakers do not share much, or even any, cultural background. This is very much an open question, which we have little research evidence on, but clearly, some shared cultural background comes with aspects of the language held in common. English language teaching materials tend to promote not only a given ‘code’, but certain information, clichés and beliefs about British and North American culture that speakers will be familiar with to a greater or lesser extent. Global entertainment industry and news services are probably even more influential in furnishing people with common information wherever they are. Other shared concepts and terms can be historical (Midas touch, Pyrrhic victory, holocaust, ostpolitik) or contemporary (tsunami, pizza, manga, Brexit) or embedded in different languages (chicken and egg, Dark Ages), which can be exploited successfully in interaction. In addition to the possibly underestimated common background, the more interactionally pertinent question is what we deem as relevantly shared in the on-going interaction. The Firthian notion on ‘context of situation’ offers a good basis for sorting out shared determinants of the setting – whether an airport, souvenir shop, immigration office, or research centre – that provides interactants with common assumptions. Historical and situational elements constitute a priori sharedness (even though their being identically ‘given’ to participants can be questioned), whereas the interaction itself generates its own shared domain as it moves on. Thus we should make a distinction between stored and dynamic sharedness. Actual verbal interaction makes use of multimodal as well as multilingual resources. It progresses dynamically along the temporal dimension, incrementing shared knowledge as it develops in participants’ joint activity (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006). Much of what is shared is thus generated in the interaction itself. What ELF throws into sharp relief is that this also concerns the linguistic resources; as Jenkins (2015: 64) points out, “We are often talking not of a priori ‘resources’, but of resources that are discovered as they emerge during the interaction”. As Jenkins observes, what gets shared may not be shared from the start, and interlocutors may not even know what they might have in common in the beginning. Altogether, the notion of jointly generating shared resources, such as language and knowledge, by participants in interaction, is crucial to understanding grammar in a usage-based or emergent manner. Usage-based models of language-in-interaction, or in alternative terms, models of languaging (Becker 1995), emphasise the nature of language as being continually created in social interaction, or, in short, language as emergent. On this point ELF is no different from language in general – it is basically a question of perceptions of language having shifted from static, focused and monolingual, towards appreciating dynamic notions of languaging and multilingualism. In line with Jenkins (2015), it is high time to take these conceptual developments on board in re-thinking ELF. A notable proportion of empirical ELF research hitherto has engaged with ELF in interaction. This may be a good choice, given the centrality of interaction in detecting processes of languaging, and also in detecting incipient and ongoing change. ELF from the micro perspective The cognitive and the interactional are closely intertwined. Individual cognition is strikingly attuned to intersubjectivity; consciousness develops along with dialogical competence, as has been shown in research into early language development (e.g. Tomasello 2003, 2009) 15 Anna Mauranen or into mirror neuron systems (e.g. Bråten and Trevarthen 2007) and their more abstract and higher-order counterparts, alignment and coupling systems (Hassen and Frith 2016). A fair proportion of contemporary brain research is directed to observing people in social interaction, because as Hari (2007) puts it, other people constitute the primary environment for humans. Interaction, in effect, shapes our brains from the start. Cognition is thus attuned to its social environment, but if interaction is viewed as an autonomous system in Goffman’s (1983) sense and in subsequent interactional sociology (cf. the previous section), what role does an individual’s cognition play? Goffman does not grant it any role, but research strands like enactivism seek to reconcile the individual with social interaction as autonomous, dynamic systems (De Jaegher, Peräkylä and Stevanovic 2016), while also recognising a tension between the autonomy of interaction and the autonomy of the individual. Even though dynamic, autonomous systems are self-organising, their processes are also connected to processes external to the system, and conditions external to the system may also be necessary for system-internal processes. Since language as a complex adaptive system is generally seen as operating both in the individual, as an idiolect, and in interaction, as communal language (e.g. The Five Graces Group 2009), it would seem that the enactivist view captures the distinction as well as the connection appreciably well. What we have, then, are self-organising systems at different scales, which are open, and although autonomous, at the same time interrelated. From the individual’s cognitive viewpoint we could expect English as a speaker’s additional language to be more weakly entrenched than the first (see also Hall, Chapter 6 this volume). The individual’s accumulated experience must be different for languages that are acquired from infancy (whether one or more) and those learned later. Entrenchment is one of the two central processes postulated in usage-based accounts of language representation in an individual’s cognitive makeup (see e.g. Dabrowska 2004; MacWhinney 2005). The other is abstraction; both rest on a speaker’s aggregate linguistic experience. Speakers normally have much less exposure to their later languages than their earliest, and this is likely to be reflected in less deeply entrenched memory representations. Production and reception in less entrenched representations may impose a greater strain on working memory, slow down memory retrieval and schema accessibility and make heavier demands on adaptive strategies. Psycholinguistic research has also consistently shown considerable frequency effects in language acquisition and use (e.g. Ellis 2002). It has been well established that frequent language elements behave differently from infrequent ones (see e.g. Bybee and Hopper 2001), and survive longest in language even over very long periods of time (Pagel, Atkinson and Meade 2007). The cognitive correlate of this is stronger entrenchment of the most frequent items, which in ELF means that these are on the whole well represented; the interactional consequence of this would show in accommodation, especially in speakers’ likelihood of finding common ground for fluent communication (see previous section). Does ELF processing have much effect on English grammar? This is where the other process postulated in usage-based models, abstraction, is relevant. Cognitive processes play a fundamental role in shaping grammars; as a speaker’s aggregate lifetime experience accumulates it gets categorised, and gradually the abstractness of the categorisation rises. At high levels of abstraction, categories eventually become fixed in grammar (Bybee 2006; Croft 2000; Tomasello 2003). Speakers’ language repertoires are dynamic in the sense that they undergo constant change during their whole lifetime. Most people’s repertoires comprise elements from more than one language, and it is reasonable to expect similar processes of abstraction for their entire multilingual repertoires even at post-childhood stages. It is 16 Conceptualising ELF also possible that speakers’ knowledge about their language(s) may be less abstract than is commonly believed (Dabrowska 2004). If this is the case, it would seem to have important implications for language learning models, above all in questioning rule-based assumptions. However, it should not differentiate between an individual’s languages: exposure and abstraction are the central building blocks in early and later acquired languages. In a traditional view, imperfect learning is implicated in language contact situations (Thomason 2001), assumed to cause structural or phonological rather than lexical changes in the target language. More often than not this presumably leads to simplification rather than complication of the target language structure. While ‘imperfect learning’ is not a useful concept for ELF (see, e.g. Brutt-Griffler 2002; Mauranen 2012), post-childhood language learning has often been implicated in structural simplification. As relatively late learning is the typical case for ELF, it would lead us to predict that ELF displays structural simplification but probably not lexical changes. Unlike structural simplification, lexical simplification has not been of much interest for language contact, and has been predicted to happen much less if at all. It would seem that since lexis changes and travels fast, it could just add to the lexical stores of both languages. However, a cognitive viewpoint reveals a somewhat different picture. Lexical simplification has been observed in learner language (e.g. Altenberg and Granger 2002; Granger, Hung and Petch-Tyson, et al. 2002) as well as in translations (e.g. Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996; Nevalainen 2005) in addition to ELF (Mauranen 2012; Gilner 2016). The prevalence of very frequent lexis in learner language is usually attributed to gaps in learning and to interference from the first language. By contrast, since translations are generally carried out into the translator’s first language, interference from the target language is the customary explanation (and learning difficulties never implicated). I would argue, as I have done before (e.g. Mauranen 2010), that the common, more general basis for these shared lexical processes in each situation is language contact. As language contact is activated in an individual who is either translating from one language to another or speaking a somewhat weakly entrenched language, it invites reliance on the most frequent vocabulary. If two competing systems are simultaneously active in a speaker’s repertoire (cf. Jarvis and Pavlenko 2007; Riionheimo 2009), we can hypothesise that the best-entrenched parts of each are likely to become proportionally more salient. As a corollary, unique features of the languages are likely to get suppressed (as in translations: Tirkkonen-Condit 2004); in ELF this might concern things like Seidlhofer’s (e.g. 2011) ‘unilateral idiomaticity’. In productive cognitive terms, then, we might assume that one of the consequences of language contact is the relative overrepresentation of the most frequent lexis of the language that is currently being used. And this is precisely what we find in ELF. It must be noted, though, that this does not entail an overall ‘impoverished’ vocabulary: we observe a difference in ELF and ENL vocabulary among the 200 most frequent words (still very common words), but in lower frequencies the difference disappears (Mauranen 2012; Gilner 2016). It would seem reasonable to expect non-first language use to manifest fuzzier processing than first language processing. Not only do later languages provide less exposure, but their acquisition begins at a later stage of brain maturation, which also contributes to weaker entrenchment. Even if we allow for the simplifications involved in talking about an individual’s first and later languages (many people are bi- or multilingual from the start, their later languages may have become stronger, etc.), in large numbers the processing of a less strongly entrenched language should be fuzzier and manifest more approximation in cognitive processing. 17 Anna Mauranen I would like to suggest that the most important cognitive processing phenomenon in ELF is approximation. By approximating intended expressions well enough, speakers can achieve communicative success. Approximation is advantageous because cognitive processing is generally fuzzy, not only speech. Precision in memory is higher when items are firmly entrenched in long-term declarative memory, but with less deep entrenchment connections can remain less stable. It is reasonable to postulate that cognitive approximation is involuntary and results from realities of perception, memory and access. Access routes may be more precarious in a less entrenched language and for less frequent items. Yet it is possible that approximation works because a speaker’s output provides enough for the interlocutor to go on, and they can manage with less accurate detail than if standard written language was taken as the benchmark. We must also assume that conversationalists in an ELF encounter engage in fuzzy processing in both the speaker and the hearer roles. Weak entrenchment is equally relevant to the hearer position as it is to the speaker position: an approximate form, for example, may not be harder to understand than a precise form, because a typical hearer is not very precisely attuned to Standard English (or any particular variety of English), but is likely to rely on fairly fuzzy processing in making sense of the interlocutor’s speech. These matching cognitive processes in turn have interactional consequences (see section ‘ELF from the meso perspective’ above): acceptance of approximate forms in interaction. When approximation works as a communicative strategy, the positive feedback from the hearer strengthens the items for speaker. A complex environment like ELF would seem to require widening tolerance for fuzziness, and speakers seem to adapt to this, as shown by research that finds less miscommunication in ELF than expected at the outset (House 2002; Kaur 2009; Mauranen 2006). Memory for sense overrides memory for form, thus a very small proportion of language is remembered verbatim. Approximations can retain the meaning but only part of the conventional expression, as in how people interact with each other, where they live how they go around for their business (cf. native English go about their business) or the main impediment in front of the gender movement (cf. impediment to). The longer the unit, the easier it seems to accept that mental representations are partial and oriented to meaning rather than form, so for instance we do not expect to remember books or even their chapters verbatim, but sentences, utterances, or phrases can sometimes become bones of contention (‘that’s not what I said’). Some items are more salient than others, and presumably better remembered. An effective approximation is a matter of shared ground between interlocutors, be it based on stored or contextual matter. For example, a noun like risk is a good candidate for being salient; it is frequent, specific, and has cognates in many languages. In ELF we find it used much in the same sense as in Standard English, but its collocations can sometimes be unusual: but there is the risk available all the time and they are trying to avoid them. Although we may not usually speak about risks being ‘available’, the sense of them being present is clear here. Working memory has limited capacity; it consists of the information the speaker attends to at a given moment (around seven units at a time) and includes the effort expended on fast on-line retrieval from long-term memory. Its constraints drive speakers towards economising on their efforts and preferring subjective simplicity (section ‘ELF from the meso perspective’ above) to complicated expression. Lingua franca use carries notable processing pressure, as speakers operate under conditions of limited resources and multi-source competition. The same constraints also favour settling on certain preferred expressions for given meanings, or ‘fixing’, as Vetchinnikova (2014) calls the process. Vetchinnikova (2014) noted fixing in individuals who repeatedly employed certain expressions for a given meaning. 18 Conceptualising ELF These expressions were roughly identical to what they had acquired from their previous experience of English, which was often salient and recent. Fixing follows the one-meaningone-form principle or isomorphism recognised in language learning research (e.g. Winford 2003). But as a counterpart to approximation, it is more widely relevant to understanding the role of ELF in language change. If we extend the term from cognitive to the meso and macro levels, we can appreciate the wider consequences of approximation and fixing. In interaction (meso level) accommodation seems to lead to convergence, and at communal (macro) level, it has been attested in identical or near-identical expressions across interactions (Mauranen 2012). Altogether, approximation leads to increasing linguistic variability, and fixing leads towards reducing it. Their interplay helps foster and perceive language change through ELF processes. Cognitive processes like approximation and fixing, then, have repercussions for macro-level communal language, via interactional accommodation and adaptation. Conclusion This chapter has approached ELF from three perspectives, from the macro through meso down to the micro level. A few recurrent themes have appeared throughout the discussion bringing to light an integrated view of ELF, as the different perspectives come together. One is the social nature of language at all levels, also incorporating individual cognition. ELF is fundamentally a matter of language contact, which in the macro-social view manifests itself as complex, second-order contact between similects. Similects, parallel idiolects of speakers with similar language backgrounds, meet and mingle in interaction between speakers. Thus in the notion of ELF as complex similect contact all three perspectives are intertwined in the dynamic process of languaging in ELF. When we talk about communal (macro) level languages, we can see that they are made up of languaging, as languaging processes in the interactions of individuals sustain the social facts that languages are. All levels of language are in constant motion, since in principle all the individual interactions that make up languages are involved in maintaining them and altering them at every moment. However, alterations brought about in interaction do not work in unison or in the same direction. Tensions remain in languages as a permanent feature, and so do the dynamisms of growing or diminishing variability. Natural languages do not reach stable states of equilibrium, and ELF cannot be expected to reach any such state either. ELF, furthermore, lacks the regulatory mechanisms characteristic of languages with a communal status, such as nation-state languages or recognised minority languages. While regulation that seeks to maintain standard languages may not be as successful as is generally believed, it imposes norms that are more or less explicit, and above all sustains notions of distinct, norm-driven languages that ‘belong’ to communities of people (cf. Widdowson 1994). Such languages are therefore adopted as building blocks and reference points of identities, and in short, become powerful social facts. Complex language contact foregrounds a multilingual view of ELF. At macro level multilinguality is perceptible as contact between English and an appreciable proportion of the world’s other languages: as speakers (often multilingual to begin with) of these other languages use ELF, the complexity of the mix is striking. The co-presence of several languages in any ELF exchange is available for interactional needs as interlocutors continuously and mutually adapt to one another. Individuals thus cooperatively engage in languaging, connecting the interactional and the cognitive. Participants in ELF interactions are at least bilingual, apart from possibly monolingual speakers of English, which shows how the smallest site of 19 Anna Mauranen language contact is that which takes place in the multilingual speaker’s mind. Multilingual proficiency is dynamic, and if we view language as a system, it is perhaps best seen as a complex system, sharing many features with other complex systems (see Larsen-Freeman, Chapter 4 this volume). Language systems influence each other in multilingual cognition, and beyond that, like other complex systems they interact with their environment. For language systems at any scale, the crucial environments are social. Relating complexity to the three perspectives in this chapter, the individual’s language can be seen as a complex adaptive system at the micro level, as can communal languages at macro level. Interactions occupy the meso level, and as was discussed above, they can be perceived as autonomous dynamic systems of their own, with vital connections to the cognitive and the communal. The concept of similect-based contact is compatible with the notion of English as a Multilingua Franca that Jenkins (2015) put forward as a new opening in the conceptualisation of ELF. As multilingualism studies indicate, a speaker’s languages are all present at any time, exerting mutual influence on each other. It follows that cognitive processing maintains a multilingual undercurrent even if speakers are using only one of their languages. This may mean competing repertoires, but also easy switching and crossing between repertoires. In interactional terms, ELF multilingualism implies that other languages can be drawn on if necessary. Conversely, if English is not chosen as the lingua franca in a multilingual encounter (a possibility Jenkins suggests), it is still highly likely to have a latent presence. We are soon going to move from the first generation of global ELF, which I have previously suggested to have started around 1995, with the worldwide access to the internet, to the next generation (around 2020–2025). One of the intriguing questions that has not been addressed relates to ‘ELF couples’ (e.g. Pietikäinen 2014) and the new generations of their children. There will probably be a growing number of people whose first language is ELF – or English – learned from parents who have ELF as their couple language. This is hardly going to be a large or influential group, perhaps not even a ‘group’ but a number of individuals who are similar in this respect. ELF as a first language is nevertheless an interesting topic of research for child language development as it is for ELF. An important consideration for ELF research and conceptualisation to take on board is the question of different time scales. These were touched on above in the connection of communities: some ELF encounters, we noticed, were transient and not easily captured in a notion of ‘community’, but nevertheless we can appreciate the fact that these are repeated, frequent event types that construct and maintain an important type of languaging in the contemporary world. Other ELF event types were more compliant with group formation and permanence or regularity of encounters between the same individuals, and finally there was a third kind of community, such as the EU, or international companies, off-shore university branches, or on a smaller scale, couples and families, where stability and permanence characterise the frame of existence. These social formations entail different time scales, and consequently different roles in, say, norm-development and regulation of ELF use. Clearly, the more stable the community at hand, the more likely regulatory practices are to set in: some usages become the norm within the community, even if external standards imposed by prestigious bodies of language regulation (dictionaries, grammars, educational institutions) should differ from these. However, all interactions self-regulate in one way or another, and the accumulative effects of masses of transitory encounters on languaging are not very well known or studied. Relative stability at the macro level works towards reliable communication, thereby helping make languages useful. Likewise, interactions are successful if they reproduce familiar practices and patterns and in this way achieve communication. There are thus interests in maintaining and reproducing shared practices, and therefore centripetal forces exert pressure 20 Conceptualising ELF both at macro and meso levels. The macro level can be expected to be particularly slow to change: global networks drive the maintenance of ELF as a mutually comprehensible resource even amid variability and change. At the same time, centrifugal forces are at work in on-going interactions where the immediate interest is to make particular, specific, unfolding communication events successful by any means available. On the smaller scale, cognition, processes are fastest; we talk about milliseconds. Still, for individual cognition the moment-to-moment processing also relies on stored resources that have accumulated as aggregate lifetime experiences of languaging. The experience keeps accumulating, thus also continually changing, albeit not very fast, because while each new experience brings something new it also repeats, draws on and reinforces earlier resources as well as the affordances of the on-going interaction. In all, time scales in ELF are multiplex, and at each level we have to account for counteracting forces within those time scales. To understand them better, we need to pose good questions for empirical research as well. ELF altogether is a complex phenomenon, which has not only stirred up a considerable amount of controversy, but already challenged many firmly held traditional notions of language – and paved the way for new questions. Further reading Hall, C.J. (2013). Cognitive contributions to plurilithic views of English and other languages. 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The use of English as the predominant global language makes it a prime site for both empirical and theoretical investigations of intercultural issues. Furthermore, language choices are not trivial in intercultural communication and the extensive use of English needs proper scholarly attention. In this chapter I will argue that ELF research has taken a similar perspective to much contemporary intercultural communication research in viewing communication from a poststructuralist perspective where categories of language, identity, community and culture are seen as constructed, negotiable and contested. Furthermore, currently both ELF and intercultural communication research are concerned with notions of culture and community, identity and intercultural communicative competence/awareness. These three themes, I believe, offer potentially fruitful points of convergence where both research fields can inform one another. Intercultural communication research While a history of intercultural communication research is not the purpose of this chapter, it is helpful to begin with distinctions between traditional ‘cross-cultural’ accounts of intercultural communication, more contemporary intercultural perspectives (Scollon and Scollon, 2001) and most recently transcultural approaches (Baker, 2016). Cross-cultural communication research typically focused on national level accounts of culture, homogeneity in cultural groupings and the study of the communicative practices of distinct cultural groups independent from intercultural interaction (e.g. Chinese communicative practices), which were then compared to the communicative practices of other distinct national groups (e.g. Chinese 25 Will Baker compared with French communicative practices). Such research has been criticised for its essentialist approach to cultural groupings (e.g. Holliday, 2011) in assuming that individuals are synonymous with national characterisations of culture and that there are clear boundaries between different cultures. Most problematic in such research has been the assumption that individuals in intercultural interactions behave in the same manner as they do in intracultural communication (communication within cultural groupings). In contrast to cross-cultural perspectives, intercultural communication research focuses on the communicative practices of distinct cultural, or other groups, in interaction with each other (e.g. Italian linguists communicating with English linguists) (Scollon and Scollon, 2001, p. 539). Cultures are not characterised as bounded entities within national borders, but fluid and dynamic with blurred boundaries. Furthermore, cultures are viewed as heterogeneous, containing a great deal of variety among members. This is not to deny the role of national cultures, which are still a powerful cultural grouping, but they are one of many cultures and communities that can be drawn upon in communication, alongside others such as gender, generation, profession and ethnicity. Most significantly in intercultural communication research we should not make a priori assumptions about the cultural groupings and identities that will be drawn on in interaction. Instead we need to ask, “[w]ho has introduced culture as a relevant category, for what purposes, and with what consequences?” (Scollon and Scollon, 2001, p. 545; see also Piller, 2011; Zhu, 2014). Most recently, given the dynamic and flexible characterisations of language, communication, identity and culture found in ELF research, it can be argued that intercultural communication is no longer an appropriate term in all instances, since it may not always be clear what cultures participants are in-between or ‘inter’ in intercultural communication. Indeed, I think ‘trans’, as in ‘transcultural communication’, provides a better metaphor with its association of across and through rather than between and the suggestion of transgressing borders (Pennycook, 2007; Baker, 2016). However, given that much of the literature and research referred to in this chapter makes use of the term intercultural communication, for consistency and continuity it is easier to keep the traditional terminology, but with the caveats and limitations noted here. Adopting this critical view of intercultural or transcultural communication, in which many different groupings and communities are drawn on, opens up the question of what is distinctive about intercultural communication as opposed to other kinds of communication. Indeed, Scollon, Scollon and Jones (2012) recommend abandoning the concept of culture and intercultural as too large, unwieldy, ill-defined and essentialist. However, I would argue that any alternative is equally problematic. Concepts such as identity, discourse and community are no less complex, open to essentialism or multiply defined. Furthermore, the notion of culture and the intercultural is made use of extensively in social life at many levels from media and political discourses to individual interactions. If we are to take subjective positions on social interactions and relationships seriously, then we need to account for culture and the intercultural and not simply dismiss it as ill-informed folk theory. Moreover, as Zhu points out in relation to culture in intercultural communication, we “need to take care not to confuse the need to problematize the notion of culture at the conceptual level with the need for a working definition of culture for those disciplines and studies which investigate group variation” (Zhu, 2014, p. 199). Zhu provides a definition of intercultural communication, which like Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) definition takes interaction and negotiation as fundamental, but also recognises the importance of participants’ perceptions of cultural and linguistic differences as essential in any characterisation of communication as intercultural. Furthermore, in 26 ELF and intercultural communication research it is necessary to make a distinction between participant or lay ‘categories of practice’ and ‘categories of analysis’ that researchers make use of (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000). Therefore, in addition to participant perceptions, if the researcher regards cultural and linguistic differences as relevant, the interaction may also be treated as intercultural, “with the caveat that there must be empirical or theoretical justifications for making use of such categories” (Baker, 2015, p. 23). In sum, we can regard communication as intercultural when participants and/or researchers regard linguacultural (linguistic and cultural) differences as significant in the interaction; however, such differences should be approached critically and not assumed a priori. ELF and intercultural communication research Following the characterisation of intercultural communication above, “ELF is by definition intercultural in nature since ELF communication is typically defined as involving speakers from different linguacultures” (Baker, 2015, p. 43). Similar points have been made by other ELF researchers, for example, Jenkins states that “ELF is about intercultural communication in the broadest sense . . . intercultural communication skills and strategies are paramount” (2014, p. 26). Likewise, Cogo and Dewey claim that “the type of research we undertake is intercultural in nature (or maybe better still, transcultural), in that it concerns communication that takes place among speakers from various linguacultural backgrounds” (2012, p. 26). Mauranen also observes that “[a]s ELF gains ground in international communication, the intercultural perspective comes increasingly to the fore” (2012, p. 43). ELF research also shares many similarities with contemporary intercultural communication research in adopting a post-structuralist perspective on communication, identity and culture in which they are viewed as constructed, negotiable and adaptable. In keeping with this critical, poststructuralist approach, ELF research has also been concerned with issues of hybridity and questions of power, ideology and resistance. This has particularly centred around standard language ideology and power imbalances related to ‘native speakerism’ and characterisations of an Anglophone ‘centre’ and periphery ‘others’ (e.g. Jenkins, 2007; Jenks, 2013). Two important points need to be addressed in relation to this characterisation of ELF as a form of intercultural communication. First, and most obviously, this entails that ELF is not culturally or identity ‘neutral’, as has been suggested by some ELF researchers (e.g. House, 2014). To claim that there is such a thing as neutral communication is to misunderstand the nature of communication as a social practice. All communication, intercultural or otherwise, involves participants whose identities will be present in the interaction in one way or another. Furthermore, communication is a form of cultural practice and so will necessarily involve drawing on, constructing and negotiating culturally based frames of reference and communicative practices. This is not to claim that any particular cultural identities or practices are present a priori, or that they are necessarily significant in understanding the interaction; but whether judged important or not, culture and identity are always present. Second, there is no implication in this characterisation of ELF that it is a unique form of intercultural communication (as for example Firth, 2009 argues), so the communication strategies, pragmatic strategies, linguistic awareness and intercultural awareness observed in ELF communication are likely to be present in other forms of multilingual intercultural communication. Indeed, it is because ELF is not a unique form of intercultural communication that research into ELF has the potential to be highly useful for intercultural communication research in general. Given the extensive use of ELF in intercultural communication globally, ELF research is likely to provide valuable insights into multilingual intercultural communication and the 27 Will Baker complex relationships between languages, communicative practices, identities, communities and cultures. However, ELF research has frequently been misunderstood, ignored or marginalised in intercultural communication literature. For example, the 600-page Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication (Jackson, 2012) does not contain a single reference to ELF. Of course we would not expect intercultural communication research to only focus on English and ELF but given its extensive global use for intercultural communication it would seem perverse to ignore it. Of most concern is that where English is dealt with in intercultural communication studies there is frequently no awareness of ELF research, even when dealing with issues addressed extensively in the ELF literature (see for example Piller, 2011). Without including ELF research there is often a lack of understanding of how issues such as identity and culture play out in contexts with few fixed connections between a language (English) and national identities and cultures. In the rest of this chapter I will outline three areas that I believe have the greatest potential for cross-fertilisation between intercultural communication and ELF research: culture, identity and intercultural communicative competence/awareness. Culture and intercultural communication through ELF Culture has understandably been the subject of much discussion and theorisation in intercultural communication research. However, it has been of less concern in ELF research. Nonetheless, a number of studies have looked specifically at the notion of culture in relation to ELF communication. Meierkord (2002) offers an early example of this demonstrating how interactants make use of English to construct and negotiate a range of cultural practices in what she terms a ‘masala’, but also suggests that ELF can be ‘stripped’ of culture, which is problematic as outlined above. Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) investigate the way in which English is used in ELF interactions to represent local cultural references and practices. The focus of this study was on a setting where there was a clearly identifiable L1 linguacultural connection and how ELF communication related to this L1 culture. While important, in much ELF interaction there may be no clearly distinguishable L1 culture that participants identify with or refer to. In a more recent study Xu and Dinh (2013) adopt a dynamic perspective in their examination of language and culture in ELF. They explore the multiple meanings that their study participants attribute to a number of key words that move between local and more flexible global cultural references. One perspective on issues of community and culture that has been of interest to ELF researchers is the notion of community of practice (CoP) (e.g. Jenkins, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2007). Much of this discussion has been at the theoretical level, although empirical studies are beginning to emerge (e.g. Ehrenreich, 2009; Kalocsai, 2014; Vettorel, 2014). In order to account for the fluid communities in which ELF is typically found the CoP framework has had to be employed in a substantially modified and more flexible manner than originally conceived (Wenger, 1998). However, there has been little in-depth consideration of how such localised CoPs relate to other scales of community and especially wider ideas of culture and cultural identities (although see Kalocsai, 2014; Vettorel, 2014). Another significant limitation is that CoPs are typically instrumental in their goals whereas cultural communities and identities are more nebulous. Thus, while ELF studies that look at CoPs have contributed to our understanding of the role of ELF in constructing and maintaining communities, they typically do this on a single instrumental scale, with many other types of community and links between them still unaccounted for. 28 ELF and intercultural communication My own research has looked extensively at the construction, adaptation and negotiation of culture in intercultural communication through ELF and how we might theorise this (Baker, 2009, 2011, 2015). In doing so I make use of the ideas of linguistic and cultural flows, hybridity, third places and complexity theory. While a detailed explanation of all these concepts is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Baker, 2015 for a full discussion), a number of central notions need outlining. In particular a perspective on culture is taken in which it is viewed metaphorically as a complex adaptive system (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008) in which cultural characterisations emerge from a conglomeration of multiple individual interactions but are not reducible to those individual interactions. Crucially, this entails that while cultural characterisations may influence individuals they cannot be read directly back to those individuals. In other words, a British person may be influenced by the notion of ‘British culture’ (to take a national cultural characterisation) and in turn their interactions may contribute to a characterisation of British culture, but their actions, beliefs and values are not synonymous with British culture. Such a dynamic view of culture means that any cultural characterisation is in a constant state of emergence but never finalised with continuous change and adaptation. Therefore, no definitive or final characterisation of culture can ever be provided. This is easily observed in the multitude of different interpretations of cultures and the struggles and tensions around who defines culture and how. Moreover, individuals are simultaneously members of many different cultural groupings at a range of levels or scales from local/regional, to national and global. Each of these groupings can again be viewed as dynamically interacting complex systems that influence each other and with boundaries between them blurred. It is important at this point to clarify the relationship between language and culture in intercultural communication through ELF interactions. Following Risager (2006), a distinction is made regarding the relationship between language and culture in the generic and differential sense. In the generic sense language is never culturally neutral since language is always linked to cultural practices and is itself a form of cultural practice. However, in a differential sense particular named languages (e.g. English) are not linked to particular named cultures (e.g. American). This provides a refutation to the strongest interpretations of linguistic relatively in which language and culture are synonymous and also more contemporary versions of this where the structure of a language is viewed as containing unique cultural elements (e.g. Wierzbicka, 2006). Thus, there is nothing that inexorably links the English language to Anglophone cultures and this has been clearly demonstrated in the research cited above. Indeed, it is the ability of language and culture to come together in novel ways that enables a language such as English to function as a global lingua franca. The notion of flows provides a metaphor to envisage how this relationship works, with linguistic and cultural flows converging in a particular communicative event to create meaning (Risager, 2006; Pennycook, 2007). Crucially, how linguistic and cultural flows converge is always an empirical question and cannot be determined in advance. In this way we can see how a language such as English operating as a lingua franca on a global scale is part of the construction and negotiation of a multitude of communicative and other cultural practices and in turn becomes part of a diverse range of cultural practices in itself. Data from my own studies (Baker, 2009, 2011, 2015) within a higher education setting in Thailand (although not confined to that setting), have illustrated the way that various linguistic and cultural flows converged in particular interactions to create meaning. An analysis of a number of different communicative events shows ELF users drawing on multiple cultural frames of reference in the same conversation, and moving between and 29 Will Baker across local, national and global contexts in dynamic ways. Crucially, the data highlight new cultural products, practices and interpretations emerging from ELF communication. Furthermore, the importance of adaptation, negotiation and co-construction is clearly demonstrated. For example, participants are seen negotiating different interpretations of the word ‘petanque’ with multiple meanings and references recognised rather than a single fixed one (Baker, 2009, pp. 581–582). Other participants are seen playfully negotiating the conventions for finishing a conversation consciously moving between different frames of reference related to ‘traditional’ cultural conventions, more contemporary approaches and linking this to a multitude of discourse communities and practice related to culture, gender and generation (Baker, 2009, pp. 577–578). In sum, current approaches to culture in ELF research complement much contemporary research in intercultural communication that also considers cultures as complex and fluid sets of beliefs, ideologies and practices that are always transitory, partial and in a constant state of emergence (Holliday, 2011; Piller, 2011; Zhu, 2014). ELF research has a particularly valuable contribution to make in exploring English, as the most extensively used language of intercultural communication, and how this is connected to constructions of culture and cultural identity. ELF research demonstrates how problematic it is to posit an inexorable link between particular languages and cultures, especially at the national level (e.g. English and Anglophone cultures) in intercultural communication. This is not to refute the power of national languages and cultures, but it does underscore the need to look at other scales and not to make a priori assumptions about this relationship for English, or any other language, that is part of intercultural communicative practices. Identity and intercultural communication through ELF Closely linked to the notion of culture is that of identity and this has been a fundamental part of both intercultural communication and ELF research. As with culture, identity is most commonly viewed from a post-structuralist perspective as multiple, emergent, dynamic and at times contradictory. Individuals simultaneously orientate towards and construct many different identities in communication such as gender, ethnic, generational, professional, cultural, national, regional and religious identities. Given the focus on process in this perspective a more accurate term might be identification, since identity construction can be viewed as the process of identification with a network of social groups and social relations that we take part in and orientate towards. It is also important to note that identity is not only identification with those groups we choose but also allocation by others to particular social groups and hence negotiation and struggle are a significant feature of identity construction (Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004; Holliday, 2011; Zhu, 2014). Language is a key aspect in the construction and negotiation of identity, as Zhu notes, “we have come to the view that language practices and identity are mutually dependent and interconnected. Language practices index and symbolise identities, which in turn impact on and feedback into language practices” (2014, p. 218). Due to the multilingual and multicultural nature of intercultural communication this makes issues of identity and language particularly complex with notions of hybridity, liminality and third spaces frequently drawn on to account for the new spaces opened up for identity construction in intercultural communication (e.g. Rampton, 1995; Pennycook, 2007; Kramsch, 2009). However, there are also dangers of essentialising and othering participants in intercultural communication, especially if stereotypical nationally based notions of identity are prevalent (Holliday, 2011). 30 ELF and intercultural communication Of particular relevance to intercultural communication research is cultural identity. Traditional intercultural communication research has quite rightly been criticised for an over reliance on essentialised notions of cultural identity in which individuals are viewed as synonymous with national cultures and national cultural identity is the sole focus of analysis (see Piller, 2011; Holliday, 2011 for critiques). Instead we need to be clear that individuals can identify with a great many social groups including, potentially, multiple cultural groups. So, for example, an individual may identify with some of the cultural practices, beliefs and values associated with Chinese culture, but this does not determine their whole identity; it is only one aspect of it. Thus, the relationship between culture and identity is as complex and dynamic as any of the other aspects of intercultural communication discussed here. Current research into cultural identity in intercultural communication has looked at the manner in which nation, ethnicity and race contribute to the construction of cultural identity and the ways in which this may be accepted, negotiated, resisted or ascribed in interactions (e.g. Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Holliday, 2011; Zhu, 2014). Especially relevant to intercultural communication research have been studies that explore the new spaces that globalisation opens up for the construction of cultural identities (e.g. Pennycook, 2007; Canagarajah, 2013). A growing number of ELF studies have also demonstrated the different ways in which a range of identities are performed through ELF. Participants in ELF studies have reported and been observed using English to create and index multiple identities moving between local L1 identities and more global orientations (e.g. Phan, 2008; Pölzl and Seidlhofer, 2006; Pitzl, 2012). Other research has demonstrated the construction of shared multilingual and multicultural identities in ELF interactions (Klimpfinger, 2009; Cogo and Dewey, 2012). Studies have also shown the role of ELF in identification with dynamic, ad hoc communities of practice and virtual communities (Kalocsai, 2014; Vettorel, 2014). Alongside this, my research has illustrated the third-place identities intercultural communication through ELF gives rise to with participants embracing being ‘in-between’ and mediating between cultures or other groupings (Baker, 2009, 2011). At other times participants have reported the use of ELF as a medium through which they can construct freer, liminal and fluid identities that are not indexed to or ‘between’ any particular cultures or cultural identifications, while on other occasions participants may report being comfortable adopting multiple cultural identities apparently without contradiction (Baker, 2009, 2011, 2015). Zhu (2015) and Baker (2015) both focus on issues of cultural identity in ELF and highlight the way in which such identities are constructed and negotiated within the interactions and warn against the danger of a priori ascriptions of cultural identity. Issues of power and ideology in identity construction have also been of interest to ELF researchers especially in relation to the pull of ‘native speaker ideologies’ in the discourse of ELT, which associates the use of English with Anglophone nations and cultures (Jenkins, 2007). Furthermore, Jenks (2013) and Baird, Baker and Kitazawa (2014) caution that while we need to be aware of the potential power imbalances native and non-native identities can give rise to, we need to carefully examine how they are constructed in interactions and not make pre-determined assumptions. In sum, ELF studies focus on the liminal, dynamic and multiple aspects of cultural identity construction, while also recognising potential power imbalances, especially in relation to native speaker ideology in English. Intercultural competence/awareness and intercultural communication through ELF Both intercultural communication and ELF research have underscored the complexity and fluidity of intercultural interactions at multiple levels from linguistic features to communicative 31 Will Baker and pragmatic strategies and culture and identity construction. Likewise, both fields have been interested in understanding how this complexity is managed in communication. There has been shared criticism of the limitations of communicative competence, particularly as conceived in applied linguistics, with its predominant focus on linguistic competence underpinned by grammatical competence. Successful communication, as demonstrated by both intercultural communication and ELF research, depends on much more than competence in a bounded set of syntax, lexis and phonology. Indeed, Hymes’ (1972) original conception of communicative competence placed greater emphasis on wider social aspects of communication but this was typically in relation to defined speech communities of native speakers – a very different scenario to most intercultural communication and ELF interaction. Within intercultural communication research the alternative notion of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been very influential (e.g. Byram, 1997). This represents an attempt to widen communicative competence in recognising the intercultural dimension to communicating in multilingual and multicultural settings. Alongside linguistic competence and communicative strategies, ICC adds features such as: knowledge about one’s own and other cultures and communities and how communication is influenced by this; a willingness to explore and accept differences in communication; the ability to relativise values and practices; the ability to mediate between different cultural groups and communicative practices; and a critical approach to cultural and communicative characterisations (Byram, 1997, 2008). Although, ICC has been drawn on extensively in intercultural communication literature, especially in relation to education (Risager, 2007), it has also been criticised for its strong orientation to national levels of culture, its a priori assumptions of cultural divides and differences and a lack of engagement with the current role of English as a global lingua franca outside of Anglophone settings (Holliday, 2011; Baker, 2011, 2015). A number of alternatives to communicative competence and ICC have been proposed and Kramsch’s (2009, 2011) notion of symbolic competence is particularly salient. Symbolic competence does not reject communicative or intercultural communicative competence, but rather incorporates a reflexive perspective that addresses the ideological, historic and aesthetic aspects of intercultural communication (Kramsch, 2009, 2011). Importantly, Kramsch assumes a more critical view of culture to the nationally orientated perspectives in ICC. Symbolic competence is about more than understanding a cultural other and one’s own culture; it is also about understanding the fluidity of numerous ‘discourse worlds’ (Kramsch, 2011, p. 356) and the ability to navigate the complexity of change, multiple meanings and diverse interpretations in intercultural communication. Symbolic competence is thus a process and a “dynamic, flexible and locally contingent competence” (Kramsch 2009, p. 200). Nonetheless, Kramsch does not explore the relevance of this concept to lingua franca communication and the focus is on multilingual immigrant communities where native speakers exert a strong influence. Canagarajah’s (2013) performative competence is also of relevance with its emphasis on the processes of multilingual/translingual intercultural communication. Particularly important is Canagarajah’s highlighting of the central role of communicative strategies, but also recognition that even these strategies need to be approached flexibly. In ELF research the notion of communicative competence has received much attention (e.g. Seidlhofer, 2011; Widdowson, 2012). In particular, it has been criticised for its static view of linguistic competence, reliance on native-like competence, and failure to recognise the importance of flexibility in the employment of linguistic resources in intercultural communication. However, arguably more significant in ELF research has been an interest in communicative and pragmatic strategies. Early ELF research such as Jenkins (2000) identified the importance of accommodation in ELF communication. Indeed, Seidlhofer and 32 ELF and intercultural communication Widdowson argue that “it may turn out that what is distinctive about ELF lies in the communicative strategies that its speakers use” (2009, p. 37); although, I would add the caveat that this is not necessarily distinctive to ELF but rather a central feature of intercultural communication in general. Alongside accommodation, communicative and pragmatic strategies such as pre-empting misunderstanding, repetition, explicitness and code-switching have frequently been noted in ELF studies (see Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey, 2011 for an overview). Importantly, these strategies are not seen as ‘compensating’ for communicative deficiencies but rather as displays of pragmatic competence by successful multilingual and multicultural intercultural communicators. To date, ELF research has provided detailed information about the micro-discourse features of intercultural communication through ELF and what competence in this might entail. Nonetheless, together with this analysis of micro level features, we need explorations of macro-level aspects of intercultural communication related to identity and culture, such as those identified in ICC, and a means of linking the two levels. Intercultural awareness (ICA) represents an attempt to draw research together from both ELF and intercultural communication studies in a conception of the skills, knowledge and attitudes needed for successful (however we might choose to define that) intercultural communication through ELF (Baker, 2011, 2015). ICA builds on many of ICC’s notions of the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed in intercultural communication. However, unlike ICC, the focus is not predominantly on national conceptions of culture and language, although they are present, but instead ICA incorporates an understanding of the fluid, complex and emergent nature of the relationship between language and culture in intercultural communication through ELF. There is also an emphasis on intercultural communication as a process and the need to employ any intercultural awareness in a flexible and situationally relevant manner. This means that detailed features of ICA cannot be specified in advance but only broad areas. These broad areas include different levels of awareness moving from a general or basic awareness of communication as a cultural practice, to a more critical awareness of varied intercultural communicative practices and finally an advanced level of intercultural awareness where flexibility, dynamism and complexity are the norm (Baker, 2011, 2015). It is this final level of the model with its emphasis on fluidity that is particularly relevant for intercultural communication through ELF. However, it is important to recognise that this model of ICA, or any other model, should not be read as a set of prescriptive features for intercultural communication. A critical approach to intercultural communication entails an understanding that there can be no one set of communicative practices, intercultural or otherwise, that are more effective or successful than any other in all situations. Just as questions of language, culture and identity are always open empirical questions, so too are notions of successful ‘competent’ intercultural communication, which can only ever be judged in relation to individual instances of interaction. Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that there is much potential for productive cross-fertilisation between intercultural communication and ELF research. First, ELF is by definition a form of intercultural communication and so offers valuable data for intercultural research. Contemporary approaches in both fields typically adopt post-structuralist perspectives to a number of central concepts such as language, identity, community and culture. Furthermore, both fields are concerned with understanding and documenting multilingual and multicultural communication in which diversity, complexity and fluidity are the norm. ELF research can draw on much of the theoretical and empirical work in intercultural communication for 33 Will Baker expanded views of identity, culture, community and intercultural competence and awareness. At the same time intercultural communication research can benefit from the extensive empirical and growing theoretical work in ELF studies documenting the relationships between languages, communicative practices, identity, community and culture in the super-diverse and complex scenarios that are typical of intercultural communication through ELF. Related chapters in this handbook 3 Ehrenreich, Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca 24 Kimura and Canagarajah, Translingual practice and ELF 28 Sangiamchit, ELF in electronically mediated intercultural communication 47 Jenkins, The future of English as a lingua franca? Further reading Baker, W. (2015). Culture and identity through English as a lingua franca: rethinking concepts and goals in intercultural communication. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural communication: a critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Scollon, R., Scollon, S.B.K. and Jones, R.H. (2012). Intercultural communication: a discourse approach (3rd edn). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Zhu, H. (2014). Exploring intercultural communication: language in action. Abingdon: Routledge. References Baird, R., Baker, W. and Kitazawa, M. (2014). The complexity of English as a lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(1), pp. 171–196. Baker, W. (2009). The cultures of English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 43(4), pp. 567–592. Baker, W. (2011). Intercultural awareness: modelling an understanding of cultures in intercultural communication through English as a lingua franca. Language and Intercultural Communication, 11(3), pp. 197–214. Baker, W. (2015). Culture and identity through English as a lingua franca: rethinking concepts and goals in intercultural communication Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Baker, W. (2016). English as an academic lingua franca and intercultural awareness: student mobility in the transcultural university. Language and Intercultural Communication, 16(3), pp. 437–451. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond ‘identity’. Theory and Society, 29(1), pp. 1–47. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M. (2008). From foreign language education to education for intercultural citizenship: essays and reflections. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. London: Routledge. Cogo, A., and Dewey, M. (2012). Analysing English as a lingua franca: a corpus-based investigation. London: Continuum. Ehrenreich, S. (2009). English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: exploring business communities of practice. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds), English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 126–151 Firth, A. (2009). The lingua franca factor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), pp. 147–170. Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural communication and ideology. London: Sage. House, J. (2014). English as a global lingua franca: a threat to multilingual communication and translation? Language Teaching, 47(3), pp. 363–376. 34 ELF and intercultural communication Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence In J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds), Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 269–293. Jackson, J. (ed.). (2012). The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication. London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language: new models, new norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), pp. 157–181. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2014). English as a lingua franca in the international university: the politics of academic English language policy. London: Routledge. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), pp. 281–315. Jenks, C. (2013). Are you an ELF? The relevance of ELF as an equitable social category in online intercultural communication. Language and intercultural communication: Special Issue: The Discourse of Ethics and Equity, 13(1), pp. 95–108. Kalocsai, K. (2014). Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca: a study of Erasmus students in a central-European context. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Klimpfinger, T. (2009). ‘She’s mixing the two languages together’: forms and functions of codeswitching in English as a lingua franca In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds), English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 348–371. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2011). The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural. Language Teaching, 44(3), pp. 354–367. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2008). Cultural globalization and language education. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meierkord, C. (2002). ‘Language stripped bare’ or ‘linguistic masala’? Culture in lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds), Lingua franca communication. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 109–134. Pavlenko, A. and Blackledge, A. (2004). Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge. Phan, L.H. (2008). Teaching English as an international language: identity, resistance and negotiation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural communication: a critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pitzl, M.-L. (2012). Creativity meets convention: idiom variation and re-metaphorization in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), pp. 27–55. Pölzl, U. and Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: the ‘habitat factor’ in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, pp. 151–176. Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. Risager, K. (2006). Language and culture: global flows and local complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Risager, K. (2007). Language and culture pedagogy. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. (2001). Discourse and intercultural communication. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton (eds), The handbook of discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 538–547 Scollon, R., Scollon, S.B.K. and Jones, R.H. (2012). Intercultural communication: a discourse approach (3rd edn). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Seidlhofer, B. (2007). English as a lingua franca and communities of practice. In S. Volk-Birke and J. Lippert (eds), Anglistentag 2006 Halle proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, pp. 307–318 35 Will Baker Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. and Widdowson, H.G. (2009). Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a lingua franca. In K. Murata and J. Jenkins (eds), Global Englishes in Asian contexts: current and future debates. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 26–39 Vettorel, P. (2014). ELF in wider networking: blogging practices. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H.G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), pp. 5–26. Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Xu, Z. and Dinh, T.N. (2013). How do “WE” (World Englishes) make sense in ELF communication? Words and their meanings across cultures. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(2), pp. 365–388. Zhu, H. (2014). Exploring intercultural communication: language in action. Abingdon: Routledge. Zhu, H. (2015). Negotiation as the rule of engagement in intercultural and lingua franca communication: meaning, frame of references and interculturality. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), pp. 63–90. 36 3 Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca Susanne Ehrenreich Introduction A community of practice is a group of people who regularly interact with each other by means of a shared communicative repertoire in order to accomplish a common task. In the process, a great deal of informal learning is taking place. Old-timers show newcomers the ropes, newcomers may inspire longer-term members to rethink and innovate established practices. In today’s globalized world, such purpose-oriented endeavours increasingly bring together people from diverse linguacultural backgrounds who use and develop, among other resources, English as a lingua franca as part of their communicative repertoire. The term “community of practice”, coined by Lave and Wenger (1991: 97–98), was developed by Wenger (1998) as the essence of his social theory of learning. In its 1998 incarnation, the concept has developed an enormous impact, both as a heuristic notion and as an educational model, and has been applied in a wide range of disciplines (Squires and van de Vanter 2013). While celebrated and applied as a knowledge management tool in organizational and business studies (e.g. Wenger et al. 2002), it has also been applied, mostly in its analytical capacity, in fields such as education and sociolinguistics (e.g. Holmes and Meyerhoff 1999; Barton and Tusting 2005a; Hughes et al. 2007), accompanied by insightful critical debates. With regard to ELF theorizing, the potential relevance of the concept of community of practice was first discussed by House (2003).1 In an attempt to find an adequate notion to conceptualize the sociolinguistic realities of multilingual ELF speakers globally, it was initially considered a possible alternative to the established concept of the speech community. However, as is argued in Ehrenreich (2009: 130), as a “midlevel category” (Wenger 1998: 124) the concept of community of practice generally describes smaller and more cohesive group configurations and is therefore not a suitable candidate for such re-conceptualization efforts (see also Jenkins 2015: 64–66). With regard to empirical ELF research, however, it is a very different story. Although utilized as a framework in only a handful of studies so far – Ehrenreich (2009, 2010, 2011a) and Alharbi (2015) in the domain of international business, and Smit (2010), Cogo and 37 Susanne Ehrenreich Dewey (2012) and Kalocsai (2014) in the domain of higher education – the concept has been shown to be a powerful analytical tool. If applied to suitable contexts, it enables socially situated explorations and analyses of ELF; analyses that help to (re-)direct the focus in ELF research to the social embeddedness of ELF in use. In this chapter, I will provide an overview of the potential and the limitations of applying the concept of community of practice to empirical research into ELF. After briefly tracing the origins of the concept and its first applications in sociolinguistics, the three criterial dimensions of a community of practice – mutual engagement, its joint enterprise and a shared repertoire – will be described, including a discussion of critical issues that have been raised in relation to them. For each dimension, it will be shown, on the basis of existing research, how these have been realized in ELF-based communities of practice. After a brief consideration of research methodological implications, empirically derived insights into the socially embedded and dynamic nature of ELF-based shared repertoires will be summarized and discussed with regard to four exemplary facets of ELF communication (strategies, multilingualism, sociopragmatic hybridity and ELF speakers’ identities). I conclude by reviewing the concept of community of practice in its capacities as an analytical tool, as a theoretical notion and as an educational model. Communities of practice as an analytical research tool: origin and applications Lave and Wenger (1991: 97–98) introduced the concept “community of practice” as part of their theory of situated learning, in which apprenticeship-like types of learning are conceptualized as “legitimate peripheral participation”, but did not specify the term in detail. Its analytical potential for sociolinguistic research was recognized and explored by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), who introduced it to language and gender research with the following, now classic definition: A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short, practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social construct, a community of practice is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992: 464) The prominence Eckert and McConnell-Ginet give in their definition to emerging “ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations” as these aggregates’ shared “practices”, will be shown to prove particularly helpful in analysing the use of ELF as norm-driven,2 social behaviour in group-based social contexts. Adopting a “midlevel category” (Wenger 1998: 124) such as the community of practice – as opposed to analytical categories describing larger and less cohesive configurations of speakers – to examine ELF in its social contexts helps to identify and describe group-internal social parameters and how these govern its members’ linguistic and communicative behaviour. Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999: 174) translate the idea of social learning into a sociolinguistic perspective: 38 Communities of practice and ELF The process of becoming a member of a CofP – as when we join a new workplace, a book group, or a new family […] – involves learning. We learn to perform appropriately in a CofP as befits our membership status: initially as a ‘peripheral member’, later perhaps as a ‘core member’ […]. In other words, a CofP inevitably involves the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. Wenger, in his 1998 book, sets out to explore the concept of community of practice “more systematically” in order “to make it more useful as a thinking tool” (Wenger 1998: 7). Starting out from the fact that communities of practice are a familiar experience to everyone since “[w]e all belong to communities of practice. At home, at work, at school, in our hobbies” (Wenger 1998: 7) and from his observation that “the learning that is most personally transformative turns out to be the learning that involves membership in these communities of practice”, he aims to exploit this familiarity to further elaborate his conception of learning as “social participation” (Wenger 1998: 4). Crucially, participation to him is both “a kind of action and a form of belonging” (Wenger 1998: 6). To him, the concept of community of practice serves as a “point of entry” into his more encompassing theory of social learning (Wenger 1998: 8). A concise definition of the concept itself is not offered. Instead, three criterial dimensions of such communities are described: mutual engagement, a joint enterprise and a shared repertoire (Wenger 1998: 72–85. 124–126). It is these criterial dimensions that help to specify what a community of practice is, in contrast to other non-practice based communities (or non-community forming types of practices). Criterial dimensions of communities of practice Communities of practice exist regardless of externally applied analytical categories. In other words, a group configuration is either a community of practice, or it is not. Two implications arise from this observation. First, configurations that do not ontologically represent a community of practice according to Wenger’s criteria cannot be transformed into such merely for research purposes. This is a lesson that can be learnt from previous research in sociolinguistics, where, as Meyerhoff (2005: 597) notes, enthusiasm for Wenger’s concept has gone slightly overboard in the past. “[S]imply jumping on a bandwagon and picking up a trendy new term [. . .] for analysing data it is not equipped to handle”, she argues (Meyerhoff 2005: 597), is a rather unwise thing to do. Second, empirical work that does not explicitly apply the community of practice framework may nevertheless offer de facto portrayals of exactly such communities, their members and their shared repertoires. So, for instance, the work by Kankaanranta and her colleagues (e.g. Kankaanranta and Planken 2010) and Räisänen’s longitudinal study (2013) represent examples of what could be categorized as conceptually ‘covert’ analyses of international business communities of practice or selected aspects thereof. Mutual engagement For a community of practice to evolve as a coherent group, its members need to interact on a regular basis. Importantly, while pursuing their tasks (or what they interpret these tasks to be) such interactions have to be made possible in the first place. The primary channel for such exchanges is direct face-to-face interaction, however, these days most likely complemented 39 Susanne Ehrenreich by electronically mediated communication. Just how much face-to-face contact between members is necessary for a community of practice to establish meaningful and rich relationships and to sustain itself as a community, is a highly controversial matter, and needs to be assessed carefully for each individual configuration. As a result of the participants’ mutual engagement various kinds of relationships evolve, with the community’s members being “included in what matters” (Wenger 1998: 74), albeit to varying degrees depending on the members’ status as “core” or “peripheral” members (Wenger 1998: 7). Establishing such group coherence requires considerable investment on the part of its members (cf. Wenger 1998: 74). Most importantly, however, right from the outset, Wenger (1998: 77) argues against a romanticized view of communities of practice, making it quite clear that these are not places free of conflict and power issues. This is a point on which he has been criticized, wrongly, I would maintain, on several occasions (see e.g. Barton and Tusting 2005a; Hughes et al. 2007). The people who are brought together in different types of communities of practice can be very different in all kinds of ways including the ways in which they respond to whatever their ‘joint enterprises’ are: “The resulting relations reflect the full complexity of doing things together” (Wenger 1998: 77). Therefore, interactions among members of a community of practice can be both “harmonious or conflictual” (Wenger 1998: 125). ELF-resourced communities of practice are no exception. It is this observation about the full range of possible interpersonal configurations that makes the concept a particularly valuable one for ELF research. It allows a contextually and situationally informed analysis of language use, reminding ELF scholars of the fact that ELF talk is not per se ‘cooperative’ in the sense of ‘conflict-free’. In this regard, the community of practice framework, which requires an ethnographic and multi-dimensional research methodology, facilitates detailed sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic analyses of when and how ELF speakers in a given interactional sequence decide to co-operate or not to co-operate with each other. Taking a look at research into ELF-based communities of practice available to date, what are the ways in which mutual engagement in such communities is enacted? Ehrenreich (2009, 2010, 2011a), Kankaanranta and Planken (2010), and Alharbi (2015) have identified the following forms of mutual engagement in the global workplace among business professionals, who, by the way, are always simultaneously members in several communities of practice: face-to-face encounters in offices, in meeting rooms, in hallways or at the coffee machine, over lunch and during business dinners. The encounters take place at home and abroad, with colleagues in subsidiaries or with clients. Naturally, mutual engagement among business professionals also involves phone calls, phone or video conferences (or net conferences) as well as e-mail. Group sizes and speaker configurations may vary considerably from one encounter to the next. In the domain of higher education, interactions and relationship building in a community of practice of Erasmus students occur in shared activities such as partying and travelling (Kalocsai 2014: 85–89), and in an international hotel management programme, inside and outside the classroom in various subgroups (Smit 2010). Crucially, the examples in all studies underline the fact that the concept of community of practice is not a synonym for externally defined groups or configurations of people (i.e. a classroom, a team, or a unit; see Wenger 1998: 74). A community of practice only evolves as a result of the relationships its members establish through their mutual engagement. The studies available so far also demonstrate that for some ELF speakers the communicative contexts in which they find themselves are relatively stable and fixed for the time of their community’s existence, as is the case with the group of Erasmus students, and even more so with the students in the international hotel management programme. Yet, in other contexts, as can be 40 Communities of practice and ELF seen in the international business communities of practice (Ehrenreich 2009, 2010, 2011a; Alharbi 2015), the ELF speakers involved are simultaneously members, often in different roles (i.e. as core or peripheral members), of several parallel communities of practice, communities that might themselves be in a state of flux to a greater or lesser extent, forming and dissolving, acquiring new members and losing others. Joint enterprise The second criterial dimension of a community’s shared practice is the negotiation of a joint enterprise. While this is a fairly intuitive notion in contexts such as Wenger’s original research setting in an insurance company, in other domains this dimension may be more difficult to pin down. It is no surprise, then, that as a conceptual category, the notion of a joint enterprise seems to pose a considerable challenge when applied to sociolinguistic and ELF research. Two of the crucial questions in this regard are: First, is ‘language’ part of a given community’s joint enterprise or not? (see Ehrenreich 2009) And, second, how specific does a community’s joint enterprise have to be in order to be analytically meaningful? (see e.g. Meyerhoff 2002; Prior 2003; Davies 2005; and for Business English as a lingua franca ((B)ELF), see Ehrenreich 2009). According to Wenger, a joint enterprise is the goal or purpose that motivates the participants’ interrelated actions, as “their negotiated response to their situation” (Wenger 1998: 77). As a result, “relations of mutual accountability” are created, which serve as communityspecific guidelines as to “what matters and what does not” (Wenger 1998: 81). Consequently, a negotiated joint enterprise is never a direct reflection of an official or external goal, but is transformed by the participants themselves in and through their practices to suit their own purposes as much as is possible in a given setting. As indicated above, in the domain of business identifying the joint enterprise of a community of practice is a fairly straightforward issue. Companies are ‘profit-making organizations’, it is their goal to develop and sell whatever product or service they have specialized in. In their organizational structures, the respective departments (e.g. research and development, production, sales, IT) as well as the units and teams contribute to this aim. Within the departments and across them, company-internally and externally, with colleagues and with customers, members of management and employees form communities of practice, who jointly negotiate how this ultimate goal of ‘profit-making’ defines their everyday practices. Generally, ‘language’ or ‘speaking a language’ are not normally part of such joint enterprises (with the exception of, for example, communication departments and translating agencies). At the same time, this does not mean that language is not playing an important part in such non-language focussed communities’ practices. Quite the contrary, the participants’ mutual engagement and the negotiation of their respective joint enterprises are realized via language – in all its social and stylistic functions – and would, quite clearly, not be possible without it. However, for heuristic reasons, it is important not to conflate what is symptomatic of fundamental differences in the respective ‘relevance systems’, i.e. a community’s set of priorities, of different professional or interest groups (for a brief discussion of the sociological construct of relevance systems and its implications for ELF research, see Ehrenreich 2009: 128–129). As discussed in Ehrenreich (2009), language plays a pivotal role in the ‘relevance systems’ of ‘language-focussed’ people or professional groups such as linguists, language teachers and language students (Ehrenreich 2009: 128–129). For these groups, language, or more 41 Susanne Ehrenreich specifically, in the case of English language specialists, English, is part and parcel of the joint enterprise of whatever professional community of practice (or related ‘constellations of practice’) they are a member of. With regard to ‘content-focussed’ people or professional groups, language only plays a secondary role. Content comes first, and language serves the purpose of conveying content (Ehrenreich 2009, 2010, 2011a). This conceptual distinction between language-focussed vs content-focussed speakers is helpful in more than one way. Most importantly, it helps to explain the markedly different attitudes towards ELF between different professional groups (Ehrenreich 2009).3 Second, it helps to uncover a heuristic confusion in early attempts to apply the community of practice framework to ELF speakers generally. For example, it was suggested with regard to applying the community of practice framework to ELF that negotiation not only “on the content plane”, but also “on the level of linguistic (English) forms” was part of the “‘enterprise’ in ELF talk” (House 2003: 572). Such a perspective may be justified in ELF-based communities of practice that carry a strong language focus such as EMI classes (for an example, see Smit 2010). Yet, in all other cases, English (as a lingua franca) is most probably part of a community’s ‘shared repertoire’, not part of their ‘joint enterprise’. Ultimately, however, whether and to what degree this conceptual distinction – language, or ELF, being part of a community’s joint enterprise vs not being part of their shared enterprise – holds true for any given ELF-based community of practice needs to be examined carefully by the researcher. It is the researcher’s task to reconstruct the participants’ emic views on what they themselves consider to be or not to be components of their joint enterprises, and how these components relate to their shared repertoires. The second challenge inherent in the notion of a community’s ‘joint enterprise’ concerns its specificity. ELF scholars are well-advised to take note of the critical voices that have been raised in sociolinguistic research. For example, Meyerhoff (2002: 528) emphasizes that “[i]t is important that [the] shared enterprise be reasonably specific and not very general or abstract”. And, extending her argument, that [i]t ought to contribute something meaningful to an understanding of the dynamics of the group involved. Sociolinguists who wish to use the notion of CofP in their analyses have to exercise caution and ensure that as researchers they are not attempting to constitute ‘CofPs’ for which a shared enterprise is explanatorily vacant. (Meyerhoff 2002: 528) To illustrate her point from a sociolinguist’s perspective, Meyerhoff presents an example taken from her own research that cannot be explained productively using the community of practice framework, simply because, as she states, “it was impossible to specify what kind of enterprise all the women who were observed using sore [a Vanuatu apology routine; SE] to express empathy might share” (Meyerhoff 2002: 530). Translating these words of caution into ELF research, this means that, hypothetically speaking, ‘communicating via ELF’ with no further defined shared goal would in most domains fall into the category of an ‘explanatorily vacant’ enterprise. Specificity of a joint enterprise in the business domain is not a problem, and the same potentially holds for classrooms of various kinds and related programme activities. Yet, to what extent externally defined groups such as classrooms actually transform into communities of practice is a matter of the participants’ actual mutual engagement. In other contexts, particularly with regard to “self-constituted groups” (Davies 2005: 562), it might be more difficult, in general, to uncover and define the possible joint enterprise of a given group configuration. For example, online communities or student groups do not automatically 42 Communities of practice and ELF constitute communities of practice. This is the case only if they have as a group negotiated a shared enterprise, at least for a given time span (see Davies 2005: 562). Returning to the questions stated at the beginning of this section regarding ‘language’ as part of a community’s joint enterprise and the specificity of such enterprises, how have these issues been dealt with in community-of-practice-based empirical ELF research to date? In my own study of two Germany-based multinational corporations in the technology sector, the members’ enterprises arise from and revolve around the individuals’ responsibilities, for example, in engineering or in sales, or around their organizations’ structures, as well as, importantly, the fact that several years ago their jobs had taken on a global dimension (Ehrenreich 2009, 2010, 2011a). Their joint enterprises concern business issues. (B)ELF, from an emic view, is part of the communities’ shared repertoires. As such it is, without any doubt, inextricably linked to business matters in that it serves the purpose of doing business, just like any other language or semiotic tool. In Alharbi’s study in a British-owned health insurance company in Saudi Arabia, the employees’ focus is on how to get their jobs in the multicultural teams of the company’s IT department done in a meaningful way (Alharbi 2015). Despite the obvious contextual differences, her findings are very similar to mine, with the exception that in particular configurations and only for some members, in Alharbi’s study, ‘English’ temporarily seems to surface as part of the members’ ‘enterprise’. In the educational domain, the situation seems to be slightly different. The group of Erasmus students in Kalocsai’s (2014) study adapted the official rationale of the Erasmus programme in a dynamic manner, a gradual process resulting in the overall joint enterprise of building an Erasmus network of friends; an enterprise, which for some members at least, was associated with the language-related goal of improving their English (Kalocsai 2014: 77–85). In Smit’s (2010: 106, 131, 135) analysis of an English-medium vocational programme, the students harmonized three components as their jointly negotiated enterprise: first, the educational goal; second, building relationships among themselves; and finally, improving their English language proficiency. Yet, in the overall account of the study, ‘English as a classroom language’ is on several occasions portrayed not only as the researcher’s main focus, but also as the sole component of the community’s enterprise, a view that may not be entirely compatible, and emically justified, with the students’ nor the teachers’ perspectives. There is content matter, too, and there are relational goals. Shared repertoire The third dimension of practice that contributes to creating coherence in a community is the development of a shared repertoire for negotiating meaning among its members (Wenger 1998: 82). The individual elements of this repertoire can be very heterogeneous in nature and comprise both linguistic and non-linguistic elements. Diverse as they may seem to outsiders, they are not random, but are unified by and a reflection of the members’ joint enterprise: The repertoire of a community of practice includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres […], actions, or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its existence, and which have become part of its practice […] It includes the discourse by which members create meaningful statements about the world, as well as the styles by which they express their forms of membership and their identities as members. (Wenger 1998: 83) 43 Susanne Ehrenreich When a community of practice evolves, its members bring with them a diverse set of communicative resources, which are then “imported, adopted, and adapted for their own purpose – if only the language(s) they speak” (Wenger 1998: 126). With regard to their analyses, ELF scholars need to be careful to acknowledge the fact that the shared repertoire of any ELF-based community of practice is always much more than ‘just’ ELF. From a community of practice perspective, ELF in its varied manifestations is part of and at the same time embedded as only one of many other elements in a multi-layered communicative repertoire; a repertoire that is itself inextricably linked with the community members’ mutual engagement and their joint enterprise (Ehrenreich 2009; Kalocsai 2014: 95–98). Crucially, it is the community’s joint enterprise, not any communityexternal criterion, which serves as the ultimate benchmark for appropriateness (Ehrenreich 2009). Moreover, such shared repertoires are not fixed at any given point in time, but mutable and adaptive (Wenger 1998: 83).4 As evidenced in Ehrenreich (2009), Räisänen (2013), Alharbi (2015) and others, in business communities these repertoires comprise, in addition to English, several other languages as well as documents such as drawings, charts, power point presentations or websites, also often models of different parts of technical products, and, on a more abstract level, certain “ways of doing things” (Wenger 1998: 83). In Kalocsai’s (2014) Erasmus student community the repertoire includes, in addition to languages, collaboratively built ‘schemata’ for partying and travelling, conversational frames, humour and communicational support. The focus in Smit’s (2010) analysis of an EMI setting is on classroom interaction via ELF as the hotel management students’ and their teachers’ shared repertoire. Wenger also points out two additional implications of such repertoires being dynamic and interactive, which provide instructive analytical clues for any socially situated research into ELF: Agreement in the sense of literally shared meaning is not a precondition for mutual engagement in practice, nor is it its outcome. Indeed, mismatched interpretations or misunderstandings need to be addressed and resolved directly only when they interfere with mutual engagement [or the joint enterprise; SE]. Even then, they are not merely problems to resolve, but occasions for the production of new meanings. (Wenger 1998: 84) Without doubt, ambiguity, in terms of linguacultural ambiguity, potentially extending to every aspect of ELF communication, is one of its key characteristics. In ELF-based communities of practice, tolerance for ambiguity is needed, assessed against the requirements of mutual engagement and the joint enterprise. Wenger’s characterization of the shared repertoire of a community of practice, is, indeed, relatively brief, as has been noted by several sociolinguists (e.g. Tusting 2005). Yet, given the overall goal of his book, this is not necessarily a major conceptual weakness of his theory per se. Concise as his outline of the characteristics of a shared repertoire may be, seen in conjunction with the other two dimensions, mutual engagement and joint enterprise, it provides sufficient orientation for sociolinguists, including ELF scholars, to develop and utilize the notion to support their research in terms of socially situated analyses of language, or ELF, in use. Summing up: features of a community of practice and methodological implications Aware of the challenge the expository nature of his characterization of the concept of community of practice poses – with no concise definition included (see Barton and 44 Communities of practice and ELF Tusting 2005b: 6) – Wenger (1998: 125–126) offers as an additional heuristic device the following list of features, which indicate whether and to what degree a community of practice has formed: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 sustained mutual relationships—harmonious or conflictual shared ways of engaging in doing things together the rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation absence of introductory preambles, as if conversations and interactions were merely the continuation of an ongoing process very quick setup of a problem to be discussed substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs knowing what others know, what they can do, and how they can contribute to an enterprise mutually defining identities the ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products specific tools, representations, and other artifacts local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of producing new ones certain styles recognized as displaying membership a shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world. Incidentally, a close look at these features reveals again the pivotal role language plays in the shared practices of such communities. Adequate research techniques are required to examine the social facets of ELF use in communities of practice from an emic, i.e. the participants’, perspective. As a general rule, qualitative ethnographic approaches, ideally in conjunction with various conversation or discourse analytic methods, seem to be the most promising way to capture the multidimensional realities of ELF use in such communities as perceived by their members. The studies conducted to date have used, in various combinations, the following data collection techniques: (participant) observation, qualitative interviews, casual conversations, online journals, as well as audio recordings of speech data. Moreover, as challenging as it may seem, spending an extended period of time in the field is a methodological sine qua non. Finally, novice researchers need to be aware of the fact that a distinct set of criteria has been developed to assess the overall quality of qualitative research (see Smit 2010: 87–88). The shared repertoires of ELF-based communities of practice: socially embedded and dynamic Seidlhofer was right when, some 10 years ago, she issued her call for “clearly situated qualitative studies with a strong ethnographic element” (Seidlhofer et al. 2006: 21). Looking at the findings of community-of-practice-based research into the use of (B)ELF available to date, these findings demonstrate conclusively what can be gained by such a ‘qualitative turn’ (see Ehrenreich 2009; Kankaanranta and Planken 2010; Smit 2010; Räisänen 2013; Kalocsai 2014; Alharbi 2015). Summarizing their overall contribution to (B)ELF research, these studies are highly innovative in that they make ‘the social’ visible in (B)ELF, thus restoring its full communicative complexity as ‘language in its social context’; an aspect that had previously, hence Seidlhofer’s call, been neglected in ELF research.5 Thick ethnographic descriptions of how (B)ELF is used in context, recorded from multiple angles and including longitudinal perspectives, reveal the wealth of social, often domain-specific, parameters at work in (B)ELF communication and how these 45 Susanne Ehrenreich govern the use of individual linguistic and communicative elements. These parameters include, to name but a few, issues of power and how power is defined in a given context, relating to hierarchies with regard to speakers, languages, cultures and organizations, as well as face issues and issues relating to social distance (see Ehrenreich 2011a). They also include domain-specific parameters, for example, with regard to business communication or classroom discourse, parameters that are derived from multiple, and often, but not necessarily, competing cultural norms. Rarely are these parameters stable ones, more often they are in flux and under ongoing negotiation in the respective communities of practice. In terms of the overall qualities of (B)ELF identified so far, community-of-practice-based work generally supports previously gained insights into ELF in many ways. Crucially, what it offers on top of that are contextually sensitive analyses from multiple perspectives of individual aspects of ELF communication, analyses that eventually contribute to a more socially differentiated description of ELF. In their light, several generalizations concerning the nature of ELF may turn out to be somewhat premature and empirically not always fully justified. Similarly, empirically uncharted territory and several blind spots become visible. A few examples will help to illustrate these more general observations, examples referring to the use of communicative strategies, the multilingual nature of ELF, the role of cultural communicative conventions, as well as, finally, (B)ELF speakers’ identities. Communicative strategies have been studied extensively in ELF research and they are generally regarded as an indication of the cooperative (in a somewhat narrow sense of the word) nature of ELF communication. Often these strategies are mentioned as candidates for possible pedagogical implications. Yet, through community-of-practice-based studies we gain a clearer picture of the social complexity that governs speakers’ decisions as to what strategy is appropriate to use in a given context or not. Quite clearly, in the business domain, power issues can occasionally override short-term communicative needs or result in uncooperative behaviour (Ehrenreich 2010; Alharbi 2015). In contrast, “collaborative communication work” (Smit 2010: 404) has been found to eclipse typical asymmetries in classroom talk in Smit’s analysis in the domain of higher education. Similarly, with regard to the notion of ELF as a multilingual resource detailed analyses of specific contexts highlight huge differences in terms of the degree to which multilingualism is played out in ELF-based encounters. In some settings, there may be a happy mix of various languages surfacing in addition to, or as part of, ELF (e.g. Kalocsai 2014: 158–163; Ehrenreich 2016: 146–149), while in others the minimum three languages involved, i.e. two L1s plus English, are strictly confined to their respective communicative spaces. For example, this was the case in a somewhat hostile encounter between German and Chinese business professionals during a meeting I observed, in which the two first languages of the participants were used extensively within the L1 groups, but in a conversationally highly impolite way, i.e. without explaining their L1 use in any way to the other party. Two parameters that contributed to the observed conversational climate include power and social distance. The observed meeting involved an important, but relatively new client (the Chinese party), and was thus an example of company-external communication, which is generally said to be considerably more formal than company-internal communication. With regard to codeswitching, one of the most obvious instantiations of ELF as a multilingual resource, Alharbi (2015: 150) is able to show, on the basis of her multi-method ethnographic data, how the instances of code-switching in company-internal meetings in a Saudi MNC varied according to the number of non-Arabic speaking, English native speaker seniors present in such meetings. In Smit’s study (2010) of an EMI setting, other languages than English were by and large considered by the community members not to be a particularly positive resource. 46 Communities of practice and ELF At the linguacultural interface of ELF communication (see Baker, Chapter 2 this volume), we find a lot of empirically uncharted territory. Pragmatic hybridity in terms of interculturally mixed communicative conventions has been found to be a key characteristic of ELF communication (Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005; Ehrenreich 2009, 2010, 2015). Ethnographic insights into the practices of international business communities of practice highlight, from an emic point of view, how such linguacultural ‘leakage’ (see for this term, Jenkins 2015: 75) is dealt with. Sometimes, although often only initially, this mix of communicative conventions poses a challenge. Members of a community of practice negotiate strategies to deal with these differences, often by way of integrating them into their shared repertoires. A host of questions needs to be asked: How do such interculturally mixed repertoires develop? Which parameters are most influential in shaping them? Power issues, local cultures (i.e. the ‘habitat factor’), the dominance of same-language-speaker groups? When or why is the mix of different communicative conventions experienced as a challenge? What are the factors contributing to a successful or less successful handling of such a mix? Once a community has negotiated an interculturally hybrid repertoire of communicative conventions, is this repertoire relatively stable or rather dynamic? Which parameters govern its situational realization? And finally, are such processes mono-directional (e.g. moving towards Western cultures?) or multidirectional? Most of these issues have only rarely been explored empirically so far,6 not least because they pose considerable methodological challenges. Community-of-practice-based, qualitative approaches offer promising avenues in this respect. Finally, there is a great overlap in terms of how community-of-practice-based research describes how members of (B)ELF-resourced communities of practice develop, over time and through their mutual engagement around a joint enterprise, into confident userscum-learners of (B)ELF (Ehrenreich 2009, 2010; Kankaanranta and Planken 2010; Räisänen 2013; Kalocsai 2014). They seem to follow a shared “trajectory” (Räisänen 2013), in that they start out from an EFL (English as a foreign language) learner identity with a deeply ingrained deficiency orientation. Gradually, however, through a process of secondary socialization, they grow into competent and confident users of their respective shared repertoires. These do not only comprise (B)ELF and other languages, but many additional enterpriserelated communicative and semiotic elements. Eventually, (B)ELF is embraced as ‘theirs’ (see also Kalocsai 2014).7 In the light of these findings, the often quoted distinction between ‘language(s) for communication’ versus ‘language(s) for identification’ has become obsolete (see House 2003 with reference to Hüllen 1992). (B)ELF is much more than just a language for communication. For many speakers it clearly also serves a range of identificatory purposes in their global interactional spaces. Evidently, communicating extensively via ELF within, across and beyond their communities of practice results in a type of learning that is “most personally transformative” (Wenger 1998: 6). Yet, interestingly, in ELF settings within an institutional educational context, such emancipation from one’s ‘old’ EFL language learner identity is not reported (Smit 2010: 408). Conclusion Community-of-practice-based empirical explorations of (B)ELF are still rare. Yet, as has been shown in this chapter, individually and in their entirety, they yield invaluable insights into (B)ELF as a social language, and clearly, more work along these lines needs to be done. By comparing and contrasting the shared repertoires of different communities of practice – either within the same organizational or institutional settings, or across such settings, within 47 Susanne Ehrenreich or across different domains, and in different geographical regions – it might eventually be possible to distinguish community-specific from more generally applicable social parameters governing the use of ELF in context. At the same time, as a research tool, the concept of community of practice is not a methodological “be-all and end-all” (see Meyerhoff 2005: 597). Groups that are organized in different ways regarding their internal structure or their goal-orientation require different concepts. Therefore, additional conceptual tools are needed in the ELF research tool box to capture adequately the specific social dimensions of ELF use in a wide range of various groupings of speakers, including larger configurations of ELF speakers as well as more transient or one-off encounters between ELF-speaking individuals. Developing such tools is high on the agenda for future ELF research (see, for example, Jenkins 2015: 76–77, on the notion of Pratt’s (1991) ‘contact zones’). With regard to ELF theorizing, the discussion in this chapter underlines the fact that the community of practice as a concept is not an adequate replacement for the sociolinguistic concept of the ‘speech community’. The search for alternatives is still on. Yet, while the community of practice itself is not a suitable candidate, additional research based on the concept might substantiate the observation that in certain “constellations of practice” (Wenger 1998: 126–131) or even beyond these, speakers of (B)ELF, in fact, share very similar beliefs as to the appropriate use of language as part of their repertoires. What is more, looking at the findings available to date, there is already valuable empirical evidence indicating that these shared beliefs result in very similar speaker identifications and, indeed, a shared sense of membership. So maybe, after all, rather than looking for conceptual alternatives, it might suffice to recast the concept of speech community in global terms. Similarly to Mauranen’s notion of ‘second order language contact’ (see Mauranen, Chapter 1 this volume), ELF speakers globally could be seen as members of ‘second order global speech communities’, of which they have become members through a shared process of secondary socialization. This process takes place in their respective domains, e.g. business, academia, higher education, leisure, etc., where they are socialized into the appropriate uses of English as a multilingual and multicultural lingua franca. Finally, the potential of the concept of community of practice in its educational dimension8 is still waiting to be discovered and explored in ELF as a field of enquiry. In some settings, such a community of practice approach might prove to be the key to a more contextually refined approach to fostering the users-cum-learners’ competence of ELF in its fluid and hybrid nature, e.g. in business. In other settings, it remains to be seen to what extent communities of practice can be ‘cultivated’ (see Wenger et al. 2002) in ways that support – through mutual engagement and organized around a joint enterprise – the development of sociolinguistic competence in ELF. To conclude, ultimately, as is the intention of Wenger’s theory, the concept of community of practice in all its dimensions – in theorizing, in research and in education – invites us to think about adequate conceptions of learning, including the learning of ELF as a social language. Notes 1 As an interesting precursor of Wenger’s concept, but already with specific reference to English as a lingua franca, see Knapp’s notion of ‘participation communities’ (Knapp 1984/2015). 2 Norm here refers to communicative norms in the broadest and most comprehensive sense of the term. 3 See as an interesting example illustrating the positive attitudes towards BELF the following resource from the field of Business English teaching (Handford 2016): https://medium.com/business-english/ business-english-as-a-lingua-franca-belf-ff52ebd05a66#.atiwdo9p0 (accessed 20 May 2016). 4 Which, incidentally, is one of the main reasons why teasing out pedagogical implications of community-of-practice-informed (B)ELF research for teaching purposes poses such a great 48 Communities of practice and ELF 5 6 7 8 challenge, at least if such ‘teaching’ is not at the same time accompanied by a major philosophical reorganization of its educational framework. Interestingly, research into BELF has always included a strong qualitative element. In fact, Louhiala-Salminen’s (2002) seminal study can be classified as another conceptually ‘covert’ community-of-practice-based study. But see Ehrenreich 2011b for a discussion of the interculturally mixed uses of address terms in a German MNC and the varied parameters influencing their situational realization. See again the resource from the field of Business English teaching (Handford 2016). See also the paragraph on ‘Education’ in the section ‘Where is the concept being applied?’ on Wenger’s website at http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ (accessed 20 May 2016). Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 2 Baker, English as a lingua franca and intercultural communication. 25Kankaanranta and Louhiala-Salminen, ‘ELF in the domain of business – BELF: What does the B stand for? 47 Jenkins, The future of English as a lingua franca? Further reading Ehrenreich, S. 2009. English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: exploring business communities of practice. In: Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. eds, English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 126–151. Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. 1999. The community of practice: theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society. 28(2), pp. 173–183. Kalocsai, K. 2014. Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca: a study of Erasmus students in a Central European context. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Meyerhoff, M. and Strycharz, A. 2013. Communities of practice. In: Chambers, J.K. and Schilling, N. eds, The handbook of language variation and change. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 428–447. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. References Alharbi, N. 2015. Business English as a lingua franca in Saudi multinational corporations. PhD thesis, King’s College London. Barton, D. and Tusting, K., eds, 2005a. Beyond communities of practice: language, power and social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barton, D. and Tusting, K. 2005b. Introduction. In: Barton, D. and Tusting, K. eds, 2005. Beyond communities of practice: language, power and social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–13. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. 2012. Analysing English as a lingua franca: a corpus-driven investigation. London: Continuum. Davies, B. 2005. Community of practice: legitimacy, not choice. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 9(4), pp. 557–581. Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 1992. Think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology. 21, pp. 461–490. Ehrenreich, S. 2009. English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: exploring business communities of practice. In: Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. eds, English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 126–151. 49 Susanne Ehrenreich Ehrenreich, S. 2010. English as a business lingua franca in a German MNC: meeting the challenge. Journal of Business Communication. 47(4), pp. 408–431. Ehrenreich, S. 2011a. The dynamics of English as a business lingua franca: a language contact perspective. In: Archibald, A., Cogo, A. and Jenkins, J. eds, Latest trends in ELF research. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 11–34. Ehrenreich, S. 2011b. Forms of address in English as a lingua franca (ELF) as a window on speakers’ perceptions of sociopragmatic hybridity. The Fourth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, 27 May, Hong Kong. Ehrenreich, S. 2016. English as a lingua franca (ELF) in international business contexts: key issues and future perspectives. In Murata, K. ed., Exploring ELF in Japanese academic and business contexts. London: Routledge, pp. 135–155 Handford, L. 2016. Business English as a ‘lingua franca’ (BELF). [Online]. [Accessed 20 May 2016]. Available from: https://medium.com/business-english/business-english-as-a-lingua-franca-belfff52ebd05a66#.atiwdo9p0 Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. 1999. The community of practice: theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society. 28(2), pp. 173–183. House, J. 2003. English as a lingua franca: a threat to multilingualism? Journal of Sociolinguistics. 7(4), pp. 556–578. Hüllen, W. 1992. Identifikationssprachen und Kommunikationssprachen [Languages for identification and languages for communication]. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik [Journal of German Linguistics]. 20, pp. 298–317. Hughes, J., Jewson, N. and Unwin, L. eds, 2007. Communities of practice: critical perspectives. London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. 2015. 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English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: two case companies. English for Specific Purposes. 24(4), pp. 401–421. Meyerhoff, M. 2002. Communities of practice. In: Chambers, J.K., Schilling-Estes, N. and Trudgill, P. eds, Handbook of language variation and change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 526–548. Meyerhoff, M. 2005. Biographies, agency and power. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 9(4), pp. 597–603. Pratt, M.L. 1991. Arts of the contact zone. Profession 91, pp. 33–40. Prior, P. 2003. Are communities of practice really an alternative to discourse communities? American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Meeting, 22–25 March, Arlington, Virginia. Räisänen, T. 2013. Professional communicative repertoires and trajectories of socialization into global working life. PhD thesis, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A. and Pitzl, M.-L. 2006. English as a lingua franca in Europe. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 26, pp. 1–34. Smit, U. 2010. 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Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 50 4 Complexity and ELF Diane Larsen-Freeman Introduction Despite its being a relatively new area of inquiry, the study of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has spurred those of us in the language professions to rethink some fundamental concepts: two of which are the nature of language and the ideology of native-speaker privilege. Offering assistance in rethinking these is Complexity Theory (CT). Complexity Theory itself has only relatively recently been taken up in the physical sciences, but it has since been widely applied to the social sciences as well. It is a metatheory of and for our times. I begin by introducing CT as a metatheory; then, I discuss how the study of ELF supports and is served by viewing language as a complex adaptive system (CAS). I turn next to the inherent challenge to native-speaker privilege in this view. Before concluding, I briefly discuss design features for an ELF research agenda informed by CT. As with all theories, tenets in CT have antecedents, stretching at least as far back as the Greek philosophers. However, the particular constellation of principles that we have come to know as CT today has emerged from the radically transformed scientific thinking that began in the previous century with the advent of quantum mechanics, the adoption of a nonreductionist approach, and the embrace of systems thinking. CT is a metatheory in the way that Overton (2007: 154) defines the term: A metatheory is a coherent set of interlocking principles that both describes and prescribes what is meaningful and meaningless, acceptable and unacceptable, central and peripheral, as theory—the means of conceptual exploration—and as method—the means of observational exploration—the context in which theoretical and methodological concepts are constructed. Theories and methods refer directly to the empirical world, while metatheories refer to the theories and methods themselves. In other words, with a metatheory there is room for, indeed still the need for, more specialized theories that refer directly to the empirical world. For instance, any attempt to account for second language development would minimally need a theory of language and a theory of learning/development. With CT as the metatheory, a candidate for the former might 51 Diane Larsen-Freeman be characterized as usage-based, where language is continually transformed through use (Beckner et al., 2009), and the latter as emergentism (Ellis and Larsen-Freeman, 2006). The point is that when it comes to ELF, CT provides meta-level guidance, and more focused “object” theories are still needed. As long as the theoretical concepts and principles of the object theories are consonant with those of CT, they would sit comfortably within the scope of CT. I turn next to consider what concepts and tenets are featured in CT as a metatheory. Complexity theory Perhaps the most powerful insight from CT lies in its non-reductionist concept of emergence. In a complex system, novelty emerges out of the interaction of its parts. This position is somewhat different from the meaning of the aphorism that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Emergence stresses that something new arises from the interaction of the components of a system. Instead of assuming that every phenomenon can be explained by breaking it down into simpler components, a more holistic perspective is called for. CT defines the problem domain as investigating how patterns continually emerge from components interacting within the changing ecology in which they operate (van Lier, 2000: 246). It is centrally a theory of change, in which the parts of a complex system self-organize—there is no inherent preformationism. As patterns emerge upwards through self-organization, they are downwardly entrained due to both the historic trajectory of the system and the conditions present in the environment (Thompson and Varela, 2001). This cyclical dynamic has been referred to as “reciprocal causality.” The way the science writer, James Gleick, has worded it, “the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” (1987: 24). Notice that emergence is situated within an ecology or context. Many multicomponential systems are “merely” complicated. What makes a system complex is both the interconnectedness of its components and the fact that they are context dependent (Juarrero, 2000: 26). A complex system changes both through internal reorganization and through the system’s adaptation to a changing context. Furthermore, because of the interconnectedness of its components, change in any one part of the system impacts the others. Complex systems also operate at different levels of scale—from micro to macro and levels in between. CT is a relational theory, so researchers do not just focus on one level of a complex system, but rather look for the connections among them (Larsen-Freeman and Tedick, 2016). Complexity arises from the nonlinear nature of the interactions among the components of a dynamic system. Change does not occur at regular intervals; sometimes it is gradual, other times sudden. While knowing the parameters of a linear system makes it possible to predict its future trajectory (Byrne and Callaghan, 2014), this is not true in a nonlinear system. In such a system, a small change in one parameter can have unanticipated consequences at a later point in time. The result is not proportionate to the cause. Complex dynamic systems are open: they take in and expend energy, matter, or information, depending on the type of system, all the while they are self-organizing. When systems self-organize, they settle into preferred states, which are called attractors. The potential for future development lies in the variability around the relatively fixed stability of an attractor. A good way to think of an attractor state is to imagine an eddy in a stream (Thelen, 2005). The water droplets that comprise it are always different, constantly flowing through it. However, the whorl remains a more or less continuous emergent pattern or attractor in the flux. Its existence and rate of flow is due to the physical contours of the streambed and the temporal conditions, e.g., the fact that its waters come from the spring 52 Complexity and ELF melt of the snow that fell the preceding winter. If either of these change, the eddy would disappear or be otherwise transformed. As I have written, CT is a metatheory of and for our times. Its influence has extended beyond its point of origin. It offers a systems-based, non-reductionist way of thinking. It seeks patterns in the flux of performance, while maintaining stability through reciprocal causality. It insists on the importance of interconnectedness and of perpetual dynamism within a context. It recognizes the nonlinearity of change. It offers a metalanguage that encodes these notions and connects a variety of phenomena. Indeed, because of its defining characteristics—continuing variation, its situatedness, and its novelty, ELF is one of these phenomena. The study of ELF has contributed to our rethinking the nature of language and thus encouraging a view of language, consonant with CT, that of language as a complex adaptive system (Seidlhofer, 2011; Mauranen, 2012; Hülmbauer, 2013; Baird et al., 2014). Nature of language: ELF as a CAS One of the issues in accounting for ELF is to overcome a way of thinking about language that has been inherited from linguistics, i.e., a static, atomistic view. Linguists adopt this view in order to describe language synchronically as an idealized system. While such an approach may yield descriptive adequacy, this pursuit provides no vocabulary or concepts for the discussion of dynamic processes (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008). The problem for ELF researchers is that the predominance of this view makes it is easy to commit the fallacy of analyzing and reifying language in use (Herdina and Larsen-Freeman, forthcoming). As Baird et al. (2014: 177) warn, In facing the challenges that accompany systematic and useful engagement with the roles and proliferation of English, it should be clear that any treatment of language that neglects the dynamic and contextual nature of communication is likely to misrepresent both the data gathered and the explanations for what is observed. The problem is compounded by experience with language instructional materials, where materials authors have to corral, segment, and sequence an otherwise protean subject (Larsen-Freeman and Freeman, 2008). Presumably, when individuals seek to communicate with others, they do not think in terms of an inventory of constructions. Rather, as speakers communicate with others, they employ all the semiotic resources at their disposal, including nonverbal ones and contextual cues. Of course, communication is not an individual act. Several individuals come together in a languaging episode (Maturana and Varela, 1987), enacting a CAS, and in so doing something new emerges. Speakers “soft-assemble” (Thelen and Smith, 1994) their language resources in the moment to deal with the exigencies at hand. The patterns are softly assembled, which means that the patterns can be flexibly adapted by speakers, depending on their intentions, their interlocutors, and the context of use. By so doing, the language resources they are using are transformed. Patterns emerge “upwards” in the sense that languageusing patterns arise from individuals using the language interactively, co-adapting to one another’s resources. However, there is reciprocal causality, in that the language-using patterns themselves “downwardly” entrain emergent patterns in a given communal language (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008). Importantly, because most ELF speakers are multilingual, the historical contingency that shapes the way that they use English is affected 53 Diane Larsen-Freeman by the other languages they know. It follows then that ELF speakers who speak English as a third language will be operating from a different base than those for whom it is a first or second language (Jessner et al., 2016). Soft assembly and historical contingency offer a way of conceptualizing both global and universal changes as well as local, variable, and individual performance (Thelen and Bates, 2003). A system denotes a set of interconnected parts, which function in coordination together. In both product and process views of language, language operates as a system, not merely a collection of components. In the latter case, it is a dynamic system. It is not necessary for a dynamic system to be invariable, bounded, or without exception (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008). Indeed, as I have already indicated, a dynamic system is perpetually changing, never ending—in the case of language, emerging from the bottom-up interaction of multiple speakers in communicative exchanges, where both parties’ language resources are affected (Larsen-Freeman, 2011: 49). The mutual influence does not lead to reification. Indeed, language should not be seen as an entity but instead as a space in which an infinite number of possible trajectories may be realized. None of these trajectories comes into being until language is used in a specific context … Context, in this sense, does not mean just the physical space; it includes the intentional or inter-subjective space between users. (Larsen-Freeman and Freeman, 2008: 161) It is important to remember that complex systems are comprised of multiple levels. In the case of ELF, we can point to individual human beings, their contacts zones, and globalized networks—nested levels that are mutually influencing each other. This does not imply that the changed use at an individual level is immediately taken up at all levels, for change takes place at different rates at different levels (MacWhinney, 1999). As with other complex systems, language-using patterns are heterochronous (Lemke, 2000). A language event on some local timescale may simultaneously be part of language change on longer timescales. The point is that both novel patterns and established ones co-exist, which make complex systems at one and the same time both variable and stable. Systems function toward stability while simultaneously changing in response to internal and external phenomena (Clarke et al., 2016). CT also helps us expect that what emerges from an interaction will be distinctive—not entirely predictable from an analysis of its antecedents. Similarly, we cannot assume that because the participants we study use English as a lingua franca, this will necessarily lead to the emergence of particular forms of speech (like a preference for zero realization of the [-s] variable). In short, it is simply difficult, if not impossible, to claim with any certainty that a specific language scenario will necessarily generate specific speech forms and lead to the adoption of specific norms of interaction and interpretation. (Mortensen, 2013: 39) Thus, the language resources of individual ELF users, i.e., people who use English in contexts where it serves as a lingua franca, may overlap, but will never be identical, not only because of the users’ different language profiles and their use of English to satisfy their unique needs, but also because of their history of interactions with others. Furthermore, each language user has in principle the right to extend the language. In addition, language 54 Complexity and ELF in use is not only for the purpose of communication but is also a tool that allows speakers to manage their identities and even to resist adopting ongoing changes present in the speech of other members of the community (Labov, 1966), so we see tremendous variation (Steels and Buels, 2017). In concert with a CAS view of ELF, Baird et al. (2014) underscore the importance of viewing language from multiple dimensions in which its contextual embodiment is crucial, and its isolation and compartmentalisation is problematic. This leads Larsen-Freeman and Cameron to state that “language cannot be usefully segregated from its ecology” (2008: 79). (Baird et al., 2014: 181) Challenging native-speaker privilege Language as a CAS has also contributed to challenging the privileging of English native speaker norms. Because language as a CAS is realized in, and affected by, different contexts, there should be no one usage that is universally privileged, independent of purpose and audience. The following excerpt from the front matter of the respected American Heritage Dictionary (pointed out by a member of its usage panel, Anne Curzan, 2016) makes this clear. The Usage Panel should not be thought of as an academy empowered to rule on all questions of disputed usage. That is an expedient that the English-speaking world has rejected since the 18th century, and in a world where English is established as the language of a heterogeneous international community, the idea that any group or individual might arrogate the authority to fix standards seems not only illiberal but absurd. (American Heritage Dictionary, 2011: xii) Along with a rejection of native-speaker privilege is the recognition that what constitutes an “error” is subject to interpretation. Curzan (2016) addresses the polysemy of the term “error,” pointing out that there are three instances of what might be called “an error” in English. One is the use of double negation, which once was common in Old and Middle English, but now only exists in non-standard varieties of English. The second is a deviation from formal standard English, such as the increasingly common use of the subject pronoun they as singular (e.g., I was talking to a friend of mine, and they told me). The third is a construction that no native speaker of English would use. However, going a step further, with regard to this third category, Jenkins (2000: 160) makes the point: “There really is no justification for doggedly persisting in referring to an item as “an error” if the vast majority of the world’s L2 English speakers produce and understand it.” Interestingly, some child language researchers now describe what might have earlier been termed “an error,” not as an error or mistake, but rather as an innovation (see also LarsenFreeman, 2016). For instance, Achimova (2008) writes about the “innovations” that children learning English as their native language exhibit. Achimova’s justification is that “[w]e refer to forms like goed as innovations, not mistakes because a child does not yet know the whole system of a language and simply tries to fill in the gaps in the grammatical system creating new forms” (2008: 7). This same logic would seem to apply to other language learners/ users, and perhaps even more so to ELF users because ELF is used in a multilingual context 55 Diane Larsen-Freeman (Jenkins, 2015), and thus what appears to be an error from a monolingual English point of view may, in fact, be an innovation from a multilingual point of view. The fact of the matter is that, from a CT perspective, ELF users have the capacity to create their own forms with meanings and uses (morphogenesis) and to expand the meaning potential of English (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008). For instance, Björkman, (Chapter 21, this volume) observes that ELF users often choose the English periphrastic comparative form (e.g., more narrow, more cheap) over the inflected form (narrower, cheaper). However, there are good reasons for this choice. Besides, many native English speakers choose to do the same (Larsen-Freeman and Celce-Murcia, 2015). The history of English is the loss of grammatical inflections (Curzan, 2016). Clearly, the form of comparatives in English is changing in this regard, and perhaps ELF users are in the vanguard in this instance and elsewhere. To return to the point about innovations and errors, CT offers support for the position that there is no principled basis for distinguishing between an innovation and an error because both are contingent upon the speakers’ perception of, and acting on, the affordances in the context to create meaning, not in their applying a fixed set of rules. In fact, instead of applying rules, there is a tendency for speakers to reuse existing forms as much as possible, even if the forms already have other functions. This exaptation serves a useful purpose. If a new invention is based on the exaptation of an existing word or construction in a slightly different context, then there is a higher chance that the hearer might guess this new meaning than if a radically new invention is made. Hence the exapted invention has a higher chance to propagate and survive in the communal language. (Steels and Beuls, 2017: 32) This process of bricolage works in both directions. Since ELF interactions are multilingual, it is possible not only for inventions to surface in English, but for new forms to be adopted into the contact language. For example, speakers of German now use the expression “Das macht sinn” (That makes sense), which is not endemic to German, but is rather a back translation from English into German (Herdina, personal communication). Much of the discussion so far has centered on the use of language for meaning-making and communicating. While these are no doubt core functions of language use, challenging native-speaker privilege also extends to using one’s language resources to negotiate one’s identity and to manipulate one’s languages resources to one’s benefit as well, what Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) refer to as “symbolic competence.” Symbolic competence “is defined within a complexity theoretical framework as the ability to position oneself advantageously, to be aware of the historicity of words, to reframe and change the context of the interaction” (Kramsch and Whiteside, 2016). In other words, in keeping with CT as a metatheory, symbolic competence is dynamic, flexible, and locally contingent (Kramsch, 2009). Implications for methodology As was mentioned in the introduction, Overton’s definition of a metatheory has implications for what he calls “observational exploration.” Although the study of language development from a Complexity Theoretic perspective is still in its infancy, second language development researchers have sought to identify research methods that are more consistent with CT as a metatheory (Larsen-Freeman, 2015). At the least, it is felicitous if such methods are longitudinal, multiscalar, and localized, and ones that consider individual variability in the 56 Complexity and ELF developing language resources of second language learners (Verspoor et al., 2011; Dörnyei et al., 2015). To these characteristics, Hiver and Al-Hoorie (2016: 750 ) add, CDST [complex dynamic systems theory] is grounded in the phenomenological reality of the social world and calls for approaches that emerge from the needs of inquiry (Morin, 2008), which we believe complements the recent pivot toward a more transdisciplinary, problem-focused orientation to research methodology (King and Mackey, 2016). It would seem that research methods with these design features are also suitable for researching ELF (Baker, 2015). Another dimension of methodology that might be attended to, given CT, is to frame investigations in multilingual terms, one where what emerges from ELF interactions is a pluralistic interplay of language resources, resulting from the mutual influence of all relevant languages in the exchange. Another important consideration has to do with the importance of context. CT makes it clear that similar mechanisms may lead to different outcomes as they interact with different features of the context. Central to these contextual features are the understandings, choices, actions, and interactions of the speakers involved (Moss and Haertel, 2016). One other way that CT may help with the study of ELF is in the former’s encouragement to interrogate dichotomies (Morin, 2007). Such an attitude might help to overcome the tendency to dichotomize native and non-native uses of English. It recognizes that dichotomies can be useful when used heuristically, such as the one between mono- and multi-lingualism, but like all heuristics, they are simplifying moves (Larsen-Freeman, forthcoming). Baird (2012: 10) has written thusly about ELF: Dichotomising along the lines of “standard” vs. “non-standard,” “ENL/normative” vs. “ELF/expressive” or perhaps worse “creative” vs. “conforming” is to vastly oversimplify the linguacultural landscapes in which language is performed, the backgrounds and roles of the interlocutors, and the contextual identification processes involved in interactions. Conclusion Some have argued that theories from the physical sciences are inappropriate to apply to more human concerns; however, linguists are increasingly drawn to CT for the analogical insights it affords, a linguistic system emerges in the same way as other “emergent phenomena” (the way systems are seen in the science of complexity), through the addition and/or disuse of the strategies that the interactants develop in the here and now of their communicative acts. (Mufwene et al., 2017: 20) If one accepts the analogy, there is guidance available in CT as a metatheory and support for it from the study of ELF: the need to acknowledge the dynamicity, nonlinearity, and openendedness of ELF communication and speakers’ positionings, which lead to the emergence of innovative, and the retention of established, patterns, partly attributable to English and partly traceable to the interplay with the other languages present. The guidance and support include the need to foreground the spatial, temporal, and intersubjective contextualization of ELF speakers’ interactions, attending to speakers’ adaptive moves and the inevitable variability 57 Diane Larsen-Freeman that accompanies the adaptation. While any of these defining characteristics of ELF could be looked at singly, an advantage to adopting CT is that it offers a coherent framework from which to view the whole. A corresponding point is that in order to avoid becoming awash in holism, it is necessary to demarcate a focal system of interest. It must be recognized that in drawing boundaries, certain aspects of a multidimensional process are foregrounded, with the result that other dimensions are backgrounded. Any claims, therefore, must remain modest and provisional (Cilliers, 2001). Further reading Baird, R., Baker, W., and Kitazawa, M. (2014). The complexity of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3, pp. 171−196. De Bot, K., Lowie, W., and Verspoor, M. (2007) A dynamic systems theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, pp. 7−21. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2016). A successful union: Linking ELF with CAS. In L. Lopriore and E. Grazzi (Eds.), Intercultural Communication: New Perspectives from ELF (pp. 15−29). Rome: Roma Tres Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2016). Complexity Theory and ELF: A matter of teleology. In M.-L. Pitzl and R. Osimk-Teasdale (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer (pp. 139−146). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Mufwene S., Coupé, C., and Pellegrino, F. (Eds.). (2017). Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. References Achimova, A. (2008). Verb innovations in spontaneous speech of children. In T. Marinis, A. Papangeli and V. Stojanovik. (Eds.), Proceedings of the child language seminar 2007–30th anniversary (pp. 4−14). Reading: University of Reading. American heritage dictionary of the English language (2011). 5th ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Baird, R. (2012). English as a lingua franca: The study of language practices. Englishes in Practice: Working papers of the Centre for Global Englishes, University of Southampton 1, 3–17. Baird, R., Baker, W., and Kitazawa, M. (2014). The complexity of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3, pp. 171−196. Baker, W. (2015). Culture and identity through English as a lingua franca: Rethinking concepts and goals in intercultural communication. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Beckner, C., Blythe, R., Bybee, B., Christiansen, M.H., Croft, W., Ellis, N.C. Holland, J., Ke, J., Larsen-Freeman, D., and Schonemann, T. (2009). Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. Language Learning, Supplement 1, pp. 1–26. Byrne, D. and Callaghan, G. (2014). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Abingdon: Routledge. Cilliers, P. (2001). Boundaries, hierarchies, and networks in complex systems. International Journal of Innovation Management, 5, pp. 135–147. Clarke M., Trujillo, A., Hubbard, R., and Loven-Santos, C. (2016). Balancing mandated innovation and personal/professional development. A paper presented at COTESOL, Denver, November 4. Curzan, A. (2016). Survey says . . . : Determining what usage is and isn’t acceptable. A plenary addressed delivered at the International TESOL Convention, Baltimore, April 8. Dörnyei, Z., MacIntyre, P.D., and Henry, A. (Eds.). (2015). Motivational dynamics in language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ellis, N.C. and Larsen-Freeman, D. (Eds.). (2006). Language emergence: Implications for applied linguistics [Special issue]. Applied Linguistics, 27(4). Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin. Herdina, P. and Larsen-Freeman, D. (forthcoming). Language and complexity. Hiver, P. and Al-Hoorie, A. (2016). A dynamic ensemble for second language research: Putting complexity theory into practice. Modern Language Journal, 100(4), pp. 741–756. 58 Complexity and ELF Hülmbauer, C. (2013). From within and without. The virtual and the plurilingual in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 2(1), pp. 47–73. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2015). 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A complexity theory approach to second language development/ acquisition. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 48−72). Abingdon: Routledge. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Ten “lessons” from CDST: What is on offer. In Z. Dörnyei, P. MacIntyre, and A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 11–19). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2016). Complexity theory and ELF: A matter of teleology. In M.-L. Pitzl and R. Osimk-Teasdale (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer (pp. 139−146). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Larsen-Freeman, D. (forthcoming, 2017). Complexity theory: The lessons continue. In Z.-H. Han and L. Ortega (Eds.), Complexity theory and language development: In celebration of Diane LarsenFreeman. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Celce-Murcia, M. (2015). The grammar book: Form, meaning, and use for English language teachers. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: National Geographic Learning/Heinle/Cengage Learning. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Freeman, D. (2008). Language moves: The place of “foreign” languages in classroom teaching and learning. Review of Research in Education, 32, pp. 147–186. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Tedick, D. J. (2016). Teaching world languages: Thinking differently. In D. Gitomer and C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (5th ed.) (pp. 1335−1387). Washington DC: American Educational Research Association. Lemke, J. (2000). Across the scales of time: artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7, pp. 273–290. MacWhinney, B. (Ed.) (1999). The emergence of language. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J. (1987). The tree of knowledge. Boston, MA: New Science Library. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morin, E. (2007). Restricted complexity, general complexity. In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts, and B. Edmonds (Eds.), Worldviews, science and us: Philosophy and complexity (pp. 5–29). Singapore: World Scientific. Mortensen, J. (2013). Notes on English used as a lingua franca as an object of study. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2, pp. 25–46. Moss, P. and Haertel, E. (2016). Engaging methodological pluralism. In D. Gitomer and C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (5th ed., pp. 127−247). Washington DC: American Educational Research Association. Mufwene, S., Coupé, C., and Pellegrino, F. (Eds.). (2017). Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 59 Diane Larsen-Freeman Overton, W. F. (2007). A coherent metatheory for dynamic systems: Relational organicismcontextualism. Human Development, 50, pp. 154–159. Seidlhofer, B.. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steels, L. and Beuls, K. (2017). How to explain the origins of complexity in language: A case study for agreement systems. In S. Mufwene, C. Coupé, and F. Pellegrino (Eds.), Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives (pp. 30–47). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thelen, E. (2005). Dynamic systems theory and the complexity of change. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15, pp. 255−283. Thelen, E. and Bates, E. (2003). Connectionism and dynamic systems: Are they really different? Developmental Science, 6, pp. 378−391. Thelen, E. and Smith, L. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Thompson, E. and Varela, F.J. (2001). Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Science, 5, pp. 418−425. Van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective. In J.P. Lantolf and S.L. Thorne (Eds.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 155−177). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verspoor, M., de Bot, K., and Lowie, W. (Eds.) (2011). A dynamic approach to second language development. Methods and techniques. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 60 5 English language teaching Pedagogic reconnection with the social dimension Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz Introduction What goes on in the language classroom is fundamentally shaped by the ways in which the very idea of language is conceptualised by curriculum developers, examination requirements, materials writers, teachers and students. The views and perceptions of these key stakeholders are of course influenced by wider educational and ideological debates in society at any given time. Take the example of English as a school subject in England. In the past 50 years or so, the characterisation of subject has been construed variously in terms of ‘personal expression’, ‘canons of English literature’, ‘basic requirement for participatory citizenship’, ‘grammar and spelling’ and so on. The teaching of English as an additional/ complementary/ foreign/second language is no exception. It has in recent times been influenced by the spread of English as a lingua franca for business, educational, governmental and technological purposes in different parts of the world, which, in turn, has further consolidated English Language Teaching (ELT) as a transnational enterprise. Given the global reach of the English language, the way in which it is conceptualised in ELT has a worldwide impact. In this chapter our discussion will comprise three main parts. We will first provide a brief account of the prevailing conceptualisation of English as it is represented in theoretical and curriculum frameworks. Then we will look at some samples of internationally marketed ELT textbooks to explore how the ‘core’ concept of English has been interpreted and rendered as teaching and learning activities and materials. In the final part we will focus on the conceptual and pedagogic adequacy of the prevailing conceptualisation and suggest that it needs to be expanded in order to take account of the type of linguistic fluidity that is characteristic of lingua franca English language use. Social dimensions of language From historical accounts we know that lexis and syntax have always been an important constituent of language teaching (e.g., Howatt, with Widdowson, 2004; Stern, 1992). Indeed it would be difficult to imagine any kind of language learning without paying 61 Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz at least some attention to the formal and rule-based aspects of the language concerned. In language education a key conceptual issue is whether grammar and lexis should be regarded as the main focus of teaching. Taken to extremes, this concern for lexico-grammar can be indifferent to questions such as who are the speakers/users, for what purpose/s and under what circumstances? The fundamental epistemological assumption is that language, as manifested in the form of lexis and syntax, has an autonomous and stable (if not permanent) existence. In ELT this was the prevailing conceptualisation in the early parts of the twentieth century (e.g., see Bell, 1981, ch. 5; Quirk, 1990; Richards and Rodgers, 2001). However, we witnessed a decisive paradigmatic shift in the 1980s. In fact the earliest movements of this shift can be traced to the intellectual developments a decade or so earlier. The work of Hymes (1972, 1977) on the ethnography of communication and communicative competence within the field of anthropology paved the way for the adoption of a different perspective. Hymes (1972: 277) argues that it is important to learn ‘knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate’. Furthermore, language learning should include social rules of use for ‘when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, in what manner’. This turn towards the social dimensions of language and language use has significant implications for language teaching. The work of applied linguists such as Breen (1985), Brumfit and Johnson (1979), Candlin (1981), Halliday (1973), Morrow (1981), Savignon (1983), Widdowson (1975, 1978) and others in this period elaborated and recontextualised this conceptual shift from anthropology to language studies and language teaching. Canale and Swain made a significant contribution to this moment of conceptual shift in a series of highly influential articles (Canale, 1983, 1984; Canale and Swain, 1980a, 1980b). Their aim was to develop for language education ‘a somewhat modified set of principles which is consistent with a more comprehensive theoretical framework for the consideration of communicative competence’ (1980a: 1). Their rendering of communicative competence for language education comprises four components: grammatical competence (vocabulary and grammatical rules), sociolinguistic competence (social conventions of use), discourse competence (elements of textual cohesion and content meaning coherence), and strategic competence (making most of limited language resources by using alternative expressions). In the ensuing 30 years these principles have consolidated into what is now widely referred to as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the worldwide ELT profession. One can readily see the principles of CLT embedded in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). The CEFR is a transnational curriculum framework for language teaching and assessment initially developed for education systems within Europe but now widely adopted globally. The CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001: 9) claims that it ‘views users and learners of a language primarily as “social agents” [. . .] who have tasks [. . .] to accomplish in a given set of circumstances, in a specific environment, and within a particular field of action’ (though in practice the social dimension has tended to be as an abstraction). Thus, the espoused aims of language education and language teaching from the CEFR perspective are to endow learners with the capacity and knowhow to communicate with others in real-world contexts. The espoused pedagogic principles of CLT offer the requisite intellectual and linguistic sensibilities for this socially oriented view of language education. From South Korea to Brazil, CLT is the paradigm representing a professionally endorsed orthodoxy in language education (for further discussion see Byram and Parmenter, 2012). Nowhere is this perspective more evident than in the internationally marketed textbooks. 62 English language teaching Manifestations of social dimensions of language in ELT textbooks The adoption of CLT and the associated changes to language pedagogy have led to a complete metamorphosis of the conceptual orientation of ELT textbooks. A cursory comparison between the more popular textbooks of the early 1980s (e.g. Soars and Soars, 1984) and those currently in use (e.g. Soars and Soars, 2009) show that there have been changes at all levels from presentation, to content as well as pedagogic tasks, though less so in the language focus of those tasks. At the heart of these changes has been our evolving understanding of how the English language is used in the world and what we believe authentic language use entails. To explore these changes we now turn to look at how the English language use has been interpreted and rendered as teaching and learning activities and materials in a range of internationally marketed textbooks. The intention here is to highlight some of the features of coursebooks that claim to adopt a communicative approach and how these may have changed in recent years. Our purpose is to explore the shifts in conceptualisation and orientation influenced by the tenets of CLT. We do not claim to be providing a comprehensive overview of such textbooks or to evaluate their usefulness. Perhaps one of the most striking developments since the introduction of CLT is the way in which ‘authentic’ materials have been perceived. In the earlier textbooks such as Headway (Soars and Soars, 1984) and English File (Latham-Koenig, Oxenden and Seligson, 1996) the emphasis was placed on the texts being taken from sources written for non-pedagogic purposes such as newspapers and magazines with, where possible, the original layout of the text being retained. The sources were predominantly from the Anglophone world, reflecting issues and topics of predominant interest to a limited audience primarily those familiar with British or American culture. In addition, tasks that were designed to ‘boost students’ confidence in dealing with real English’ (Soars and Soars, 1984, back cover) would often require students to talk in pairs or groups about topics unrelated to their experience (e.g. finding a town or country house, Soars and Soars, 1984, p. 31), and would focus more on practising taught forms than on enabling learners to convey their own meaning. Learners would be given the information to use in their dialogues and role plays. Acknowledging the internationalisation of English, more recent textbooks have themselves recognised the need to deal with a wider range of material and tasks that relate to international learners all over the world. Such textbooks, like their precursors, continue to focus on developing students’ grammar and vocabulary, but at the same time aim at developing learners’ communicative capacity to deal with authentic language use in their carrier content. If we take the fourth edition of New Headway Intermediate (Soars and Soars, 2009) as our first example, a number of the reading topics include a non-Anglophone perspective, such as in the first unit, which introduces a family from Kenya and China, and Unit 6, which compares the kitchens of women from Italy, the US and India. There is also a recurring ‘Spoken English’ section that draws learners’ attention to features of real life language use such as sounding polite in Unit 1 and ways of adding emphasis to what is being said in Unit 6. A further feature evident in this textbook is the way in which many of the tasks are set up to promote communication among the students. In Unit 6 (p. 50), for example, students work in three groups with each group reading one of the three texts on one of three kitchens described and then work with members of the other groups to swap and compare information. Such information-gap tasks have been designed to promote interaction among learners and encourage a semblance of authentic communication. 63 Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz We now turn to English Unlimited Intermediate (Rea and Clementson, 2011) as a further example of how enhancing communicative ability has been put into practice in recent years. (For a detailed critical appraisal of this textbook from an ELF perspective, see Dewey, 2014). This course is part of a series covering six levels (from A1 to C1 on the CEFR scale) and is aimed at adult learners. In the introduction to the teachers’ book the course is described as: ‘practical, authentic, international and flexible’ (p. 4 of Teacher’s Pack). The textbook includes both scripted as well as unscripted (i.e. sourced from recordings of instances of real-life communication) audio and video listening material among native and non-native (expert) speakers who come from a range of places and speak with different accents. In the first activity of Unit 2, for example, the conversations are between an Argentinean and an Irish person and then a Canadian talking with a Turkish person, though the language oriented tasks all focus on native speaker English. A section on intercultural awareness is included in every second unit to further promote intercultural communication. Among the topics covered are ‘Dealing with conflict’ in Unit 9 and ‘Attitudes to family’ in Unit 11, and indeed, intercultural communication is seen as paramount by the authors who describe intercultural competence as a ‘fifth skill’ (Students’ Book, back cover). The systematic use of extended tasks and projects is a further way of preparing learners for future communicative situations outside the classroom. In English Unlimited (Rea and Clemenston, 2011) such a task is found in each unit to consolidate and extend the learning introduced in the opening sections of the unit. So, for example, in Unit 2 entitled ‘Good communication’ the target activity is to discuss the issue of banning mobile phones and MP3 players in the office, expressing opinions with greater or lesser certainty through use of modal auxiliaries. A cumulative unit project also concludes each unit of English: No Problem (Quinones and Karol, 2004) which is a US-oriented text for adult migrant learners with the view of equipping them for the future. The above examples illustrate how two dimensions of social language, that of exposure to authentic language use as well as engaging with others in the learning activities, are being built into the teaching materials currently in use. The increasing use of unscripted texts from a range of real-world sources that has been facilitated by the availability of modern technology is exposing learners to samples of diverse language use. Such texts that are being presented in speech and writing as well as in the form of illustrations incorporate information beyond the basic fabric of the language (i.e. grammar and vocabulary), thus building awareness of socially and contextually appropriate language use, but they always do so according to native speaker norms. In addition the activities themselves are designed to facilitate meaningful interaction among learners, though it must be acknowledged that much of the interaction continues to be directed by the teacher and/or textbook. One way in which textbooks drive the interaction is through the choice of topics presented. To appeal to as wide an audience as possible, currently used textbooks pride themselves on selecting universal topics (see, for example, the back blurb of Soars and Soars, 2009 and Rea and Clemenston, 2011). Yet this is one of the features of such textbooks that has come under a good deal of criticism (e.g. Akbari, 2008; Siqueira, 2015). To be universally acceptable the topics selected and consequently the texts associated with them have often been ‘anaesthetized to make them politically and socially harmless for an international audience’ (Akbari 2008: 282). Materials writers are advised by publishers to adhere to the PARSNIP acronym, that is, to avoid topics of politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms (i.e. sexism, racism, radicalism etc.) and pornography (Gray, 2001, cited in Akbari, 2008: 282). By reaching out to everyone, the textbooks will not necessarily be meeting the real needs, interests and 64 English language teaching concerns of anyone. They may be exposing learners to language as it is used in a specific situation such as by the National Geographic as is the case in Life Intermediate (Stephenson and Highes, 2013) or the BBC in Speak Out Upper Intermediate (Eales and Oakes, 2016). However, this does not guarantee that the materials are relevant for the learners. No text is culturally neutral. Thus textbooks provide learners with a perception of the English-speaking world through the lens of the textbook writers/publishers. Typically this world continues to be viewed from the vantage point of the idealised Anglophone world user. Even when speakers of other cultures are introduced the language samples fail to capture the fluidity of real-time language use: the samples of language presented or indeed elicited from the learners appear sterile and far divorced from the type of interaction that occurs in spontaneous speech. We draw on an example from a recently published textbook to illustrate this point. In Unit 5 of Speak Out Upper Intermediate (Eales and Oakes, 2016, p. 137) students are asked to work in pairs to talk about ways for getting people to stop dropping litter. They are given the following list of options: get a celebrity spokesman to promote the idea; have signs for the backs of cars: ‘Don’t even think of throwing your rubbish out’, increase fines for dropping litter, have rubbish bins that make fun sounds when something’s dropped in. They are then instructed to use the provided framework that shows what each speaker is to include while role-playing the situation, as can be seen from the extract below: A: B: A: B: How / feel / get / celebrity / endorse / campaign? not / first choice / have to say How / idea / increase / fines / strike you? It / be / done before. / think / wrong track. / It / great / if / use / signs / back of cars (Eales and Oakes, 2016: 137; extracted from task 4B of Unit 5.3) The objective of the task is to have students suggest ideas, however, not only are all the ideas given, but the frame for the dialogue is presented so there will be very little variation in the outcome of the task regardless of speaker. What students will say is therefore predictable. It becomes a task of practising forms rather than of meaning-making, one to be completed as quickly as possible rather than a task to become involved in. It does not capture the fluidity and agentive characteristic of real-life interaction, which can be readily seen in the following extract taken from a ‘live’ interaction during a Biology tutorial at a London university. The focal student (S) is a speaker of English as an additional language. The tutor is a mother tongue English speaker. The interaction is between a tutor and a student using English as an additional language at the beginning of a seminar when the tutor is returning marked work to students. 01 S: 02 T: 03: S: 04 T: 05 S: 06 T: 07 S: 08 T: 09 10 S: where is mine?1 where is yours (.) it’s a very good question I gave it in I (.) in the box over there (.) was it? Where did you give it? in the box downstairs ah, that’s why I haven’t got it why? because it should have been in the metal box here (.) you give it to me again (.) it may even be lost because if they have any (.) I have your name on your paper [inaudible] 65 Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz 11 T: 12 13 S: 14 T: 15 16 S: 17 T: 18 19 S: 20 T: 21 22 S: 23 T: 24 S: 25 T: 26 S: 27 T: 28 S: yes but it’s probably got mislaid somewhere because they are not expecting this work = = OK it should have been in the metal box there [pointing in the direction of an adjacent room] huh this time this time I’ll let you off (.) if it happens again I can’t let you off OK all tutorial work is in the box [pointing in the direction of an adjacent room again] in this floor yes, on the end here OK OK [turning away from S] right our next job ahh can I give you yes, when you just give it to me as soon as possible OK. The student in this exchange has her own agenda. Once she finds out that her assignment is not returned by her tutor she needs to ascertain two pieces of information: where and when she can resubmit her assignment. The tutor is forthcoming as to where, in fact, he reiterates the information a couple of times (ll.14–15, 20–21). But having indicated that the issue is closed (l. 25), the tutor has not provided the second piece of information as to the time of resubmission. The student, therefore, does not let the tutor move on (l. 26). This extract of spontaneous and agentive speech is very different from the textbook example cited above in that its focus is on meaning-making and continues to the point where the necessary information has been elicited (rather than merely rehearsed) (see Leung and Lewkowicz, 2013 for a related discussion; also see Leung, 2014; Leung and Street, 2014). Changing dynamics of language use What the above discussion reveals is that although current textbooks aim to enhance learners’ social language by including authentic materials and encouraging students to use language to express views and opinions, these two dimensions of social language are not sufficient to truly prepare students for dealing with the complexities of real-life language as it has been documented. One possible explanation relates to the carrier content of such textbooks, which is often anodyne to the point that the authenticity is there to meet a marketing requirement rather than enhance learners’ propensity to use language in a meaningful (for them) way. The material is authentic in the eyes of the material writers/publishers but may not be for the learners who may be observing others’ use of language rather than becoming involved in the meaningful production of language. This resonates with the distinction between genuine and authentic language that Widdowson (1978) made nearly 40 years ago, claiming that no materials are authentic in their own right – they need to be authenticated by those using them. This suggests that a key issue in materials design is that of interest and relevance to the target audience and no materials can be considered authentic just by virtue of the fact that they came from non-textbook sources. So in this context if we take authentic language to mean any piece of language that has been actually used in society, then it may mean very 66 English language teaching little to the student. We can call this faux authenticity. The fundamental tenets of CLT, as it was formulated by Canale and Swain and others, were to endow students with a capacity to engage with others in ways that are socially tuned. However, the need to package teaching materials that are drawn from a narrow range of texts that have been used, perhaps, inadvertently reified the social in anodyne ways. It would be fine to present faux authentic materials if we were simply interested in using them as stimulus for grammar or vocabulary exercises. But if we are to promote genuine student engagement, then we would need to provide students with the opportunity to make or add personal meaning as part of the learning activity. The injection of students’ personal meaning may include activities and tasks that challenge or reject the ideas and arguments in the carrier content. Giving students a voice in the learning activities is what would make language learning activities more authentic. This is related to the idea of personal intellectual growth as a language learning goal. Dixon (1967: 6–7), in a seminal paper given at the oft-quoted Dartmouth College conference on language education had this to say: The fact is that in sharing experience with others man is using language to make that experience real to himself [. . .] in so doing each individual takes what he can from the shared store of experience and builds it into a world of his own. The idea of personal growth is intrinsically social. It is also consistent with Dewey’s (1902) idea that acquiring knowledge should not be about absorbing something new that is entirely imposed from outside the student’s experience. The task of the teacher is to align students’ learning experience with the content of learning in a developmental journey. (For a detailed discussion, see Leung and Scarino, 2016.) The discussion above indicates quite clearly that in English-speaking environments the ways in which language is used are broadly patterned in terms of types and contexts of social interaction but not fixed in terms of moment-to-moment agentive engagement (see Nicholas and Starks, 2014, ch. 2 and 3), particularly in situations where ethnolinguistic diversity forms the socio-cultural backdrop. In other words, people are not social dudes and they can choose to act on their volition. There is fluidity in the ways in which people interpret social conventions. Similar fluidity can also be found in contexts where English as a lingua franca (ELF) is used. As it has been well attested, in ELF-mediated interactions there is ‘inherent fluidity . . . in the ad hoc, situated negotiation of meaning’ (Seidlhofer, 2009: 242). We would amplify the relevance of this observation to our discussion by suggesting that in ELF contexts there is potentially a liminal element that does not obtain even in interactions involving interlocutors from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds in English-speaking environments such as universities in London (see the extract of a Biology tutorial above). In interactions conducted in a lingua franca, there may well be a shared understanding among the participants that both the conventionalised linguistic forms and functions can be stretched and transformed to suit the communicative needs of the moment. In these interactions putative native speaker ways of doing things with language are not necessarily the only, or the most important, reference point. We are by now familiar with ELF phenomena such as treating non-count nouns as count nouns (e.g. information – informations and research – researches) (e.g. Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey, 2011) and the diverse ways in which interlocutors engage one another in establishing shared meaning and rapport (Batziakas, 2016), including the oft-quoted ‘let-it-pass’ principle that facilitates interactional flow when there is a momentary difficulty in establishing mutual understanding (e.g. Firth, 1996; also see Canagarajah, 2007 in relation to language learning). This ‘freedom to’ puts available shared 67 Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz linguistic resources at the service of effective and felicitous communication in ways that the interlocutors see fit adds to the fluidity discussed above. In a recent effort to expand the conceptual frame of ELF, Jenkins (2015) points to the importance of explicitly recognising the inescapably multilingual dimension in ELF. While it would be fair to say that speakers’ other languages have been recognised as part of the discussion on code-switching in the ELF literature, it is the case that the use of their other languages has been subsumed as part of the ELF repertoire. Jenkins (2015: 61) argues that ‘for ELF users, English is only one language among others present or latent in any interaction. Its multilingual nature therefore needs to be given greater theoretical prominence than hitherto’. From the point of view of our discussion here, this expanded view of ELF as a potentially multilingual language practice is very significant. Since the onset of the Direct Method in the early part of the twentieth century (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Howatt, with Widdowson, 2004, chapter 16), the teaching of English has been largely presented in the popular textbooks and teacher education literature as a monolingual English-only enterprise. The adoption of this approach by large-scale language teaching providers such as Berlitz has served to consolidate its grip on the ELT profession. (For a detailed discussion see Cook, 2010.) Littlewood (2014: 358) calls this the monolingual principle: A practical issue that almost continuously engages teachers’ decision-making in the classroom is the role (if any) that they should accord to the students’ mother tongue. The ‘monolingual principle’ – that only the target language should be used – has been enshrined in most of the methodological proposals that have influenced language teaching over the last century. In many contexts (e.g. Hong Kong and the UK) it is official policy to teach only in the target language or at least to use the mother tongue only as a last resort. In some other contexts (e.g. Mainland China and South Korea), teaching through the mother tongue has been accepted in practice, but official policy now urges teachers to exclude it. Littlewood’s observation that the use of students’ mother tongue in language teaching/learning is supported by recent research accounts that document this practice. For instance, in a study of the classroom practices of four English teachers in a Japanese engineering college, Humphries and Burns (2015: 243) report that these teachers avoid the use of English in some classroom activities that are meant to promote communicative use: The textbooks included activities designed to encourage exploration and discussion of various cultural contexts where English might be used … The teachers often explained these topics at length in Japanese, because ‘it’s quite difficult for them to understand’ [according to one of the teachers]. Moreover, they stated that they often struggled to translate unfamiliar concepts and offer information about overseas locations and international travel. [Another teacher] asserted that the contexts were irrelevant to the students’ everyday lives. He was at a loss to explain this cultural content and omitted many activities. [emphasis added] With the advent of the increasingly popular Content-Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes in Europe for second/foreign language teaching, the issues of using students’ mother tongue and the target language have received renewed attention. In CLIL programmes the subject teacher (say a German-speaking Mathematics teacher), who is not necessarily 68 English language teaching trained in second/foreign language teaching, is required to teach the subject content through the medium of a target language (in Europe English is the often the chosen language). In an exploration of CLIL teachers’ views on the use of languages, Skinnari and Bovellan (2016) find that while they expressed different opinions on the pedagogic efficacy of the use of students’ L1 and the target language generally, using English was sometimes seen as problematic and artificial, especially if they had to teach local or national history and civics, which are very contextually situated. One of the Finnish teachers in their study expresses the following opinion regarding the use English to discuss ‘local’ Finnish social issues: [E]specially in civics, there is so many new kind of things every year, like a: what means ‘uusioperhe’ [reconstituted family in English] or that kind of things and the new kind of words are usually, there is very often the other words which are not (.) even (.) there is no English words for them because they are, like Finnish social security questions. (Skinnari and Bovellan, 2016: 159) Another participant teacher, working in Austria, reported teaching some parts of history and geography through the shared L1 (German) because it was felt that it would be more ‘natural’ to discuss some cultural and historical issues in the students’ mother tongue: I think we are an Austrian school and we have to know Austrian history in German, too […] when I talk about feelings, for example when I talk about concentration camps during the Second World War, I don’t do it in English […] German is kind of the feeling language. (Skinnari and Bovellan, 2016: 159) All in all, despite the persistent curricular and professional insistence on using the target language exclusively in language teaching, there is strong indication that many teachers are resorting to using the mother tongue extensively. Littlewood (2014: 358) suggests that in China and South Korea, for instance, students’ mother tongue is used ‘as much as 70 per cent or even 90 per cent of the time’. Concluding remarks If we return to the questions posed by Hymes (1972: 277) – ‘when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, in what manner’, we will find that we are dealing with an increasingly complex and dynamic range of circumstances in which English is used in the world today. There is therefore a very strong case for re-examining the conceptual and pedagogic appropriateness and adequacy of the established CLT paradigm, as it is currently being advocated by a number of ELF scholars (see, for example, Dewey 2012, 2014). Nowhere is this more pertinent than in the ways that the social dimension has been interpreted and translated into pedagogic approaches and teaching materials. Recognising diversity and fluidity, however, can raise further conceptual and practical issues for ELT. In face of what seems to be an inexorable movement towards greater diversity and fluidity as the use of English continues to spread into different educational, professional and social domains across the world, how do we deal with the multiple and always emergent and malleable language norms and practices? And how do teaching approaches and materials cope with this flux? 69 Constant Leung and Jo Lewkowicz Given the diversity of English language use and language users it would seem necessary to look more carefully at local needs of individual learner groups, i.e. to move away from the international, universally (un)acceptable, bland textbook to more local solutions (Gilmore, 2007). This would invariably require more professional training for teachers to gain confidence in selecting and/or adjusting materials appropriately for their learners’ needs as routine practice (see Dewey and Patsko, Chapter 35 this volume; see also e.g. Bayyut and Akcan, 2014, section 2; Vettorel, 2014). For this kind of professional practice to be adopted there would need to be a persistent effort on the part of curriculum managers (in both publicly funded and commercially operated institutions), materials writers and publishing houses to actively promote the idea of ‘localisation’ to extend classroom pedagogy and materials production. The ‘universal’ textbook can be regarded as one of the starting places for the planning of teaching content, and the local extensions should be seen as a vital part of a responsive curriculum and pedagogy. From the point of view of teacher professionalism, there would need to be a concerted effort to encourage teachers to examine the relevance and pedagogic merit of any recommended teaching guidelines and materials, and to engage in reflexive examination of their own classroom practice and educational values in relation to students’ language learning needs. Reflexivity here means the preparedness and readiness to turn one’s own thinking (and conduct) on itself, thus making it available as an object of critical self-examination (see Mann, 2016, ch. 1). This capacity for reflexive examination of one’s own thoughts and actions is an important part of independent professionalism (Leung, 2009, 2013), and it can facilitate the development of local curriculum and pedagogic extensions. Such an approach that would in itself acknowledge ELF as a legitimate language practice, not a deviation from the norm, would have a number of additional advantages. It would allow teachers to encourage their students to use all the linguistic resources available to them – be that their knowledge of the L2 as well as their L1. Teachers themselves could determine what is relevant for their learners in terms of models of language and language use, in addition to (or even instead of) the ones imposed by others including textbooks and official curriculum statements. This would help to ensure that learners are better able to engage in the language learning classroom to build confidence in expressing themselves and their ideas rather than the ideas of a third party, unknown to them. Note 1 Transcription key: S – student T – tutor (.) pause of up to one second = latching ? rise in intonation (word) unclear words [ ] noises and comments related to the utterance Related chapters in this handbook 35 Dewey and Patsko, ELF and teacher education 42 Baird and Baird, English as a lingua franca: changing ‘attitudes’ 70 English language teaching Further reading Burns, A. (ed.) (2005). Teaching English from a global perspective. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Kramsch, C. (2011). Language and culture. In J. Simpson (ed.), The Routledge handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 305–317). Abingdon: Routledge. Omoniyi, T. (2014). 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Hall Introduction Although there is a formidable body of psycholinguistic work on the processing, representation, and development of English in learners and multilingual users, researchers have not been centrally concerned with the cognitive resources and processes underlying ELF. Several publications have addressed the cognitive dimensions of the phenomenon to a greater or lesser extent, but so far there has been almost no empirical research, and no assessment that distinguishes ELF from other non-native English speaker (NNES) contexts of usage. As well as reviewing relevant published studies, therefore, this chapter attempts to provide some foundations for a fuller cognitive account. It tries to isolate what I take to be the distinctive nature of the phenomenon, namely the processing of English in interactions between heterolinguals (people with different L1s). It also explores how models of mental representation, processing, and development can contribute to the broader goal of ELF research to problematize traditional monolithic views of English. A cognitive account must start by acknowledging the enormous variation in the depth and breadth of L2 mental resources brought to ELF interaction, the extent to which users can control these resources automatically or deliberately, and the degree to which they converge with or diverge from those used by native English speakers (NESs). In the early days of ELF research, when the object of enquiry was understood by many to be an emerging global variety of English arising from sustained interaction between heterolingual NNESs, questions about how such a variety might be mentally represented and processed by fluent users would have been legitimate (although they were not posed). But it is now clear that ELF is more coherently conceptualized as a communicative mode or situation, rather than a linguistic system that may be learned to different levels of individual proficiency (cf. e.g. Mortensen, 2013). Different kinds of NNESs will be more or less successful communicators in the ELF mode and, independently of this, their mental resources will align to different degrees with the norms of NES standardized varieties. NESs also participate in ELF interactions, and they too will bring variable resources to the communicative event, deploying these resources variably, with variable success. To further complicate matters, many ELF scholars and commentators (including almost all of those referred to in this chapter) continue to present ELF 74 Cognitive perspectives on ELF as a linguistic system, a kind of English, using terms like ELF user/speaker and contrasting it with English as a native language (ENL). This problem remains a serious obstacle for a cognitive account of ELF. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first discusses cognitive ontologies of English in the light of ELF research, exploring usage-based approaches and the role of usage norms. The second addresses how ELF-informed cognitive research can shed light on the assumed dichotomy, more broadly viewed, between native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs). The third deals with the nature of the mental resources used in ELF processing. The chapter ends with some general conclusions and suggestions for further research. ELF and cognitive ontologies of English By highlighting settings in which common norms cannot be guaranteed and are not under development at a community level, ELF studies have provoked a significant shift in scholarly thinking about NNS Englishes. Hitherto, the issue had been dominated by: (a) second language acquisition (SLA) research, assuming “inner-circle” national standard varieties as learning targets; and (b) World Englishes studies, focused on emerging “outer-circle” national varieties. In “expanding-circle” contexts, where ELF prospers, English is more of an individual, cognitive phenomenon, playing little role in interaction between colingual community members (Schell, 2008). In such contexts, users develop similar idiolects not because of the population-level diachronic processes that lead to indigenized varieties, but as a result of individual cognitive processes of crosslinguistic influence from a common L1. Mauranen (2012; Chapter 1 this volume) calls these Englishes “similects” and characterizes the ELF mode as one of “second-order language contact,” in which users of different similects interact (Mauranen, 2012: 29). ELF therefore exemplifies a cognitively marked phenomenon because it involves language processing in circumstances where the assumption of shared (or target) community norms cannot be taken for granted. In traditional cognitive ontologies of language, this assumption is the default (cf. e.g. Jackendoff, 2011: 587). The family of theoretical approaches collectively called usage-based linguistics (UBL) has been recognized by several researchers as a particularly appropriate framework for addressing the cognitive dimensions of ELF (e.g. Mauranen, 2012; Alptekin, 2013; Mackenzie, 2014; Vetchinnikova, 2015), although ELF has not been discussed in the mainstream UBL literature. In UBL, language is conceptualized as a cognitive resource constructed and continuously developing on the basis of analyses of the frequency and distribution of form-meaning pairings in the input experienced during usage events (Goldberg, 1995; Langacker, 2000; Tomasello, 2003; Ellis, 2008). Systematic patterns of language are not determined “top-down,” as rules conforming to hard-wired universal principles, but rather emerge “bottom-up,” on the basis of variable, socially contextualized, individual experience. Consistent with UBL, Complexity Theory provides a way of conceptualizing the constantly shifting and socially contingent nature of individual language knowledge deployed in ELF (cf. Larsen-Freeman, 2015; Chapter 4 this volume). In the ontological framework developed by Hall (2013), these individual resources are conceived as part of polylingually constituted “I-registers”: mentally represented idiolectal knowledge deployed in, and changed by, ELF and other usage modes. For an example of a usage-based characterization of part of an I-register used regularly in ELF mode, see Hall, Joyce, and Robson (2017). 75 Christopher J. Hall But most UBL accounts of English do not provide an exact fit for ELF. Usage-based linguists generally assume a supra-mental ontological category of language that holds at the community level, and in fact most work within the approach is concerned with group knowledge of national varieties (cf. Hilpert, 2014: 191–194). From the usage-based perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, for example, Langacker (2008) specifies that “a language is characterized as the set of internalized structures (conventional units) that enable its users to speak and understand” (p. 19), distinguishing between “what a single speaker knows and the collective knowledge of a whole society” (p. 30). Furthermore, “[a]n individual’s notion of what an expression means [. . .] includes an assessment of its degree of conventionality in the speech community” (p. 30). In UBL, the individual (cognitive) view and the community (social) view of language are distinguished by the concepts of entrenchment and conventionality. Entrenchment is the process by which repeatedly encountered tokens of language input cause the associated neural event type to be stored and accessed as a unit in memory as “an established routine that can be carried out more or less automatically once it is initiated” (Langacker, 1987: 100). Contrasting with the individualized nature of entrenchment, “[c]onventionality implies that something is shared—and further, that it is recognized as being shared—by a substantial number of individuals” (p. 72). Croft (2000: 7) interprets this in terms of Clark’s (1985) notion of common ground, which he takes as a mental construct. For some UBL scholars, the intersubjective role of conventionality in linguistic interaction can only be fully understood by looking beyond individual minds to joint cognition (cf. Harder, 2010; Verhagen, 2015: 239). On a UBL account, then, ELF interaction may be interpreted as an exercise in joint cognition to which individual heterolingual participants bring repertoires of mentally represented linguistic resources that they have constructed on the basis of prior experience (including L1 influence). Differing from the standard UBL view of interaction, however, the common ground assumed by ELF participants will include shared communicative principles but not predetermined linguistic norms. Yet patently ELF interactants assume that their linguistic resources will be sufficiently aligned for effective linguistic communication to result—in other words, they will assume they are all speaking a version of English. For some ELF scholars, what holds these Englishes together as a unified resource is not group conventions but the virtual language: “that resource for making meaning immanent in the language which simply has not hitherto been encoded” (Widdowson, 1997: 138; cf. also Seidlhofer 2011: 109–120; Hülmbauer, 2013). Seidlhofer and Widdowson define “the language” (“virtual English”) in terms of a set of abstract constitutive rules, which may be realized (encoded) variably, giving rise to systems that have regulative conventions, e.g. “Standard English” (SE), but also others that do not conform to such conventions, such as the Englishes involved in ELF interaction. The precise ontological status of “virtual language” has not been spelled out in published treatments, and has been interpreted as an idealized monolithic system existing independently of users (Hall, Wickasono et al., 2017) and as completely incompatible with UBL (Vetchinnikova, 2015). Yet there are indications that Widdowson and Seidlhofer conceptualize it as mentally constituted and indeed consistent with UBL: Widdowson contends that “[“ELF users”] are performing on the basis of their knowledge/awareness of virtual rules which, as learners, they have somehow abstracted out of the actual language data they have been taught” (2010, personal communication; cf. also Seidlhofer, 2011: 120). In this view, English is understood not as the “conventional units” shared by its users, but rather the abstract rules they construct developmentally and employ to 76 Cognitive perspectives on ELF formulate utterances. NES production is normally constrained in usage by the particular regulative conventions of the communities to which they belong, but NNESs in ELF mode exercise greater freedom. In order to be able to assess this issue more fully, we first address the fundamental question of whether—and if so to what extent—the acquisition, storage, and processing of English are intrinsically different for NESs and NNESs, in and out of ELF mode. ELF and cognitive aspects of the NS/NNS dichotomy Neuropsychological accounts of the NS/NNS dichotomy formulated by Ullman (cf. 2015) and Paradis (cf. 2009) have been applied to ELF directly by Alptekin (2011, 2013) and indirectly by Hall (2014; Hall and Wicaksono, 2013). In separate but essentially similar models, Ullman and Paradis contend that L2 users rely more on declarative memory systems than procedural memory systems for learning and using grammar. Declarative memory is used to develop, process, and store idiosyncratic information that cannot be predicted on the basis of patterns in sensory input (e.g. the arbitrariness of word forms). Much of this knowledge is explicit, in the sense that it is available to conscious awareness and may be intentionally (deliberately) learned. Procedural knowledge is used for skills involving the sequencing and categorization of information. It is acquired implicitly (i.e. without awareness or intention), and gradually becomes automatized through extended practice (“entrenched” in UBL). Procedural memory systems control L1 grammar, including syntactic, morphological, and phonological regularities. The two types of memory are claimed to be physically instantiated in distinct neuroanatomical structures (although see Cabeza and Moscovitch, 2013). According to Ullman, declarative memory systems are recruited for semantic and lexical learning in both L1 and L2. For grammar, however, there are differences related to age of acquisition and exposure: pre-adolescent learners of L1 and L2 rely on procedural memory, but adult L2 learners depend on declarative memory, at least at early stages and in the absence of rich and prolonged experience with the language. Ullman suggests that in addition to maturational constraints, this has to do with the learning contexts typical of adult L2: instructed learning being less likely than uninstructed “immersion-like” learning to lead to “native-like” grammatical knowledge and processing, because the relative lack of opportunities for practice results in dependence on declarative knowledge (cf. DeKeyser, 2007). Alptekin (2011) used this research to argue that the English knowledge of a “‘typical’ ELF user” is fundamentally different from that of ENL users, because it “stem[s] from different cognitive resources and [is] the outcome of different cognitive processes” (p. 159). For him, most “ELF users” will have learned English using declarative memory systems as adolescents or adults, in instructional contexts, and so in post-instruction usage will rely on controlled lexical and semantic processing. He argued that there are two reasons why the forms used in ELF will differ from those used in ENL: first, “ELF users” cannot access their learned grammatical knowledge efficiently enough in online processing because it is not proceduralized, leading to the omission of forms that are obligatory in standardized versions of ENL; second, proceduralized knowledge from their L1 might transfer to L2 production, leading to the commission of forms that do not occur in ENL grammars. Alptekin (2011: 160) claimed that the evidence that NNES ELF interactants understand each other better than NESs do is consistent with this account, because the former have “identical cognitive resources and processes underlying output production.” 77 Christopher J. Hall Unlike Alptekin, Hall and colleagues (Hall and Wicaksono, 2013; Hall, 2014) use the declarative/procedural distinction to emphasize the cognitive commonalities of NNS and NS knowledge types and processing modes. They contend that both NNESs and NESs can and do develop proceduralized knowledge of English, and that the Englishes developed in procedural memory will inevitably differ from the community norms of SE in both cases. In infancy, NSs develop implicit grammatical knowledge on the basis of the speech events they are exposed to and participate in, resulting in idiolects that conform to local community (often dialectal) norms. As a consequence of schooling and the development of literacy practices, they subsequently develop knowledge of SE through second dialect acquisition (Siegel, 2010). This knowledge will be variable across individuals (Dąbrowska, 2012) and for most NESs will initially be declarative, deployed using controlled processing. Depending on social experience, procedural control of SE norms will develop to different degrees. For NNESs, the sequence is reversed but the outcome is similar: learners are typically exposed to SE as the learning target, and they develop explicit knowledge of it initially in declarative memory systems. But their usage and experience of English both within and beyond instructional contexts will inevitably lead to parallel development of implicit knowledge in procedural memory systems (Ellis and Wulff, 2015: 86–87). The knowledge thus acquired will be influenced by the L1 system as well as the NNS Englishes to which the learner is exposed. For learners who go on to use English regularly in ELF contexts, procedural knowledge of English will become entrenched, and will become increasingly likely to diverge from SE norms. Alptekin (2011) claimed that ELF and ENL (usage) are fundamentally different because, unlike NESs, NNES participants in ELF cannot recruit procedural memory systems for the acquisition and processing of grammar. Yet neither Ullman nor Paradis discount the possibility that NNSs can develop proceduralized grammatical knowledge. In fact, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that NNSs with high levels of proficiency process L2 grammatical structures essentially the same way as NSs (e.g. Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Kaan, 2014), using the same areas of the brain (e.g. Green, 2003; Abutalebi and Della Rosa, 2012). Hall (2014) contends that much of the evidence about “native-like” knowledge and processing in NNSs is actually moot, based as it is on the construct of proficiency, which is defined in SLA primarily, but uncritically, in terms of “accuracy.” The employment of accuracy-based measures of language use, such as error rates and grammaticality judgements, conflates “nativeness” (proceduralized grammatical processing) with conformity to exogenous norms like SE. Assuming a cognitive ontology of English consistent with UBL, the inclusion of “accuracy” as a criterion to measure knowledge of English is a category error. Language resources and language processing in ELF Much of the published discussion of ELF processing concerns issues that are common to all L2 usage, whether with heterolinguals, colinguals, or monolinguals. It has tended to adopt the mainstream ontology of English as a set of “conventional units” that are not completely known by NNESs in the interaction. Mauranen’s (2012) account, for example, characterizes ELF interaction between NNSs in terms of lack of entrenchment and limited automatization. Like Alptekin (2011), she contends that the less entrenched linguistic forms of “ELF users” will have “insufficient or partial” memory representations, compounded by “insufficient access routes to the target item.” This leads to “approximation,” the production of an item that “deviates from or falls short of the target [. . .]” (p. 42), understood as the conventional 78 Cognitive perspectives on ELF NES norm in SE. But the discussion in the two preceding sections suggests that the distinctive feature of ELF from a cognitive perspective is that NNESs who operate regularly in ELF mode will not assume predetermined shared norms. In much ELF performance, the NES target (if known and/or consciously valued), will not be relevant. ELF interactants will employ proceduralized linguistic resources that conform only partially with the conventions of NESs (and of the similects used by their interlocutors). They engage successfully in joint cognition because of shared communication strategies, a collaborative disposition, and the deployment of linguistic resources shaped by similar Englishing experiences (possibly in the form of overlapping sets of abstract rules distilled from these experiences). An issue that pertains specifically to ELF, then, is whether the absence of an assumption of shared norms leads NNESs in ELF mode to be more creative with their resources in production than they would be when interacting with NESs, where the pressure to align with “target” norms is higher. Data from corpus studies have been used to show that the ELF mode involves elevated levels of NNES creativity/innovation (e.g. Pitzl, 2012), though this has not been explicitly compared with non-ELF usage. The common occurrence of nonconventional, innovative forms, both morphological and syntactic, has been interpreted by Seidlhofer (2009) as evidence that processing in ELF operates according to Sinclair’s (1991) “open choice principle” (OCP), whereby utterances are assembled from atomic units by rule. Sinclair contrasts the OCP with the “idiom principle” (IP), according to which utterances are assembled from “semi-preconstructed phrases” (p. 110), i.e. multi-word expressions (MWEs) or formulaic language. This is consistent with Wray’s (2002) argument that adult L2 learners differ from NSs because they “will fall into the process of analysis” (p. 259), whereas the latter “start with big units and analyze them only as necessary” (p. 211). Wray and Grace (2007) relate the use of formulaic language (consistent with the IP) with esoteric (intra-group) communication, and suggest that more transparent language use (consistent with the OCP) evolves in situations of exoteric (inter-group) communication, including lingua franca usage (pp. 551–555). Conflicting with this position, a recent review of empirical studies of the online processing of MWEs in both L1 and L2 (Siyanova-Chanturia and Martinez, 2015) concludes that both NSs and proficient NNSs are sensitive to the frequency of MWEs and that this has an effect on the way they are processed and stored. The evidence reviewed suggests that NSs process frequent MWEs more quickly than novel control strings, and are able to use their previous knowledge of them to better predict subsequent input. For NNSs, the evidence is restricted to comprehension, mostly of idioms with different degrees of compositionality, and almost uniquely with “proficient” users. But Siyanova-Chanturia et al. (2011) showed that lower proficiency NNSs had essentially the same reading speeds for frequent binomials (e.g. bride and groom) and their reversed novel versions (groom and bride), whereas NSs and higher proficiency NNSs were faster with the former than the latter. They take this as evidence for the UBL position on mental representation: that language knowledge, for both L1 and proficient L2 users, is stored in units that include but also regularly extend beyond the single lexical item, and furthermore, that the degree of entrenchment of these chunks, and consequently their availability for automatized use, is a function of their frequency in the input. Given that proficiency is in part a function of experience with the language, and experience determines subjective frequency counts, the conclusion that the IP operates in L2 processing seems more consistent with the psycholinguistic evidence (e.g. Kaan, 2014) than one in which lexical items can only be combined by grammatical rule (i.e. the OCP). 79 Christopher J. Hall Studies of idiom use in ELF corpora (e.g. Pitzl, 2012; Franceschi, 2013) have yielded numerous examples of “approximation” to NES norms, and this has been taken as evidence by Seidlhofer (2009, 2011) and others for dependence on the OCP in ELF mode. Other ELF researchers, however, adopting a more explicitly cognitive perspective and taking into consideration also non-idiom MWEs, have questioned this argument (Mauranen, 2009, 2012; Carey, 2013; Vetchinnikova, 2015). They suggest that such examples do indeed reflect the IP in action, but that the MWEs are less entrenched in NNESs, and for this reason only approximate the target (NES) form. For example, Carey (2013) found that in academic ELF (both written and spoken), high frequency MWEs were used mostly conventionally, and indeed more frequently than in ENL, whereas those with lower frequency were more prone to approximation. Following Mauranen (2009), he concluded from this that “ELF users” store and retrieve the “functionally fixed” semantic chunks that underlie unstable lexicogrammatical forms. Mauranen (2012: 42–44) argues that in ELF interactions, approximated forms will typically be processible for meaning by interlocutors on the basis of shallow or “fuzzy” processing driven by context and lexical knowledge rather than exhaustive parsing (cf. Clahsen and Felser, 2006), resulting in communicative success. Vetchinnikova (2015) makes a similar argument on the basis of an examination of the language that participants in academic ELF experienced in the genre, as well as their own production. Her data suggest that these individuals build individual repertoires that include MWEs recycled from the input to which they have been exposed, but often in “approximate” form at the level of “unit of meaning.” This evidence suggests that, consistent with the IP, NNESs who have considerable experience using English have access to stored MWEs or conceptual/semantic chunks when processing in ELF. Yet by demonstrating that the IP is operative at semantic or lexicogrammatical levels in ELF usage, one cannot conclude that the OCP is entirely inoperative. The process of approximation, for example, would seem to require constructional knowledge at some level of lexico-grammatical abstraction from the unanalyzed “target” form, whether a semantically related item is substituted for a conventional one, or two conventional phrases are blended (Taylor, 2012). In other words, the processes can only occur if the user has analyzed the internal structure of a MWE to some extent. UBL approaches provide a psycholinguistically plausible model of language knowledge that can account for the joint operation of the IP and OCP in processing. In construction grammar (Goldberg, 1995; Hilpert, 2014: ch. 6), for example, individual knowledge of language takes the form of an inventory of constructions (form-meaning mappings), which range along a continuum from single items like words (e.g. view), through semi-fixed expressions with variables (e.g. in my N, where N can be replaced with view, opinion, perspective, etc.), to completely abstract constructions (e.g. prepositional phrase). At the abstract end of the continuum, constructions resemble rules, in the sense of regularities that users extract from lexical material (cf. Culicover and Jackendoff, 2005: 39–40). Here, perhaps, we have a cognitive interpretation of the notion of English as “virtual language”: a mental repertoire of possibilities for novel English constructions determined “bottom-up” by individual experience. On this interpretation, there will be as many “virtual Englishes” as there are users of English, the degree of variation between them constrained by (degrees of) mutual intelligibility, influence from other language knowledge (similects), and (conscious or unconscious) sensitivity to conventional norms. Given that processing in ELF mode is characterized by the absence of the assumption of predetermined community conventions, we cannot discount the possibility that some of the 80 Cognitive perspectives on ELF novel, creative, or unconventional forms found in transcripts of ELF interaction have been produced via processing according to the OCP, i.e. using the resources of the user’s “virtual English.” Conclusions and future research This overview has concentrated on issues that have arisen in cognitively oriented commentary on ELF, and has attempted to develop some foundations for a coherent cognitive account of the phenomenon. Two major controversies we have addressed are the extent to which ELF interaction relies on fundamentally different cognitive resources and processes compared with NES–NES interaction and the extent to which processing in ELF interaction relies on the IP as opposed to the OCP. With reference to the former, the evidence appears to suggest that the similarities are greater than the differences, and that the main difference stems from the absence of an assumption of predetermined norms. With reference to the latter, it would appear that, as in NES–NES interaction, both principles are in operation, although to different extents, depending on the degree of entrenchment and reliance on procedural memory that individual experience results in. Several issues remain unaddressed. One is the presence of NESs in ELF interaction. There is a substantial body of research on the processing of NNS speech by NSs, much of it perpetuating the traditional monolithic view that NNS speech is inherently “defective” and therefore difficult to process (e.g. Millar, 2011). But there is no research, as far as I know, on processing by NESs who operate consistently, or very frequently, in ELF mode (and little on intelligibility between NNES heterolinguals: cf. Pickering, 2006). Another issue that requires more attention is the role of cross-linguistic influence and language competition in processing in ELF mode. There is abundant evidence that bilinguals are able to operate in both monolingual and bilingual modes (Grosjean, 2013), and there is much discussion in recent ELF literature about the inherently bilingual nature of the phenomenon (Hülmbauer, 2013; Jenkins, 2015); but there has not yet been any discussion of (or empirical evidence concerning) the issue of whether ELF mode inevitably entails a bilingual processing mode. Related to this issue, there has been interesting psycholinguistic work on Slobin’s (1996) notion of “thinking for speaking”: the conceptual packaging, conditioned by linguistic experience (and therefore differing cross-linguistically), that a speaker carries out in order to formulate appropriate linguistic expressions. Slobin (1996: 89 ff.) points out that “first-language thinking” might explain some “second-language speaking” patterns, and SLA research suggests this to be the case, but that “second-language thinking” can be developed (Stam, 2010). It would be interesting to explore whether expert NNESs are more likely to maintain “firstlanguage thinking” in ELF mode than when interacting with NESs. Finally, there may be potential for cognitive work on social alignment in ELF (cf. Weatherholtz et al., 2014). The position I have adopted here suggests that for such research to be effectively pursued, there are some basic matters that still need to be resolved. One is the fundamental issue of what it is that scholars understand ELF to be. Persistent representation of ELF as though it were a linguistic system that has users (who can represent it mentally, process it, and dynamically modify it through usage) is an obstacle to a cognitive understanding of the phenomenon. A second problematic issue is the lingering influence of monolithic conceptualizations of English (Hall, 2013), where uncritical reference is made to “target” configurations (i.e. the forms of SE, which have no clear psycholinguistic status). A third obstacle is the broad focus that discussions of ELF processing adopt, where little attempt is 81 Christopher J. Hall made to distinguish between NNESs operating in ELF mode and interacting with NESs or colinguals. Evidently, cognitively oriented research on ELF has hardly begun. Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 4 Larsen-Freeman, Complexity and ELF 7 Seidlhofer, Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation 8 Widdowson, Historical perspectives on ELF 19 Pitzl, Creativity, idioms and metaphorical language in ELF 20 Ranta, Grammar in ELF 22 Hynninen and Solin, Language norms in ELF Further reading Alptekin, C. (2011). Beyond ENL norms in ELF use: a cognitive perspective on ELF output. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 34, 2, 148–165. Hall, C.J. (2013). Cognitive contributions to plurilithic views of English and other languages. Applied Linguistics, 34, 211–231. Hall, C.J. (2014). Moving beyond accuracy: from tests of English to tests of “Englishing.” ELT Journal, 68, 4, 376–385. Kaan, E. (2014). Predictive sentence processing in L2 and L1: what is different? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4, 2, 257–282. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. References Abutalebi, J. and Della Rosa, P.A. (2012). How the brain acquires, processes, and controls a second language. In Faust, M. (Ed.), The handbook of the neuropsychology of language (pp. 516–538). Oxford: Blackwell. Alptekin, C. (2011). Beyond ENL norms in ELF use: a cognitive perspective on ELF output. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 34, 2, 148–165. Alptekin, C. (2013). English as a lingua franca through a usage-based perspective: merging the social and the cognitive in language use. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 26, 2, 197–207. Cabeza, R. and Moscovitch, M. (2013). Memory systems, processing modes, and components: functional neuroimaging evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 1, 49–55. Carey, R. (2013). On the other side: formulaic organizing chunks in spoken and written academic ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2, 2, 207–228. Clahsen, H. and Felser, C. (2006). 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Lingua, 117, 543–578. 84 7 Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation Barbara Seidlhofer Introduction Over its (still quite brief) history, ELF research, as well as resistance to it, has been much concerned with the theoretical and practical issue of how the conceptualization of ELF relates to Standard English (StE), and to standard language ideology more generally. The unprecedented spread of ‘English’ in the wake of globalization has brought up for reconsideration many basic and well-established assumptions about language and languages: assumptions about the stability and distinctiveness of linguistic systems, about monolingual norms and communal identity and the nature of native speaker competence, all of which are intricately bound up with notions of the standard language. This chapter will consider the nature of standardization, StE, and standard language ideology and how these relate to folk and expert notions of ‘English’. It will then scrutinize and (re-)evaluate the basic assumptions that are closely connected with StE and so result in particular beliefs and attitudes, practices and policies. The reasoning underlying this chapter is that an awareness of the way these common assumptions relate and operate enables us to develop a better understanding of the nature of ELF communication. Things fall apart? This changes everything? It is a sociolinguistic commonplace that all natural languages are variable, continually in flux, complex and endlessly emergent (Larsen-Freeman, Chapter 4 this volume). But English, as the global means of communication that it has become over recent decades, is a special case altogether. As a truly post-modern phenomenon, it is used by speakers from all walks of life in all continents, with hundreds of different first languages and varying degrees of ‘proficiency’, and in a way that demonstrates very clearly that communicative effectiveness is frequently a function of variability, of the destabilization of established linguistic norms. This represents a challenge to linguists and laypersons alike, to English teachers and teacher educators, activists and policy makers. In some quarters, concerns have been voiced that, to quote W.B. Yeats, Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. 85 Barbara Seidlhofer Certainly the centre as represented by Kachru’s inner circle, “the traditional bases of English” (Kachru 1985: 12) cannot hold – their English falls apart into a diversity of different forms and functions. Does that mean that anarchy is loosed upon the world? It is certainly true that the present state of affairs in a globalized world changes many wellentrenched assumptions about English, and more generally about the way we think about languages and the communities that use them. It is, then, of the nature of languages to be intrinsically unstable: they quite naturally vary in their use as users exploit their pragmatic possibilities to express themselves in different contexts and for different purposes. Languages are continually emergent because they are necessarily adaptive to ever-changing circumstances. But at the same time, humans find it difficult to live with uncertainty: we need to assume some relative fixity, some stability that we can rely upon. So for some intents and purposes it makes sense to assume that languages are in a steady state, and to operate with notions of a standard language. The question is: for what intents and purposes? And for whose intents and purposes? In defining communal and cultural identity, language users will themselves think of their own first language(s) as distinct, as a means of establishing their insider status and excluding outsiders. So for their intents and purposes there are distinct languages and communities. These are essentially folk linguistic concepts that linguists have also found it convenient to adopt. The identification of separate languages and cultures is based on historical circumstances, on the existence of relatively stable, small-scale communities and restricted networks of interaction. But what if people from other primary cultures and communities appropriate a language not originally their own and make it their own? We now live in a globalized world of digitalized networks and mobile, scattered communities – and, to all intents and purposes, to use the words of the title of Naomi Klein’s 2014 book about capitalism and the climate, This Changes Everything. Standard English and standardization StE, “conceived of as unmarked, stable, and uniform” (Johnston and Lange 2006: 192) presupposes a stability that is an illusion, and has proved to be elusive of any linguistic definition: “standard languages are fixed and uniform-state idealisations – not empirically verifiable realities” (J. Milroy 1999: 18). Nevertheless, StE persists in that, as Bex puts it, it does capture the folk belief that there ought to be a ‘correct’ way of speaking and writing … and that this ideal should be enshrined both in reference works and in the utterances of authorities. In this sense, Standard English is a descriptive term which describes and regulates those forms of English which are regarded as social markers of status. (Bex 1993: 256) The description and regulation of high-status forms of English happens in a deliberate and perpetual process of standardization, for which J. Milroy provides a general definition, “the imposition of uniformity upon a class of objects” (2001: 351). This means that natural languages, which are by their nature non-uniform and variable, do not just become standard, they have standardization imposed upon them. The motivation for standardization is to stabilize the language in order to establish effective communicative conventions and a sense of common, often national, identity and security. There is also a practical motivation in 86 Standard English and ELF variation providing institutional norms against which individual linguistic behaviour can be measured; hence the standard language is equated with standards of linguistic behaviour and educational achievement. While other standard languages, such as French, for example, are associated with national institutions such as academies, it is much less clear who undertakes the standardization of English, who has (had) the authority to do so. Apart from literary authors, especially in the eighteenth century (Wright 2006; Hickey 2015; Widdowson, Chapter 8 this volume), it is mainly language experts such as lexicographers and grammarians who decide what counts as the English standard language – which is then imposed by different kinds of institutional authority. StE is, then, an institutionalized construct, and only really possible when the language is written. And being dependent on literacy, StE is closely associated with education, as “the dialect normally used in writing, for teaching in schools and universities, and the one most often heard on British radio and television” (Hughes, Trudgill and Watt 2013: 13). It is, however, “a variety that is never perfectly and consistently realized in spoken use” (J. Milroy 2001: 543). As Trudgill and Hannah (2013: 2) explain, “although Standard English is the kind of English in which all native speakers learn to read and write, most people do not actually speak it” – where “people”, one needs to note, is intended to refer only to native speakers of English. For Milroy and Milroy (2012: 19), a standard language can only be “an idea in the mind rather than a reality – a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent”. The standard, primarily written, (supposedly) stable, careful usage of English by ‘educated speakers’ is, then, a privileged variety representing a prestige linguistic norm recognised in particular communities and set up as gatekeeping for the achievement of education and therefore social status. StE is also the variety with a historical pedigree, which in turn is seen to bestow legitimacy on it in the eyes of both laypersons and many linguists (and relegates other forms to the status of “illegitimate offspring” (Mufwene 2001)). ‘Major’ European languages that have a long history of standardization such as English, French and Spanish have then constituted the basis for most – consequently monolingual – linguistic theorizing and description. So separate standard languages have generally become the unmarked, ‘normal’ languages providing the data for linguistic research, which in turn (wittingly or unwittingly) has fed into and perpetuated the standard language ideology that sees imposed language uniformity via one and only one legitimate standard variety as desirable and beneficial for society (cf. J. Milroy 1999; 2001 for an extended discussion of this process). Countless books and articles have been written about standardization and StE, its historical development and its current significance. Even since 2000 several new books have appeared (e.g. Hickey 2015; Locher and Strässler 2008; Wright 2006) and classics on the topic have seen several new editions (e.g. Milroy and Milroy 2012; Trudgill and Hannah 2013). There is then a continuing preoccupation with StE, no doubt because the concept proves so elusive: as Bex (1993: 257) puts it, “Standard English is a powerful social myth rather than a linguistically delimited variety”. But this myth “is not just a reified social dialect, but rather an ideological construct against which deviance and difference are measured”, and to “deviate from the standard is to be foreign, uneducated, criminal, deviant” (Pennycook 2000: 118, paraphrasing L. Milroy 1999 and Lippi-Green 1997). Furthermore, this ideology is based on an apparent contradiction. StE, as pointed out earlier, is established on the basis of the written language and is not spoken by the majority of English native speakers. Given the tenet in linguistics 87 Barbara Seidlhofer that the spoken language is primary, it seems curious that StE should be accorded primacy as representing the language since it clearly does not represent the reality of how the language is actually spoken. Where native speaker spoken usage is concerned, there is a recognition, even a celebration, of dialectal variation that does not conform to StE norms. The same recognition is not extended to non-native speakers, however, and where their usage varies from the standard it is stigmatized as defective, as non-English. So effectively non-native users of the language have conditions of conformity imposed upon them that native speakers themselves do not meet within their inner-circle communities. Thus the ideology of the standard language insists on ideal standards of ‘proper’ linguistic behaviour. Standard and standards Because StE, while assumed to be a linguistic entity is essentially ideologically constructed, the discussion of the description of StE carried out on the structure of the language itself tends to be intermingled with the prescriptive notion of ‘standards’, and the use of non-Standard English to be taken as evidence of intellectual deficiency, of a failure to meet the standards of proper thinking that society promotes through education. It is precisely “this interrelationship between linguistic form and social discrimination that enables us to refer to the conceptualisation of ‘Standard English’ as ideological in its nature” (Bex and Watts 1999:13). That this applies to StE in L1 situations is well documented by Labov, particularly in his paper “The logic of non-standard English” (Labov 1969), where he argues against the idea that the use of non-standard English indicates a lack of communicative and cognitive ability on the part of its users (Widdowson, Chapter 8 this volume). What is non-standard is therefore stigmatized as defective – a view with which researchers in ELF are all too familiar (see Jenkins 2007: ch. 2). As Jenkins neatly summarizes it, “[f ]or many, then, ELF represents a decline in standards just as, for them, any departure from the standard necessarily represents a decline in standards” (Jenkins 2007: 35, original emphasis). The linking of StE with standards also carries the implication that the use of non-standard English not only reveals the failure to conform to what is socially required but is even positively anti-social. As J. Milroy points out, there is a marked tendency to associate “tolerance of variation with ‘permissiveness’ and further identify linguistic ‘permissiveness’ with moral permissiveness” (J. Milroy 1999: 20). Effectively, therefore, the advocacy of StE imposes a set of conditions on ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ behaviour. These conditions are essentially fixed rules for social conduct established by institutional authority. I return here to the points made earlier about the fiction of linguistic stability over time: although standards necessarily represent values established as valid in the past, they carry with them the assumption of unaltered validity in the present without regard to how circumstances may have changed. Such a conservative perspective, which assumes a continuing stable state of affairs, seems especially questionable in the rapidly changing contemporary world, where adaptability is at a premium. ELF and StE ideology So far I have been focusing on standardization and Standard English as it has developed and been discussed with reference to Kachru’s inner circle, rather than how all this plays out for English as spread across the whole globe. And it is with respect to this global context that it is particularly striking how deeply entrenched standard language ideology is in the shape of StE as described and prescribed in British and American works of reference. For what we observe 88 Standard English and ELF variation here is the assumption – sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit – that a national standard language should be valid and relevant not only within a particular country but globally.1 Standard English = the whole of English ELF research has documented and described countless ELF interactions in which speakers communicate, and commune, without fully adhering to StE correctness (as indeed is the case in native-speaker contexts too). Therefore, one aspect of standard language ideology particularly relevant to ELF thinking is the odd, clearly counterfactual assumption widely held among both linguistics experts and laypersons that StE constitutes English in its entirety, the English language. We see this manifested in titles of reference books – to pick some random examples from a shelf in my office: there is the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners and the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, the Cambridge Grammar of English, the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, and Practical English Usage. But while these titles suggest a general, all-encompassing coverage of ‘English’, they actually just denote Standard English. As J. Milroy explains, in ‘standard language cultures’ the awareness of a superordinate standard variety is kept alive in the public mind by various channels (including the writing system and education in literacy) that tend to inculcate and maintain this knowledge – not always in a very clear or accurate form – in speakers’ minds. The main effect of these is to equate the standard language – or what is believed to be the standard language – with the language as a whole and with ‘correct’ usage in that language, and this notion of correctness has a powerful role in the maintenance of the standard ideology through prescription. (J. Milroy 1999: 18) There is a great discrepancy, then, between this perception of StE as English tout court, and English in the world, for StE (if one assumes it is a descriptive reality rather than only a myth) covers only a tiny portion of ‘all of English’. Excluded here are not only the myriad rural and urban local dialects of Kachru’s inner circle but all ways of speaking English across all the circles (Kachru 1992). The fact that neither publishers nor authors/compilers of reference works such as the ones mentioned above regard it as necessary to specify that they are equating ‘English’ with ‘Standard English’ indicates just how deeply engrained and taken for granted the prevalence and assumed general, global relevance of StE is. In this line of thinking, then, StE is English, and what is not StE therefore is not English. Standard English = native-speaker English? As we have seen above, StE is above all an ideological construct, and notoriously elusive. Equally elusive is the idea of the native speaker – and similarly abundant is the volume of writings that it has spawned (e.g. Coulmas 1981; Davies 2003, 2012; Paikeday 1985). The indeterminate status of the concept has not, however, prevented it from being assigned supreme significance for theoretical, descriptive and applied linguistics. As Brutt-Griffler (2002: 17) observes, “[i]t has become something of an article of faith that the study of linguistics centers on the monolingual individual – the native speaker”. The question of how the concepts 89 Barbara Seidlhofer ‘Standard English’ – equated, as we have seen, with English as such – and ‘native speaker’ relate is of particular interest in the era of globalization, in which one language has morphed from an insular vernacular with relatively few native speakers to a ‘world language’ used as a lingua franca, predominantly by non-native speakers. It is because StE is represented as ‘proper’ English that it is prescribed as the model for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). But here, the imposition of a standard is extended even further. Sociolinguists have been at pains to point out that StE is a dialect that can be spoken in a variety of different accents, so there is no standard accent. It is intriguing in this respect to look back at the Kingman Report (1988), a document prepared by a government-appointed committee to enquire into the teaching of English in Britain. In it we find the following statement about StE: 33. Since it holds this important role in the written form, it is also used to communicate across local areas and between regions in a spoken form. In its spoken form it may be pronounced with many different regional accents – e.g. Devon, Cheshire, Midlands, Northumbrian, East Anglian. And it is also spoken far beyond these islands in Australian, American, Jamaican and Indian accents, as well as by speakers using English as a foreign language and speaking it with Japanese or Brazilian or Russian accents. There is one accent of English which is used by a minority of speakers in Britain called ‘Received Pronunciation’... This accent is the standard for foreign students of English in Britain, but is not used as the model of English pronunciation in British schools, since speakers may be rightly proud of their regional pronunciation, which identifies where they come from. (Kingman 1988: 14, emphasis added) According to this report, there is then a standard accent as far as foreign students are concerned, and not only those in Britain one might add, as is borne out by courses in spoken English everywhere that are based on a model of so-called British (or American) pronunciation. Note, also, that there is no need perceived in this report to grant “foreign students of English” the same right to be “proud of their regional pronunciation, which identifies where they come from”. About a decade later, early ELF research prepared the ground for proposals for the acknowledgement of these “foreign students’” accents as perfectly legitimate L2 sociolinguistic variation and expression of identity (Jenkins 2000).2 The odd claim we are confronting here is that a national standard language should have global validity as a communicative currency. This view is most clearly exemplified by authorities on StE, particularly leading authors of major grammars of StE such as Randolph Quirk (Quirk et al. 1972; Quirk et al. 1985), when they pronounce on the teaching of English in the outer and expanding circles. In a paper in which he reacts to the “half-baked quackery” (1990: 9) of calling into question the strict insistence on StE for all purposes of EFL teaching in all contexts, Quirk argues that standards of communication in English depend on conforming to StE, “freely current throughout the world” and described in “the best grammars and dictionaries” (p. 10). And with reference to a study into the differences between native and non-native speakers’ intuitions about French in France he infers – for English in the world – that the distinction “of greatest importance educationally and linguistically is that between native and non-native” (p. 6). Quirk concludes that this implies “the need for native teacher support and the need for non-native teachers to be in constant touch with the native language” (p. 7). It seems, then, that the notions of ‘nativeness’ and ‘standard’ are here conflated to such an extent that they become mutually dependent, indistinguishable and even identical. 90 Standard English and ELF variation However, they are of course independent in principle: a majority of native English speakers are speakers of non-standard English, and countless non-native English speakers are users of StE. Quirk’s paper creates the impression that it is only (a minority of) native speakers of English who can be trusted to speak proper English up to the standards that any communication situation, anywhere in the world, might require. In this line of thinking, then, StE and native English are the same. What then if we follow the two lines of reasoning, or tacit assumptions at any rate, that a) StE is the whole of English and b) StE is the same as native English? The combination of these two equations results in the conclusion that native English also is the whole of English, and therefore non-standard non-native English is not recognized as English on two counts. In other words, the variable, often non-standard and predominantly non-native English usage observed in all kinds of ELF interaction (and captured in ELF corpora) “just isn’t English”, as May (2000) complains in an article in The Times (see Seidlhofer 2011: ch. 2 for an extended discussion). ‘Compare and contrast’: StE and ELF perspectives on some familiar concepts In 2006, Clyne called English “the most pluricentric and international of all languages” (2006: 99). ELF research in the intervening years has moved on from the idea of an English with many ‘centres’ and used between ‘nations’, and has focused more on deconstructing and challenging the central concepts that constitute the backdrop of standard language ideology that ELF theorizing has had to contend with. This process happened in a succession of (overlapping) phases, starting with fundamental challenges to pedagogic orthodoxy in core areas of ELT (Jenkins 2000) and to received ideas about the scope of description of ‘English’ (Seidlhofer 2001; see also Part III of this volume). Subsequent work focused on attitudes to ELF and ELF research (Jenkins 2007; see also Baird and Baird, Chapter 42 this volume) and on undertaking actual descriptions of ELF interactions, in various domains and speech event types (Cogo and Dewey 2012; Mauranen 2012). Concurrently, ELF researchers also engaged with broader theoretical issues in the context of globalization (e.g. Dewey 2007; Seidlhofer 2007). More recently, research foci have been ELF and “the politics of academic English language policy” (Jenkins 2014, her subtitle; see also Part V of this volume) and questions of how the study of ELF relates to frameworks of multilingualism and (trans)languaging and thus to conceptualizations of ‘language’ as such (e.g. Hülmbauer and Seidlhofer 2013; Cogo, Chapter 29 this volume; Jenkins 2015). In all of these phases ELF research has had to grapple with the forces of native standard language ideology. In order to compare the study of English as carried out within frameworks explicitly or implicitly in keeping with standard language ideology with the study of ELF communication, it will be instructive to look at key arguments in an important article dealing with “language ideologies and the consequences of standardization” (J. Milroy 2001, title) and to explore how these appear in a different light when examined through ‘an ELF lens’ – and thus what ELF thinking is up against. In his 2001 paper, published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, J. Milroy explores what effects standard language ideology has had on attitudes to language, mostly English, held by linguists and also by laypersons (assumed to be native speakers). He investigates the influence this standard language ideology has had on linguistic theorizing and empirical research, which in turn has tended to perpetuate this ideology. He emphasizes that “standard language cultures are not universal”, despite the fact that users of, and linguists working on, the most 91 Barbara Seidlhofer widely used ‘major’ languages of the world tend to assume that they are.3 The examples provided in this paper all relate to English and so lend themselves particularly readily to investigation from an ELF perspective. Three related central concepts at work here are correctness, competence and linguistic integrity. Correctness J. Milroy explains that an extremely important effect of standardization has been the development of consciousness among speakers of a ‘correct’, or canonical, form of language. In what I have above called standard-language cultures, virtually everyone subscribes to the ideology of the standard language, and one aspect of this is firm belief in correctness. (2001: 535, original emphasis) In StE ideology there is, then, a high premium on correctness, meaning that native speakers of English are under pressure to (be able to) conform to correct standard usage, at least in writing and in situations requiring careful language use. It is interesting that this criterion, and this expectation, has been transferred wholesale to contexts where English is taught, learnt and used as an additional language. It is assumed that standards of English made and upheld by speakers of English as a native language (ENL) in their ENL communities are considered automatically relevant and valid in quite different communities, and when no native speakers of English may even be present. As we have seen above, the native speaker ideal rules supreme, not just at home. And so it is that StE correctness constitutes the learning target and the criterion for success when it comes to teaching English as a foreign language. Not meeting this target is seen, according to current orthodoxy, as failing to become communicatively competent, and is sanctioned accordingly in English tests (Harding and McNamara, Chapter 45 this volume; McNamara 2014). In reference works for EFL teaching we see non-standard forms explicitly proscribed, even in emphatically descriptive contemporary grammars that also encompass casual spoken English. To pick just one example of many, according to the Cambridge Grammar of English, which carries on its cover a ‘Real English Guarantee’ and claims to be based on an international corpus, About is not used with the verb discuss: We wanted to discuss the arrangements for Chinese New Year. (We wanted to discuss about the arrangements for Chinese New Year.) (Carter and McCarthy 2006: 23, 5f) and this passage is marked with an “error warning symbol”. Similarly, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary offers “You cannot say” proscriptions in “Help” notes, e.g.: You cannot say ‘discuss about something’: I discussed about my problem with my parents. (OALD, 2010, s.v. discuss) The graphic strike-out seems to suggest that there is, in the teaching and learning of English an a priori assumption that communicative success depends on strict adherence to the norms of StE. This ‘Real English’ (though not all that real as just a small minority of speakers 92 Standard English and ELF variation actually speak it) is proclaimed to be what learners and teachers of English need: the English as recorded in standard grammars and dictionaries, proper English, Standard English. Teachers and learners have been well schooled in standard language ideology, in the assumption that anything that does not conform to the standard language is by definition incorrect, defective, undesirable. So these pronouncements serve to maintain the institutionally sanctioned ideology enshrined in curricula, textbooks and official examinations, the now virtually globally adopted Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe 2001) being a prime example of such standardization (Moore 2011). Again, the reason why these proscriptions are given is to maintain stable and uniform standards – efforts that run counter to the contemporary reality of how the language is actually used globally. The OALD and the Cambridge Grammar assume the authority to tell users of English what they “cannot say”. But the fact is that on the actual evidence of the ELF corpora VOICE, ELFA and ACE, speakers can say these things, and do: discuss about is used, by speakers from a very wide range of L1 backgrounds in a great variety of speech event types, as are many if not all of the other linguistic forms that are proscribed in these standard works of reference, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this non-standard use causes any problems for the interlocutors. Empirical ELF research, then, shows that there is absolutely no generally valid, straightforward relationship between communicative effectiveness and correctness in terms of StE – just as we know there is no such relationship for speakers of regional ENL dialects. Observing the dynamics of ELF use we see very clearly that communicative effectiveness cannot be guaranteed through grammatical correctness – in fact, quite often the opposite is the case, that non-standard forms that speakers create and converge on ad hoc in processes of accommodation and analogy seem to facilitate communication in certain contexts (Cogo and Dewey 2012; Hülmbauer 2013). Nevertheless, ELT orthodoxy has it that what is regarded as competence in English is not the creative exploitation of available communicative resources but adherence to correct StE forms (see also Kohn 2011). Competence The ability to produce ‘correct’ linguistic forms is, then, closely linked to the notion of competence, which in turn is often invoked in the expression ‘native-speaker competence’. Linguists have long been at pains to explain that just like discrete varieties do not exist as such but are idealizations, or convenient fictions (Seidlhofer 2011: ch. 3; Trudgill 1999: 122), so the notion of competence is an idealized construct too – most prominently captured in Chomsky’s familiar definition as the linguistic knowledge of “an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows his language perfectly” (Chomsky 1965: 3). Of course completely homogeneous speech communities do not exist, and Chomsky does not claim that there actually is such a thing – it simply suits his theorizing purpose to think of communities as if they were homogeneous, just as it suits sociolinguists to think of varieties as if they were discrete. Nevertheless, the conviction persists in many minds that ideal speaker-listeners knowing their language perfectly actually exist, that there is such a thing as complete native-speaker competence. Despite much agonizing debate about the impossibility of actually defining the ‘native speaker’ (Davies 2003), the concept nevertheless has the status of an aspirational ideal in ELT, and persists in SLA research in the concept of interlanguage, a continuum of acquisition whose terminal point is native-speaker competence. There is, then, a ‘common sense’ conviction at large that there are languages, discrete, complete and self-enclosed, which their native speakers know in their entirety – that there is, in short, a well-defined, or at least a definable competence in 93 Barbara Seidlhofer a language. Interestingly, J. Milroy points out that a powerful effect of standard language ideology in the UK and the USA is that another dimension is added to this conviction, so that the general public, including those who make judgements about correctness, are often willing to admit that they themselves make mistakes and are not competent in their own knowledge of the language. They require the guidance of privileged authorities. … The (usually unnamed) authorities on whom speakers (and their teachers) depend have privileged access to the mysteries of language and have something of the status of high priests. (2001: 536, 537, emphasis added) This short glimpse at expert and folk ideas of correctness and (native-speaker) competence should suffice to illustrate the many different takes on these ideas that co-exist, peacefully or otherwise, in the minds of most language users in standard language cultures. Obviously, on reflection these ideas just do not add up, they are irreconcilable. But beliefs and attitudes are usually reproduced through education, and due to standard language ideology being so well entrenched among Anglo-American linguists and non-linguists, people are not aware of them. As J. Milroy (2001) eloquently argues, linguists themselves are affected by, but also have contributed to, this naturalization process. This, then, is the matrix of contradictory ideas and strongly held convictions that ELF research is confronted with, leading to impassioned rejections of arguments that ELF interactions are worth describing and analysing in their own right, and that the insights thus gained into ELF communication might have pedagogic implications. For example, a German university professor of English linguistics, and one who has published widely on English as a world language, expresses his views of ELF, leaving us in no doubt about his conviction that StE is relevant and mandatory for all purposes, for all speakers in all places: The demand for English will continue and possibly increase, which means that more and more people will acquire broken, deficient forms of English which are adequate to the extent that they permit the communicational functions they were learnt for … However, the incomplete acquisition reflected in such instances will never become the basis for a linguistic norm, which is, and has always been, based on the consent of the learned and guided by the accepted written norm, which has remained surprisingly homogeneous around the globe … There is no danger of such deviant uses ‘polluting’ the standards of native speakers even if they become a minority in the global anglophone community. Int[ernational] E[nglish] will not be corrupted by such uses. (Görlach 2002: 12f) ELF researchers who have discussed possible pedagogical implications of ELF theorizing and description have been accused equally vehemently by English language (teaching) professionals of “bring[ing] the ideal down to the gutter, with no check-point on the way” (Sobkowiak 2005: 141), “inventing a new variety’” and “installing a fledgling ugly duckling” (Maley 2009: 194, 196) and offering a “broken weapon” to L2 users that “risks bringing them stuttering onto the world stage of ELF” (Prodromou 2008: 250). These attitudes driven by standard language ideology have been richly documented and discussed in detail, especially as they relate to ELT, in Jenkins (2007). The traditional conceptualization of ‘competence’ is, of course, incompatible with the communicative capability (Widdowson 2003) for exploiting multilingual resources that we 94 Standard English and ELF variation see at work in the empirical study of ELF interactions. This research shows that in many, if not most contexts in which English is currently used, speakers do not fully conform to ENL conventions that orthodox pedagogy regards as the hallmark of being ‘competent in the language’. This is not surprising, as these ENL conventions have arisen in quite different local communities of users and are replete with in-group markers of shared sociocultural identity that are, to say the least, irrelevant in ELF situations (see also Baker, Chapter 2 this volume). Linguistic integrity An important factor contributing to the entrenchment of standard language ideology – and one to which work in linguistics has actively contributed – is the historical process of legitimization, which in turn is linked to the idea of linguistic integrity, to ideals of a pure standard language, not contaminated by other languages: The historization of the language requires that it should possess a continuous unbroken history, a respectable and legitimate ancestry and a long pedigree. It is also highly desirable that it should be as pure and unmixed as possible. (J. Milroy 2001: 548f) These idealizations have been so internalized by most people who were socialized in conventional educational settings in standard language cultures that they tend to operate at the subconscious level, are taken for granted – perhaps particularly in the dominant ‘Western’ tradition of Anglo-American linguistics. Mainstream sociolinguistics has been busy describing and delineating varieties, wedded as it has been to conventional (often national) notions of communities inhabiting a certain physical space and engaging in daily face-to-face contact. In European language education policy, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe 2001), despite its proclaimed overall objective of furthering a composite plurilingualism, persists in an ‘enumerative’ and separatist rather than integrationist approach to ‘languages’. As is discernible in some descriptors of language proficiency developed for the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio, the orientation is clearly towards monolingual native-speaker norms (cf. Hynninen 2014; Jenkins and Leung 2014; McNamara 2011; Pitzl 2015; Seidlhofer 2011: ch. 8), so that, for example, ‘intelligibility’ is taken to mean being intelligible to native speakers, and being able to understand native speakers. There is no differentiation in this powerful policy document between ‘modern foreign languages’ on the one hand and ‘English’ on the other, as if all ‘languages’ fulfilled the same role in the world and as if people’s objectives for learning them were all the same. These examples show how those socialized in standard language cultures find it hard to accept that the orthodoxy of the unique validity and intrinsic superiority of a single, immutable standard language is undergoing vigorous questioning in ELF research – and perhaps what makes this rethinking particularly difficult to countenance is that it has to do with the extraterritorial development of English, a language with an especially strong tradition of standard language ideology, and where it is particularly true that “‘standard variety’ has been equated with ‘prestige variety’” (J. Milroy 2001: 532). It may therefore take a while yet before insights into ELF communication are taken on board in ‘mainstream’ linguistics and applied linguistics. New proposals in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics for alternatives to standard models have only made it into the ‘critical sectors’ of the mainstream over the last couple 95 Barbara Seidlhofer of decades, in parallel with the development of ELF research. While there is still a great deal of work being done on ‘code-switching’ and ‘borrowing’ and on neatly delimiting one variety of English from another, it is gradually being recognized that getting to grips with the complex phenomenon of global communication via ELF in our increasingly ‘virtual’ world calls for a broader outlook than can be provided by approaches dependent on standard language orthodoxies. It is only fairly recently that alternatives to thinking of languages as discrete and neatly bounded entities have evolved in ‘Western’ sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, largely by taking on board work pioneered in and on non-standard language cultures (e.g. Mühlhäusler 1996). The ways of thinking that have seen a surge in recent years are more in keeping with the way people in the twenty-first-century “shuttle between communities” (Canagarajah 2005; see also Morán Panero, Chapter 44 this volume). We are encouraged to think through the processes of “disinventing and reconstituting languages” (Makoni and Pennycook 2007), and alternative metaphors for theorizing the dynamics of ELF communication are being offered in terms of transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet 2005), global Englishes and transcultural flows (Pennycook 2007), mobile resources (Blommaert 2010) and translingual practice (Canagarajah 2013; Kimura and Canagarajah, Chapter 24 this volume). Pennycook (2009: 204) suggests that “[w]e need to escape from the circles, tubes and boxes based on nations that have so bedevilled world Englishes and linguistics more generally”. Standard English and code fixation The well-entrenched notion of monolingual competence, so closely linked to correctness and linguistic integrity, that I have briefly discussed would seem to be based on what I have referred to elsewhere (Seidlhofer 2011) as code fixation. It is the code, and more specifically the code that has been institutionally sanctioned as the standard that is given overriding prominence as the essential determinant of effective communication. But as Jakobson pointed out many years ago (1960), the code is only one factor in communication. In his conception, the message form that is produced in a particular communicative event will be drawn from the resources of the code but what linguistic form this takes will depend on a combination of other factors – who the participants are and what linguacultural knowledge they can assume is shared between them, what intents and purposes they have in communicating, and so on. The code is only one factor and participants will make use of it as an expedient resource, exploiting whatever elements of it they have at their disposal that are communicatively appropriate and effective, whether they conform to the norms of StE or not. And the code resources at their disposal will not be confined to those of English. For what has been observed in ELF communication is that interactants do not just put to work elements of a language that they learnt at school, being careful to use them as ‘correctly’ as possible. Rather, ELF users draw on “their multi-faceted multilingual repertoires in a fashion entirely motivated by the communicative purpose and the interpersonal dynamics of the interaction” (Seidlhofer 2011: 108). In these interactions, speakers “are focused on the interactional and transactional purposes of the talk and on their interlocutors as people rather than on the linguistic code itself” in a creative process in which “the code is treated as malleable and adjustable to the requirements of the moment” (Seidlhofer 2011: 98; cf. also Cogo and Dewey 2012; Jenkins 2015; Mauranen 2012; Pitzl forthcoming). In short, ELF 96 Standard English and ELF variation users “act upon, and sometimes against, norms and standards” (Jørgensen 2008: 164), and what they draw on in this process of (trans)languaging is not linguistic competence in StE but communicative capability (Widdowson 2015). As Garcia and Li Wei (2014: 8) put it, paraphrasing Becker (2000), “language can never be accomplished; and thus languaging is a better term to capture an ongoing process that is always being created as we interact with the world lingually”. Conclusion As will have become evident, thinking through issues of standardization and how they relate to ELF constitutes a complex challenge as “the idea of what is believed to constitute a ‘language’ can hardly escape the influence of the standard ideology” (J. Milroy 2001: 539, original emphasis). Studying the fluidity of ELF practices in today’s world thus raises issues of general theoretical significance and points us to the urgent need to re-think not only the status and roles of English but also our conceptualizations of the nature of language and communication in general. The challenge of understanding ELF in relation to centuries-old ideas about standardization is embedded in the general challenge of understanding the changed circumstances of the contemporary globalized world in relation to definite ideas about borders and boundaries between communities, cultures and languages, which had seemed so secure for so long. Notes 1 This assumption, so starkly evident in international higher education, is documented and critiqued in Jenkins (2014): “[I]f English is the language of international H[igher] E[ducation], it is not appropriate for it to be a national version of HE’s Anglophone minority” (Jenkins 2014: 206. original emphasis). See also Part V of this volume. 2 For other observations on the Kingman report from the perspective of “verbal hygiene” see Cameron 1995. 3 There is an interesting parallel here with the assumption that the findings of second language acquisition research are universally applicable, but as Tarone, Bigelow and Hansen (2009) point out, they are for the main part based on studies of literate subjects only. Further reading Jenkins, J. (2007) ‘ELF and standard language ideology’ and ‘Language attitudes’ Chapters 2 and 3 of English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milroy, J. (2001) ‘Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (4): 530–555. Seidlhofer, B. (2011) ‘Standard English and real English’ and ‘Reconceptualizing ‘English’. Chapters 3 and 4 of Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, Oxford: Oxford University Press. References Becker, A.L. 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Widdowson Introduction: a recurring theme It has become a truism to say that the extent to which English is now used as a lingua franca is unprecedented in that it has become an all-pervasive feature of a globalized world. But although the extent of its use is unprecedented, it is, of course, by no means the only example of a language that, originally confined to and defined by a relatively small community of users, has spread beyond its borders to become an international means of communication. In this respect, it can be said that ELF is a new phenomenon in degree but not in kind. And as with other languages, the extension into lingua franca use quite naturally involves variation and change as the language is adapted to meet the needs of different communicative contexts and purposes. The study of ELF is essentially the study of adaptive variation and under what conditions this is activated. As such, it too has its precedents, for the study of linguistic variation has long been central to sociolinguistic enquiry. A recurring theme here is the tension between variation as a pragmatic communicative expediency and variation as the expression of social identity. People invest their language with sociocultural values that they quite naturally seek to preserve and protect. If, as in the case of a lingua franca, a language is appropriated by outsiders and adapted to suit their own communicative requirements, the integrity of the language as representing these values would seem to be undermined. So it is that the intrinsic tendency of English, like any other language, to spread and mutate and continually adapt itself to different conditions has often caused alarm and despondency among linguistic preservationists who claim to have custody over the language and its ‘proper’ use. In their view, this tendency calls for intervention to ensure that if there is to be variation, it can be controlled so the communicative and communal integrity of the language is not compromised. Prescriptions of appropriate language This attitude to English is all too evident in current reactions to the uncontrolled spread of the language in its use as a lingua franca, as ELF researchers know all too well. 101 H.G. Widdowson But the attitude itself goes back a long way. In 1712, for example, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet entitled ‘A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English tongue’, in which he inveighs against ways in which the language is corrupted, how it is full of what he calls ‘manglings and abbreviations’ (Swift 1712). In the previous century, we find Sir Thomas Sprat also complaining about the abuse of English. His objection, however, is not to the mangling of linguistic forms but to the extravagant eloquence of their use, what he refers to as ‘the luxury and redundance of Speech, this vicious abundance of phrase, this trick of metaphors, this volubility of tongue, that makes so great a noise in the world’ (1667: 111–113). Sprat was one of the founders of the Royal Society, established for the ‘Improving of natural knowledge’ and his hostility to eloquence is because he sees it as a threat to its mission. As he puts it, There is one thing more about which the Society has been most solicitous, and that is the manner of their discourse; which, unless they had been very watchful to keep in due temper, the whole spirit and vigor of their design had been soon eaten out by the luxury and redundance of speech. (Sprat 1667: 111–113) The necessary manner of discourse, he believed, was ‘a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can’ (Sprat 1667: 111–113). Sprat is effectively presenting the case for English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the specific purpose here being the advancement of science. This was, he believed, a variety of English used by ‘Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants’ in contrast to the vicious verbiage of ‘Wits or Scholars’. It is of interest to observe that some 250 years later, Peter Strevens sounds a similar note in his article significantly entitled ‘Alternatives to Daffodils’ in which he speaks out against the predominance of literary uses of English in language teaching and in favour of what was then called the register of scientific English. He concludes by expressing a Sprat-like view in pedagogic terms: the science and technology student is not at present adequately catered for: current English teaching practice is non-scientific and sometimes anti-scientific ... Perhaps ‘Fair daffodils we weep to see thee haste away so soon’… will give way in some overseas classes to language work more relevant to the science student’s eventual needs. (Strevens 1971: 11) What both Sprat and Strevens argue is that we need to recognize, that to be effective, English has to adapt to different requirements, to be appropriate to different communicative contexts and purposes. But in neither case is there any suggestion that this might involve any structural non-conformity from established linguistic rule. What they are talking about is not the use of a formally abnormal kind of English but the different functional use of what is formally a normal kind of English. The question arises, however, as to whether there are domains of use where conformity to rule does not necessarily meet communicative requirement and that call for some refashioning of the linguistic code itself. 102 Historical perspectives on ELF Recodifications of English Domains of use naturally multiplied with the expansion of empire but since the spread was a function of colonialism, English, like its colonized users, was under the jurisdiction of its British rulers. Whatever variable encoding occurred in its use, such non-conformity to rule was not sanctioned by authority as legitimate. But when the United States declared independence from colonial rule, a community of native speakers was created that was not bound by such authority and could change the language to suit the needs of the new nation. And Noah Webster set out to do just this: Now is the time and this the country in which we may expect success in attempting changes to language, science, and government. Let us then seize the present moment and establish a national language as well as a national government. (Webster 1789: 405) For Webster, a recodification of English was called for so that it would serve the cause of national identity. The recodification was relatively minor, involving mainly orthographic and lexical innovation, but served its intended symbolic purpose. Over a century later, recodification was deemed necessary for an entirely opposite reason: not to support nationalism but to counter it. For, in Europe, nationalism, in the early part of the twentieth century, was taken to be a major cause of the First World War – Einstein called it ‘an infantile disease’. In consequence, in the aftermath of war, an anti-nationalist sentiment sought to eradicate this disease by the promotion of international understanding. It was in this socio-political context that Ogden devised his Basic English (Ogden 1930). Unlike Webster’s intervention, the purpose here called for a radically recoded version of the language, a totally different kind of English, an elementary coding system, stripped of grammatical and idiomatic complexity so as to make it readily adaptable to any demands that might be made upon it as an international means of communication. But apart from this practical advantage, and as a corollary to it, Basic also had a symbolic advantage: this version of English was thereby de-nationalized in that it removed features of the language that made it distinctive as the national language of its native speakers, and who, therefore, could no longer claim ownership of it. Communal and communicative functions These attempts to refashion English so as to meet the needs of different domains of use are not only of passing historical interest. They raise controversial issues about the role and status of the language that are centrally relevant to an understanding of its international use and that remain unresolved to this day. One of these has to do with the relationship referred to earlier between the function of a language as an expression of communal identity, which is Webster’s concern, and its function as a means of wider communication, which is Ogden’s. How far are these functions compatible, how far in tension? In native speaker communities the two would seem to be naturally compatible, indeed symbiotically related in that effective communication is both cause and consequence of social cohesion. This is not usually the case with ELF, however, where the language is appropriated by other users and adapted expediently to meet their communicative needs, and where the 103 H.G. Widdowson identifying function may have little if any relevance. In this respect, it might be said that with such adaptive uses of English there is some reduction in function, which is why they are often taken to be defective – expressions of incompetence. A second issue, which is made particularly prominent in Ogden’s proposal, is how far it is possible to identify what features of the standard language are actually essential for communication. Seen in this light, Ogden’s proposal is comparable to Jenkins’ Lingua Franca Core (LFC) (Jenkins 2000). One is concerned with lexico-grammatical and the other with phonological features of English, but both seek to separate out those linguistic features that have general communicative salience from those that only incidentally serve the dual communicative and identifying function of particular native speaking communities. In this respect, the design of Basic English can be seen as the specification of a lingua-franca core. Where the two specifications differ, of course, is that Jenkins’ LFC is based on empirical findings of how people make variable use of an existing linguistic code, which therefore, has vitality (Stewart 1968). Basic, on the other hand, is an artificially constructed code: nobody actually speaks it and it can only become vital if it is actually put to use. So the de-nationalizing of English has the effect of de-naturalizing it. The problem posed by Basic was how far artificially abstracted encoding specifications can be vitalized to become a natural means of communication. English as an international language As it turned out, the problem disappeared as Ogden’s proposal was overtaken by events. Basic was designed to meet the needs of international communication, but as the century progressed, English was becoming increasingly established as an international language without the need for artificial intervention. The fledgling domain of scientific enquiry, for example, which Sprat believed needed to be linguistically nurtured, took flight and found its own global manner of discourse in English under its own impetus. Attention now was focused not on how the language might be refashioned for international use, but on how this use affected the status of the language – how ‘English’ was to be defined now that it had become what Larry Smith called an ‘International auxiliary language (EIAL)’ (Smith 1980). As Strevens puts it: In the case of the language called ‘English’ the sheer numbers of English users whose individual performances (and competences) are summated within the fiction of ‘English’, their worldwide geographical distribution, the great range of social needs and purposes they serve, and the resulting myriad of identifiably different versions of English – all these factors combine to produce a paradox: as English becomes ever more widely used, so it becomes ever more difficult to characterize in ways that support the fiction of a simple, single language. (Strevens 1980: 79) Over 30 years later Seidlhofer points out that this fiction that English is one language and ‘evermore shall be so’ still prevails and is a major obstacle in understanding the nature of ELF (Seidlhofer 2011). What then has happened over the intervening years? How far has the changed status of English been recognized and what characterization has been proposed as a factual alternative? Strevens seeks to resolve the paradox he refers to by making a distinction between intranational and international uses of the language. By the former term he means the English adopted as a community language in ex-colonial countries, those in what Kachru later called 104 Historical perspectives on ELF the outer circle (Kachru 1985). Other countries, he says, need the language ‘for contact with the external world, for communication with other individuals and communities, for access to science, and other uses for which English is the vehicle’ (Strevens 1980: 81). The other countries that Strevens specifically mentions are Japan, Turkey and Brazil – countries located in Kachru’s expanding circle. Interestingly, however, Strevens makes the point that communities who use English intranationally also need to use the language for international purposes as well, so that his concept of international cuts across the Kachru distinctions and in effect refers to the use of English as a lingua franca. However, subsequent developments in the study of EIAL did not focus on international English in this sense but on the intranational English, that of outer-circle users. And the main concern was to describe the recurrent linguistic features that defined distinct so-called nativized varieties associated with particular communities of users. These were accordingly assigned independent status as World Englishes, thereby providing symbolic confirmation of the political independence of these ex-colonial countries. The English of the inner circle was thereby de-nationalized and then re-nationalized as the language of outer-circle communities. The primary focus was, then, on language as a means of expressing social identity, and in this respect the World Englishes movement (the WE paradigm as it is usually called) can be seen as the empirical analogue of Webster’s proposals for modifying English so as to make it a symbol of independence and separate national identity – proposals that, when taken up and vitalized in use, became established in the United States as, in effect, the first of the World Englishes. World Englishes and English as a lingua franca The extensive work on World Englishes, initiated and inspired by Kachru and Smith, and published in the journal of that name, was, then, principally concerned with the description of varieties, linguistically distinct versions of intranational English that had their own communal identity and integrity. The variable manifestations of ELF, of international English as Strevens defines it, are not accounted for. Indeed, there is a tendency among WE proponents to dismiss such variation as unworthy of study precisely because it does not display the formal regularities that can be systematically identified as constituting a separate variety (for further discussion see Seidlhofer 2015). Interestingly, Strevens himself takes up a position that is in line with an ELF rather than a WE perspective on variation. Referring to Smith’s label EIAL (English as an international auxiliary language) he makes the following comment: [T]he locution ‘English as …’ presupposed the existence, to the minds of some people, of ‘an English’ i.e. of a degree of reification, of a more or less finite, describable entity different in some definable respects from other forms of English. (Strevens 1980: 94) But in the minds of WE people it is presupposed that there are indeed such describable entities, forms of English that are different from each other in some definable respects. This is precisely what is held to justify the plural form World Englishes. Strevens continues with a disclaimer: ‘This has not been the intention of “auxiliary” in EIAL. On the contrary, the original concept had been of differing purposes for using English rather than different versions of the language’ (Strevens 1980: 94; emphasis in the original). If this was indeed the original concept of EIAL, it would seem to correspond more closely to an ELF rather than a WE perspective, one that recognizes that there is English in the world 105 H.G. Widdowson other than World Englishes, and one that looks at the process of variation itself, at how English takes various forms to satisfy differing communicative purposes rather than at different formal versions of the language (for further discussion see Widdowson 2015). Intentionally or not, these remarks by Strevens can be seen as indicating these two separate future developments in the study of international English. But these are perhaps more clearly signaled 10 years earlier in research that makes no reference to international English at all. I refer here to the work of William Labov. In a celebrated paper (Labov 1969a) he challenges the privileged status of Standard English and the idea prevalent at the time that failure to conform to it on the part of speakers of what was then called Black English vernacular (BEV) was evidence of diminished communicative and cognitive capabilities and that its speakers had a verbal deficiency that needed to be remedied by education. This idea that non-conformity to Standard English results in verbal deprivation and communicative impairment is one that ELF scholars are all too familiar with. They too have had to contend with the idea of the essential superiority of the standard language, an idea as institutionally entrenched as ever, and the assumption that users of the language who do not conform to it must necessarily be communicatively defective and in need of remedial treatment by educational intervention – witness the widespread view of ELF that it is really only another name for learner English. In this respect, Labov anticipates a basic tenet of ELF study that people are perfectly capable of communicating effectively without conforming to the norms of the standard language and that such conformity will even often be contextually inappropriate and may well result in ineffective communication. But we need to note that the people Labov is talking about in this paper are members of a particular community of speakers, and his aim is to demonstrate that the language they use is contextually appropropriate for their own intra-community purposes. In this case, therefore, the communicative and identifying functions of language use converge. Labov is concerned to show not only that the use of features of non-standard English can be pragmatically effective on particular contextual occasions, but that these features are consistent markers of social identity. Though non-conformist in relation to the norms of the standard language, they conform to other norms that define a different version of the language with its own system of rules and its own social conventions of appropriate use. As Labov puts it ,‘All linguists who work with non-standard Negro English recognize that it is a separate system, closely related to Standard English but separate from the surrounding white dialects by a number of persistent and systematic differences’ (Labov 1969a: 32). Labov’s demonstration of the logic of non-standard English is designed to present a case for the recognition of African American English as having its own independent status and integrity as a variety in its own right. There is a clear correspondence here with the work of WE scholars, similarly concerned with establishing versions of English that are dialectal in that they represent the means of communication and the expression of identity of separate speech communities, defined as groups of people who share the same primary socio-cultural space. They too focus attention on intra-community domains of use where the communicative and identifying functions naturally converge. Language variety and variation But of course, what we have with ELF is the use of English between people who do not belong to the same speech communities, as these are traditionally defined, who therefore do not share the same primary socio-cultural or lingua-cultural space. The question arises as to what communicative demands are made on the language in ELF domains of use and 106 Historical perspectives on ELF how these demands can be provided for. We can perhaps best approach this question by first considering domains of use where the demands are small and relatively easy to meet. I refer to the use of so called pidginized forms of English. These have been a subject of linguistic study for over 50 years, and again, raise issues that bear directly on current thinking about ELF. In reference to Smith’s EIAL, pidgin domains of use are local and not international but like EIAL the language can be described in the two different ways already discussed: in ELF terms as a variable process of pidginization or in WE terms as a pidgin, a language variety. This is a representative definition: The process of pidginization is usually assumed to begin when a language is used only for very limited communication between groups who speak different native languages. Sharply restricted in domains of use, it undergoes varying degrees of simplification and admixture. If a new stable variety of the language emerges from this process, it might be described as a pidgin. (Rickford 1977: 191–192) Since pidgin English is used for ‘communication between groups who speak different native languages’ it conforms to Seidlhofer’s definition of ELF as ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). And as with ELF what is emphasized in Rickford’s definition is use as a process. Just as a pidgin may emerge as a stable variety so it is conceivable that variation in ELF interaction in some contexts may over time also lead to relative stability, when, for example, regularities in ELF use emerge in what has been called a particular discourse community (Swales 1990) or community of practice (Wenger 1998). And of course if the language becomes communal in this way, so it acquires an identifying function accordingly. Variation, then, can be studied in two ways. One way is to relate language variation to language change, to trace its developmental trajectory by identifying interim stages of its emergent progress towards stabilization. So one might identify certain rudimentary forms of English as a basilect and then trace how through variable and extended use it develops into a mesolect and subsequently into an acrolect, an established variety (Bickerton 1975). Similarly, Schneider (2012) argues that in some of its manifestations at least, ELF variability can be taken as an interim stage of variety development. Such an approach focuses attention on the linguistic properties that are manifested in different ways of using English and so is essentially concerned with variation as an indication of language change. But a second way of studying variation is to consider the process itself and the communicative conditions that give rise to it. Here the focus of attention is not on linguistic forms as such but on their pragmatic function, that is to say, to quote Strevens again, on ‘differing purposes for using English rather than different versions of the language’ (1980: 94; emphasis in the original). To do this is to move from considering not the linguistic features of the texts that are manifested in language use but the discourse that they realize – what users mean by the linguistic forms they use. Some of these discoursal purposes are satisfied by a very rudimentary use of linguistic forms and here there are uses of ELF that can indeed be characterized as pidginized English. But the point is that such uses are appropriate to purpose and as and when purposes make greater communicative demands, so the language quite naturally complexifies to meet them for, as Halliday puts it: ‘The particular form taken by the grammatical systems of language is closely related to the social and personal needs that language is required to serve’ (1970: 142). 107 H.G. Widdowson In the study of pidginization, this complexification is generally discussed as a feature of creolization, the process whereby the language extends into a wider range of domains of use and eventually gets stabilized as a creole: a variety, a version of the language associated with a particular community of speakers, in short, a World English. And as such, as mentioned earlier, the communicative and identifying function of the language converge. But the two functions do not have to converge. This process of complexification does not have to be uniquely associated with creolization. As the use of English extends into the domains of international communication, it will naturally complexify to meet a wide and heterogeneous range of contexts and purposes. The use will sometimes approximate to the linguistic norms that characterize native-speaking varieties. But this approximation is incidental, a function of communicative expediency, and carries no necessary identifying significance. What brings about complexity in ELF usage, and the extent to which it is or is not in conformity to established encoded forms of the language is the complexity of the contextual demands that it has to satisfy. These demands may be intra-community in a conventional sense, as is the case with creolization, and, as we have seen with BEV, but they can also be, and in ELF are, inter-community – international in the Strevens sense. With ELF we have the same motivation that furthers the development process of creolization – the increasing functional demands that lead to formal complexity – but these are associated not with intra- but with inter-communal contexts and purposes. With ELF we have variation that is not necessarily an interim stage on the way to a variety but a continually adaptive pragmatic use of linguistic resources (see Widdowson 2015). One can of course describe the actual linguistic forms that this variation can take without subscribing to the view that they are embryonic features of a variety. This involves focusing attention on the variants that are textually produced rather than on the pragmatic discoursal process that produced them. This is generally done by referring variant forms to the conventional norms of standard usage. Thus, with some ELF interactions, one can point to such textual features as the ‘absence’ of definite articles or the third person s, or the non-standard use of prepositions or the plural morpheme. To do this is to give privileged benchmark status to these conventional norms. Where variants are so regular as to constitute a variety, as in the case of World Englishes, they are then, of course no longer considered as errors but are legitimatized as sociolinguistic markers of identity and pragmatically appropriate to context in intra-community domains of use. But where these variants are used inter-communally, that is to say when people from different primary communities communicate, as is the case with ELF, the error stigma tends to remain, in spite of the evidence that they serve to textualize their users’ discourse intentions in pragmatically effective ways. Text and discourse: analysis and interpretation There are then two approaches to the description of ELF variation, and they correspond to two historical traditions in linguistics. One treats instances of language use, what Saussure refers to as actes de parole, as text, the overt linguistic forms that language users produce. The second approach considers what users intend to mean by the texts they produce, and how their texts are variously interpreted, in other words what discourse a text is designed to realize, and what discourse is derived from it. To illustrate the distinction we can return again to Labov. When he is pointing out the distinctive linguistic features of a particular instance of BEV: for example, negative concord (as in ‘you aint goin’ to no heaven’) or invariant be (as in ‘when they be sayin’) he is talking about text. When he says that these features are used in a contextually appropriate way to express a complex argument, then he 108 Historical perspectives on ELF is interpreting the text as discourse. When he demonstrates that BEV is systematic, he is treating it as text but when he argues it is logical, he is treating it as discourse. Over recent decades, with the development of corpus linguistics, textual description has become increasingly precise and detailed. This has revealed that there are recurring patterns of usage within texts, co-textual inter-dependencies that combine linguistic items into phraseological units in accordance with what Sinclair calls the ‘idiom principle’ (Sinclair 1991). Since text is obviously produced as a sequence of linear units, the recently proposed ‘linear unit grammar’ (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006) would therefore seem to be particularly well suited to its description. And it has indeed been applied to the description of ELF text by Mauranen and her colleagues (Mauranen 2012). Text description is a matter of tracing the occurrence of different linguistic forms, and, as indicated earlier, where they vary from conventional usage, these variants can be described by taking some established version of the language as a norm of reference. This is what Labov does when pointing out the distinctive features of BEV, and what Schneider does when he makes lists of how variants in ELF compare with those in WE varieties of English. In both of these cases the variants that are identified are isolated grammatical features. Where the linear unit approach to the description of ELF text differs, and breaks new ground, is that the variants identified are within phrasal sequences where linguistic elements are compounded into larger linear units. What is of particular interest here is not the occurrence of particular grammatical or lexical features in ELF text, but the extent to which their occurrence in these phrasal units differs from ‘normal’ usage. This is the approach that is applied to those data in the ELFA corpus of spoken English that are produced by non-native speakers in academic domains of use. The non-conformist variants that occur are described as approximations: phrasal units that resemble but do not fully replicate normal English. In producing such variants ELF users are said to approximate to normal English but do not quite get it right. In some cases, the approximations are said to be ‘formal’ in that it is the linguistic form that users do not get right, but in other cases the approximation is said to be ‘semantic’ in that the linguistic form is ‘correct’ but not used in accordance with the conventions of idiomatic usage. Approximations, then, are ‘expressions that are close to the target, but not entirely precise’ (Mauranen 2015: 40) The linear unit approach to text description, though innovative in many ways, is not entirely unprecedented. In the middle of the last century, Zellig Harris expressed the belief, very much in tune with current thinking, that ‘language does not occur in stray words or sentences but in connected discourse’ (Harris 1952: 3). Harris made no distinction between discourse and text and so he proceeded to consider the nature of this connection by proposing procedures for analyzing texts by identifying what he calls morphological combinations as sequential patterns of structural and semantic equivalences. At a time well before the advent of corpus linguistics, his approach to text analysis was of course necessarily somewhat rudimentary and very different from that based on linear unit grammar, but it raises a fundamental issue about the nature of such analysis – an issue that is directly relevant to the study of ELF. After demonstrating how his analysis works, Harris concedes its limitations: All this, however, is still distinct from an interpretation of the findings, which must take the meaning of morphemes into consideration and ask what the author was about when he produced the text. Such interpretation is obviously quite separate from the formal findings, although it may follow closely in the directions which the formal findings indicate. (Harris 1952: 29; emphasis in the original) 109 H.G. Widdowson To ‘ask what the author was about when he produced the text’ is to raise the pragmatic questions of what discourse the author intended to textualize, and what discourse might be interpretatively derived from it. Although Harris recognizes that text analysis alone cannot deal with such questions, he suggests that discourse interpretation may follow closely from its findings. He does not explain, however, how it might follow, just how the formal features of texts are indicative of their pragmatic significance. The issue of the relationship between text analysis and discourse significance is left unresolved. And it is an issue that is raised in the linear unit analysis of ELF text. Here too the question arises as to how its formal findings are to be interpreted. When approximations are said to be ‘not entirely precise’ this refers to their linguistic form and not to their pragmatic function: obviously being pragmatically precise does not depend on how closely one gets to a target linguistic norm. So the question arises as to what motivates these approximations, what these ELF users ‘were about’ when they produced their texts? As with any pragmatic use of language, the linguistic forms that occur are those that users have reason to suppose are appropriate to context and purpose. In the domains of academic use that ELFA is concerned with, what these ELF users assume to be appropriate is presumably the English that is established as conventionally normal in academic discourse. Not surprisingly, then, it is these norms to which they seek to conform. Approximations are of their nature norm-referenced and if the norm is known, meanings can be inferred by reference to it: ‘Approximations that are close enough to their target may not pose too much difficulty for a hearer to construct the meaning from the elements that are there’ (Mauranen 2015: 42). The target referred to here is presumably the English that is conventionally used in academic texts, that is to say, the standard language, and if the hearers are familiar with this, then it is indeed likely that they would be able to normalize the approximation. This, of course, presupposes that meanings are inscribed in their particular textualized form and so are not directly recoverable from the non-conformist variant but only via reference to the standard norm. Effective communication, therefore, is assumed to depend on conformity. But of course these conditions that encourage deference to conventional norms do not by any means obtain in all domains of ELF use. As in any other use of language, linguistic variation in ELF is pragmatically determined as users draw expediently and adaptively on whatever formal resources they have at their disposal to get their meanings across, and these resources will, as has been pointed out in the ELF literature, be multilingual in that they will naturally include the users’ knowledge of their own first languages (Klimpfinger 2009; Hülmbauer and Seidlhofer 2013; Jenkins 2015; Hülmbauer 2016). So in many, perhaps most cases, ELF users cannot rely on a mutual knowledge of conventionalized norms. As, for example, research based on the VOICE corpus has shown (e.g. Pitzl forthcoming; Seidlhofer 2009), they have to negotiate conditions for understanding as they go along and what is meant by the variants they use, whatever their linguistic provenance, has to be inferred in the discourse process by reference to context and purpose. In these cases where there is no conventionalized norm to refer or defer to, the interpretation of what users are about does not, as Harris puts it ‘follow closely’ from the textual forms they produce. This, of course, underlines the importance of recognising that the linguistic features of ELF are pragmatically determined by local contextual factors and cannot be generalized. As Harris indicates, the relationship between the formal findings of text analysis and their interpretation as discourse remains problematic. And not only problematic for the study of ELF. As Labov points out, the understanding of all language use involves an enquiry into ‘how things are done with words and how one 110 Historical perspectives on ELF interprets these utterances as actions: in other words, relating what is done to what is said and what is said to what is done’ (Labov 1969b: 54–55). Conclusion And it is this that links ELF study with the past. For all the work that I have referred to, in one way or another, has been concerned with this relationship between what is said and what is done, with what forms of English are needed to appropriately textualize the discourses of different domains of use. For Sprat, the forms appropriate to the discourse of scientific enquiry had to be of the ‘mathematical plainness’ he supposed to be characteristic of the speech of artisans; for Webster and Ogden the language code itself had to be refashioned to suit changed national and international discourse needs respectively. Subsequent sociolinguistic study has shown how users fashion existing linguistic resources for themselves to suit their communicative needs. What informs all of these developments is the recognition that different discourses, whether these are transient or become stabilized as varieties, will make different textualizing demands on linguistic resources, and it is the same recognition that informs the study of ELF. With digital communication and the vastly extended networks of interaction, discourses increase in their diversity and so the forms of English that textualize them will quite naturally vary in accordingly diverse ways. The extent of this diversity is unprecedented, but not the adaptive process of variable discourse textualization that drives it. In this respect ELF as a phenomenon is not new. And, since, as we have seen, different approaches to dealing with this adaptive process have a long history, ELF study is not in its essentials new either. It too has its precedents, and tracing them can perhaps reveal more clearly just what these essentials are. Further reading Labov, William. 1969. The logic of non-standard English. In Alatis, J. (ed.) Georgetown Monographs on Languages and Linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, vol. 22, pp. 1–44. Labov, William. 1969. The Study of Non-Standard English. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Widdowson, Henry. 2015. ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4(2): 359–372. References Bickerton, Derek. 1975. Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halliday, M.A.K. 1970. Language structure and language function. In John Lyons (ed.) New Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 140–165. Harris, Zellig. 1952. Discourse analysis. Language 28, 1–30. Hülmbauer, Cornelia. 2016. Lingualisms, languaging and the current lingua franca concept. In Pitzl, Marie-Luise and Ruth Osimk-Teasdale (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Perspectives and Prospects. Contributions in Honour of Barbara Seidlhofer. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp.193–203. Hülmbauer, Cornelia and Barbara Seidlhofer. 2013. English as a lingua franca in European multilingualism. In Berthoud, Anne-Claude, Francois Grin and Georges Lüdi (eds) Exploring the Dynamics of Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 387–406. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 111 H.G. Widdowson Jenkins, Jennifer. 2015. Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice 2(3): 49–85. Kachru, Braj, B. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: the English language in the outer circle’ in R. Quirk and H.G. Widdowson (eds) English in the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–30. Klimpfinger, Theresa. 2009. ‘She’s mixing the two languages together’: forms and functions of code-switching in English as a lingua franca. In Mauranen, Anna and Elina Ranta (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 348–371. Labov, William. 1969a. The logic of non-standard English. In Alatis, J. (ed.) Georgetown Monographs on Languages and Linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, vol. 22. pp. 1–44. Labov, William. 1969b. The Study of Non-Standard English. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-Native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, Anna. 2015.What is going on in Academic ELF? Findings and implications. In Paola Vettorel (ed.) New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning English. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 31–52. Ogden, C.K. 1930. Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar. London: Paul Treber. Pitzl, Marie-Luise. Forthcoming. Creativity in English as a Lingua Franca. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Rickford, John. 1977. Pidginization and creolization: language acquisition and language universals. In Albert Valdman, ed., Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press, pp. 49–69. Schneider, Edgar. 2012. Exploring the interface between World Englishes and second language acquisition – and implications for English as a lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1): 57–91. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2009. Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a lingua franca’. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(2): 195–215. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2015. Response to Berns (2015) World Englishes 34(2): 303–306. Sinclair, John, 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, John and Anna Mauranen. 2006. Linear Unit Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, Larry. 1980. English for Cross-Cultural Communication. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Sprat, Thomas. 1667. The History of the Royal Society. London: Martyn & Allestry. Stewart, William. 1968. A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism. In Fishman, J (ed.) Readings in the Sociology of Language. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton pp. 531–545. Strevens, Peter, 1971. Alternatives to daffodils. In Perren, G.E. (ed.) Science and Technology in a Second Language. Oxford: Centre for Information on Language Teaching, pp. 6–10. Strevens, Peter, 1980. Teaching English as an International Language. Oxford: Pergamon. Swales, John. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swift, Jonathan. 1712. A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. London: Benjamin Tooke. Webster, Noah.1789. Dissertations on the English Language. Boston, MA: Thomas & Company. Wenger, Etienne. 1998 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, Henry. 2015. ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4(2): 359–372. 112 Part II The regional spread of ELF 9 ELF and the EU/wider Europe Tamah Sherman Introduction This chapter presents an overview of the present situation of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in the EU and the expanding European context. It views ELF as one of many strategies for solving communicative and sociocultural problems, both on the macro and micro level. This strategy is realized in: 1) situations in which ELF is an alternative to the use of other regionally and/or internationally important languages (French, German, Russian); 2) situations in which ELF is an alternative to receptive multilingualism between closely related languages; and 3) situations in which ELF is an alternative to translation/ interpretation. It also emphasizes differences between regions and individual national contexts in Europe, particularly in regard to local language constellations and ideologies, as well as the positions of languages/varieties on the labor market. I place particular focus upon Central and Eastern Europe (former Soviet Bloc countries) where English has replaced German and Russian as lingua francas in recent decades. The chapter will conclude with a brief consideration of the position and management of ELF in light of the increasing Asian presence throughout Europe in the business sphere, higher education and tourism. The use of a lingua franca as a language management In this chapter, English is understood as one of many lingua francas that have always existed throughout history (see Ammon and Mattheier 2001 or Knapp and Meierkord 2002 for an overview of these) in the context of inherently multilingual situations (see Jenkins 2015 on the conceptualization ELF within paradigms of multilingualism). Varieties of language emerge as lingua francas for one generally presumed reason: that the speakers in the given situations and communities do not otherwise share a common language that is the first language of at least some of them. Therefore, the lingua franca is selected so that the given communication may take place at all. In other words, a variety is chosen as a strategy for solving a communication problem. But in some situations, participants may opt for a lingua franca for different reasons, the main one being that other candidate varieties are laden with 115 Tamah Sherman historical and political connotations and may signal a power imbalance. In this case, the variety is selected as a lingua franca as a strategy for solving a sociocultural problem. In addition, the process of selecting the variety may vary greatly, ranging from a momentary decision in the context of an individual interaction to a carefully planned policy decision on the part of an international organization. This problem-based view of the selection of languages for the role of lingua francas is based on the language management approach (Jernudd and Neustupný 1987; Nekvapil 2006; Nekvapil and Sherman 2015), in which the range of strategies described above corresponds to the distinction between so-called simple and organized management. The language management approach enables us to integrate macro and micro perspectives on language use and metalinguistic behaviour and to demonstrate how sociocultural and socioeconomic issues can very strongly influence the choices that are made regarding the use of both entire varieties, e.g. opting for English instead of German for the purposes of a business meeting, and individual linguistic features, e.g. selecting the non-standard, yet intelligible construction “he know”, as opposed to “he knows”, in the context of such a meeting. According to this approach, people encounter problems or inadequacies in everyday communication, either because they cannot understand others or make themselves understood, or because they deem the linguistic or other semiotic means used to communicate to be either incorrect or otherwise inappropriate for the given situation. A typical example is a tourist situation, related to shopping, eating, finding accommodation or asking for directions. The tourist, if he or she is not a native or highly competent non-native speaker of a language of the area visited, i.e. cannot rely on the same norms for communication as at home, becomes aware of this fact, selects another way to communicate, and enacts it. In terms of the language management approach, this roughly corresponds to the phases of noting, evaluation, adjustment design and implementation (see Jernudd and Neustupný 1987). Like any other form of behaviour toward language, language management related to ELF is never a matter of language alone, but rather, is grounded in and primarily serves broader communicative and socio-cultural issues. This applies, we will see, to the overall selection of English as a lingua franca as the means to be used in a given communicative situation, either spontaneously or in the form of official policy. ELF in the new and expanding EU Over the twentieth century, norms and expectations for the selection of lingua francas in communication in the European context have undergone specific development in line with a number of extra-linguistic factors, above all political and economic ones. Among the most recent and, for the purposes of this text, the most important points of transition are the end of the Cold War in 1989, the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc, and the gradual expansion of the European Union to include former Soviet Bloc countries and other countries in the Mediterranean region, with the greatest change occurring in 2004. For many of the countries of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe that joined the EU in 2004 or after (with the exception of Poland), the local or state language constitutes a medium-sized language (Vila 2012), meaning that the pressure to speak foreign languages is significant, and for the youngest generation of job-seekers, often a basic assumption. Most of these states belong to the former Soviet Bloc, which, overall, means that they have experienced the following changes over the past quarter-century that are relevant to the use of lingua francas: 116 ELF and the EU/wider Europe 1 2 3 4 5 Foreign language knowledge as a symbol of prestige and resulting manifestations of standard language and/or native speaker ideology regarding those languages. Russian as the most commonly taught foreign language prior to 1989 and as the lingua franca used in communication between people living in the region. The gradual shift to English as the most commonly taught foreign language. A generational difference in foreign language knowledge. Specific constellations of ideologies relating to selected languages (see Nekvapil and Sherman 2013) and their varieties. English, then, is often viewed as many scholars (including Kachru 1986; Pennycook 1994; Nekvapil and Sherman 2009, 2013; Zabrodskaja and Ehala 2015) have observed in expanding-circle and even outer-circle countries, that is, as a language perceived by its speakers as neutral for all practical purposes in selected communication situations. This means that ideally, no particular group (e.g. Czechs vs. Germans, Estonians vs. Russians, etc.) has a linguistic or cultural advantage, although the inevitable impossibility of true neutrality has been exemplified by many authors, e.g. Pennycook 1994 or Nekvapil and Nekula 2006. English is also subject to the ideology of the absolute instrumentality of a language (Nekvapil and Sherman 2013), i.e. if one learns the given language, one can communicate with anyone else in the world. The teaching of Russian (in the Czech Republic in particular) has made a comeback, particularly due to the employment opportunities it affords, connected to business with Russian-speaking countries. Though both Russian and English are selected for their instrumental value, it still cannot be stated that Russian would be viewed as neutral in the same way that English is, but rather, as a language that brings certain economic benefits. Also, in European nation-states characterized by strong standard language ideology (see Seidlhofer, Chapter 7 this volume) relating to the national language, there is a long tradition of a strong orientation toward linguistic form and “correct language use”. This is attested to by the existence of state-funded language consulting services (see Beneš et al. in prep.), in which callers often demand that the linguists working there provide them with a single correct linguistic variant for use in a given situation. Furthermore, in the case of selected small- and medium-sized languages, speakers are also not accustomed to interacting with speakers of non-native varieties and have limited ability in foreigner talk as described by Ferguson (1971). This ideology can then easily extend to the teaching of foreign languages, with native varieties of the languages being preferred, which, in the age of the internet and the extensive exposure to English language popular culture, can lead to conflict between teachers and students regarding legitimate English knowledge. In this vein, the United Kingdom’s 2016 advisory referendum vote to leave the European Union, if carried out to completion, will most likely have implications for the further development of teaching resources and the orientation toward British varieties of English in EU institutions and policies. Given these present conditions, while the potential to manage communication and sociocultural problems through the selection of languages other than English as lingua francas has theoretically not lessened, it is continually subjected to the ideological and economically motivated preferences of individuals and institutions. These will be discussed in the next section. ELF is an alternative to other regionally and/or internationally important languages If we are to imagine situations in which communicative management is done by selecting a lingua franca, ELF presents one of many options, above all in situations that are more 117 Tamah Sherman regional in the European context. The potential for the selection of languages other than English in this role has been transformed both by the EU’s recent growth and by shifts in the teaching of foreign languages. Other languages that have functioned as lingua francas in recent history and continue to do so are German, French and Russian. At this point, it can be hypothesized that the potential for any of the above-named languages as lingua francas is very closely related to the cultural and economic power of the national states in which those languages are the first or second languages of the majority of the population. German is a strong case in point (see Darquennes and Nelde 2006; Ammon 2015; Dovalil 2015). German is the language with the greatest number of native speakers in the EU (TNS Opinion and Social 2012), as well as a second or foreign language by many Europeans. But though German served as a major lingua franca of science and scholarship for many years, in the last century, its position has declined. This is visible, for example, in its status as a working language of the European institutions. As Darquennes and Nelde (2006: 68) and most recently Ammon (2015: 752­–780) describe, the United Kingdom’s joining of the European Community in 1973 led to a decrease in the use of the previously predominant working languages, French and German, effectively pushing German into “third place” and gradually out of de facto working language status. As a result, it is not uncommon to encounter situations in which English is chosen as a lingua franca, but in which German would have served this purpose. This is particularly the case in Central Europe, where, following the Second World War, German was associated with the Nazi regime and later with post-Cold War economic domination, thus English is often chosen with the claim that it is the “neutral” option. This has happened despite Germany’s strong position as a foreign language for many years, and the abundance of qualified teachers of German as opposed to qualified teachers of English (see Dovalil 2010). The main potential for German as a lingua franca (GLF) is shifting, from a lingua franca used internationally to one used extensively within the borders of German-speaking countries, which are often target countries for migration. For example, due to recent economic development in southern regions of Europe and despite the widespread markets for Spanish in the world, it is not uncommon to find Spanish speakers from Spain and other parts of the world working in Germany, in GLF. And with the strong economic position of Germany in the EU context and the rising costs of university study elsewhere, there is particularly increased potential for GLF in the German academic space as well as in the professional one. For example, in 2015, all of Germany’s public universities were tuition-free, upon the condition that the studies take place in German. German’s position as a language of business communication has also shifted, due for the most part to the internationalization of large companies that were originally German, such as automobile manufacturers. Previously, German may have been the lingua franca for people employed at company branches in Central Europe, whereas at present, this function is retained only regionally. In both academia and business, then, we can presume that GLF is used mostly in informal situations, such as when students and employees socialize in small groups. French, like German, is used as a lingua franca inside of the countries where it is an official language (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg), including by numerous migrants. It supersedes German in that it is used more often in officially EU contexts. Wright (2006: 36–38) points to a number of reasons for the strong position of French as a lingua franca (FLF) prior to the twentieth century, including France’s earlier military and economic power, the colonial legacy of French, Paris as a cultural center, and French as an important scientific and scholarly language and the most important language of world diplomacy prior to the Second World War. The two World Wars gradually weakened this 118 ELF and the EU/wider Europe long-established position, followed by the gradual shift from French to English in international organizations beginning in 1973, when the UK joined the European Community, and countries joining the EU later (particularly after 2004) were not those that spoke French as a predominant second or foreign language, being more likely to have German or Russian (Wright 2006: 39–40). However, French continues to act in the European context as a language that has speakers of considerable enough power to keep certain genres of institutional communication from becoming entirely monolingual. For example, an EC Sixth Framework Programme project focused on multilingualism, Language Dynamics and Management of Diversity (DYLAN project 2006–2011), established both French and German as working languages and also submitted reports to the commission in French (for some examples, see www.dylan-project.org/). In new EU-member states such as the Czech Republic, French is often selected as a foreign language instead of German based on ideologies of “beautiful” and “ugly” language (cf. Nekvapil and Sherman 2013). Even so, German remains more commonly taught than French, and with the expansion of the EU eastward, the position of FLF is challenged by that of Russian, even though countries with Russian as an official (non-minority) language are not members. Russian has traditionally served as a lingua franca following processes of russification in the Russian empire and the corresponding language policy in the nineteenth century (Pavlenko 2006), then having become a second language of citizens of the USSR, then the first foreign language learned by people living in the Soviet Bloc throughout the twentieth century. The potential for Russian as a lingua franca (RLF) thus still exists among a large number of speakers who were exposed to Russian as a foreign language in countries of the former Soviet Bloc. This is, very roughly speaking, anyone who was born prior to 1980. The use of RLF occurs in communities of migrants from the former USSR (e.g. Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic states, Central Asia and the Caucasus region) living in other European countries, and it is not uncommon to observe locals in Central European countries “reviving” their school knowledge of Russian to communicate with these new migrants as well as with tourists (see Pavlenko 2012). Pavlenko (2006) poses the question of how long this potential will last. With Russian’s comeback as a foreign language, often motivated by the chance to do business in it, it can be predicted that RLF will live on, albeit with a shift in or reduction of domains for its use. For example, it is a question whether RLF will continue to function in the academic sphere outside of Russian-speaking countries and fields of study focusing on the region and its languages. For languages other than English, then, the potential of a language for use as a lingua franca often depends on the number of speakers who can easily learn it as a foreign language. It is not uncommon for speakers of Romance languages to pick up French quickly when studying or working in Brussels, Luxembourg or Strasbourg, or for speakers of one Slavic language to quickly acquire another, even as a “truncated repertoire” (Blommaert 2010), which is one step removed from practices of receptive multilingualism, which will be discussed below. ELF as an alternative to receptive multilingualism with closely related languages Another proposed adjustment to the problem of communication within Europe is the concept of receptive multilingualism (ten Thije and Zeevaert 2007), in which two or more participants in communication can use different languages, but the minimal necessary degree of mutual understanding takes place (see Haugen 1966 and the concept of “semicommunication”). 119 Tamah Sherman This is also known as lingua receptive or LaRa and it has been actively presented and promoted as an alternative strategy to ELF in certain contexts, see e.g. ten Thije et al. 2012; Kristinsson and Hilmarsson-Dunn 2012; Rehbein et al, 2012). This occurs most typically between speakers of languages differing from one another in correspondence with Heinz Kloss’s (1969) concept of Ausbau (varieties defined as separate languages due to elaboration) as opposed to Abstand (varieties defined as separate languages due to extensive structural differences). These models as a strategy, in contrast with ELF, are particularly applicable to Germanic languages, above all in Scandinavia, in which some countries may be moving from Kachru’s expanding circle to the outer circle, as there are some societal domains that have shifted nearly entirely to the use of English to the detriment of the national languages. The situation has reached such a state that it has become necessary to demonstrate and describe situations in which receptive multilingualism is preferred to English in situations where (at least, from the outside) English might be expected (see Barfod in prep.). And more recently, particularly following the separation of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and the subsequent (re-)creation of national states with national languages that are the mother tongue of the majority of the population, these paradigms have received renewed attention in the Slavic world (see e.g. Sloboda and Brankačkec 2014). Among younger people, it is possible to observe the selection of English as a medium of communication between Czechs and Slovaks. For example, it even occurs occasionally, though still very rarely, that a Czech university student will prefer an English text to a Slovak one. One experimental exploration of the potential for ELF communication vs. receptive multilingual communication is Blees et al. (2014), who tested it on German and Dutch university students. Their participants found it easier to solve a puzzle task with the help of ELF than with the help of LaRa, even though they were using their L1 in the LaRa interactions. They were also more successful in communicating when they had a positive attitude toward the language they were using (either English or their L1), and when their passive proficiency in the language used by their interlocutor (either English or their interlocutor’s L1) was higher. The main explanation for these results, then, was that even though the participants’ native languages were closely related, they were all more proficient in English, which ultimately led to increased ability to speak to one another and handle the task. It is possible, then, to speculate that the ease and effectiveness of communication using ELF or LaRa, and thus their future potential, is largely dependent upon pre-existing contact between speakers of different languages, language ideologies, and above all, trends in language teaching in the individual countries in Europe. ELF as an alternative to translation/interpretation Selected spheres of communication opt for the use of language professionals, i.e. translators and interpreters. Among the most prominent of these are the European institutions, which, on the whole, employ many such professionals. Part of this use of language professionals stems from the rights afforded to the de jure official languages of the European Union, of which there were 24 in 2016. These rights concern both communication within institutions and communication between individual citizens and those institutions. For example, EU citizens may communicate with institutions in any official EU language. The EU has three de facto working languages – English (used most often), French, German, but German is not typically used in this function. Theoretically, the extent of the interpretation and translation work that occurs in EU institutions means that it is often being done when the use of ELF would suffice. There are significant economic considerations in the discussion surrounding 120 ELF and the EU/wider Europe policies here. For example, the costs of working in English alone vs. translating and interpreting have been compared, e.g. by Gazzola and Grin (2013), who conclude that the latter is more economically effective and evaluate it as fairer. Translation and interpretation have also become the subject of debate regarding the question of dubbing of audiovisual media. A loose connection is often postulated between access to media in the original language and foreign language (predominantly English) knowledge of the general population. This occurs particularly in “dubbing countries”, where movements such as a Czech Facebook group “Stop mandatory dubbing, let’s replace it with the original subtitled version”, presume that this change will lead, based on the Scandinavian model, to higher overall competence in English nationwide. In this connection, politicians such as German EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger and Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka have been colourfully mocked by internet users for their English skills, or lack of them, very often reflecting some of the local standard language ideologies discussed above. Translation studies emphasize the teaching of standard language varieties, as these provide them with an important source of cultural capital, and in fact, the building blocks upon which their profession is built (for more on this potential conflict, see e.g. Hewson 2009). There are, however, many contexts in which, despite the supply of trained translators and interpreters on the market, they are not used, often due to the lack of specialized competence. Instead, in-house employees are utilized, or participants simply to count on the fact that not everyone in a meeting will understand everything, then later summarizing for those who did not (cf. Angouri and Miglbauer 2014). ELF and the increasing Asian presence in Europe Older constellations of languages in the role of lingua francas have not only been influenced by European unification and expansion, but also by the increased presence of individuals and institutions from other parts of the world, most predominantly Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Due to the focus of this volume as a whole, in this section I will consider the question of contacts between Europe and Asia, in particular what is known as “the Far East”, and countries within it that represent significant economic partners for Europe such as Japan, China and South Korea. In all three of these countries, there has been a recent push toward English, connected both to personal desire for lifestyle changes and to the market value attributed to the language (see Park 2009; Seargeant 2009; Park and Wee 2012). There are three main manifestations of these contacts between continents. The first consists of the presence of Asian businesses of various sizes, ranging from Thai massage parlors to Vietnamese restaurants to multinational companies producing automobiles and electronics. This is, in part, complemented by the presence of European companies in Asia (see Fairbrother 2015). The second is connected to the increasing Asian student presence in Europe. Many universities have joined the wave of internationalization and used it as a selling point. With decreases in state funding for universities, this internationalization often consists of the increased recruitment of students from outside the European Union, among others as a way to gain additional tuition fees. The third is the ever-growing Asian tourist population in Europe (see e.g. Sloboda 2016 on the resulting increased linguistic repertoire of service personnel in the center of Prague to include Chinese). This final reality faced by Europe is a good way to analyse the possibilities for the three language management strategies discussed in the sections above. I will use a newly emerging example: contact between speakers of Czech and speakers of Japanese, Korean or Chinese. First and foremost, contact between speakers of these languages is occurring for the first time 121 Tamah Sherman in recent history. Other than language specialists, there is not an extensive history of one group speaking the other’s language. There is also no history of the extensive and predominant use of a lingua franca other than English between these groups. There are no “natural” opportunities for receptive multilingualism and speakers often have strong beliefs about the languages being “completely different” (see Nekvapil and Sherman 2013). Previous contacts were defined by the use of translators and interpreters. And indeed, translating and interpreting are used in two of the spheres of communication discussed above – in business as well as in tourism, via which Asian languages can be increasingly observed in the linguistic landscape of European cities – on signs for businesses and attractions (one notable example is the “Romantic Road” in Germany, the official signs for which are in German and Japanese), in train transportation announcements, on menus, and the like. In manufacturing companies, translators and interpreters may be employed in production, where employees hired from abroad by agencies may not speak any other language. The differing nature of ELF communication in these contexts reminds us of an important consideration for the analysis of ELF communication overall, that is, the role of context. In tourist interactions, the communication is predominantly of a transactional character, with mutual intelligibility being of primary importance. Language is managed in these transactions above all in situations in which this mutual intelligibility is disrupted, for example, when idiomatically named food items on a menu are translated word-for-word into English, and thus cannot be understood by customers. Language is also managed merely on the level of noting and evaluation, when translations or other expressions are noted as funny or evaluated, based on local ideological assumptions, as “bad English”. In the business interactions, linguistic form ranges in importance, but overall, is of less significance than in the higher education interactions, where students from Asia are typically expected to conform to European linguistic and genre norms. Rather, the business context is characterized by the management of socio-cultural issues. Problems arise in connection to differing cultural styles of communication, for instance, in the perception of hierarchical relations in a company unit or in the question of how much time employees should spend at work vs. with their families. The management of communication in one such case is as follows (see Nekvapil and Sherman in prep.). Extensive ELF communication occurs because Korean company managers are constantly coming in and out of a large manufacturing plant, local employees get used to the way they speak (referring to it as “Kor-English”, a local variant of what may be referred to elsewhere as “Konglish”), eventually learning to understand it. Communication is also enabled by the use of technology – mobile translation applications are often employed in cases of unknown vocabulary. On the shop floor, individual levels of English knowledge are typically not evaluated negatively, while in white-collar positions, the Koreans’ English is evaluated as problematic by Czech employees, who themselves, have spent extensive time and energy on their English skills. However, it may not be possible to design and implement adjustments to the Korean employees’ language due to their ownership of the company. All the while, there is a push at the headquarters to standardize the international employees’ English, in line with the overall push toward English in some Asian countries mentioned above. Concluding remarks Very frequently, the strategies of choosing ELF, other languages in the role of lingua francas, practices oriented toward receptive multilingualism, or translation and interpretation are implemented in the same context, complementing one another (cf. Hülmbauer 2014, who 122 ELF and the EU/wider Europe echoes the European Commission in stating that this is desirable). At the same time, it cannot be denied that there are cases in which the selection of one strategy can lead to a decrease in awareness that others are possible. The most apparent manifestation of this phenomenon can be found in the changes in speakers’ understanding of the potential for receptive multilingualism, particularly in regard to closely related languages, in communication. In addition, it is apparent that individual strategies have certain advantages, particularly economic ones, for the actors involved at selected moments, and it is thus necessary to understand the conflict between them as a structural characteristic of human society as a whole. This is most apparent in the question of language-related professions, in which certain varieties are commodified (cf. Heller 2010). In countries of Kachru’s expanding circle which joined the EU in 2004 or after, this is very much the case, as can be observed in contexts such as advertising for translation agencies and language schools, and the structure and content of university language majors. At this point, it is important to distinguish between acting as sociolinguists and acting as (language) teachers, policymakers or other types of language managers. As sociolinguists, we consider the fundamental fact that people will always 1) find multiple ways to communicate using whatever means possible and available; and 2) behave toward language in a way that corresponds to its multiple functions, even beyond basic communication. This means that all interests must be included in our interpretations (cf. Haberland 2011). Institutionally based language managers, then, need to be informed by sociolinguistic research, to the degree that it is possible to create compromises in light of multiple, often conflicting interests. Related chapters in this handbook 2 Baker, ELF and intercultural communication 3 Ehrenreich, Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca 29 Cogo, ELF and multilingualism 44 Morán Panero, Global languages and lingua franca communication Further reading Linn, A., Bermel, N. and Ferguson, G. (eds) (2015) Attitudes towards English in Europe: English in Europe, Volume 1. Berlin, Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter. Prendergast, C. (2008) Buying into English: Language and investment in the new capitalist world. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Przygoński, K. (2012) Sociolinguistic aspects of the functioning of English in post-1989 Poland. Oxford: Peter Lang. Sloboda, M., Laihonen, P. and Zabrodskaja, A. (eds) (2016) Sociolinguistic transition in former Eastern Bloc countries: Two decades after the regime change. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. References Ammon, U. (2015) Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in der Welt. Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter. 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Therefore, investigating ELF in other parts of the world is essential if we want a better understanding of how it operates. My principal research objective is to help fill this empirical gap by providing an in-depth investigation of ELF in the context of the Middle East, an area that has not yet been investigated (the only notable exception is Zoghbor’s (2009) research on teaching Lingua Franca Core (LFC) to Arab learners). In this chapter, I attempt to present a brief account of the use of English as a de facto lingua franca in the Gulf Cooperation Council (henceforth GCC) states. I start this account by presenting a historical account of English in the GCC area. I then look at the current uses of English in the GCC area and attitudes toward its widening use. In the last section of this chapter, I present findings from my own research on business English as a lingua franca (BELF) in Saudi multinational corporations (MNCs) in which I adopted an ethnographic perspective to study intercultural communication through BELF (Alharbi, 2016). Through discursive analysis of business meetings, participant observation and ethnographic interviews, my research findings reveal the most important communicative strategies employed in BELF communication and shed some light on BELF users’ attitudes toward its use in their workplace. These findings are discussed throughout this chapter, but in greater detail in the section on GCC English. English in the GCC: a historical account The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was established on 25 May 1981. It comprises six states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain (see Figure 10.1). English spread throughout the GCC countries as it spread across the rest of the world. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Britain expanded its colonial power 126 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states throughout many regions in the East, including Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. (This expansion was in addition to Britain’s colonial existence in the Indian subcontinent in Southeast Asia.) Although Britain had little colonial interest in the Gulf area per se, Britain was interested in the Gulf’s strategic location along trade routes to India (Charise, 2007; Onley, 2007). The Gulf states were not occupied properly as colonies; however, between 1820 and 1915, Britain had signed agreements with all Gulf states to protect the waterways taken by British traders in India. In 1932, Saudi Arabia became the first country to declare its independence from the British protectorship (Charise, 2007). Since the seventh century, Islam and Arabic (itself an important lingua franca) historically have been strong unifiers in the Gulf region. Nevertheless, the region’s geographic position – a crossway between West and North Africa, Europe, India and Asia – has guaranteed that the region is in constant contact with diverse languages and cultures. Additionally, millions of Muslims pilgrimage to the holy sites of Saudi Arabia, Makka and Madina each year. The diverse linguistic backgrounds of the Muslim pilgrims and travelling traders in the area, as well as the region’s strategic location, imply that multiple languages were used for trade purposes. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, different local varieties of Arabic constituted the basic languages of communication (Charise, 2007). With the British presence in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, English gradually became a lingua franca as well (Fussell, 2011). After the termination of British protectorships, the use of the English language was maintained through its addition into the Gulf states’ public schools as a subject (Fussell, 2011). CYPRUS Erbil Mosul Aleppo Latakia Nicosia SYRIA Beirut Gaza Strip Isfahan I RA Q West Bank Amman Kerman Abadan Kuwait KUWAIT Hafar al Persian Batin Al Jubail Gulf Buraydah Ad Dammam Manama Dhahran QATAR BAHRAIN Doha Riyadh Tabuk Hail Luxor Medina Aswan Yanbu al Bahr Halayeb Jeddah SAUDI ARABIA Bandar Abbas Abu Dhabi OMAN Dubai Gulf of Oman Muscat OMAN Mecca Red Sea Salalah Jazan ERITREA Asmara Zahedan UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Abha Wad Madani IRAN Shiraz Bushehr Asyut Khartoum Herat Ahvaz An Nasiriyah Al Basrah JORDAN Al Aqabah Port Sudan Tehran Qom Arak Baghdad Haifa ISRAEL Port Jerusalem Said Qazvin Kermanshah Damascus LEBANON Zanjan Kirkuk Massawa Al Ghaydah Sanaa Al Hudaydah YEMEN Arabian Sea Al Mukalla Aden DJIBOUTI Djibouti Figure 10.1 Gulf of Aden Socotra (YEMEN) Map of the Gulf Cooperation Council states 127 Nuha Alharbi Because of the Gulf states’ somewhat large political independence during the time of the British presence, English was perceived as a facilitator of the process of nation building, rather than as an impediment to it (Charise, 2007). This perception bears some resemblance to the sociolinguistic reality of many other countries that were former British colonies and that belong to the so-called expanding circle in Kachru’s (1985) model, e.g., Hong Kong and Singapore, and in which English now has a widespread official status. From the discovery of oil in 1938 to the early 1990s, a constant wave of American and British companies arrived in Saudi Arabia with long-term projects and contracts. Their existence intensified the use of English in the area, albeit within a limited sector, i.e. the petroleum and minerals sector (Habbash and Troudi, 2015). Historically, the multilingualism in the GCC area did not threaten or affect the status of Arabic, which has played a major role in the politics and education of this area throughout history. Education, prior to the British colonial presence, was the responsibility of the religious institutions, which emphasized the value of Arabic as a language with a near-sacred status (Hitti, 2002). Therefore, it can be argued that the robust historical, cultural and religious connections of Arabic guarantee its pre-eminence as a unifying language in this area. Nonetheless, English serves numerous functions in the Gulf area, and its use continues to expand, as will be seen in the next section. English(es) and other languages in the GCC Arabic is the only official language of the GCC states. Nevertheless, a number of different languages are also widely spoken, including Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Tagalog and Pashto (Syed, 2003), and in Saudi Arabia specifically, Indonesian languages are also spoken. As Randall and Samimi (2010) state, official estimates are not available, but approximately 100 languages are spoken in the region by 200 nationalities and 150 ethnic groups. In addition to the region’s geographical location along a main trade route, some economic factors have greatly impacted the existing ethnic and linguistic profile of the GCC. Enormous income from oil exports has spurred an unparalleled growth of construction and infrastructure projects. This boom has necessitated recruiting labourers from surrounding countries. Nowadays, in most parts of the GCC, expatriates outnumber locals (Ali, 2009). Among the best examples of this expatriate influx is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which Graddol (1997) believes falls into the grey area of Kachru’s (1985) model, as English has become a ‘second’ instead of a ‘foreign’ language. In the UAE, expatriates from South and Southeast Asia constitute nearly 80 per cent of the total population (Charise, 2007). Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait also have a substantial number of expatriates. Although there are currently somewhat fewer foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, recent research shows that expatriates are more likely to secure a new job in Saudi Arabia than in any other country in the GCC (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2009). Syed (2003) asserts that nearly 70 per cent of the labour force in the GCC area is comprised of expatriates. The GCC region is clearly multicultural and multilingual. The abovementioned multicultural demographic composition in the GCC area has had a significant impact on the use of languages in general and on the use of English and Arabic in particular (cf. Al-Haq and Smadi, 1996). In this context, a lingua franca is essential to organize the massive number of multinational expatriates in development projects. English is obviously the most readily available lingua franca for people from diverse linguacultural backgrounds residing in the GCC. Therefore, the UAE’s Ministry of Labour declared plans to devise a policy that would make basic knowledge of the English language a prerequisite 128 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states for anyone applying for a working visa in the country (Al-Issa, 2006). Applying this policy indicates that English is vital as a lingua franca among 80 per cent of the population. Such a prerequisite is not officially implemented in Saudi Arabia, but most institutions, especially in the private sector, require certain levels of English competence. English is also extensively used by the vast number of Southeast Asian domestic labourers in the GCC area, who usually originate from countries with established English varieties (Charise, 2007). A report presented by GulfTalent (2010) asserts that India will continue to serve as a source for skilled labour, or any work that requires English language skills. Historical connections between the Gulf and South Asia were established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Britain, which facilitated commonalities between the two parts of the world such as currency, political officers and other forms of lexical exchange between Urdu and Arabic (Charise, 2007; Poole, 2006). Most families in the Gulf rely on imported domestic labour from India, the Philippines and Indonesia (Charise, 2007), all of which are countries that fall into Kachru’s (1985) outer circle, where English has become nativized because it is spoken as an official second language. This importation of labour presents more chances for English to be used alongside Arabic within the household. Poole (2006) presents a detailed account of English in Oman, which is largely influenced by Indian English, while adopting a normative view on both Omani and Indian Englishes by describing them with reference to ENL. The above description implies that English is widely recognized as a lingua franca, a fact that creates significant opportunities for linguistic research in the GCC context. The current use of English in the GCC states cannot be confined to a certain number of contexts. However, English is most widely and evidently employed in two important aspects of life in the GCC states, i.e. higher education and international business. These two fields are internationally recognized as fields where the use of English as a lingua franca prevails, and they are, to date, the most researched domains of ELF use (Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey, 2011). Speaking about Europe but with applicability to the rest of the world, Graddol (2006: 20) argues that ‘an English factor is found in virtually every key macro trend’ taking place, including calls for ‘the reform of education in universities and schools’. This could not be clearer than in the case of Saudi Arabia. Calls for educational reforms post the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 out of the 19 attackers were Saudi citizens, included calls to intensify teaching of English as a way of promoting tolerance and acceptance of other cultures and faiths (Weber, 2011). In the late 1990s, Saudization was introduced, i.e. the implementation of government policies that encourage hiring Saudi nationals in private sector organizations to counter unemployment amongst Saudi nationals. At that time, it became very important for Saudi nationals to learn English so that they could take over service industry positions as well as positions within the core industries (Mahboob and Elyas, 2014). These cultural and economic needs increased the demand for improved English language teaching (ELT), which was considered the first step toward educational reform. The Saudi ministries of Education and Higher Education (two ministries before February 2015, one ministry now) invested in ELT. English is taught as a subject in public schools starting in Grade 4 in Saudi Arabia, and it is taught in all grades and levels in private schools. The Ministry of Education aims to develop students’ ‘awareness of the importance of English as a means of international communication’ and to enable students ‘linguistically to benefit from English speaking nations, [as] that would enhance the concepts of international co-operation that would develop understanding and respect of cultural differences between nations’ (Rahman and Alhaisoni, 2013: 114). This aim suggests that the Ministry of Education is teaching English to promote the language as a lingua franca. 129 Nuha Alharbi The GCC states’ heavy investment in ELT has resulted in importing curricula from the inner-circle contexts, and with those curricula come NS faculty and staff to run these new institutions. Today, every university in Saudi Arabia has an English language institute/centre that teaches intensive English courses to students in their foundation (first) year. English and higher education in the GCC has been a controversial issue in the past two decades (cf. Findlow, 2006). Findlow (2006) explains how the GCC states, in particular the UAE, have accommodated globalization of education by embracing English within a policy of linguistic dualism whereby English is associated with business, modernity, internationalism, material status and secularism, and Arabic is associated with religion, tradition, emotions and localism (Findlow, 2006). This dualistic approach is not explicitly stated in language policy documents but has obviously evolved through practice. This same practice is also starting to emerge in the Saudi Higher Education sector, where English is currently employed as a medium of instruction in the departments of medicine, engineering and pure sciences while Arabic serves as a language of instruction in departments of social sciences and Islamic studies. The GCC educationalists thus seem to acknowledge the important role English plays in the region and that its significance will probably grow in the next years. However, a challenge for the GCC states is how to reconcile the demands for local, national and religious identities with the homogenizing implications of globalization and the widening use of English in education (Canagarajah, 1999). This linguistic dualism in higher education has stirred debate and attracted criticism, as will be seen in the next section on ELF attitudes in the GCC states. English is, without a doubt, also the language of business in the GCC. This is seen through multinational corporations (MNCs) adopting English as an official or a de facto language of communication. As expatriates in the GCC MNCs outnumber locals, business English as a lingua franca (BELF) appears to be the only viable means of intercultural communication in the GCC business contexts (Alharbi, 2016). The use of English in business, however, has not stirred the same controversy as it did, and still does, in the education sector. The findings of my research will be further discussed in the next two sections. In addition to education and business, English is also widely used in the media, including newspapers, television, radio and the internet. In Saudi Arabia, there are at least seven English-speaking TV channels that broadcast shows produced in the West with Arabic subtitles most of the time. There are also two major English newspapers, Saudi Gazette and Arab News, published by the two largest Saudi publication houses. Most internet websites (including the government websites) have both Arabic and English versions. Generally, there is wide diffusion of English at different professional and societal levels in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states. It is problematic to describe the linguistic landscape in the GCC as if it were a hegemonic entity with identical ethno-linguistic composition. Dubai (UAE), Doha (Qatar) and Dhahran (Saudi Arabia), for example, all have greater levels of internationalism than others. In Dubai, the situation currently is that English is required for a much greater range of social interactions, from shopping to receiving medical attention (Randall and Samimi, 2010). As Randall and Samimi (2010) point out, there are few places in the world where a second language is necessary to perform basic shopping tasks, from grocery stores to shopping malls; while Arabic is the rightful official language, the authors argue that English has a de facto status in Dubai. Although Graddol (2006) argues that Arabic is the fastest growing of the world languages, at least demographically, expatriates in the GCC area do not take the time and effort to learn it. Randall and Samimi (2010: 45) cite McLaughlin (2008) to explain the lack of interest in 130 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states learning Arabic in the UAE, but with applicability to the rest of the GCC states. McLaughlin points to ‘apprehension about the language’ and a ‘limited number of institutes that teach Arabic properly’; moreover, ‘as the Arab population is small there is no opportunity to speak Arabic with UAE nationals’. Some of my BELF research participants also asserted that they did not feel the urge to learn Arabic simply because English was sufficient to communicate with their Arabic colleagues (Alharbi, 2016). One of my non-Arabic speaking participants explains how English in his workplace simultaneously facilitates communication and demotivates him to learn Arabic: ‘It [English] is a facilitator indeed. But ideal? No. Like in my case it kind of somehow deprived me from learning Arabic which would not be possible in this very westernized work environment’. In the next section, I briefly discuss the most prevalent attitudes toward the widening use of English as a lingua franca in the GCC states. ELF attitudes in the GCC states The widening use of English in the GCC states came with socio-political baggage. Concern over the widening use of English is often expressed in the region, especially in regards to the preservation of local cultures and identities. There are many within the GCC states who claim that the widening use of English is threatening the quality of the Arabic language used in the GCC in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. There is a continuous debate in the national press about the necessity of preserving Arabic as a cultural asset and improving the Arabic language teaching to counter the rapid spread of English. The GCC governments, as members of the Arab League, are committed to the promotion of the cause of ‘Arabization’ and to preserving the ‘intellectual and artistic legacy of the Arabs’ by emphasizing Arabic history and literature in their curricula, with Arabic being ‘the language of instruction in all subjects and in all educational stages in the Arab countries’ (Findlow, 2008: 347). However, this commitment cannot be fully realized in the GCC states because of ‘prioritization of international communication and competition’ (Findlow, 2008: 347). Some research findings show that the increasing reliance on English can lead to a dilemma in which English is considered a symbol of technology, modernity, travel and employment, ‘while Arabic is educationally marginalized and is seen to represent tradition, religion and, even worse, backwardness’ (Habbash and Troudi, 2015: 62). The commonly held view is that, due to its centrality to Islam, Arabic is indisputably a valuable asset as the language of the GCC states and of all other Arabic countries. Arabic speakers often feel that ‘their classical language is the most beautiful and logical, with an incomparable grammatical symmetry and lexical richness’ (Findlow, 2006: 45). This sentiment toward Arabic is seen in the findings of most research done on Arabic language attitudes. These findings suggest that the high value attached to Arabic by its speakers stems from its religious and cultural status in the GCC context. Therefore, the opponents of widening the use of English in the GCC area believe that the dominance of English is an imperialistic tool aiming at diminishing or at least weakening the value of Arabic and Islam (cf. Karmani, 2005). This belief was very common in the second half of the twentieth century, but it still stands today, even if to a lesser extent – and even despite evidence that the use of English does not necessarily threaten Arabic or GCC identities. For example, Al-Haq and Samadi (1996: 315–316) presented evidence that ‘Saudis’ attachment to their identity, religion and culture should not be affected negatively [by the widespread of English]. Therefore, there is no fear that English will weaken the position of Arabic and Islam’. Their findings also showed that 131 Nuha Alharbi Saudi students are neither Americanized nor Anglicized nor Westernized due to the use of English; their national identity and Arab unity are not affected by the virtue of English; and their piety does not become corrupted by the impact of English. (Al-Haq and Samadi, 1996: 315–316) In a more recent study, Elyas (2008: 45) also asserted that for his university student interviewees, ‘English does not appear to be an indication of an imperialistic purpose of Westernization of their Arabic identity’. The reported Arabic speakers’ high esteem of their language seems to be limited to certain contexts where Arabic serves as an identity marker. For example, Habbash and Troudi (2015) argue that their Arabic-speaking participants’ esteem of their Arabic language does not extend to their views of Arabic as a language of education, modernity and scientific and technological advancements. Therefore, Habbash and Troudi (2015: 71) conclude that the increasing reliance on English in the Saudi context, especially as a medium of education, is downgrading Arabic to ‘a second-class status’. Findlow’s (2006) findings are in parallel with those of Habbash and Troudi (2015), but she adds that ‘changed political or socioeconomic circumstances could at any time threaten this balance and bring about a rather different set of feelings about the prevalence of English’ (p. 34). Any discussion of attitudes toward English in the GCC has to consider the attitudes toward different varieties of World Englishes as well. Al-Asmari and Khan (2014), for example, argue that the academic environment in Saudi Arabia is not welcoming of outercircle Englishes, such as the Indian Englishes spoken by a significant number of workers in the Saudi labour market. This attitude does not usually affect speakers of World Englishes in the business sector, but it has a significant impact on the processes of recruiting and selecting potential English language teachers in the GCC states (cf. Al-Asmari and Khan, 2014; Ali, 2009). This can be frustrating to competent ELT practitioners from the outer circle who, even when recruited, suffer from discrimination in comparison to their equally or even lessqualified teachers from Kachru’s (1985) inner circle (see Ali, 2009 for a detailed discussion of the ‘brown man’s’ burden of teaching English in the GCC). GCC state educationalists place great emphasis on inner-circle Englishes. Compared with their NNES colleagues, NESs are more ambitiously recruited to teach in the GCC and are offered more competitive packages. The common belief is that NESs are automatically more competent at teaching their mother tongue (Ali, 2009). Based on my own experience as a language teacher in a Saudi University, this belief is also common amongst university students, who usually try to sign up for the English classes given by NESs. Elyas’ (2014) study looks at EFL student identities in Saudi Arabia. Some of his participants explained that one of the reasons for the lack of success in learning English is their failure to speak ‘correctly’ and their feelings of inadequacy compared to the ‘perfect’ native speaker (p. 34). The attitudes toward English in the GCC business domain seem to be more positive in general. Based on the findings of my research on BELF in Saudi multinational corporations (Alharbi, 2016), BELF users seem to have an overall positive and pragmatic attitude toward the adoption of English as a medium of communication in their workplace. This positive attitude is manifested either as acceptance or, in some cases, as enthusiasm. The participants also seemed to agree on the level of proficiency required for business communication to succeed. Their views concurred with findings in previous ELF/BELF research that linguistic ‘correctness’ according to ENL norms is not necessary (cf. Ehrenreich 2009). What matters in BELF communication is effectiveness and achieving the goals of communicative events, even if this happens at the expense of linguistic form. While discussing the attitudes toward 132 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states the use of BELF in their workplace, some of my participants showed some concerns of an ideological nature, similar to the attitudes discussed above in relation to education. That is, they expressed that communication through English somewhat threatens their linguacultural identities, which they felt are better expressed through Arabic. This concern, however, is not prevalent among the other interviewees, who generally believe that the adoption of English is only natural in today’s globalized economies. GCC English? Findings from BELF research in Saudi Arabia Previous attempts to describe GCC Arabic speakers’ use of English generally adopt a deficiency perspective on non-ENL speech. They tend to report potential ‘problems’ that are likely to occur when Arabs use English (cf. Davies and Bentahila, 2012). As this paper adopts an ELF perspective, I will not discuss findings from this research here (see Alharbi, 2016 for a detailed discussion of intercultural communication in Saudi Arabia). The only attempt to describe Saudi use of English in a positive light is seen in Mahboob and Elyas (2014). Mahboob and Elyas analysed one of the English textbooks developed by the Saudi Ministry of Education for use at the school level in order to outline some of the features that are observed in published texts in Saudi Arabia. Their textbook analysis ‘shows that there are a number of grammatical features used in the book that are different from “standard” Englishes’ (Mahboob and Elyas, 2014: 135). These features include ‘variation in use of tense markers; variation in the use of articles; variation in marking subject-verb agreement; and number (singular/plural “–s”)’ (Mahboob and Elyas, 2014: 135). Mahboob and Elyas’s analysis, however, cannot be taken at face value as it covers only one textbook, and it also looks like an attempt to describe Saudi English from a World Englishes perspective, which can be problematic considering that the sociolinguistic reality in Saudi Arabia is clearly not similar to that of the outer-circle contexts. English use in Saudi Arabia and in the GCC states in general is better described in light of the Global Englishes paradigm, and namely ELF. The ethno-linguistic composition of the GCC states indicates that ELF speech in the GCC states has developed its own character distinct from that of ELF speech in other settings. In my own BELF research (Alharbi, 2016), Arabic, the language of ‘the habitat’ (Pölzl and Seidlhofer, 2006) of the majority of the participants; English, the perceived corporate language; and the different L1s of the company’s staff members are all at play. This multilingual/multicultural makeup shapes patterns of BELF interactions. In such linguistic environments, variability, one of ELF’s principal characteristics, is heightened, and cultural hybridity is even more expected. With this in mind, I echo Klimpfinger’s (2009: 348) concern that so far ‘little has been said about the use and role of other languages in ELF’. Although Jenkins (2015) presents a theoretical reconsideration of ELF from a more multilingual perspective, I find it especially surprising that, with the exception of Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) and Mauranen (2012), the role of the language of the habitat is often ignored in ELF research. Considering the claimed influence of Arabic on its speakers, the habitat factor is important. Taking Hitti’s (2002: 90) often cited suggestion that ‘hardly any language seems capable of exercising over the minds of its users such irresistible influence as Arabic’, the role of Arabic in ELF/BELF use needs to be discussed further to grasp ELF/BELF’s cultural hybridity in regions such as the GCC states where Arabic is the predominant language. To account for the role of L1 in ELF communication, Mauranen (2012) proposed the term similect to describe the features of the ‘similar lects’ that emerge through shared linguistic histories as in the case of the BELF data in my research. In my BELF research, the shared 133 Nuha Alharbi features resulting from ‘many speakers having the same language combination in their repertoire, and thereby similar transfer from their first language’ (Mauranen, 2012: 29) are prevalent in BELF communication. The effect of Arabic on BELF use is reflected in some of the discourse practices originating from Arabic. This effect is seen in the adoption of Saudi norms in relational talk, politeness strategies, turn-taking and other face-related issues. This adoption is revealed in the discursive analysis of the recorded meeting language in the form of greetings and turn-taking management. This finding also emerged in my interview data, as most of my non-Saudi participants assert that they happily adopt the local small talk norms. The effect of Saudi Arabia’s known religiocentrism (cf. Davies and Bentahila, 2012) is also evident in my BELF data. This religiocentrism can take the form of religion-related words and phrases (see also Mahboob and Elyas, 2014). My participants, mostly Muslims, and to some extent non-Muslims too, switched to Arabic quite often to express their faith by using Arabic religious phrases. One of my non-Muslim, non-Arabic speaking participants explained his use of the Islamic religious phrase in sha Allah (if God wills): I say in sha Allah yeah at the beginning I was thinking it is not for not for me because I am not Muslim of course but it kinda grows on you. You start saying it with time you get used to it in sha Allah in sha Allah, but it is not only me now even my wife say it ALL the time she she picked it up from work too. Another feature related to the habitat culture and adopted by some of my participants is using swear words and taboo words, which are sometimes translated into English or used in their original Arabic forms. In fact, translation of culture-specific elements from Arabic, and sometimes from other mother tongues, to English is a common practice in my research field. Some of my participants asserted that they translate proverbs, poetry and idioms from their L1s. One of my non-Arabic speaking participants says that a proverb he once shared with his Saudi manager is now known to all of his department members because his manager found it useful and started using it often. Thus, it can be said that BELF users in this business context make use of idiomatic expressions by presenting and sharing idiomatic phrases from their L1s for their own locally emerging needs and purposes. BELF in this case serves as a shared communicative resource used to accommodate one another’s needs and to mark shared territory in emerging communities of practice. My research findings are in line with those of Meierkord (2002) and Firth (2009). Firth (2009) asserts that ELF is inherently hybrid in nature. For example, participants may borrow, use and reuse each other’s language forms, create nuanced words, and switch and mix languages. In my BELF research, one clear reflection of this fact is my participants’ extensive, undisruptive use of code-switching, which is used to serve different communicative functions such as accommodation, inclusion/exclusion, emphasis and signalling of cultural identities. One of my research objectives is to determine how, in spite of the linguacultural diversity typifying communication in MNCs in general, intercultural communication through BELF is possible and even successful. It seems that negotiation of meaning through different communicative strategies is a common micro-level mechanism. It appears to be a necessity and a top priority for participants in BELF communication in Saudi MNCs. It is motivated by a range of goals, including maintaining the interactional flow, achieving communicative effectiveness, seeking approval, reaching agreements, building rapport and solidarity, and developing identities (Alharbi, 2016). My analysis of recorded business meetings revealed that BELF users in Saudi MNCs employ communicative strategies to enhance mutual understanding. Paraphrase 134 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states of problematic elements in an utterance is used both as a pre-emptive strategy and as a repair strategy. Hedging is also employed to avoid face-threatening acts and to smooth interactions, especially the ones that involve interlocutors from top-level management. Some interlocutors employ utterance completions and backchannels as a means to make an implicit or explicit appeal for assistance or to show understanding and signal listenership. The need for these communicative strategies in BELF intercultural communication is great, considering the variability in linguistic and cultural backgrounds and the emphasis on communication effectiveness to get the job done (Alharbi, 2016). Conclusion The discussion of ELF status in the GCC has to be coupled with a discussion of the wider ideological and cultural contexts in which it is used, and this is what I attempted to do in this chapter. This chapter is meant to present a comprehensive, albeit brief, account of ELF/BELF use and attitudes in the GCC states and also to serve as a starting point for future research on ELF in this multicultural/multicultural context. This paper started by presenting a historical account of English in the GCC area. It then moved to look at the current uses of English in the GCC area and at the attitudes toward the widening use of English, especially in higher education and in business. In the last section of this paper, findings from my own research on BELF in Saudi MNCs are briefly discussed on the basis of the different ethnographic data sets. Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 8 Widdowson, Historical perspectives on ELF 17 Cogo and House, The pragmatics of ELF 25 Kankaanranta and Louhiala-Salminen, ELF in the domain of business – BELF: what does the B stand for? Further reading Alharbi, N. (2016). Business English as a lingua franca in Saudi multinational corporations: Qualitative investigation of communicative strategies and orientations to use in international workplaces. Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London. Findlow, S. (2006). Higher education and linguistic dualism in the Arab Gulf. British Journal of Sociology of Education 27 (1): 19–36. Mahboob, A. and Elyas, T. (2014). English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. World Englishes 33 (1): 128–142. References Al-Asmari, M. and Khan, M.S. (2014). World Englishes in the EFL teaching in Saudi Arabia. Arab World English Journal 5 (1): 316–325. Al-Haq, F.A. and Samadi, O. (1996). Spread of English and westernization in Saudi Arabia. World Englishes 15 (3): 307–17. Al-Issa, A. (2006). The Cultural and economic politics of English language teaching in Sultanate of Oman. Asian EFL Journal 8 (1): 194–218. 135 Nuha Alharbi Alharbi, N. (2016). Business English as a lingua franca in Saudi multinational corporations: Qualitative investigation of communicative strategies and orientations to use in international workplaces. Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London. Ali, S. (2009). Teaching English as an international language (EIL) in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries: The brown man’s burden. In F. Sharifian (ed.), English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 34–56. Canagarajah, S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charise, A. (2007). More English, less Islam? An overview of English language functions in the Arabian/Persian Gulf. Accessed November 2012 at http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/ courses/eng6365-charise.htm Davies, E. and Bentahila, A. (2012). Anglo–Arab intercultural communication. In C. Paulston, S. Kiesling, and E. Rangel (eds), The handbook of intercultural communication. Chichester: Blackwell, pp. 231–250. Ehrenreich, S. (2009). English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations. Exploring business communities of practice. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 126–151. Elyas, T. (2008). The attitudes and the impact of the American English as a global language within the Saudi education system. Novitas-ROYAL 2(1): 28–48. Elyas, T. (2014). Exploring Saudi Arabia’s EFL student identity: A narrative critical approach. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 3(5): 28–38. Findlow, S. (2006). Higher education and linguistic dualism in the Arab Gulf. British Journal of Sociology of Education 27 (1): 19–36. Findlow, S. (2008). Islam, modernity and education in the Arab states. Intercultural Education 19 (4): 337–352. Firth, A. (2009). The lingua franca factor. Intercultural Pragmatics 6 (2): 147–170. Fussell, B. (2011). The local flavour of English in the Gulf. English Today 27 (4): 26–32. Graddol, D. (1997). The future of English? London: British Council. Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of ‘English as a foreign language’. London: British Council. GulfTalent, (2010). Saudi Arabia and Qatar lead job creation in the Gulf. Accessed June 2012 at www.gulftalent.com/resources/employment-news/Saudi-Arabia-and-Qatar- lead-job-creation-inthe-Gulf-43 Habbash, M. and Troudi, S. (2015). The discourse of global English and its representation in the Saudi context: A postmodernist critical perspective. In R. Raddawi (ed.), Intercultural communication with Arabs. Springer: Singapore, pp. 57–75. Hitti, P (2002). History of the Arabs (10th edn). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice 2 (3): 49–85. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. and Dewey M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44 (3): 281–315. Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguist realism: The English language in the outer circle. In Quirk, R. and Widdowson, H. (eds), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–30. Karmani, S. (2005). English, ‘terror’ and Islam. Applied Linguistics 26 (2): 262–267. Klimpfinger, T. (2009). ‘She’s mixing the two languages together’: Forms and functions of codeswitching in English as a lingua franca. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 348–371. McLaughlin, L. (2008). British professor rubbishes false fears on learning Arabic. Gulf News, 22 January. Accessed 18 May 2009 at http://archive.gulfnews.com/ articles/08/01/22/10183870.html. Mahboob, A. and Elyas, T. (2014). English in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. World Englishes 33 (1): 128–142. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meierkord, C. (2002). ‘Language stripped bare’ or ‘linguistic masala’? Culture in lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua franca communication. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 109–133. 136 ELF in the Gulf Cooperation Council states Onley, J. (2007). The Arabian frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, rulers, and the British in the nineteenth-century Gulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pölzl, U. and Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: The ‘habitat factor’ in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177, 151–176. Poole, B. (2006). Some effects of Indian English on the language as it is used in Oman. English Today 88, 21–33. Rahman, M. and Alhaisoni, E. (2013). Teaching English in Saudi Arabia: Prospects and challenges. Academic Research International Journal 4 (1): 112–118. Randall, M. and Samimi, M. (2010). The status of English in Dubai. English Today 26 (1): 43–50. Syed, Z. (2003). The sociocultural context of English language teaching in the Gulf. TESOL Quarterly 37 (2): 337–341. The Economist Intelligence Unit (2009). The GCC in 2020: Outlook for the Gulf and the global economy. Chicago, IL: Economist Intelligence Unit. Weber, A. (2011). Politics of English in the Arabian Gulf. Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Accessed February 2016 at http://eprints.ibu.edu.ba/13/ Zoghbor, W. (2009). The implications of the LFC for the Arab context. IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group Newsletter 41, 25–29. 137 11 The development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN Andy Kirkpatrick Introduction: the development of the role of English in ASEAN In this chapter, drawing on data from the Asian Corpus of English (ACE), a corpus of English as a lingua franca use among Asian multilinguals, the majority of whom are from ASEAN countries, I shall illustrate how English is being shaped and adapted by Asian multilinguals, both linguistically and culturally. The linguistic focus will be on the use or non-use of a selection of non-standard morpho-syntactic forms and whether or not their use gives rise to problems in communication. The role of the speaker’s first language – in terms of both codemixing and linguistic transfer – will also be discussed. The cultural focus will be on how speakers represent their own culture(s) and the cultures of the region in their use of English. The chapter will conclude with suggestions for ELT pedagogy and policy. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises 10 nations. The countries in alphabetical order and with the dates of joining ASEAN in brackets are as follows: Brunei (1985), Cambodia (1999), Indonesia (1967), Laos (1997), Malaysia (1967), Myanmar (1997), the Philippines (1967), Singapore (1967), Thailand (1967) and Vietnam (1995). Of these 10 countries, only 5, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand were the founding members at the initial ratification of ASEAN with the Bangkok Declaration of 1967. Interestingly and, perhaps surprisingly to those who follow the language policies of the European Union where each member country’s language is an official language, the Bangkok Declaration makes no mention of an official language or languages that might be adopted by ASEAN. According to delegates at the Bangkok meeting on 1967, it was simply assumed that English would be the de facto official language of the group (Okudaira 1999). This may have been because four of the original founding members of ASEAN had been colonies of either Britain (Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore) or America (the Philippines) and because English had continued to play an institutional role in each of these postcolonial settings. At the same time, however, Malay might have been a strong candidate as an official language as Malay is the national or official language of Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore and is spoken in parts of both the Philippines and Thailand. Here, I give a brief account of how English has developed across ASEAN. For a full account see Kirkpatrick (2010). 138 The development of ELF in ASEAN ASEAN represents one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse areas of the world, with over 1,000 languages. All the world’s great religions are also represented, with for example, Buddhism being the major religion of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, and Islam of Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia. Christianity and Hinduism are found throughout the region, with the Philippines being a strongly Catholic nation. The de facto status of English as the official language was given de jure status with the signing of the ASEAN Charter in 2009. Article 34 of the Charter states that ‘the working language of ASEAN shall be English’ (www.asean.org/storage/images/ASEAN_RTK_2014/ ASEAN_Charter.pdf). The Charter also lists, however, as one of the 14 principles listed under Article 2, the need to have respect for the different cultures, languages and religions of the peoples of ASEAN. The question then arises of how respect for this linguistic, cultural and linguistic diversity can be developed if English is the sole working language of the group. How can English play a role in encouraging linguistic, cultural and religious diversity? That English is expected to play this role has been made clear by the ASEAN Secretary General, Le Luong Minh, who announced in 2013 ‘with the diversity of ASEAN reflected in our diverse races, histories, cultures and belief systems, English is an important and indispensable tool to bring our community closer together’ (ASEAN 2013). In this chapter I shall therefore consider how English might play this apparently contradictory role of uniting ASEAN while at the same time respecting its diversity. First I shall briefly discuss how the use of English as a lingua franca across ASEAN is shaping English itself linguistically and culturally. I shall also consider the communicative strategies being adopted by ASEAN ELF speakers. I shall then consider the pedagogical implications of these linguistic and cultural developments and suggest ways in which English can be taught as a lingua franca that might encourage respect for the linguistic and cultural diversity of ASEAN. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of issues and challenges that the adoption of English as the sole working language has for other languages, in particular as languages of education. The nature of ASEAN ELF The official promotion of English as the sole working language of ASEAN has provided great impetus to its rapid development as a regional lingua franca. In addition, therefore, to the usual motivations to use English, namely to be able to participate in and benefit from modernisation and globalisation, its official status in ASEAN provides an extra motivation for the teaching and learning of English. The role of English as a lingua franca across ASEAN is not, of course, unique. The major role of English in today’s world is as a lingua franca. That is to say English is most commonly used as a lingua franca by people who are multilinguals and for whom English is a shared language. In ASEAN, English is typically used as a lingua franca by ASEAN multilinguals for whom English is an additional language. Thus, for example, Thais, Indonesians, Filipinos and Vietnamese will typically use English as a lingua franca with each other. This has implications for the development of English. As Mauranen (2006) has pointed out, with English as a lingua franca becoming the most common role of English in today’s world, we need to know something about it; how it is developing and how it is being shaped and used by speakers of ELF. To understand how ELF is developing and being used has been the motivation behind the creation of a number of corpora of the use of English as a lingua franca. Two particularly 139 Andy Kirkpatrick well-known corpora of ELF are the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) established by Barbara Seidlhofer and colleagues at the University of Vienna (www.univie. ac.at/voice/) and the ELF corpus of academic English (ELFA) collected by Anna Mauranen and colleagues at the University of Helsinki (www.helsinki.fi/englanti/elfa/). A third corpus, the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) (http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/ace/), is a corpus of naturally occurring English used by, primarily, ASEAN multilinguals. This corpus was collected by the author of this chapter working with data collection teams across East and Southeast Asia. ACE uses the same transcription conventions as VOICE to enable researchers to compare data from VOICE, which is primarily European-based, with the primarily Asian-based ACE. The discussion and examples below of how English is being used and shaped by multilingual Asian users of ELF are taken from ACE. Linguistic features Non-standard forms are common in the speech of ELF users (Breiteneder 2009; Kirkpatrick 2010; Seidlhofer 2011); but non-standard forms are also common in vernacular varieties of so called native-speaker varieties of English, such as American English (e.g. Lippi-Green 1997; Green 2002), British English (Crystal 2004; Britain 2007) and Australian English (Ransom 1987; Deldridge 1999), including Australian Aboriginal English (Harkins 2000). Given the pervasive nature of these non-standard forms, there is a debate over the extent to which the first language of the speakers influences their English (e.g. Mufwene 2008) or whether there are set of vernacular universals, in other words, a set of non-standard forms that occur in all vernacular varieties of English, regardless of the speakers’ first language, as proposed by Chambers (2004). Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004) have identified candidates for linguistic/morphosyntactic ‘angloversals’, non-standard forms that occur in certain varieties of English. It is evident that certain non-standard forms occur across several varieties (Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006), which does call into question the role of the first language. In arguing for the influence of the substrate or first language, Lim and Gisbourne (2009: 124) point out that the occurrences of similar non-standard forms across different varieties of English does not necessarily provide evidence for the existence of universals. Rather they argue that, in the context of Asian varieties of English, ‘these Asian varieties have a particular feature because one or some of their substrates do, not simply because the feature is typical of the region’. They wisely go on to point out, however, that the influence of the first language is not the only cause for language change, a caution against assigning a single cause to language change also noted by Thomason (2010: 31) who points out that, in most cases, no cause can be firmly established ‘because of the real possibility that multiple causes are responsible for a particular change’. Mauranen (2012: 29) makes an interesting distinction between a similect and a dialect, with similects sharing linguistics features due to substrate transfer from a shared L1 and dialects developing linguistic features from using analogy from the L2 to give, for example, ‘discuss about’ from ‘talk about’. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to attempt to answer the substrate vs universals question here. Language contact, however, appears to play a major role in language change. As Hickey (2010: 5) has observed ‘it would seem that language contact always induces change’. Nevertheless, a number of scholars have recently questioned the role of the substrate (e.g. Gut 2009; Hundt, Hoffman and Mukherjee 2012; Seoane and Suarez-Gomez 2013; Hall, Schmidtke and Vickers 2013). For example, the research conducted by Hall and his colleagues (2013) concluded that the countable use of mass nouns was widespread across a range of different varieties of English. They also noted, however, that, although 140 The development of ELF in ASEAN the countable use of mass nouns was widespread, it was rare, with an occurrence rate of only 3.5 percent. This then raises the related question of whether the mere occurrence of a non-standard form in a specific variety can be classified as being a typical characteristic linguistic feature of that variety. Hall would argue that the fact that a non-standard feature occurs does not mean it is thus a characteristic feature of that variety, a view echoed by van Rooy (2013). It is in cases such as these that a corpus is so useful, as the actual frequency of occurrence of a specific non-standard form can be counted and the relative percentage of its occurrence vis-à-vis the standard form can be measured. It was in order to test the influence or otherwise of the substrate on the use of nonstandard morpho-syntactic forms that a colleague and I investigated, using a subset of ACE, the marking or non-marking of present simple and past simple tenses in the speech of first language speakers of Malay (Kirkpatrick and Subhan 2014). We chose first-language speakers of Malay, as Malay is a language that does not mark for tense. We thus wanted to test the hypothesis that, as Malay does not mark for tense, the English of these speakers would be characterised by the non-marking of these tense forms. Many scholars, including the author of this chapter, have long noted that the non-marking of tense forms is a feature of Malaysian and Singaporean English (e.g. Platt 1991; Kirkpatrick 2007). To briefly summarise our findings, we noted that, contrary to our expectations, the nonmarking of these tense forms was comparatively rare. With a total possible 413 tokens of tense marking, the speakers used the standard marking on 306 occasions and only did not mark for tense on 107 occasions. What was even more noteworthy, however, was how the level of formality and the context influenced tense marking. In informal contexts, the speakers did not mark for tense on 100 occasions. Even in these informal contexts, however, the non-marking was less frequent than marking, as they did mark for tense in 153 instances, giving a marked to non-marked ration of about 1.5 to 1. In formal contexts, the use of nonmarking was rare. Out of a total possible 159 instances of marking, the speakers marked the tenses correctly on 152 occasions and did not mark for tense on only 7 occasions. This illustrates that, while the non-marking of tenses occurred in the speech of these L1 speakers of Malay, it cannot be said to be a characteristic feature of their English. On the contrary, in formal contexts, non-marking, while attested, was extremely rare. Even in informal contexts, the correct marking of tenses was more common than non-marking by the ratio of 1.5 to 1. This study also showed the importance of identifying and specifying the context and level of formality of any interaction in describing the use of non-standard forms, as these appear more frequent in informal and in formal contexts. It would thus appear, therefore, that, while the first language had some influence on the marking or non-marking of the simple present and simple past tenses of these speakers, it was by no means the major one. Care must be taken before classifying a non-standard feature as a characteristic feature of either a variety or of ELF simply on the basis of its occurrence. As Lim and Gisbourne stress (2009), it is the frequency and consistency of use that is important. Only if a non-standard feature is used frequently and consistently – and, this means for at least 50 per cent of the time – can that feature be classified as a characteristic. The study of ELF corpora such as VOICE and ACE allow researchers the opportunity to investigate, not only the occurrence of a specific non-standard form, but also its frequency and consistency of use. Discourse and cultural features The substrate or first language of an ELF user may not only influence the user’s English at a morpho-syntactic and phonological level, but also at the level of discourse. It is also possible 141 Andy Kirkpatrick that the user’s cultural values will find expression in the English. As an example of substrate influence at the level of discourse, the excerpt below is from the same data subset of ACE comprising the first-language speakers of Malay. The speaker is a Malay-speaking Malaysian Chinese female. (For a fuller account see Kirkpatrick and Subhan 2014: 396) then he said erm if the if I was younger lah and then I would think about leaving school lah I say why give it to your mother or father to take care lah I might have done that lah cos my parents then he said then he said no lah the most important time for a child is four years mah and I want to bond with my child. The tense markings (in bold) show no non-standard forms or influence from Malay. The excerpt also contains a number of discourse markers (underlined), including five instances of lah and one of mah. While there is some doubt whether these discourse markers originate in Malay or Chinese (Matthews 2010), it is clear that they represent substrate influence and this speaker is using discourse markers from the substrate in her use of English. This is a form of code-mixing, which is common in varieties of world Englishes as speakers of a specific variety of a world English share, by definition, the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds and thus code-mix freely (McLellan 2010). This use of code-mixing often acts as a marker of identity and here we see these markers of identity occurring in English being used as a lingua franca. One explanation of this might be that the participants in this interaction are all speakers of Malay; but then we might also expect the use of code-mixed Malay vocabulary, but there is none in this conversation between these speakers of Malay. This is interesting because a possible difference between the use of English as a lingua franca and a variety of English is that the latter will contain code-mixing, including the use of shared vocabulary items and local idioms, while ELF will not see so much of these features because the primary function of ELF is for communication, while a major function of a variety of English is the expression of a shared identity. This is not to say, of course, that ELF speakers cannot or do not express identity (Baker 2011) or that speakers of a variety of English do not communicate, only that on a continuum between identity and communication, ELF speakers are placed closer to the communication end, while speakers of varieties are placed closer to the identity end (Kirkpatrick 2007). In a recent study comparing a corpus of Brunei English with a subset of ACE it was found that code-mixing was frequently and consistently used in Brunei English but far less so in the ACE ELF data (Kirkpatrick and McLellan 2012). Studies using VOICE data, however, have shown the use of code-mixing, including the use of idioms (e.g. Pitzl 2009). One explanation for the difference between VOICE and ACE data may be that Europeans share many cultural values, and because many of the languages of Europe are members of the same language family. East and Southeast Asia are more culturally and linguistically diverse and are home to several distinct language families. This is a question that needs further investigation. The topics people discuss in ACE tend to be, not surprisingly, Asia-centric (Kirkpatrick, Patkin and Wu 2013). They include discussions about the qualities of different varieties of rice, the poor treatment of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, issues connected with taking out loans from Islamic banks, Thai-Myanmar border issues, problems associated with communicating with people from Middle Eastern cultures, the use of languages and the place of language and identity. In these discussions, a feature of ELF communication that becomes apparent is the importance of adopting communicative strategies that will aid communication between people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, which are the topic of the next section. 142 The development of ELF in ASEAN Communicative strategies Research into the communicative strategies of ELF speakers illustrates their function in assuring cooperative and collaborative communication. In an early study, Firth (1996) noted that what he called ‘the let it pass’ principle appeared to operate when a participant in a conversation did not understand what was being said, but made no comment, hoping it would become clear later. This ‘let it pass’ strategy has subsequently been empirically confirmed by Deterding (2013) as he interviewed participants who had provided data and they confirmed that they had adopted a strategy of letting something they had not understood pass in the hope all would become clear later. Meierkord’s research into ELF communication concluded that the conversations are characterised by their participants’ desire to render the interactions normal and to achieve communicative success’ (2012: 15). House (2006: 94) refers to the ‘solidarity of non-native ELF speakers’. In an early study using ACE data, Kirkpatrick (2010: 141) identified 15 communicative strategies of ELF speakers. These distinguished between listener strategies and speaker strategies and are listed below. Strategy type (listener): lexical anticipation, lexical suggestion, lexical correction, don’t give up, request repetition, request clarification, let it pass, listen to the message, participant paraphrase, participant prompt. Strategy type (speaker): spell out the word, repeat the phrase, be explicit, paraphrase, avoid local/idiomatic referents. In a review of recent research into ELF, Archibald, Cogo and Jenkins (2011: 3) concluded that the findings ‘evidence the supportive and cooperative nature of interactions in ELF where meaning negotiation takes place at different levels’. The research therefore confirms that ELF interactions tend to be supportive and collaborative. However, as stressed earlier in the discussion of the use of non-standard morpho-syntactic forms, context is all important. When the stakes are high, the preservation of the speaker’s face may not be seen as important (Jenks 2012). Such is the case in high-level ASEAN meetings, for example, as noted by one Cambodian government minister when stressing the importance of English: If we don’t know English, how can we participate? We need to know English so that we can defend our interests. You know, ASEAN is not some kissy-kissy brotherhood. The countries are fiercely competitive, and a strong knowledge of English will help us protect our interests. (Clayton 2006: 230–231) Another context where the competitive nature of the interactions will overcome the need to be polite is the courtroom. In their study of courtroom data taken from ACE the authors show that ‘direct, confrontational questioning and bald-on-record disagreement are common currency in these exchanges, where winning the argument supersedes the desire for interactional comity’ (Kirkpatrick, Walkinshaw and Subhan 2016). In this section I have provided a brief review of the nature of ELF, illustrating this with examples from morpho-syntax, discourse, local cultural referents and topics and communicative strategies. In the next section of the chapter I shall propose a number of pedagogical principles for the ELF approach to English language teaching (see also Kirkpatrick 2015). 143 Andy Kirkpatrick Pedagogical implications When teaching languages, teachers like to have a model or standard upon which to base their curriculum. This presents a problem for the ELF approach, as ELF does not constitute a stable single variety of English (Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011; Seidlhofer 2011). On the contrary, given the diverse multilingual and multicultural backgrounds of its speakers, ELF represents multilingual diversity and its speakers, as we have seen with the type of communicative strategies they adopt, are constantly negotiating meaning and accommodating to each other’s way of using English. The natural diversity of ELF is why I have been careful to call the proposed method for teaching ELF as a lingua franca approach. The models or standards of English to be taught under this approach are dependent on the context. Generally speaking within the ASEAN context, multilingual English teachers who have learned English as an additional language and who share similar linguistic backgrounds with their students represents the best classroom model for their students, as long as their own proficiency levels are high. It is with this ASEAN context in mind that the following principles of the lingua franca approach are proposed (see also Kirkpatrick 2012). The principles of the lingua franca approach1 Principle 1: The native speaker is not the linguistic target. The goal is mutual intelligibility As the main role of English in ASEAN (if not elsewhere) is as a lingua franca, it follows that the people with whom ASEAN speakers of English are primarily communicating are fellow Asian multilinguals. The native speaker therefore provides a exonormative, if not irrelevant, model. An appropriate linguistic model for a multilingual user of English in these contexts is a fellow multilingual who shares similar linguistic backgrounds. As McKay (2009: 238) has argued ‘Reliance on a native-speaker model as the pedagogical target must be set aside’. Monolingual benchmarks should not be used to measure multilinguals (Garcia 2009: 386). Thus, for example, an appropriate linguistic model for an Indonesian learner of English is a fellow Indonesian who has high proficiency in English (and who, of course, is suitably trained as a language teacher). An appropriate linguistic model for the Filipino learner of English becomes a well-trained Filipino teacher with high proficiency in English. In short, multilingual models need to be set by fellow multilinguals. Some decades ago, Tommy Koh, then Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations said, ‘When I speak English I want the world to know that I’m Singaporean’. By making the local multilingual model the classroom goal, users of English throughout the region will be able to echo Tommy Koh’s wish, inserting their own nationality as relevant. Principle 2: The native-speaker’s culture is not the target culture. The goal is (ASEAN-centred) intercultural competence Given that the Secretary general of ASEAN has, as noted above, stated that English is an ‘indispensable tool’ for bringing the diverse communities of ASEAN together and for forging an ASEAN identity, the English language curriculum can play a role in fulfilling this goal. A major focus of the ELT curriculum could be to inform the students about the linguistic, cultural and religious diversity of ASEAN. For example, the ELT curriculum can inform students about the importance of different religions to different people in the region. 144 The development of ELF in ASEAN Indonesian children can learn about the role of Buddhism in Thailand and Catholicism in the Philippines. Filipino children can learn about the role of Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia. The ELT curriculum can introduce children to local literatures in English (of which there is a great deal) so that they are able to identify with the characters portrayed (Thomson 2003) and develop a sense of identity. Principle 3: Well-trained local multilinguals provide the most appropriate English language teachers Given the first two principles proposed above, it naturally follows that it is local well-trained multilinguals who have high proficiency in English who become the most appropriate teachers for their students. Not only do they provide an excellent role model – the usual advantage typically ascribed to so-called non-native teachers, they also provide an excellent linguistic model. In addition, given that they share their students’ linguistic backgrounds, they can exploit a bilingual pedagogy in the classroom and use their students’ L1 in systematic ways to help them learn the L2 (Littlewood and Yu 2009; Swain, Kirkpatrick and Cummins 2011). In so doing, they can also promote a multilingual ethos among the class or schools. Instead of students feeling they are striving to become native speakers of English – and thus being corrected every time their accent or grammar betrays their multilingual background, students need to be told they are developing multilinguals who are adding English to their linguistic repertoire. They are not deficient native speakers. They are developing multilinguals. Principle 4: Lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for lingua franca speakers Many language teaching institutions, including regional universities, send their English majors to native-speaking environments to help them improve their proficiency in English. Thus, classes of students are sent to countries such as Australia, Britain or the United States, usually at great expense. These students are also often sent to parts of these native-speaking countries where vernacular varieties of English are spoken. Lancaster and Durham, both in the north of England and home to local dialects of English are examples. Instead, however, of sending students to places where they either may not understand the regional dialect or feel embarrassed and inferior about speaking in front of ‘expert’ native speakers, sending these students to regional lingua franca environments such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei places them in contexts where English is used naturally as a lingua franca by fellow multilinguals. In such environments, the students may feel more at ease – there is an absence of expert native speakers – and find their English proficiency developing more swiftly than if they were in a native-speaking environment. It is also, of course, a much cheaper option. A lingua franca environment may thus provide a more effective and cheaper alternative to a native-speaking one for these students. Principle 5: Spoken English is not the same as written English A major difference between spoken and written English is that there are no L1 writers of English in the sense that everyone has to learn, consciously, how to write. The rules of writing are varied and can be determined by such things as genre, culture, levels of formality, and the medium. Even so, recent research into English as a written lingua franca (Mauranen 2012; Jenkins 2014) is calling for universities to recognise the existence of English as a 145 Andy Kirkpatrick lingua franca, both spoken and written. I return to this in the next section, but stress that the principles being proposed here are primarily concerned with spoken English. Principle 6: Assessment must be tailored to the lingua franca/ASEAN context It is essential that new assessment schemes are developed that are relevant to the lingua franca approach. It is well known how the assessment tail wags the curriculum dog. Teachers will, naturally enough, teach to the test. Without changing the assessment regime, therefore, there is little chance of changing the curriculum or approach. For example, Hong Kong’s Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers of English (LPATE) used to measure whether English teachers would gain the top score for their pronunciation of English against the following benchmark: ‘the candidate’s accent bears no trace of his or her first language’. Fortunately, this has since been discarded as a benchmark, but represents an example of the type of benchmark that needs to be discarded from all assessment criteria, as it measures multilinguals against monolingual benchmarks. Apart from being unfair, such benchmarks are also inappropriate in the ASEAN context. ASEAN, in consultation with the South East Asian Ministers of Education organisation (SEAMEO), could consider establishing a regional team to look into the establishment of assessment benchmarks for both teachers and students. The publication of an ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook (www.asean. org/storage/images/2012/publications/ASEAN%20Curriculum%20Sourcebook_FINAL. pdf ) is a good start, but the materials and ideas within the Sourcebook will only be adopted once relevant and appropriate assessment criteria are developed. In the concluding section, I turn to issues and challenges facing the growth of the role of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN. Issues and challenges The fact that English has been made the sole working language of ASEAN has led, not unnaturally, to an increased pressure to learn English in government schools throughout ASEAN. Indeed, Indonesia is the only nation that has not made English a compulsory subject in primary school, but even there, English is the main foreign language learned and taught. In all the other nine nations, English is introduced in primary school and the trend is for it to be introduced earlier and earlier. In many counties (Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar) it is introduced from Grade 1. In Singapore, it is the medium of instruction for all subjects from Grade 1. Generally speaking, the trend is for the nations of ASEAN to promote only two languages in education, namely their respective national language and English. A notable exception to this is the Philippines, which has recently adopted a system of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB MLE) whereby 19 of the Philippines’ 180 or so languages are now to be taught as media of instruction for the first three years of primary school. This represents a significant turn-around from the earlier Bilingual Education Policy (BEP), which saw Filipino and English as the two languages of education, with English being used to teach maths and science from Grade 1 and Filipino for the other subjects. Malaysia has also recently reversed its policy of teaching maths and science through English from Grade 1 and has re-introduced Malay as the medium of instruction for these subjects (Gill 2012). Generally speaking, the trend is clear, however. English is being introduced earlier and earlier into the primary curriculum, usually at the expense of local languages. As an Indonesian scholar lamented: 146 The development of ELF in ASEAN with (the) emerging and mushrooming demand for English, schools then drop the local language in order to give more time to the English teaching. As a result, in the long run, children and the younger generation can no longer speak the local language. This is culturally and linguistically pitiful. (Hadisantosa 2010: 31) A great advantage of the lingua franca approach to the teaching of English in ASEAN is that English can be delayed until at least the later years of primary school, if not early secondary. The usual advantage of starting to learn a second language before puberty is that it allows the learner to develop a more native-like accent. But this advantage no longer has any relevance, as learners will be acquiring a multilingual model, dependent upon their multilingual backgrounds. At the same time, the idea that the earlier the better applies to language learning has regularly been challenged by scholars (e.g. Benson 2008). The earlier the better may well be true for natural language learning environments, but classrooms are not natural language learning environments (Cenoz 2009). The linguistic diversity of ASEAN could be maintained, at least to some extent, if primary schools were to focus on local languages (preferably, where practical, the learner’s mother tongue and the respective national language). The model of allowing the primary curriculum to focus on local languages and only introducing English at secondary would result in a win-win situation with learners developing a multilingual repertoire that included a local language, the respective national language and English. At present, as evidenced by the constant ‘discourse of despair’ emanating from Ministries of Education throughout the region, children are not learning English to any functional level. More importantly, many are dropping out of school, often around Grade 5, and a major reason for this is that they are being taught in languages they do not understand (UNESCO 2007). The dominance of English as a language of education can also be seen at tertiary level. An increasing number of universities through the region (and in this, these universities are following a world-wide trend (Dearden 2014)) are offering programmes and courses taught through English. In many cases, this adoption of EMI is causing serious problems for both staff and students. To take one example, in Myanmar the current language policy prescribes English as the medium of instruction within all institutes of higher education. This is despite a severe shortage of teachers who have adequate proficiency to teach English, let alone content subjects in English. As a recent report showed, the English language (EL) proficiency levels among EL teachers indicated that many were at AO on the CEFR scales (which is to say they spoke no English at all), with the majority at A1/A2 (Khaing 2016). A third study, which spanned several universities in Myanmar, investigated staff and student attitudes over the use of EMI. The findings showed an overwhelming response (more than 90 per cent) in favour of the use of Burmese alongside English as a language of instruction (Thant 2016), as neither staff nor students were able to teach or learn if English was the only language used, as their proficiency levels were not adequate. A potential solution to this challenge is to view English as a lingua franca and see it within a framework of multilingualism. It should be taught as a lingua franca, following the principles outlined above. In the context of higher education, this would mean that the ‘E’ of EMI would be classified as English as a lingua franca, not as a native-speaker variety. It would also mean that English does not mean English alone. The use of the local language as a language of scholarship and education needs to be encouraged. Students and staff should be encouraged to use languages other than English. This would be particularly beneficial for students who could use their first languages in preparing a task or assignment, although the final product would need to be in English. The ability to use the first language in preparing 147 Andy Kirkpatrick an assignment in a second language has been found to increase the level of complexity and sophistication of the final product (Behan, Turnbull and Spek 1997). Setting English within a multilingual frame would also mean that students should be encouraged to consult readings and sources in languages that they know, not just those written in English. In short, EMI should be framed in such a way that encourages staff and students to use their own linguistic resources so they do not come to overlook or look down on their own languages as languages of education and scholarship. Conclusion In this chapter I have briefly traced the development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN and illustrated how multilingual ASEAN users of English are shaping English in a number of ways. I have also proposed a set of principles for adopting a lingua franca approach to the teaching of English, which take into account this new role of English as a lingua franca across ASEAN, especially given its status as the sole working language of the group. I have then warned how the increasing role of English is threatening local languages in a number of domains and have thus suggested that (1) English can be delayed until secondary school to allow primary schools to focus on local languages, including the respective national language; and (2) the adoption of EMI in higher education should be done within a multilingual framework. In this way, English may indeed help to draw the diverse communities of ASEAN closer together and help forge an ASEAN identity, as hoped by the current Secretary General. Note 1 Originally published in Kirkpatrick (2012). Further reading Deterding, D. (2013). Misunderstandings in English as a lingua franca. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: a multilingual model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. and Sussex, R. (eds) (2012). English as an international language in Asia. Dordrecht: Springer. References ASEAN. (2013). Keynote address by H.E. Le Luong Minh, Secretary-General of ASEAN at the British Council Conference on ‘Educating the next generation of workforce: ASEAN perspectives on innovation, integration and English’. Bangkok, June 24, 2013. Archibald, A., Cogo, A. and Jenkins, J. (2011). (eds) Latest trends in ELF research. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Baker, W. 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English Today, 29, pp. 10–15. 150 12 Chinese English as a lingua franca An ideological inquiry Ying Wang Introduction The momentum of the spread of English has brought to the fore the role of English as a global lingua franca used by and between speakers of different first languages (L1s), who are increasingly exposed to intercultural encounters due to the on-going globalisation. While globalisation ‘forces sociolinguistics to unthink’ languages on the basis of boundaries (Blommaert 2010: 1), the research into English as a lingua franca (ELF) goes beyond territoriality and looks into multilingual and multicultural practices where English plays a crucial role in interaction (e.g. Jenkins 2015a; Mauranen 2012; Seidlhofer 2011). Geographical boundaries that were the cornerstone of sociolinguistic inquiry become irrelevant in the analysis of ELF data, which focuses on how ELF users exploit various resources available to them in order to cope with the international communication contexts in which they participate (e.g. Baker 2015; Cogo and Dewey 2012; Jenkins 2015a, 2015b; Seidlhofer 2011). This is in line with the scholarly interest in trans-lingual and trans-cultural turn in a wider sociolinguistic discipline. As Blommaert (2010) points out, globalisation has impacts on sociolinguistic issues and requires a perspective shift from language-in-place to language-in-motion. His view of language as a mobile resource resonates with the concept of ELF, which acknowledges the dynamics and adaptability of English in often transient multicultural encounters. The conception of ELF challenges the traditional link between language and geographical boundaries and draws scholarly attention to the practice of ELF in what Pennycook (2007) describes as ‘locality’. Correspondingly, the research into ELF supports the legitimacy of Englishes in intercultural practices, for example, business ELF and academic ELF. The shift to focus on ‘language as local practice’ (Pennycook 2007) thus offers ground for the understanding of the connection through ELF practice between speakers of different L1s, and points to the deterritorialisation of ELF (Seidlhofer 2011). The conceptual shift leaves us with an open question as to how to understand the connection between non-native English speakers who have shared L1 backgrounds and participate in respective intercultural communication where ELF is relevant for them. The lack of focus 151 Ying Wang on this kind of connection can be ascribed to the assumptions that L1s are often tied to nation-states and that ELF is a contact language between speakers who do not share L1s. However, I argue that ELF as opposed to English as a foreign language (EFL) or a native language is relevant for non-native English speakers who need international communication, no matter whether they are grouped in terms of their L1s or not. Presumably, the connection between ELF speakers who have shared L1s – for instance, Chinese speakers of ELF – should not become invalid when they stop mutual communication between themselves and turn to use English as a contact language to engage in their respective encounters of speakers who do not share their L1s. In addition, the link between speakers of shared L1 backgrounds who engage in respective encounters through ELF with those who do not share their L1s needs to be investigated rather than simply rebutted. My interest in the link between ELF users who have shared L1s find its support in Mauranen’s (2012) differentiation between mutual and parallel interactions when she discusses the impacts of L1s on ELF users’ Englishes. She takes ‘Finglish’, for example, and points out that Finnish speakers are distributed among parallel ELF encounters and engage with speakers of other L1s by drawing on Finnish speakers’ shared repertoire. As she notes, while ‘speakers of Finnish . . . have no reason to talk to each other in English’, ‘the shared features of “Finglish” result from many speakers having the same language combination in their repertoire, and thereby similar transfer from their first language’ (Mauranen 2012: 29). The notion of parallel interaction implies the connection among ELF users who have shared L1s. While there has been fruitful research on how ELF users who do not share L1s engage with each other, not much has been explored as to whether ELF speakers who share L1s engage with the connection among them, and if yes, how. These questions have been occupying my mind for a long time, given my concern for the link between English and Chinese speakers who are from China. English has a long history – according to Bolton (2003), Chinese contact with English started in 1637 along with the arrival of British mercantile ships in Canton – and phenomenal existence in China with a large population involved in the use and learning of English – as Jenkins (2015b) notes, the English-speaking population is around 430 million in China. Thus, the inquiry into the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ English in an updated context not only has implications for English education in China but also shed lights on the understanding of the global communicative order. The debates on the influence of L1s on ELF use seem to suggest that the notion of nation associated with L1 cannot be simply ignored. The deterritorialisation of ELF, however, breaks the link between language and nation. There is thus a conceptual paradox in considering Chinese speakers’ ELF in association with China. This chapter looks into this conceptual paradox by addressing the questions about the connection between ELF speakers in parallel engagements as opposed to mutual engagements, with a focus on Chinese users of ELF from China. It proceeds from the discussion of different approaches to English in relation to China so as to contextualise the grouping of Chinese speakers on the basis of their contact with English. Then it considers the grouping of Chinese ELF users by comparing different concepts of communities and presents empirical data as to how Chinese ELF users engage with the connection among themselves. The chapter concludes with the argument that Chinese speakers’ own English as a lingua franca is not defined in linguistic terms but in ideological terms, with the notion of China having implications for an imagined community of Chinese ELF speakers. This chapter thus sheds lights on the grouping of ELF users in terms of their L1s. 152 Chinese English as a lingua franca English and China Since its emergence in the Chinese scene, English has served as a language that enables Chinese speakers’ communication with foreigners. The development of English in China has led to four main research strands. The first strand is associated with Chinese pidgin English. In their early contact with English dating back to 1637, Chinese speakers learned English for the purpose of communicating with those who came to China for business, missionary service and colony rule (Bolton 2003; Eames 1974). As William (1836: 429) observes, everywhere else it is expected that time will be devoted to the acquisition of the language of the country by strangers ... But here, the case is exactly the reverse. Foreigners have for ages come to China from different lands for trade, and still all communication is carried on in a foreign tongue. Given that pidgin English was easy to learn, there was an expansion of its use across social classes to enable language contact between Chinese and foreigners (Hall 1944). The rise of formal English education went along with the decline of Chinese pidgin English, leaving the use of pidgin English with Chinese speakers at the lower end of the social hierarchy. Thus, there developed a contempt for Chinese pidgin English (Bolton 2003; Reinecke 1938). As Reinecke (1938: 112) points out, since the diffusion of true English among all classes of the Chinese ports, the Pidgin is clung to only by some die-hard foreigners accustomed to use it talking down to their servants, and its use is resented even by houseboys. The second strand echoes a predominant pursuit of ‘correct’ English in China. The development of English education in China have been geared towards the approximation of native English speaker competence, despite various reforms on English education. With the reference to native English, Chinese speakers’ English is often stigmatised as learner English, which is labelled with Chinglish and Chinese English (Hu 2004; Jiang 1995). As Henry (2010) points out, this view finds its support in the theory of interlanguage (Selinker 1972), a cornerstone of traditional second language acquisition (SLA) research, which emphasises the notions of authenticity and correctness of English, as well as the ownership of English by native English speakers exclusively. In this line, an initiative is to identify Chinese speakers’ gaps in learning and using native speakers’ English so as to help to narrow the gaps or to avoid the so-called errors (e.g. Jiang 1995; Yip 1995). The third strand features heated debates on Chinese variety of English (e.g. Hu 2004; Kirpatrick and Xu 2002). There emerged the need for expressions of unique Chinese cultural ideas, which cannot be fulfilled with ‘authentic’ English. At the same time, the influence of the World Englishes (WE) paradigm expanded to China when scholars started to consider Chinese speakers’ own English by drawing upon WE theories (Bolton 2003; Han 2007; He and Li 2009; Kirkpatrick and Xu 2002). Initiated from translation studies, the term of ‘China English’ was proposed to call for the usage of English that reflects the uniqueness of Chinese cultural ideas, so as to differentiate from Chinese English, a term that is often associated with Chinese learner English (Hu 2004). However, the World Englishes paradigm has its focuses on English varieties used by speakers who share their first languages for the purpose of 153 Ying Wang intranational communication. In this sense, the relevance of Chinese variety of English and the suitability of using the term ‘China English’ for the understanding of English used by Chinese speakers for the purpose of intercultural communication today are to be questioned. In the fourth strand, researchers consider the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ own English in intercultural communication. The strand takes shape in the twenty-first century, which contextualises the growing involvement of Chinese speakers in intercultural communication and the widening engagement of Chinese speakers with other speakers from various L1 backgrounds. That is, the role of ELF is becoming increasingly prominent for Chinese speakers and for China. Li Wei (2016) argues that Chinglish should be reconsidered in the new context where Chinese speakers are situated today. He uses examples of ‘new Chinglish’ to illustrate how Chinese speakers engage in translanguaging skills, that is, they draw on their entire multilingual repertoire in order to communicate successfully in intercultural interactions. Correspondingly, researchers have started to consider Chinese speakers’ own English within the framework of ELF (e.g. Fang 2015; Wang 2012, 2013, 2016). In Wang’s (2012) work, Chinese speakers’ English used for intercultural communication is considered as Chinese ELF (ChELF). She argues that ChELF is developing its legitimacy in Chinese speakers’ perceptual space and that this contributes to the diversity of English in intercultural discourse. In short, the long history of English in China and the widespread relevance of English for Chinese speakers have motivated unremitting efforts in exploring the link between Chinese speakers and English. The four strands surface different perspectives on Chinese speakers’ ownership of English and point to the inquiry into what English means for Chinese speakers in collective terms. Nonetheless, while ELF research lends support to the grouping of ELF users in terms of their mutual engagement, how Chinese speakers of ELF can be grouped together to support the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ own ELF needs to be considered. This leads to the discussion of community, which is a key element in considering language legitimacy (e.g. Wang 2012). Community and ELF The notion of community is central to the understanding of how language works, develops and changes in real-life situations and how language interacts with various factors in social contexts (Wardhaugh and Fuller 2015). It is thus a key conceptual issue in ELF research (Ehrenreich 2009; Mauranen 2012; Seidlhofer 2011), which looks at the unprecedented sociolinguistic phenomenon that English is used as a global lingua franca by people who are from different first-language backgrounds. The notion of community basically concerns the grouping of people and demarcates members from non-members. A conventional way of grouping language speakers for the purpose of investigating language issues points to the concept of speech community, adopting geographical and/or social boundaries to study idealised homogeneous language groups (e.g. Labov 2006). The investigation of Englishes in NES countries and WE contexts follows this line and reveals how English is locally developed to suit the needs and wants in various speech communities and evolves into localised varieties closely tied to locally defined boundaries. However, speech communities are irrelevant for the research into ELF and unable to capture ELF as a phenomenon in intercultural settings that go beyond locally or physically defined boundaries. Given this, House (2003) proposes to adopt the concept of communities of practice (CoP), which is centered on ‘practice’ and detached from geographical boundaries. The proposed conception of community is now well received 154 Chinese English as a lingua franca as the mainstay of ELF research (e.g. Ehrenreich 2009; Jenkins 2007; Seidlhofer 2011). With membership emerging in joint engagement, communities take into shape because of what people do rather than where people are (from). This concept provides theoretical support for ELF in its own right. ELF speakers are acknowledged as active co-constructors of CoPs, where ELF speakers negotiate to achieve common ground showing their patterns of language use and project their identities through ELF as the medium of communication. Nonetheless, CoPs are not without limitations, as criticised in Ehrenreich (2009, Chapter 3 this volume). This paper argues that the focus on mutual engagement in the concept of CoPs does not leave the space for the understanding of ELF speakers who are from the same L1 backgrounds and is thus not appropriate for the investigation into Chinese ELF speakers. Some scholars consider the concept of ‘imagined communities’ as also relevant to ELF users (e.g. Jenkins 2011, 2014; Mauranen 2012; Wang 2015). This concept comes from Anderson’s (2006) work on nationalism. He argues that a nation is ‘an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’, while community members do not necessarily meet each other or even know each other (Anderson 2006: 6). For him, ‘communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined’ (Anderson 2006: 6). To put it differently, membership emerges in imagination and communities take shape in imagination. This concept emphasises ‘imaginedness’ and highlights the ideological dimension of community and membership. What follows discusses the concept of imagined community in detail in order to identify its relevance to the grouping of Chinese ELF speakers, which leads to the conception of an imagined community of Chinese ELF. First, it is not oriented towards ‘physical’ but ‘psychological’ spaces (Jenkins 2011, 2014: 37; Mauranen 2012: 18). This differentiates itself from both speech communities and CoPs. In terms of both speech communities and CoPs, scholars define what makes a community with the focus on what community members speak and do. As for imagined communities, what community members think makes a community makes a community. The concept of imagined communities sets no limitation on space in physical terms, with its analogy to the irrelevance of physical locations for ELF speakers’ intercultural encounters. Clearly, the focus on psychological spaces also opens up the possibility of going beyond time frames and drawing links between the past, the present and the future. While not much discussion has been conducted in the research into ELF, a few studies on language learner identity (e.g. Kanno and Norton 2003; Norton 2000; Norton and Kamal 2003) have provided references in this respect. For example, in Norton and Kamal’s (2003) study, an imagined community has a ‘future’ dimension, which captures the future relations among community members and relates to the present thinking about the future. Thus imagined communities ‘extend both spatially and temporally’ (Kanno and Norton 2003) and overcome the constraints that physically defined communities have. Second, the notion of imagined community is not based on communication but communion. In the traditional sense, a community is ‘a local unit, characterised for its members by common locality and primary interaction’ (Hymes 1962: 30). By contrast, in ‘imagined communities’, community members do not necessarily meet each other or even know each other but they conceive ‘a deep, horizontal comradeship’ (Anderson 2006: 7). The decentering of ‘primary interaction’ in the conceptualisation of community is relevant to ELF speakers who do not necessarily communicate with each other (Mauranen 2012). This creates the space for what Mauranen (2012) defines as ‘similects’, that is, L1-influenced L2 lects that L1 speakers use in paralleling engagement with speakers of different L1s. In addition, the focus on communion draws attention to the study of what draws members together. 155 Ying Wang In Anderson’s (2006) discussion of nation as an imagined community, comradeship is core to community, with an emphasis on emotional attachment to the imagined affinity and ‘cultural roots’ as fundamental adhesives. This differentiates imagined communities from speech communities, which are defined with the focus on language use, and CoPs, which are defined with the focus on practice. With ‘comradeship’ at the core of ‘imagined communities’, how community members draw boundaries concerns who they believe are in comradeship with them and who they do not. That is to say, drawing boundaries is not a top-down process related to political decisions or foreign policies. This aligns with the case of ELF where ‘the choice of language has developed through a kind of evolutionary process’ (Mauranen 2012: 23), that is, ELF is a natural choice of medium for international communication due to the needs and wants of speakers from different first-language backgrounds. Considering the applicability of imagined communities for ELF, Jenkins (2014: 37) makes a point that virtual affinity can be found in shared non-nativeness among ELF speakers and she further hypothesises that ‘there may be a feeling of virtual bonds among ELF speakers around the world, or among a particular sub-section of them, for example fellow East Asian ELF speakers’. While the hypothesis is yet to be verified in empirical data, research shows that ELF speakers from the same cultural backgrounds have attachment to their cultural roots in their use of English. For example, Chinese ELF users are willing to express ‘Chinese-ness’ in their use of ELF (Wang 2012). This resembles to some extent Anderson’s argument that cultural roots are adhesives that draw members together in their mental spaces. Third, members of imagined communities draw ‘limited’ or ‘finite’ boundaries in their imagination rather than regard the entire human race as belonging to the same nation (Anderson 2006). While physical localities are often irrelevant to ELF research (see Seidlhofer 2011), it is impossible to assume ELF speakers constitute a single and homogeneous global community (Ehrenreich 2009; Mauranen 2012). Mauranen (2012: 23) sees academia as an important domain for ELF research and argues that ‘academia as a whole is an imagined community’. The boundary is drawn between academic and nonacademic ELF users. Ehrenreich (2009) draws a line between language-focused and content-focused CoPs. While communities of ELF-speaking business professionals are often found to be content-focused and be relaxed with linguistic accuracy (e.g. Ehrenreich 2009, 2011; Kankaanranta and Planken 2010), language accuracy and the conformity to native English speakers’ English continue to be the focus of English language teaching industry (Jenkins 2012). In Wang’s (2012) study, a line is drawn between Chinese ELF users and non-Chinese ELF users who are considered as co-players in global communities of practice. She sees Chinese ELF users as a Chinese ELF community whose members are engaging in paralleling global communities of practice. For her, what makes a Chinese ELF community lies in Chinese ELF users’ identification with what she hypothesised as a Chinese ELF community. To put differently, the issue is whether Chinese ELF users conceive of themselves as members of a community co-constructed by them (Wang 2012). In short, boundaries beyond a geographical basis are necessary to suit different research interests in relation to ELF. Fourth, the concept of ‘imagined communities’ accepts independence and autonomy as an integral feature of communities. The political agendas surrounding a nation’s sovereignty have some resemblances to the agendas of ELF research, which is centered on ELF users’ legitimacy of using Englishes that do not conform to native English speakers’ English. The notion of sovereignty, as originated in the time of Enlightenment and Revolution shattering hierarchical structure of religions, implies an independent status, the call for pluralism as well as the dream for freedom (Anderson 2006). As for the case of ELF, ELF speakers adapt 156 Chinese English as a lingua franca English to suit their purposes and accommodate to the situations where they use English, which results in the difference between ELF and English as a native language. Given the global spread of English, the ownership of English has expanded beyond native English speakers, who are traditionally conceived as custody of English (Widdowson 1994). While native English speakers’ authority in English is challenged and to be challenged (Wang 2016), ELF speakers’ acceptance of their own way of using ELF is key to the construction of their communities. In short, a nation’s pursuit for independent status in the world system has resemblance to the call for the global ownership of English, which concerns ELF speakers’ legitimacy in their autonomous use of English. In short, the concept of ‘imagined communities’ allows for an extended research scope of ELF with the focus on ELF users’ decision on who they would like to align with. In this imagined affinity, ELF users have legitimacy of using English in the way that they consider as appropriate for their purpose of communicating with each other. Importantly, understanding the imagined affinity requires perspectives from ELF users. This leads to my investigation into Chinese ELF users’ perspective as to whether they see connection with each other and, if yes, how. The data as presented below shows that an imagined Chinese ELF community is emerging in Chinese ELF users’ mental space and offers space for the development of legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ own way of using ELF. An imagined Chinese ELF community The data comes from a three-year research project on Chinese speakers’ perceptions of their English in intercultural communication (Wang 2012). This includes questionnaire responses made by 502 university students and 267 professionals whose work involved frequent contact with non-Chinese professionals, as well as interviews with 24 university students and 11 professionals among those questionnaire respondents. Questionnaire responses present us with rich information regarding imagined affinity, imagined boundary, emotional attachment to Chinese cultural roots, and endonormativity. Interviews not only confirm these aspects but also allow for the understanding of how the participants perceive the future of Chinese speakers in international community. Necessarily, all these features are imagined with the role of English as a lingua franca that enables Chinese speakers to communicate with non-Chinese speakers. Affinity to an imagined global community An imagined affinity with a global community across different cultural backgrounds is evident in a few words that frequently occurred in the written responses to the five open questions in the questionnaire. A few buzz phrases are big global family (国际大家庭), global village (地球村), and world citizen (世界公民). Interestingly, many respondents conceive of the affinity as if it is in the process of developing. They use phrases such as globalisation (全球化), internationalisation (国际化) and going global (走向世界) in their comments on the status and the role of English in the contexts that are relevant to them. For example, If hoping to become a world citizen, you should master this lingua franca. [English is] a tool for information exchange in globalisation and for integration [into the global community]. (Questionnaire response) 157 Ying Wang The responses present an aspiration for global community membership and emphasise the role of English in the affiliation with an imagined global community that goes beyond the boundary of China. An imagined boundary within an imagined global community Questionnaire responses reveal a perceived multiplicity of identities constructed in Chinese ELF use. Chinese speakers are perceived as a collective whole and the ‘us–them’ relation exists between Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers within the imagined global community. There is a hierarchy of ELF speaking groups, with individual Chinese speakers of English at the lower end, overall Chinese speakers of English in the middle and the global community at the higher end. The role of English in establishing the relations is made explicit. That is, English is necessary for the integration (融入) into, merging (融合) with, and connection (接轨) to a global community. For example, As a member of the international family, [we] need the competence to get integrated with the most part of the globe. Popularising communicative competence in English will greatly promote the mutual understanding between us and the outside world. (Questionnaire response) This written response constructs multiple identities of Chinese ELF speakers, with Chinese speakers’ collective identity perceived in the reference to ‘a member of the international family’. The respondent talks about the benefit of ‘popularising communicative competence’ and implies that he has the benefit of Chinese speakers as a whole in mind. A boundary is drawn between ‘us’ as insiders and others as outsiders. The boundary arises in questionnaire respondents’ imagination and converges with the geopolitical boundary of China. Ideas about Chinese speakers’ use of English are often related to China’s engagement in the global community. For example, Chinese economy will be integrated into the world economy. It won’t close itself off. To some extent, the ability of speaking English will show that you are an international person, well educated, etc. (Questionnaire response) In this written response, a link is established among individual Chinese speakers, China and the global community in the respondent’s perceptual space. While English is regarded as a key to the crystallisation of this link, the affinity with China links Chinese speakers together who have a joint enterprise, that is, China’s economic development. A boundary is drawn between Chinese ELF speakers and other speakers of ELF in the global community. Emotional attachment to Chinese cultural roots According to questionnaire analysis, Chinese speakers are to some extent proud of Chinese culture and expect some cultural continuity in their use of English. The cultural continuity is not only meaningful for Chinese speakers’ own sake but also valuable for the development of English in the wider international community. Thus there reveals a sense of resistance to be assimilated with the ‘pure’ English. 158 Chinese English as a lingua franca Chinese language has its history for over two thousand years. What is associated with this language is its culture. For English to be developed into a real ‘world language’, I find it helpful to incorporate [a] sort of Chinese way of using language. (Questionnaire response) Apart from positivity for Chinese cultural continuity in the usage of English, it is common to find responses that restrict Chinese speakers’ own way of using English to the purpose of entertaining themselves. For example, Chinglish represents Chinese speakers’ sense of humour. For this reason, I often collect such use of English for the purpose of fun. However, I will avoid such use of English in the encounter with foreigners. (Questionnaire response) It is well accepted that humour is a matter of culture. For example, Jenkins (2014: 176) reports a comment by one of her research participants that ‘the laughing point is different’ in the jokes of British and non-British speakers of English. The questionnaire response illustrated above recognises a positive side of Chinglish, which is presumably bad English or awkward English produced by Chinese speakers (Hu 2004; cf. Li 2016). It highlights the value of Chinese speakers’ English in generating humour by bringing in personal experience. It sets a boundary as to who can appreciate the humour generated through Chinglish by indicating that Chinese speakers’ own way of generating humour is not suitable for intercultural communication. This response shows a paradox between Chinese speakers’ collective identity and their engagement with international community. Endonormativity Endonormativity in terms of English might be considered as equivalent to ‘sovereignty’ in terms of politics. The questionnaire data shows a divided view of endonormativity. In positive terms, some respondents claim the linguistic rights of Chinese speakers as an entire group and argue for Chinese speakers’ endonormative use of English. For example, I think Chinese people should have our own English and our own norms. (Questionnaire response) Some respondents draw attention to the pragmatic value of Chinese speakers’ English and makes a point to Chinese speakers’ own English as purpose-driven, as seen in the following written comments: [Chinese speakers] have their purpose of communicating ideas and [their English] is very practical. [Chinese speakers] use simplest words to express different ideas. Their English can be considered as practical. (Questionnaire response) An endonormative orientation to Chinese speakers’ English is also seen in some respondents’ speculation of language development. Those responses include comments on the influence of first languages on second-language acquisition. Interestingly, the speculation challenges 159 Ying Wang a traditional pursuit for authentic English and converges with some scholars’ (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mauranen 2012; Ranta 2009) proposal to reconsider first-language transfer in English as a second language. For example, People from any nations would have some difficulties in learning an additional language and inevitably be influenced by their first language. I think language involves development. As long as the language is intelligible, the language is acceptable. It is unnecessary to emphasise the authenticity and the standardisation. (Questionnaire response) The terms describe a kind of English with Chinese characteristics, which I think can be developed. Language itself involves integration and flexibility. Communication comes first. (Questionnaire response) To be fair, some written responses point to an exonormative orientation by associating L1 Chinese transfer with negative description. For instance, Sinocised English, [which is] disqualified English. [They are] a kind of English representing Chinese way of thinking and featuring Chinese accent, [that is,] unintelligible English. (Questionnaire response) The diverging orientations suggest a great controversy among questionnaire respondents on the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ English. The data reiterates Wang’s (2012, 2013) discussion that endonormativity is a thorny issue for Chinese speakers in conceptualising their own English, conflicting with exonormativity in Chinese speakers’ mental space. An imagined future In Norton and Kamal’s (2003) work, what community members hope for and foresee for the future makes an important dimension of language learners’ imagined identity. In the same vein, the data retrieved in this study presents a picture of an imagined future for Chinese ELF speakers. First, the data reveal a hope that endonormativity of Chinese speakers of English will be accepted by an imagined international community. Chinese speakers are perceived as an entire group and simultaneously an imagined member community contributing to an imagined international community. Interview participants talk about these two types of communities spontaneously in making comments on the role and status of English. Liting, for example, makes comments on the legitimation of Chinese speakers’ own English, when she was invited to make comments on the questionnaire at the beginning of the interview. Interviewer: Do you have any ideas about or comments on the questionnaire? Liting: You see, now there is American English, British English, hmm, I mean there are many kinds of English. Our Chinese speakers’ English should also be acknowledged. Its status should be raised. Hmm, I feel proud. I mean, if it is accepted by international society, as a Chinese speaker, I will have a sense of national pride. (Interview with a university student) 160 Chinese English as a lingua franca Liting overtly expresses her thoughts about the link among Chinese speakers’ English, international community and nationalism. In her view, Chinese speakers’ English is related to ‘national pride’. The possessive pronoun our implies a sense of ownership of English. Simultaneously, she regards ‘international society’ as superordinate to the group of Chinese speakers. While she believes that the international community decides the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ English, she vigorously speaks for the group of Chinese speakers that ‘our’ English ‘should’ be acknowledged. Second, a perceived value is given to Chinese speakers’ own English, with an emphasis on its contribution to the future making of English in an international community. Hewei, for instance, takes pride in Chinese culture, and considers the benefits of Chinese culture being embedded in Chinese speakers’ use of English and argues for Chinese speakers’ ownership in a subtle manner. By talking about the difference in ‘ideologies and cultures’ between Westerners and Easterners, he suggests that diversity would benefit the development of English. Hewei: Our Chinese culture actually, definitely it is profound and comprehensive. There’re a lot of things that foreigners don’t have in their cultures. If we involve it in our use of English, it helps to some extent the development of English. It will become more comprehensive, compatible with more ways of thinking. If so, I think, English will develop better into a language that integrates diversified ideas and contents. [English would] not only represent Westerners’ ideas, but also integrate with the Easterners’ ideologies and cultures. This will help English to develop into a more comprehensive internationalised language. (Interview with a university student) Third, the future of Chinese speakers’ own English in international communication is perceived as closely associated with the future of China in the world system. For example: Jun: […] in the future, if China’s influence increases, it [i.e. Chinese speakers’ English] would be welcome […] Because English, English involves a kind of standard [...] set by its providers. If the providers are powerful, definitely their standards will be promoted quickly; if the providers are not powerful enough, or we can say, if they have little discursive power, the standard will not be acknowledged by other countries, or others. It really depends on the discursive power, whether the country is powerful or not. (Interview with a businessman) Jun does not evaluate Chinese speakers’ English in itself but sees language as an issue of discursive power. When he talks about the future of Chinese speakers’ English, he relates it to the sociolinguistics of English in the global community. His view is made explicit that the legitimacy of Chinese speakers’ English depends on the position of China in the world system. That is, the future of Chinese speakers’ English is tied to the future of China. In turn, the endonormativity of Chinese speakers’ English is tied to the development of China. In a nutshell, the data presents how English, China and an imagined global community are mapped in the participants’ ideological space. Chinese speakers are seen as a member community contributing to an imagined global community. Where English is the link between an imagined Chinese community of ELF speakers and an imagined 161 Ying Wang global community, there is a belief, among some participants, that Chinese speakers’ own English serves its function and a hope, among other participants, for the endonormativity of Chinese speakers’ own English to be developed and to be accepted by the imagined global community in the future. Conclusion Previous research on ELF has challenged the tradition of evaluating ELF users’ Englishes with reference to established norms of English as provided by NESs, leading to the reconsideration of ELF users’ Englishes in their own right. The endeavour features a focus on deterritorialisation, with community being detached from national boundaries (Seidlhofer 2011). This chapter adds to the discussion on the issue of territoriality and the conceptualisation of community in the ELF research. The data suggests that an imagined ELF community is taking shape among Chinese ELF users with its endonormativity in developing. Their imagined Chinese ELF community seems to be a glocal space that serves as an interface between an imagined global community and an imagined Chinese community where Chinese culture and the national boundary are the glue that holds people together. The participants’ discussion of Chinese speakers’ own English is focused on the function of their English in intercultural communication, the link of their English with Chinese culture and national identity, as well as the aspiration for the acceptance of an imagined global community. In this sense, Chinese speakers’ own English is not defined in linguistic terms but in ideological terms, with the notion of China having implications for an imagined community of Chinese ELF speakers. The space for the myth of the NES ownership of English is shrinking to give way to a claim and an aspiration for an ownership of their own English by Chinese ELF speakers, which they negotiate with a respect for an imagined global community. Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 3 Ehrenreich, Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca 11 Kirkpatrick, The development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN Further reading Lo Bianco, J., Orton, J. and Gao, Y. 2009. China and English: globalisation and the dilemmas of identity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Norton, B. 2013. Identity and language learning: extending the conversation. 2nd edn. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pan, L. 2014. English as a global language in China: deconstructing the ideological discourses of English in English education. London: Springer. References Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined communities. London and New York: Verso. Baker, W. 2015. Culture and identity through English as a lingua franca: rethinking concepts and goals in intercultural communication. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Blommaert, J. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 162 Chinese English as a lingua franca Bolton, K. 2003. Chinese Englishes: a sociolinguistic history, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. 2012. Analyzing English as a lingua franca: a corpus-driven investigation. London and New York: Continuum. Eames, J.B. 1974. The English in China. London and New York: Curzon Press, Barnes & Nobel. Ehrenreich, S. 2009. English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: exploring business communities of practice. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 126–151. Ehrenreich, S. 2011. English as a business lingua franca in a German multinational corporation. Journal of Business Communication, 47, 408–431. Fang, F. 2015. An investigation of attitudes towards English accents at a Chinese university. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Southampton. Hall, R.A. 1944. Chinese pidgin English grammar and texts. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 64, 95–113. Han, L. 2007. ‘中国英语’研究现状分析 [Analyzing the current situation of ‘China English’ research]. 外语与外语教学 [Foreign languages and Their Teaching], 10, 28–32. He, D. and Li, D.C.S. 2009. Language attitudes and linguistic features in the ‘China English’ debate. World Engilshes, 28, 70–89. Henry, E.S. 2010. Interpretations of ‘Chinglish’: native speakers, language learners and the enregisterment of a stigmatised code. Language in Society, 39, 669–688. House, J. 2003. English as a lingua franca: a threat to multilingualism? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7, 556–578. Hu, X. 2004. Why China English should stand alongside British, American, and the other ‘World Englishes’. English Today, 20, 26–33. Hymes, D. 1962. The ethnography of speaking. In Gladwin, T. and Sturtevant, W.C. (eds) Anthropology and human behavior. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington. Jenkins, J. 2007. English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. 2011. Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 926–936. Jenkins, J. 2012. English as a lingua franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66, 486–494. Jenkins, J. 2014. English as a lingua franca in the international university: the politics of academic English language policy. London and New York: Routledge. Jenkins, J. 2015a. Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice, 2, 49–85. Jenkins, J. 2015b. Global Englishes. London and New York: Routledge. Jiang, Y. 1995. Chinglish and China English. English Today, 11, 51–53. Kanno, Y. and Norton, B. 2003. Imagined communities and education possibilities: Instruction. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 2, 241–249. Kankaanranta, A. and Planken, A. 2010. BELF competence as business knowledge of international operating business professionals. Journal of Business Communication, 47, 380–407. Kirkpatrick, A. and Xu, Z. 2002. Chinese pragmatic and ‘China English’. World Engilshes, 21, 269–279. Labov, W. 2006. The social stratification of English in New York city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Li, W. 2016. New Chinglish and the post-multilingualism challenge: translanguaging ELF in China. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5, 1–25. Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF: academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Norton, B. 2000. Identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity, and educational change, Harlow: Longman. Norton, B. and Kamal, F. 2003. The imagined communities of English language learners in a Pakistani school. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2, 301–317. Pennycook, A. 2007. Language as a local practice. London and New York: Routledge. Ranta, E. 2009. Syntactic features in spoken ELF: learner language or spoken grammar? In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 84–106. Reinecke, J.E. 1938. Trade jargons and Creole dialects as marginal languages. Social Forces, 17, 107–118. 163 Ying Wang Seidlhofer, B. 2011. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selinker, L. 1972, Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209–231. Wang, Y. 2012. Chinese speakers’ perceptions of their English in intercultural communication. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Southampton. Wang, Y. 2013. Non-conformity to ENL norms: a perspective from Chinese English users. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2, 255–282. Wang, Y. 2015. Chinese university students’ ELF awareness: impacts of language education in China. Englishes in Practice, 2, 86–106. Wang, Y. 2016. Native English speakers’ authority in English. English Today, 32, 35–40. Wardhaugh, R. and Fuller, J.M. 2015. An introduction to sociolinguistics. 7th edn. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Widdowson, H.G. 1994. The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28, 377–389. William, S.W. 1836. Jargon spoken at Canton. Chinese Repository, 4, 428–435. Yip, V. 1995. Interlanguage and learnability: from Chinese to English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 164 13 The status of ELF in Japan James F. D’Angelo Introduction The chapter begins with background information on English language attitudes and education in the Japanese context, from a historical and present-day perspective. The second part of the chapter outlines the potential value of ELF-informed views to this context, in contrast to a more traditional native speakerist-informed paradigm—primarily in societal domains. The chapter then goes on to investigate actual efforts to document and describe ELF in Japan. It looks at several research-related initiatives, including work on the Japan component of the Asia Corpus of English (ACE) project led by D’Angelo, and work underway at Waseda University under the direction of K. Murata, and touches briefly on several ELT-related efforts, both at the institutional level, and by individual professors and practitioners. The chapter considers challenges that lie ahead regarding ELF in Japan, in an attempt to evaluate the long-term impact that ELF may have on the Japanese context, especially in light of likely demographic changes in Japan’s population composition and increasing need for English in various domains. The chapter closes with a conclusion, and suggestions for further reading. Background on English In Japan This section provides a short introduction to historical and present-day attitudes towards English and English language education (henceforth ELT) in the Japanese context, especially with regard to how these attitudes may lend perspective to the relevance of English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF) for Japan. English came to Japan sporadically during the era of exploration, but the major influence of English on the archipelago came with the opening of the country by Commodore Perry and his black ships at the beginning of the Meiji Era, in 1868. At this time Dutch was already influential, and German was widely studied for the purposes of medicine and science. Mori Arinori, the first Japanese ambassador to the United States (1871–1873) and later Minister of Education, proposed abandoning the Japanese language in favor of English, and was an 165 James F. D’Angelo advocate of Westernization (Hall, 1973). In general, the Japanese are known for valuing authenticity and perfectionism—that there is a certain “correct” way of doing all things1— and this has extended to their privileging of native, “inner-circle” English varieties and a concomitant prescriptivist view of English: an entrenched influence that continues to this day (Reischauer 1995; Honna and Takeshita 1998; D’Angelo 2011). Since English education has been compulsory in Japan from seventh through twelfth grades since the early postwar era, and has been extended progressively into lower levels of elementary school since 2007 (first as an “activity”—not to be evaluated on the student’s report card), with it becoming a compulsory subject from fifth grade in 2011 (Guardian 2011), there has also long been an active ELT research community in Japan. For example, the bimonthly Japanese magazine Eigo Kyoiku (English Education), is in 2016 in its 65th volume, dating back to 1951! As a result, in spite of the mainly native orientation towards English, due to the widespread activities of the large research community one can find Japanese scholars working in every area of linguistics, applied linguistics, and English pedagogy. Japan was thus one of the first expanding-circle countries to be open to world Englishes (hereafter WE) and other pluralistic views of the English language which are precursors to the ELF paradigm. While the majority of Japanese scholars were influenced by mainstream cognitivist Second Language Acquisition Theory, those with an outward-looking attitude who attended international conferences and interacted with international scholars, inevitably became interested in variationist approaches to ELT. One of the first of these was Suzuki Takao (Suzuki 1973) who rejected placing America on a pedestal, and he was soon followed by Yasukata Yano, Sanzo Sakai, Nobuyuki Honna, Hiroshi Yoshikawa, Nobuyuki Hino, Aya Matsuda, Paul Matsuda, and others. Several of these scholars studied in the 1970s with English as an international language (henceforth EIL) founder Larry Smith at the East/West Center at the University of Hawaii/Manoa, and after his alignment with Braj Kachru in the mid-1980s, began to spread interest in WE in Japan.2 This chapter argues that having this key nucleus of WE/EIL/ELF-informed3 domestic scholars provides the support mechanism for further growth in ELF research and its application in the Japan context. Indeed, the majority of scholars who attended the World Englishes conference over the years are now regular attendees and presenters at the ELF conference. Potential value of ELF-informed views for Japan Many of the central tenets of ELF are well-suited to the Japan context. As Japan is in the Kachruvian “expanding circle,” which includes countries that were never colonized by America or Britain, and where English has no official status and is used in comparatively few internal domains (i.e. media, government, judicial, education, commerce), there is less reason for claims of an indigenized variety of Japanese English (D’Angelo 2013), as there might be in Singapore, India or Nigeria. Since English is used to a very limited extent among Japanese when no non-Japanese are present, it is mainly used in situations in Japan that are multinational in nature, or in a wide range of overseas encounters. Thus rather than focus on documenting the features of Japanese English (or looking at outdated WE-informed concepts such as “international intelligibility,” which tends to look only at recorded one-way interaction, and mainly phonological aspects of communication), pluricentric-leaning scholars in Japan—those already having interest in WE—have for the past 10 years begun to show more interest in ELF as the most useful paradigm. 166 The status of ELF in Japan ELF is centrally concerned with how users of English from different international backgrounds, each using their own idiolect of English, come together to negotiate meaning and accommodate to one another to reach mutual understanding. As Widdowson has said (2014), when ELF users interact, there is no common idiom, or no Gricean maxims that apply. As a result, the interlocutors are “languaging” or “idiomatizing” in a real-time fashion, developing a common idiom to reach common ground. Research findings have shown that ELF users are eager to meet their interlocutors halfway (even perhaps more than halfway!) and have a strong ability to comprehend and interpret the intentions of other ELF users—mainly nonnative speakers (NNS). Considering this reality, it doesn’t make sense to teach an American English model and an American idiom in Japan, since it is well documented that NNS outnumber NS today (Graddol, 2006; Crystal, 2007), and Japanese are more likely to come into contact with Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese and Germans than with Americans or Canadians. For Japanese, the key to proficiency in English is not having a high TOEFL or TOEIC score, but in developing a new kind of proficiency that draws on ELF and EIL as well. It is important to note, that whereas at one point EIL scholars drew a clear distinction between EIL and ELF, there is today less claim of fundamental differences between the concepts of EIL and ELF (Jenkins 2007, 2011). Matsuda, doing work primarily on Japan, was initially somewhat skeptical of ELF—as were other WE scholars who tended to place too much emphasis on ELF claims of the future development of LFE (Lingua Franca English) as a variety, rather than a function of language (Seidlhofer 2009). Yet more recently, Matsuda attended the ELF7 Conference in Athens, and was part of a panel devoted to ELF at the twenty-first IAWE Conference in Istanbul, organized by Turkish scholar Y. Bayyurt. This further strengthens the evidence that for expanding-circle scholars, ELF is the most relevant paradigm. While EIL may be considered to largely overlap with ELF, the EIL scholarly community currently has no conference or journal, so the acronym may be of decreasing currency in coming years. While in its early years ELF was mainly focused on syntactic usages of ELF-speakers (for example Breiteneder’s 2005 work on the “dropping” of the third-person singular “s”), it increasingly looks at cultural factors—which has been a more prominent focus in EIL work—as well. EIL scholar Sharifian (2009: 249) stresses that we each have our own “cultural conceptualizations,” and that “Intercultural, or meta-cultural, competence needs to be viewed as a core element of proficiency in English used for intercultural communication.” To over-rely on grammatical accuracy (based on NS norms), and to teach American or British pronunciation and culture, are to do a disservice to the real needs of Japanese ELF users. As Widdowson (2011, 2012) again points out, the speech and writing of most users of English around the world today will be filled with what he terms “non-conformities.”4 These are not errors per se, but forms of English that are influenced by a different reality from that of NS users. They have a different L1 and come from multilingual backgrounds. Their L1, their culture, their experiences will all contribute to a new idiom. The author’s own doctoral thesis supports the complexity of this reality (D’Angelo 2016). Forty-four graduates of the Chukyo University College of World Englishes (CWE), who graduated between 2006 and 2014, responded to a 27-item open-ended questionnaire, and confirmed that in their business and personal “transnational” interactions in English, they regularly come into contact with Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Koreans, Chinese, Sri Lankans, Zambians, Germans, Brazilians, Italians, Australians, and Indonesians. They stress that grammatical accuracy is not vital, exposure to many varieties is essential, and that learning how to negotiate with people from other cultures in English is a crucial skill. 167 James F. D’Angelo One student mentioned how hard it is, in her job with a major Japanese spark-plug manufacturer, to deal effectively with German and French customers. They are forceful, and she has needed to learn how to stand her ground with them. We live in an ELF-world today, and the sooner Japan recognizes this, the better. Efforts to document, describe, and promote ELF in Japan ELF was originally developed as a paradigm by various scholars in Europe. While we are all familiar with the work of Jenkins, Seidlhofer, Mauranen, Cogo, Ehrenreich, Dewey, Pitzl, and others, as early as the mid-1990s scholars such as A. Firth (1996), Jenkins (1996) and Meierkord (1998) were beginning to use the term. At a panel that looked at ELF at the 2009 IAWE Conference in Cebu (the Philippines) the moderator, Kingsley Bolton (2010), suggested why this may have been so. He indicated that there was an attempt to “import” the WE paradigm to Europe in the 1990s and it didn’t fit the sociolinguistic context, where there was not significant need for intra-national use of English. At the same time, he pointed out that after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it became much more difficult to get student visas in the US, and there was a shift in international students from the US, to the UK and across Europe. Other factors, including the increase in cross-border students brought about by establishment of the EU, and the increase in Chinese students around the world thanks to their government’s easing of travel restrictions in the early 2000s, may have further drawn attention to the need for research into ELF interaction. A similar phenomenon (on a smaller scale) occurred decades earlier for Larry Smith—first noticing Asians from 20 different countries interacting in English in Hawaii at the East/West Center—when first-hand exposure provided the impetus for his pioneering work on EIL. As the use of English spread further and further into various domains around the world, scholars in Asia also began to show interest in ELF. Kirkpatrick is perhaps the key player in this effort. Through his work in Australia and at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, he came into contact with Japanese scholar N. Honna, one of the leading proponents of a pluralistic/multicultural approach to English in Asia. Honna developed a wide range of contacts in the region among scholars in India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Russia. He was also connected with important ELT-related organizations within Asia, such as RELC—the Regional Language Centre—set up by ASEAN’s Ministers of Education Group (known as SEAMEO) in Singapore, with the blessing of Lee Kuan Yew. RELC was, and remains, an important icon for a non-native-centric view of English for Asia—a confidence that an NNS context could provide expertise in English. Many early WE scholars such as Edwin Thumboo, M.L. Tickoo, Ho Wah Kim, and Anne Pakir provided a valuable forum with their contributions to the RELC Journal. Honna was prescient in many ways, in that while a proponent of World Englishes, his main focus has been on “English as a multicultural language” and he has served as past president of the IAICS—The International Association of Intercultural Communication Studies. Like Hino, who has always portrayed himself as an EIL scholar more than a WE scholar, Honna also foresaw that for Japan, a paradigm such as ELF is a model that more closely portrays the international/intercultural uses of English that are important to the Japan context. Kirkpatrick had majored in Chinese as an undergraduate, and his familiarity with Asia made him a logical choice to compile a corpus of English in Asia. The usefulness and prominence of the EU-focused VOICE project headed up by Seidlhofer at the University of 168 The status of ELF in Japan Vienna led to a similar project for Asia (Kirkpatrick 2010). Originally entitled ELFiA (ELF in Asia), it was later renamed to “ACE”: the Asian Corpus of English. As is documented in other chapters in this volume, ACE is composed of groups who gathered data in 10 different Asian contexts, with 10 hours or recorded interaction from each context. Kirkpatrick asked the author of this chapter to head up the Japan component of the ACE corpus. The 10 hours of recording has been completed as of this writing, but ACE Japan lags behind the other contexts in that only roughly two hours of the recording have been transcribed. The ACE corpus itself came online in 2014, and is a valuable resource for scholars looking to research ELF across Asia. While the Japan component still needs much work to be brought online, there are fortunately Japanese participants in the recordings from other contexts, such as Brunei and the Philippines. Yet ultimately, to get a deeper understanding of Japanese participants’ behavior and handling of ELF interactions, it is necessary to bring online the entire 10 hours of Japan-based recordings, which is a priority of the author. From its inception, ELF has been corpus-driven, and having a corpus of actual ELF usage is a great advantage that ELF holds over EIL research, and one of the reasons for ELF’s growth and interest: ELF usage is well-documented and its data can be studied from syntactic, phonetic, lexical, pragmatic, discourse, and intercultural perspectives to truly demonstrate linguistic practices across boundaries. A more recent important development is the formation by Kumiko Murata of Waseda University in Tokyo, of an ELF Special Interest Group (SIG) within JACET: The Japan Association of College English Teachers. (JACET 2016) JACET currently boasts over 2,700 members and has a huge reach and influence within Japan. Whereas it is commendable that the above-mentioned JAFAE is completely dedicated to a pluralistic view of English, its reach is limited, with only 100–125 active members, and average attendance of only 35 participants at its two annual conferences. JACET by contrast, is a more mainstream organization, and its impact is high. Essentially every university in Japan has several members who belong to JACET. JACET has 60 different special interest groups,5 which makes for much competition for members’ attention. Still, every SIG meeting (SIGS are required to have one meeting every two months) is advertised by e-mail to all JACET members, so the awareness-raising ability of a SIG is high. To demonstrate this, as host of the July 2016 ELF SIG meeting, the author received inquiries from dozens of colleagues who are not normally in touch. The ELF SIG already has 30 members, and shows the potential to have an important impact on increasing ELF efforts in Japan. Prior to this development, Murata has been the recipient of several ongoing major ELFfocused research grants by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants in Aid for Scientific Research, Foundation B. She has hosted an annual “ELF International Workshop” for the past five years, which had been attended by the major founding figures of ELF including Jenkins, Seidlhofer, Widdowson, Pitzl, and others. These workshops are well-attended and further help to develop local scholars in Japan who are interested in conducting research into ELF topics. In addition, in Murata’s own PhD program, she has helped to develop an increasing number of PhD recipients whose main focus is ELF (Murata 2016). It should be noted as well that Hino at Osaka University is co-founder of the ELF SIG, and has also developed a growing cadres of EFL/EIL-focused scholars. The CWE at Chukyo University currently only offers a masters’ program but has also developed several young scholars who wrote their theses on ELF, and who are how teaching in local area high schools and universities. The ELF SIG, formed at the beginning of 2016, has not yet outlined its full research agenda, but promises to be the best vehicle to increase understanding of, appreciation for, and 169 James F. D’Angelo implementation of ELF-informed ideas across Japan in coming years. One of the research foci mentioned in the original proposal to create the SIG was the importance of the “Global 30” project—an effort to create a network of world-class universities in Japan that also offer certain majors of study in English. English as a medium of instruction (heretofore EMI) is a challenge in Japan higher education since it is difficult to have enough Japanese students of a sufficiently high English proficiency level to interact in the classroom toe-to-toe with international students from various backgrounds (Murata and Iino 2014; D’Angelo 2015). EMI goes hand in hand with ELF in today’s global education sector (Jenkins 2014), and ELF research can provide important insights into how Japanese university students can better cope with the reality of sharing an interactive, discussion-based classroom with an internationally diverse student population. Japanese students are extremely reticent to speak out in front of others, and this is intensified when the others may have better English skills. Another possible research initiative for the SIG may be to develop a new corpus of ELF in Japan. The author has attempted to communicate to the founding members that having the SIG contribute to completing transcription of the Japan component of the ACE corpus would be an important effort, but the prevailing mood seems to prefer assembling new/independent data. Still, if such a new effort was undertaken, if VOICE/ACE conventions were followed, the possibility of future sharing with ACE could be an option. A final note on the importance of the SIG is that JACET also has several recent SIGs whose interests may dovetail with ELF. SIG #26 is on World Englishes and cross-cultural understanding (founded by former CWE Dean Hiroshi Yoshikawa), SIG #41 is on English education in East Asia, and SIG #54 is devoted to English for academic purposes (EAP). Collaborative efforts among these SIGs could further strengthen the impact of ELF in Japan. While JACET membership is predominantly Japanese nationals, another large organization, The Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT), has a mainly native-speaker membership and also boasts nearly 3,000 members (JALT 2016). With its heavy NS orientation, JALT does not currently have SIGs on World Englishes, EIL, or ELF, but has in the recent years hosted ELF-aware scholars such as A. Matsuda, N. Hino, and S. Canagarajah as plenary speakers, so there is a trend towards openness to pluralism in JALT, and the timing is right for an ELF scholar to step in to fill this role. ELT-related ELF initiatives and reality in Japan ELF in education Regarding ELT efforts that would be informed by ELF research and insights, there are several programs in place. In 2002 Chukyo University established the CWE as referenced above, with a goal of making students more aware of varieties of English around the world, and having less of a native-speaker orientation. The CWE hosted a weekend workshop in cooperation with JAFAE in 2003 with talks by L. Smith, Hino and Honna, Sakai, Takao Suzuki, Y. Takeshita, P. Nihalani, and Braj and Yamuna Kachru. The CWE also hosted the 2006 IAWE Conference, part of which was a special panel dedicated to the work on EIL of Larry Smith. Over the years since then, the CWE has also hosted a series of lectures for students by leading WEs/EIL/ELF researchers including Dita, Pefianco Martin, Llurda, Dayag, and Mahboob. While the concept of EIL or ELF is not integral to the entire curriculum, all students take an Introduction to World Englishes class (the last three weeks of which covers ELF and EIL) as freshmen, and are required to visit Singapore for a three-week study tour. These undergraduate students do not acquire a deep understanding of ELF, but their raised 170 The status of ELF in Japan awareness makes the reality of ELF sink in later, either when they do a year abroad in Italy, Finland or Korea, or when they get out into the working world (D’Angelo 2016). It is interesting to note that even when bound for the US, CWE year-abroad students find most of their friends are from Korea, Turkey, and Brazil. Many CWE students expressed that they now see the reality of “World Englishes.” Hino also has made significant efforts at Osaka University to introduce ELF/EIL to his undergraduate and graduate students. With his graduate students especially, they are mixed with a significant percentage of international students thanks to Osaka U. being one of the highly competitive imperial universities. Thanks to the Global 30 project, Keio University, Waseda University, Hiroshima University, Nagoya University, and others are wrestling with introducing EMI programs to their curriculum, where ELF issues are an everyday reality. One of the concerns for expanding ELF in such settings is the reluctance of many Japanese faculty members, in spite of their ability to write and deliver academic papers in English, to actually use English in the classroom. A foreign professor at Hiroshima University has administered an extensive questionnaire on attitudes of Japanese faculty towards teaching in English, and found considerable resistance to lecturing in English (Sponseller 2015). In one effort specifically given the ELF moniker, Oda at Tamagawa University has created a Center for English as a Lingua Franca (Tamagawa University 2016). The Center has an office area and open space for teachers and students to use. While Tamagawa does not have an actual English major or EMI program, Oda has made an effort to bring in teachers with an ELF research background or from non-native contexts such as the Philippines. The Center is a resource for mainly part-time teachers who teach required English skills classes for other departments, but does not have a mandate to conduct teacher training in ELFinformed methods, so its impact may still be limited at this point. Oda currently serves on the Board of Asia TEFL, a very large ELT organization in this region, and his influence among Japanese academics could help to spread ELF efforts to other universities around Japan. One final area in education to address is secondary education. While Japan is still very grammar-translation and test oriented in junior and senior high schools, change is beginning to occur there as well. Textbooks are showing an increase in the number of characters who come from, and topics that relate to, non-native backgrounds (Kawashima 2009). There is also increased interest in “Active Learning” as teachers attempt to introduce more communicative methods into their classrooms. For over 25 years the JET program (Japanese English Teachers) has existed, which has imported mainly NS recent college graduates to Japan to serve as “assistant language teachers” at Japanese secondary schools, to give the students a feel for “living English.” While this program has often been criticized as reinforcing an NS-bias, the number of NNS JETs has increased over the decades (Kawashima 2009), including those from South Africa, the Bahamas, Singapore, The Philippines, and India/Pakistan. In one recent example of the kind of grass roots change that is possible, an American former international student at CWE, now working as a JET, invited the author to give a keynote at the annual JET workshop held in Shizuoka, Japan in November 2016—an event to be attended by over 1,000 JETs and local teachers. This is the type of rare opportunity to reach a broader audience that can only occur once a critical mass of smaller efforts by individual ELF-aware scholars is made. I hope to see more such opportunities in the future. ELF in business ELF is the reality for Japanese business people around the world today. While at one time much of Japanese trade was conducted with America and the West, Y. Kachru pointed out 171 James F. D’Angelo as early as 2003 that data from the Japanese Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Communications indicated that Japan’s trade with non-inner circle countries “far exceeded that with native English speaking areas of the world” (Kachru 2003: 40). This trend has only increased, and Japanese business people have to be prepared to interact in English with ELF users from all over the world on a regular basis (D’Angelo 2016). Educational programs at the secondary and university level should be preparing students for this reality, but it requires a consistent and sustained effort. Developments such as international discount clothing maker UNIQLO to make English its official language for all meetings, even among all Japanese participants, and the use of English as the official language at Nissan/Renault, show an increased commitment to ELF in business. It remains to be seen whether this trend will increase, but it should be followed with interest. The role of JICA—The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA 2016) should also not be underplayed, as Japan is one of the largest providers of international aid projects, and there is a strong need for ELF among JICA representatives. Yamami 2015 demonstrates that among parents with work experience in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, and also among those with higher levels of English proficiency, there is much more appreciation of ELF, and less of an NS proclivity. One positive sign of an increased openness to the reality of ELF in Japan among business people, is the recent demand for books on Indian and other varieties of English in Japanese book store chains. Professor Enokizono of CWE, a fluent Hindi and Urdu speaker, and expert on the subcontinent, has authored two recent books on Indian English that are selling briskly. His recent book on developing listening comprehension skills for Indian English (Enokizono 2016) indicates that Japanese business people are eager to adapt to ELF-like settings. Challenges ahead for ELF in Japan ELF faces a more difficult context in Japan (and elsewhere in Asia) than in EU countries. English is certainly used widely in business in Asia, but the majority of Japanese may still believe that the goal of studying English is to reach native-like proficiency. Japan does not possess the depth of penetration of internationalization of its population as one might find in Europe, and on university campuses in Austria, The Netherlands, Sweden, and even Italy and France. Whereas in Europe a large percentage of research is conducted in English, in Japan almost every field of inquiry still has much of its fundamental research written in Japanese—even if later, key studies are then published in English. Japan has powerful translation abilities, and most of the best known texts in various fields are translated in Japanese. In contrast, the University of Helsinki project “WRELFA”: the Written Corpus of Academic ELF (WRELFA 2015), draws on 372,000 words of academic research blogs, 330 PhD examiner reports in English, and a Scientific ELF Corpus of 759,000 total words with writers from 10 different first language backgrounds. This fascinating compilation of ELF data would be unconscionable in Japan. An important step to increase the status of ELF in Japan would be for the small but growing ranks of academics committed to ELF to join hands with leading business professionals who see the need for ELF, to launch projects to promote understanding of the paradigm. For example, the inadequacy of traditional measures of testing English proficiency, such as the TOEIC or TOEFL, has been repeatedly pointed out by EIL and ELF scholars (Lowenberg 2012; Shohamy 2014). In terms of business leaders, K. Ito, a CWE professor who was formerly managing director of Toyota India, in a recent plenary address (Ito 2016) mentioned that for 172 The status of ELF in Japan personnel officers in Japan, the TOEIC test is not a good indicator of an employee’s ability to succeed when sent overseas to Delhi. Perhaps such scholars and business leaders could join together to develop a more valuable form of testing. Conclusion ELF has made inroads into Japan at a rapid rate over just the past five years, demonstrating the great vitality and usefulness of the paradigm. ELF makes much more sense for Japan than world Englishes, since in Japan the main uses of English are in international, rather than intranational domains. ELF can provide Japanese users with more confidence in their English medium interactions, since it does not privilege native speakers, and can raise awareness that each user’s unique “idiolect” is what they naturally bring to any ELF situation. ELF can be a significant help to implementing a more effective ELT in Japan, as well as a paradigm to help Japanese business/science/medical professionals be more effective in their use of English. While Japan is not yet as fertile a ground for ELF as continental Europe, efforts such as the “Global 30” have brought young scholars from Gambia, Uganda, Indonesia, Vietnam, and countless other contexts to the campuses of the top Japanese graduate programs. In addition, efforts of JICA to help developing nations, Japan’s increased focus on business in Asia and South Asia, and its role in ASEAN + 3 (ASEAN plus Japan, Korea, and China), all make it beneficial for Japanese users of English to become effective ELF users. The status of ELF is rising in Japan, but the progress of this increase in status requires considerable effort from the ELF-committed academic community to take full advantage of what ELF has to offer, lest Japan revert to more NS, prescriptivist paradigms. Notes 1 Whether this be the tea ceremony, flower arranging, judo, archery, or speaking English. 2 The 2nd, 6th and 12th IAWE Conferences were all held in Japan, between 1995 and 2012. 3 While early work on ELF may have been more features-oriented and less cross-cultural communication oriented that traditional work in EIL, for the purposes of this chapter they are considered very close in meaning. ELF does however, have the advantage of established corpora, and a more robust and evolving research agenda. 4 This term is perhaps more useful that the WE efforts to define non-native usages, such as “deviations,” “diversions,” etc. 5 It is perhaps a small triumph that ELF is JACET’s 57th SIG, while one dedicated to CEFR (which might be considered less ELF-friendly, or more oriented towards “standard” English?) is the 58th. Related chapter in this handbook 39 Suzuki, Liu and Yu, ELT and ELF in the East Asian contexts Further reading D’Angelo, J. (2013) Japanese English: Refocusing the discussion. Asian English Studies. 15: 99–124. Hino, N. and S. Oda (2015) Integrated practice in teaching English as an international language (IPTEIL): A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan. In Y. Bayyurt and S. Akcan (Eds.) Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca. Munich: De Gruyter. Murata, K., Ed. (2016) Exploring ELF in Japanese academic and business contexts: Conceptualisation, research and pedagogic implications. London: Routledge. 173 James F. D’Angelo References Bolton K. (2010) World Englishes and English as a lingua franca: A comparison of approaches with particular reference to English in the Asian context. Keynote Speech, the Fourth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Hong Kong Instittue of Education, May 26, 2011. Breiteneder, A. (2005) Exploiting redundancy in English as a European lingua franca: The case of the “third person -s”. Unpublished MA Thesis: University of Vienna. Retrieved 20 June, 2011 from www.univie.ac.at/voice/page/abstracts/breiteneder_2005.pdf. Crystal, D. (2007) English as a global language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Angelo, J. (2016) A broader concept of World Englishes for educational contexts: Applying the WE Enterprise to Japanese higher education curriculum. Unpublished doctoral thesis, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus library, South Africa, B. Van Rooy and S. Coetzee-van Rooy advisors. D’Angelo, J. (2015) Nurturing EMI in broad-based Japanese higher education: The case of Chukyo University. In Murata, K. (Ed.) Waseda Working Papers in ELF, 4: 219–228. D’Angelo, J. (2013) Japanese English: Refocusing the discussion. Asian English Studies. 15: 99–124. D’Angelo, J. (2011) What nearby models can Japan consider in the era of globalized higher education? Journal of College of World Englishes, 14: 1–20. Eigo Kyouiku (English Education Magazine) (2016). 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JALT College and University Education SIG Conference, Sugiyama University, Nagoya, Sept 26, 2015. Suzuki, T. (1973) Words in context: A Japanese perspective on language and culture. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Tamagawa University (2016) English as a lingua franca program. Retrieved June 26, 2016 from www. tamagawa.jp/en/highereducation/efl.html Widdowson, H.G. (2014) ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca (4)2: 359–372. Widdowson, H.G. (2012) ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1): 5–26. Widdowson, H.G. (2011) Only connect: The wider implications of ELF. Distinguished plenary lecture: The Fourth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca. Hong Kong Institute of Education, May 28, 2011. WRELFA Project (2015) The corpus of written academic English. Retrieved June 28, 2016 from https://elfaproject.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/wrelfa-written-corpus-of-academic-elf/commentpage-1/ Yamami, Y. (2015) Japanese parental beliefs on language learning and awareness of changing demographics of global language use. Unpublished Masters’ thesis. Chukyo University College of World Englishes. 175 14 ELF in Brazil Recent developments and further directions Telma Gimenez, Michele Salles El Kadri and Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo Introduction As we write this chapter, a major turn in our foreign language education policy has taken place, with English replacing Spanish as the compulsory subject at high school level via a presidential decree. As it would be expected, this is not without angry rebuttals from the academic community that sees in the initiative another move towards a neoliberal vision of education and one that clearly marks the connections between language and the economy. That political decision, largely influenced by the private sector interests and in the name of economic recovery, represents a big change in relation to a multicultural perspective that has, if only on paper, been endorsed in the last decades. It is true, though, that making the offer of Spanish compulsory at high school level in 2005 challenged that open approach to the teaching of foreign languages, but the non-obligation of students attending classes was a manoeuvre that kept the spirit of multilingualism alive.1 The fact that the teaching of English is now compulsory at high school level is, therefore, a sign that times are changing. Brazil’s ranking in the world economy gives it a privileged status among the leading nations. Our development has been strongly tied to global flows and English plays an important role in our political and strategic goals. The marriage between language and economic development could be more easily seen in the largest academic mobility program launched by the government, the “Science without Borders Program” (Szundy, 2016). As part of the higher education and research internationalization efforts, the federal government invested heavily in scholarships for undergraduate students to carry out part of their studies abroad, in “universities of excellence”. It was soon discovered that proficiency in English was a fundamental requirement, since most of those universities were in the English-speaking world or in countries where the leading universities were adopting English as the medium of instruction. While this would suggest that an ELF perspective would be readily embraced and greatly enhance the teaching of this language in schools across the nation, “native speakerism” seems to be the predominant model. It is in the context of the increasing visibility of English both in higher education through movements to internationalize the universities and in schools that are now being called upon 176 ELF in Brazil to make English compulsory, that we will address how ELF has been perceived, studied and implemented in our country in the last decade. First, we will discuss the rise of English in higher education due to the perceived demands to internationalize; then we will review studies that have adopted an ELF perspective and what they tell us about English in Brazil. Against this backdrop we will reflect on potential directions for ELF research as part of a critical agenda in Applied Linguistics in our country. Internationalization, English and language ideologies It is well known that universities around the world have been pressured to adopt internationalization policies in order to demonstrate their relevance and quality (Hudzik, 2011). Although the reasons to connect local researchers and students to a wider network of science production and dissemination may vary, it is undeniable that rankings have been one of the key tools in this process and a competitive ethos has dominated what can now be considered the global market of higher education. Brazilian universities were gradually acknowledging that need when the federal government launched in 2012 an ambitious program to qualify researchers by offering scholarships mainly to undergraduate students in technological areas to pursue part of their studies abroad in “universities of excellence”. The Science without Borders (SwB) program marks a turning point in the internationalization of higher education in Brazil, with its goal to “promote the consolidation and expansion of science, technology and innovation in Brazil by means of international exchange and mobility”. Among the purposes of such initiative, the government wanted to “induce the internationalization of universities and research centers in Brazil by encouraging the establishment of international partnerships and a meaningful review of their internal procedures in order to make the interaction with foreign partners feasible” (Ciência sem fronteiras 2012). After four years, the program managed to give 73,353 scholarships to undergraduate students, according to the control panel available for public consultation at the program website,2 and initial impact studies are being made to establish the policy effects on the development of science and technology produced in the country. At the moment the majority of the evaluations are based on anecdotal evidence, although some of the studies on SwB tried to use objective indicators such as the information provided in the returning students’ CVs (Sarmento, Thiago and Andreotti 2016). In the study of a small cohort of students who went to Canada in the initial phase of the program, those authors found that many of the returning students seemed to have understood their experience as one that focused mainly on academic and professional dimensions. They did not necessarily develop other capacities envisaged by the program, such as those related to “entrepreneurship, competition and innovation”. While the benefits of the program are challenged by some and praised by others, the new phase announced recently by the authorities will exclude undergraduate students, with the argument that it is too expensive to maintain that number of students abroad for one year or more. No matter how Science without Borders is designed in its next phases, it has already caused a great impact on language education practices in universities, especially in relation to the teaching of English. When the program was launched, it was soon discovered that the undergraduate students lacked the necessary proficiency to attend classes in English-speaking universities, leading to the creation of another important component of the internationalization efforts in Brazil: a large-scale national English language education program – English without Borders (EwB), 177 Telma Gimenez et al. later renamed Languages without Borders (LwB) (Gimenez 2016). This program illustrates the interconnections between internationalization of higher education and English, and exposes the linguistic ideologies underlying its pedagogical decisions and actions. As Szundy (2016: 104) puts it, Despite the growing research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) and transidiomatic practices within the fields of applied language studies, gatekeeping efforts to maintain mainstream native English standard varieties, mainly the American and British ones, as yardsticks of academic and professional mobility remain vigorous within educational markets. In a similar vein, Gimenez (2016) had already discussed how the native-speaker ideology remains implicitly endorsed by the program thanks to a market-oriented view of education, that favors commodified testing and varieties. After analyzing the institutional discourses of LwB through its website, Szundy (2016) concludes that the native Standard North-American variety is the English legitimized by the program and closely associated with the proficiency Brazilians need to achieve in order to participate in international universities and research centers, a conclusion similar to that presented by Gimenez and Passoni (2014). The fact that the world of policy-making seems to go in a direction opposite to many academics who advocate a lingua franca approach to English reveals the tensions inherent in the teaching of English for internationalization and poses challenges to researchers in this field and it is their work that we discuss next. ELF voices In this section, we will present an overview of how ELF has been perceived, studied and implemented in our country. To reach this aim, we will draw on three reviews of studies focusing on ELF in Brazil and one recent edited book. In addition to giving this overview of ELF in our national context, we will also focus on the results of our investigations carried out in our state (Paraná) and in our local context of work.3 These publications will enable us to present both national and regional perspectives, helping to create a wider picture of the issues involved in ELF in our country. ELF in our national context In order to portray a picture on ELF in our national context, we draw on three main studies (Calvo, El Kadri and Gimenez 2013; Bordini and Gimenez 2014; Grano 2016). Calvo, El Kadri and Gimenez (2013) focused on Brazilian studies about ELF between 2005 and 2011, investigating the following sources: a) CAPES database of dissertations and theses; b) Google Scholar; c) Brazilian journals in the area of (applied) linguistics; d) proceedings of national events; and e) a recent collection of papers on this subject, edited by Gimenez, Calvo and El Kadri (2011). By using the keywords English as a lingua franca, English as an international language and English as a global language, the authors found out that the majority of them focused on conceptual reflections about ELF, with few investigations concentrating on empirical data or providing practical examples of how to implement ELF in the curriculum. They also pointed out that for the investigated Brazilian researchers, the English language is undergoing change and being reshaped by the many contacts between people from different 178 ELF in Brazil linguistic settings, moving away from the native-speaker norms. Those authors found ELF to be a promising area in Brazil and pointed out the increasing number of discussions involving ELF in seminars and congresses. Additionally, they considered that not only was a lingua franca approach challenging conceptualizations of language but also that those reflections were being introduced in teacher education programs. Bordini and Gimenez (2014) complemented that survey by examining publications in similar sources but extended it to the period 2005–2012 by using the key terms: English as a lingua franca, English as a global language, English as an international language and English as a multinational language. As it would be expected, they found similar results, and indicated the gap in studies that looked at ELF within a linguistic perspective, i.e. the need for studies that analysed the interactions between Brazilians participating in lingua franca interactions. That result was probably linked to the understandings of ELF revealed in the surveyed studies: “they bring the meaning of international communication of the language, especially due to the fact that the number of nonnative speakers has surpassed the number of native speakers” (Bordini and Gimenez 2014: 29). Obviously, the recognition that English is used for international communication is not sufficient to endorse an ELF approach to language teaching, although most of the investigations were carried out with English language professionals (students from Letras undergraduate courses and English teachers), demonstrating that pedagogical concerns were central to the reviewed authors. A more recent review carried out by Grano (2016) analysed the proposals for English language teaching following an ELF perspective for the period 2012–2015 in CAPES Database of Journals (Portal de Periódicos) and at Google Scholar, using the keywords English as a lingua franca, English as an international language and English as a global language. In a second search, these keywords were combined with the word teaching. The author found that the studies focused on ELF as a reconceptualization of English and its teaching that addressed issues of culture, phonology, intelligibility and teaching materials. It seems that researchers are moving forward in linguistic descriptions as “part of the most recent studies addressed the interactions in ELF and they were not restricted to derive implications for teacher education” (Grano 2016: 10). While there is a plethora of recent publications addressing language policies and the English language in Brazil (e.g. Gimenez 2015; Miranda and Rodrigues 2015; Siqueira 2015; Storto ad Biondo 2016; Martinez 2016; Abreu-e-Lima and Moraes 2016; Gimenez and Passoni 2016), only a few problematize what is meant by ELF in the classroom. An attempt to tackle the issue was carried out by Gimenez, El Kadri and Calvo (in preparation (a)) by putting together a collection entitled English as a Global Lingua Franca and Language Education: A Brazilian Perspective. The purpose was to identify those academics who had expressed interest in addressing ELF from a pedagogical perspective. The aim was to illustrate how ELF has been dealt with in teacher education programs. The volume consists of three parts: i) a conceptual one aiming at critically discussing the concept of a global language and its implications for teaching/teacher education in our context; ii) a section in which beliefs about ELF are explored with teachers and learners; and iii) a practical section with examples of how English as a lingua franca has been dealt in language courses and teacher education programs. Despite having 10 chapters, only 3 presented practices that incorporated ELF in teacher education programs (Gimenez, El Kadri and Calvo in preparation (b); Duboc in preparation; Porfirio in preparation). Most of the other papers presented concepts that should guide educational practices within an ELF perspective. This suggests that educators consider challenging 179 Telma Gimenez et al. English in terms of its status as a foreign language, the goals to be achieved and its role in a global world should be at the forefront of English language teaching. However, what this means in terms of the linguistic forms and models is unclear. According to those authors, teaching English from a critical perspective may be the key to having access to cosmopolitanism while reassessing local relations (Zacchi in preparation). Zacchi’s point of view is that “the idea of connecting global Englishes with local histories takes into account the position of lingua franca assumed by English in past decades, but doing away with the imperialist bias”. To Zacchi (in preparation) it means to step away from the perspective of English as an imperialist language, on the one hand, and teaching it as a commodity, on the other. He believes it would be more suitable to explore English as hegemonic. Its use may be subversive to the extent that it promotes locality: to him, it would result in a situated teaching that allows for the refashioning of students’ identities. No longer just consumers or guardians of the language. Other points of view are that critical literacy as a form of posthuman pedagogy along with its theoretical assumptions and pedagogical implications presents a suitable alternative for the work in ELT from an ELF perspective (Jordão and Marques in preparation). Jordão and Marques support such a view by stressing that meaning-making is as an on-going process of dialogical dialogue, that is, the searching for the creation of spaces where different meanings can be negotiated. It means to understand discourse in social practice, marked by relations of power and negotiation, thus not being neutral or independent of subjectivity. To them, it would mean to “be local in ELT”, that is, constructing agency for teachers and students of English, helping them to achieve ownership over ELF, to build awareness of their own and other’s meaning-making practices, shortcomings and potentialities in language. A third view is the idea that an intercultural approach should be adopted (Siqueira in preparation). Siqueira argues that English should be taught based on notions of interculturality, difference and interpersonal relations by exploring the roles English plays in their local cultures and the cultures of their possible future interlocutors. To him, linguistic knowledge should be linked to other culturally related phenomena in light of the current context of globalization. In general, to those higher education practitioners, ELF is important for three reasons: i) the linguistic choices a teacher makes in the classroom reflect larger ideologies of dominance, internationalization and/or knowledge in our current context of globalization; ii) it helps them advance their comprehension of culture and intercultural awareness, and to deal with local and global cultural phenomena in more informed ways; iii) it allows them to better position themselves regarding the politics of English in today’s age, and how it can impact their lessons. However, as we can see, they seem to engage more easily with ELF as a label that captures their wish to move towards a critical perspective on ELT; they have more difficulty in translating it into practical teacher education activities beyond reading and discussion of what English means in today’s world. ELF in our regional context The authors of this chapter have been engaged in attempts to introduce ELF in teaching. Three of our studies investigated i) ELF in teacher education programs (El Kadri, Calvo and Gimenez 2014); ii) ELF in a specific teacher education program and an analysis of the material produced by the students who attended the course (Gimenez, Calvo and El Kadri 2015); 180 ELF in Brazil iii) ELF in a didactic unit produced for an online teacher education program (El Kadri, Calvo and Gimenez 2017). The study conducted by El Kadri, Calvo and Gimenez (2014) examined to what extent an ELF perspective had informed the curriculum of English language teacher education programs in the state of Paraná. The data was gathered through an open-ended questionnaire responded the educators of seven universities from the state. The analysis of their responses suggested that there is the recognition that ELF is an important perspective to be introduced into initial teacher education programs as many of them affirmed familiarity with the subject, although we could not assess their understanding of ELF. Results also indicated that ELF is addressed mainly in the pedagogical component of the program, and not widespread among the teaching staff, suggesting that, in general, traditional language assumptions are not challenged in exclusive language-related courses, thus resulting in isolated attempts and initiatives by those who had contact with the ELF literature. Investigating the students’ understandings in the course “English as a lingua franca”, Gimenez, Calvo and El Kadri (2015) presented a description of the optional course offered to pre-service teachers in order to raise awareness about ELF. The authors analyzed the production of teaching units as the materialization of the participants’ understandings. The general aim of the course was to promote awareness on the differences between English as a foreign language (EFL) and ELF regarding its learning in the Brazilian context. Specifically, it aimed at i) introducing some basic references on English and its global spread; ii) discussing ELF and the implications of the de-centering of the native speaker as a norm; iii) familiarizing the students with some grammatical and discursive features in transcultural communication through the analysis of ELF corpora; and iv) analysing teaching materials according to the discussions above. The production of teaching units was one of the instruments used to assess the students in the course. Through the analysis of the units the authors captured the participants’ views on ELF and the pedagogical implications they identified. In general, the authors indicated that for those pre-service teachers: a) an ELF perspective is about different English varieties (as well as accents) to be brought in the classroom; b) intelligibility is more important than achieving a standard native-speaker variety; c) ELF is related to social/ cultural themes although in a stereotypical way; c) the global and the local are connected, with the students reflecting about the realities in other countries and their own context; d) an ELF perspective can be more easily introduced in activities that privilege oral comprehension and production. In the analysed units, the authors then recognized echoes of the literature on ELF, but due to its short duration, there was insufficient time to include all the aspects from the ELF perspective they considered relevant. Despite this caveat those authors assessed the experience positively, since it moved the participants away from a strict EFL perspective. Another investigation (El Kadri, Calvo and Gimenez 2017) focuses on an initiative to incorporate ELF through a unit in a course that was part of an online program attended by pre-service English language teachers in a public university. Our findings were based on the analysis of the unit according to two instruments: a) a checklist that contained some characteristics associated with ELF according to the literature, and b) the course instructor and tutors’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire. The unit included problem-solving and argumentative tasks, but showed a limitation in proposing an articulation of ELF with teaching/didactic practices; that is, the unit had a more reflective character but it did not bring some tasks in which the pre-service teachers could plan lesson or didactic units articulating some of ELF implications. For the authors, “if this aspect were considered, the future teacher would have 181 Telma Gimenez et al. the chance to think more about the English classroom and their roles as teachers”. The activities were designed to get the student teachers’ cognitive engagement with ELF but lacked questioning some of its assumptions. Our assessment was that if the course had been longer, it would have been relevant to include tasks to check the participants’ understandings by asking the student teachers to plan lessons or course units taking an ELF perspective into account, or even to pose problems (in vignettes, for instance) and ask them to provide solutions. These reflections are significant because they are an indication that there have been attempts to engage with ELF issues in teacher education in Brazil. The pedagogical implications remain relevant because the teaching of English is gaining increasing importance in the country, as we have stressed in the introduction. These experiences are far from ideal, but they signal a movement towards incorporating perspectives that challenge the status quo and the normativity that has guided our EFL traditions. Concluding remarks In this chapter we presented a (partial) picture of how the English language has been addressed by policy-making and how an ELF perspective has been received in academic circles in Brazil, by reviewing some of the studies recently carried out. We introduced issues related to policy decisions regarding the teaching of English in relation to internationalization efforts in higher education and their reinforcement of normative views of language. The tensions inherent in the teaching of English for internationalization and the ELF voices represent the major challenges for English language teaching in Brazil today. Despite the context of internationalization being particularly suited to a lingua franca perspective, given that academics are being pushed to function in international circles, the world of policy-making seems to go in a different direction by reinforcing native speakerism. The review of some of recent studies revealed that a critical perspective to English has been closely associated with ELF, suggesting that it is an approach that, together with others derived from postcolonial perspectives (such as World Englishes) allows the deconstruction of traditional ways of teaching English. To us, approaching ELT from an ELF perspective would be an empowering one, because it would allow us to challenge and actively struggle against monolingualism and beliefs tied up with English imperialism. It would allow teachers to focus on questioning normative views on language and education; it would allow teachers to explore, together with learners what we mean by communication and how power relations come into play when we use English. That can have a transformative effect. As Dewey (2014) suggests, questioning assumptions can be a big step forward in constructing other pedagogical practices that are more responsive to local needs and aspirations. Our reflections indicate that a critical agenda in language teaching in the context of internationalization cannot leave aside the discussions carried out by ELF researchers and practitioners. Following Paulo Freire’s steps, we believe the adoption of that perspective in ELT would be liberating for both teachers and learners. Notes 1 According to the law (Lei 11.161), Spanish should be offered by high schools but attendance was not compulsory, in order to avoid conflict with the national law for education (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Brasileira), which establishes that a foreign language is compulsory but schools are free to choose which language to offer. 182 ELF in Brazil 2 www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br/web/csf/painel-de-controle. 3 The national initiative mentioned in the section above was followed closely at the state level in Paraná, due to the fact that the funding included only federal universities and not the state ones. Paraná has seven state universities and they were left out of EwB. For this reason, in 2014 a regional program was designed under the suggestive name of “Paraná Fala Inglês” (Paraná Speaks English). With similar goals of preparing the academic community to apply for the available scholarships, the program aimed at teaching the learners to take the TOEFL tests, a requirement for participation in SwB (Marson and Borges 2015). Like the national program, this one also does not challenge the standard language ideology based on native speaker norms. While there is tacit acceptance that “English is English”, an ELF perspective remains absent from the reflections on the program. In fact, planning for the second phase suggests that an Inner Circle variety will be privileged, thus doing little to challenge normative models based on native speaker norms. Related chapters in this handbook 31 Smit, Beyond monolingualism in higher education: a language policy account 32 Murata and Iino, EMI in higher education: an ELF perspective 34 Wingate, Transforming higher education and literacy policies: the contribution of ELF 35 Dewey and Patsko, ELF and teacher education Further reading Archanjo, R (2016). “Moving globally to transform locally? Academic mobility and language policy in Brazil”, Language Policy, pp. 1–22. doi 10.1007/s10993-016-9408-0. British Council (2014). Learning English in Brazil: Understanding the aims and expectation of the Brazilian emerging middle class. A report for the British Council by the Data Popular Institute. Available from www.britishcouncil.org.br/sites/default/files/learning_english_in_brazil.pdf (accessed 3 October 2016) British Council (2015). English in Brazil: An examination of policy, perceptions and influencing factors. Available from https://ei.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/latin-america-research/ English%20in%20Brazil.pdf (accessed 3 October 2016). Gimenez, T., Ferreira, A.J., Basso, R.A. and Cruvinel, R. (2016) “Policies for English language teacher education in Brazil today: preliminary remarks”, Profile, 18 (1), pp. 219–234. Szundy, P. T. C. (2016). “The commodification of English in Brazilian public universities: language ideologies entextualized in the scope of the program English Without Borders”, Revista da Anpoll, 40, pp. 101–114. References Abreu Lima, D. and Moraes Filho, W. (2016) “Languages without Borders Program (LwB): building a Brazilian policy for teaching languages towards internationalization” in K Finardi, (eds), English in Brazil: views, policies and programs. Londrina: Eduel, pp. 85–110. Bordini, M. and Gimenez, T. (2014) ‘Estudos sobre inglês como lingua franca no Brasil (2005–2012): uma metassíntese qualitativa’, Signum: Estudos da Linguagem, 17(1), pp. 10–43. Calvo, L.C.S., El Kadri, M.S. and Gimenez, T. (2013). “English as a lingua franca: a Brazilian perspective”, Proceedings of the V International Conference on English as a Lingua Franca – ELF 5, Bogazici University, Istambul, pp. 1–8. Ciência sem fronteiras. (2012, November and December). Available from www.cienciasemfronteiras. gov.br/web/csf-eng/goals (accessed 29 April 2017). Dewey, M. (2014) “Pedagogic criticality and English as a lingua franca”. ATLANTIS Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies vol. 36(2), pp. 11–30. 183 Telma Gimenez et al. Duboc, A.P M. (in preparation). “The ELF Teacher education: contributions from postmodern studies” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S (eds), English as a Global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. El Kadri, M.S., Calvo, L.C.S. and Gimenez, T. (2014) “ELF in Brazilian teacher education programs”, paper presented to the Scientific Meeting of the 7th International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Athens-Greece, 4–6 September. El Kadri, M.S., Calvo, L.C.S. and Gimenez, T. (2017). “English as a lingua franca in an online teacher education program offered by a state university in Brazil” in Matsuda, A. (ed.), Preparing teachers to teach EIL: Curricular description. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 181–194. Gimenez, T. and Passoni, T. P. (2014). “Competing discourses between English as a lingua franca and the ‘English without Borders’ program”, paper presented to the Scientific Meeting of the 7th International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Athens, Greece, 4–6 September. Gimenez, T. and Passoni, T.P. (2016). “English as a lingua franca and the internationalization of higher education in Brazil” in K Finardi, (eds), English in Brazil: views, policies and programs. Londrina: Eduel, pp. 162–177. Gimenez, T. (2015). “Renomeando o inglês e formando professores de uma língua global”, Estudos Linguísticos e Literários, 2(52), pp. 73–93. Gimenez, T. (2016). “English as a global language and the internationalization of universities” in Basurto-Santos, N. and Cárdenas, M.L (eds), Investigaciones sin fronteras: temas nuevos y perdurables en lenguas extrangeras. Research without borders: new and enduring issues in foreign language education Universidad Veracruzana, Dirección Editorial, Xalapa, , pp. 157–170. Gimenez, T., Calvo, L.C.S. and El Kadri, M. (2011). Inglês como língua franca: ensino- aprendizagem e formação de professores, Pontes Editores, Campinas. Gimenez, T., Calvo, L.C.S. and El Kadri, M.S. (2015). “Beyond Madonna: teaching materials as windows into pre-service teachers’ understandings of ELF” in Bayyurt, Y.S and Akcan, S. (eds), Current perspectives on pedagogy for ELF. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 225–237. Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds) (in preparation, a). English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (in preparation, b). “Awareness raising about English as a lingua franca in Brazilian teacher education programs” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds), English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Grano, A. (2016). Inglês como lingua franca global e propostas para seu aprendizado (English as a global lingua franca and proposals for its teaching and learning), Unpublished research report, State University of Londrina (UEL), Londrina. Hudzik, J. K. (2011). Comprehensive internationalization: from concept to action. NAFSA – Association of International Educators, Washington. Jordão, C.M. and Marques, A.N. (in preparation). “English as a lingua franca and critical literacy in teacher education: shaking off some ‘good old’ habits” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds), English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Marson, I.C.V. and Borges, E.F.V. (2015). “‘Paraná Fala Inglês’ na UEPG: experiência extensionista com foco na mobilidade internacional”, Extensio: R. Eletr. de Extensão,12 (20), pp.73–89. Martinez, R. (2016). “English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in Brazilian higher education” in Finardi, K. (eds), English in Brazil: views, policies and programs. Londrina: Eduel, Londrina, pp. 191–218. Miranda, F.C. and Rodrigues, G.M. (2015). “A perspectiva do Inglês como língua franca e suas implicações pedagógicas” (English as a lingua franca perspective and its pedagogical implications), Claraboia, 2 (2), pp. 42–52. Porfirio, L. (in preparation). “The concept of ELF and English teachers’ education: what to expect from this relationship?” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds), English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Sarmento, S., Thiago, E.M.C.P.S. and Andreotti, V.O. (2016). “Science without Borders – an alternative framework for evaluation”, Interfaces Brasil/Canadá, 16 (1), pp. 40–71. Siqueira, S. (2015). “Inglês como língua internacional: por uma pedagogia intercultural crítica” (English as an international language: for a critical intercultural pedagogy), Estudos Linguísticos e Literários, 52, pp. 231–256 184 ELF in Brazil Siqueira, S. (in preparation). “English as a lingua franca and teacher education: critical educators for an intercultural world” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds), English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Storto, A. and Biondo, F.P. (2016). “The mobility between languages and the fluxes of globalization: reviewing paradigms, transcending paradoxes”, Revista da Anpoll, 40, pp. 77 –89. Szundy, P.T.C. (2016). “The commodification of English in Brazilian public universities: language ideologies entextualized in the scope of the program English Without Borders”, Revista da Anpoll, 40, pp. 101–114. Zachi, V. (in preparation). “Global Englishes, local histories” in Gimenez, T., El Kadri, M.S. and Calvo, L.C.S. (eds), English as a global lingua franca and language education: a Brazilian perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 185 15 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans Introduction South Africa – like many others on the continent – is a multilingual country. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) declares 11 languages as official, granting 9 previously marginalised indigenous languages “parity of esteem” alongside English and Afrikaans. However, as far as international visitors and the majority of middle-class citizens are concerned, English is the lingua franca and the language of prestige in South Africa. A commercial enterprise that markets South Africa, Brand South Africa (2016), declares on its website that “English is the most commonly spoken language in official and commercial public life – but only the fourth most spoken home language”. Being so low down on the list does not, however, upset its number one status. Numerous attitudinal studies, particularly among higher education students and the parents of school-going children, show the belief that English is a global language that guarantees upward social mobility and prestigious jobs (Bosch and De Klerk, 1996, p. 244; Evans and Cleghorn, 2014, p. 2; Mashiyi, 2014, pp. 156–157; Parmegiani and Rudwick, 2014, p. 117). In this chapter, we provide a brief historical background to the prominence of English despite less than 10 per cent of the ±54 million South Africans claiming it as their mother tongue. We allude to the levels of proficiency and various forms of English in South Africa. We follow with a description of the functions of English and the domains where it dominates. Against this background we argue that in reality there is a disjuncture between the perceived status of English and its actual grassroots usage with several other viable contenders for the position of lingua franca. Contextualising the rise of English in South Africa The initial linguistic landscape of South Africa was primarily shaped by African migration and Anglo-Dutch colonisation throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1820, the first large contingent of British settlers established themselves in regions that today remain enclaves of White English speakers although Zulu (Natal), Xhosa (Eastern Cape), and Afrikaans (Western Cape) are the dominant languages in terms of numbers. 186 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? In the aftermath of the South African War (1899–1902), the English and Afrikaans speaking groups lived acrimoniously. An attempt at reconciliation was made in 1910 when the “English” provinces of the Cape and Natal and the Afrikaans-speaking provinces of Transvaal and Free State, were declared the Union of South Africa remaining under imperial governance until 1931. Under the then Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd a decision was taken to break away from the Commonwealth and declare itself an independent republic in 1961. Afrikaans was then recognised as an official language alongside English. Despite the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of the country, white supremacy negated other groups, including their languages (Gautschi, 2010; Gough, 1996; Khokhlova, 2015). For the next three decades, Afrikaans dominated the public domain culminating in the 1976 Soweto uprising that saw schoolchildren vehemently oppose the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in certain subjects. It was not until 1994 that the hegemony of Afrikaans was broken, when nine Bantu languages were afforded official status in a democratic attempt to extend citizens’ linguistic rights. Four of these are Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele), three are Sotho-Tswana languages (Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho and Tswana) while Venda and Tsonga stand on their own as minority languages. Table 15.1, shows an uneven distribution of English speakers across the country. Provinces that are mainly rural have few, self-professed English home-language speakers. Provinces, where more than a million people use English as a home language, remain the original settler regions of the Western Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng – the economic hub of the country. The notorious Apartheid racial labelling is still used for census data and Table 15.2 makes it clear that English is claimed as a first language by 9.6 per cent of the population cutting across all racial categories. The most recent national census (2011) indicated that this number was up from 8.2 per cent in a decade, ascribing this 1.4 per cent increase to “Black Diamonds” – a rising middle class with international aspirations. At present, the six most widely spoken South African languages are Zulu at 22.7 per cent, followed by Xhosa at 16 per cent, Afrikaans at 13.5 per cent, English at 9.6 per cent, Tswana at 8 per cent and Sesotho at 7.6 per cent (Statistics South Africa, 2016). Parmegiani and Rudwick (2014, p. 118) describe the distribution and use of English in relation to the other South African languages as “a scenario where African languages Table 15.1 Spread of English across provinces (%) Language Western Eastern Northern Free Kwa-Zulu North Gauteng Mpumlanga Limpopo SA (first) Cape Cape Cape State Natal West English 20.2 5.6 3.4 2.9 13.2 3.5 13.3 3.1 1.5 9.6 Source: Census 2011, p. 25. Table 15.2 Spread of English across racial groups Language (first) Black African Coloured Indian or Asian White Other English 1, 167, 913 (2.9%) 945, 847 (20.8%) 1, 094, 317 (86.1%) 1, 603, 575 (29.5%) 80, 971 Source: Census 2011, p. 25. 187 Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans continue to be extensively used in informal domains, while English continues to be the undisputed intra-national lingua franca in formal domains” despite few speakers being truly fluent in the language. Ironically, the entrenchment of the status of this colonial language has also been fuelled by Apartheid struggle veterans’ claim that it is the “language of liberation” (Bekker, 2012; Gough, 1996; Khokhlova, 2015; Silva, 1997). English proficiency of South Africans Most South Africans are at least bilingual; many are multilingual yet English does not necessarily count as one of the languages they speak with confidence or fully understand. English is “disproportionately influential” and “acquiring competence in English is highly desirable” yet it is used with vastly “varying degrees of sophistication” (Khokhlova, 2015, p. 985). As reported on the website SALanguages.com (2016), a national sociolinguistic survey of English language proficiency conducted by the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) in 2000 found that •• •• •• 40 per cent of the respondents reported that they used English in interaction with line managers (followed by Afrikaans – 28 per cent and Zulu – 11 per cent); 80 per cent reported the use of English as a language of tuition in the wider educational setting (followed by Afrikaans – 16 per cent and Zulu – 6 per cent); Only 22 per cent fully understand political, policy and administrative-related speeches and statements made in English. Webb (2002, p. 7) states that “English is probably known by more than 50 per cent of the SA population at a very basic level of communication”, which would not bode well for its use as a lingua franca. He also reports on a survey of English language proficiency in which 49 per cent of their respondents often did not understand or seldom understood speeches in English. This lack of English language proficiency rose to 60 per cent among speakers of Tswana, Ndebele and Venda, particularly among less educated respondents, respondents in rural areas, and respondents in semi-skilled or unskilled communities. The lack of English comprehension skill is also apparent in informal contexts. Respondents rated their ability to follow a story on radio or television in English as follows: Sotho: 28 per cent, Tswana: 14 per cent, Pedi: 19 per cent, Swazi: 27 per cent, Ndebele: 3 per cent, Xhosa: 24 per cent, Zulu: 32 per cent, Venda: 0 per cent and Tsonga: 24 per cent. More recently, the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS, 2008) polled a representative sample of South Africans to determine, among others, their self-reported English language proficiency. The NIDS data require self-assessment of language proficiency, specifically reading and writing, in the home language as well as in English on a 4-point Likert scale. In their discussion of this survey, Posel and Zeller (2010) provide an overview of previous sociolinguistic surveys and agree with Deumert, Inder and Maitra (2005) “that self-assessed levels of proficiency are mostly over-estimated and that the language skills of those participants who report average or high proficiency in English are often less than basic”. In Posel and Zeller’s (2010, p. 14) analysis of the NIDS data, they note differences between younger (between 15 and 30) and older (over 30) respondents in perceived reading and writing ability in English: 188 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? African adults aged 15 to 30 years are almost twice as likely as older African adults to report reading very well in English; and whereas only 5 per cent of young adults reported not being able to read in English at all, almost 31 per cent of older adults reported no ability to read English. Similar changes are apparent when comparing male and female respondents in the different age groups, with more female respondents reporting good language proficiency in their home language and in English. Although these differences can be attributed to young people over-reporting their competence, Posel and Zeller (2010, p. 14–15) suggest that “the data would also be consistent with socio-economic changes since the ending of apartheid”, since it seems unlikely that young women as a group would over-report their language abilities. Attempting to obtain an overview of language proficiency, the authors compare respondents who reported high levels of proficiency in both their home language and in English: “the NIDS data suggest that approximately 65 percent of adults in South Africa are home language proficient whereas only 47 percent are English language proficient. Both home language and English language proficiency are lowest among African adults (Posel and Zeller, 2010, p. 17). Nel and Müller (2010, p. 636) suggest reasons for this situation: Lack of access to newspapers, magazines, TV and radio; lack of opportunity to hear or to speak English; lack of English reading material at home and at school; and poor language teaching by teachers whose own English proficiency is limited. Although spoken by so few and not understood by many, as Probyn (2001, p. 250) notes, “English remains the language of power and access – economically, politically, socially – despite the fact that it is the mother tongue of a relatively small minority . . . indigenous languages, although spoken widely at family and community level, are relatively disempowered”. This trend may worsen if the highbrow push for “English-only” by the next generation of upwardly mobile South Africans continues. English as spoken in South Africa Linguistic studies on the features of native and non-native varieties of English in South Africa are scant. The existence of particular varieties is an obvious remnant of the Apartheid system where ethnolinguistic groups were separated and particular norms for English language use developed in each community. However, all local languages have enriched the English spoken at the tip of the African continent, adding not only unique vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, intonations and pronunciations but also attempting to cement a national identity in post-apartheid South Africa. The point of English as a lingua franca is for it to be used as an additional language by the majority of South Africans and census records give an indication of the English language resources that are available in the form of teachers, civil servants and the like. In terms of language acquisition, both in- and out-of-class experiences with English will probably be with native and non-native varieties of English. Such English language resources are spread unevenly throughout the country, with rural areas having the least exposure to English. This is the situation referred to by Balfour (2002, p. 27) when he notes that “In South Africa, however, what is understood to be ‘English’ [. . .] is problematic because the quality of language instruction is dependent on social-economic as well as geographical variables”. 189 Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans So does English function as a lingua franca in South Africa? Calls for a specific South African standard for English language teaching have died down since the 1990s. This is not ideal, since it assumes that speakers know what the most desirable variety may be for acquisition purposes and in the process prejudice regarding “proper English” is painfully evident in particular teachers’ attitudes (see e.g. Van der Walt, 2007). The phenomenon that Bobda (2006) calls “the new mother tongues” in his country (Cameroon) is also evident in South Africa, where parents who are home-language speakers of African languages or Afrikaans make a conscious decision to introduce English as their home language and children grow up as home-language speakers of a variety of South African English. Bobda (2006, p. 67) argues that there should be reference to new mother tongues since “French, English and Pidgin English have taken over the mother tongue status and functions of indigenous languages”. Acknowledging the role of English as a lingua franca in this way could work against additive bi-/ multilingualism, since its role as a “traffic” language requires describing not only its context-specific use but also its place among the many other South African languages. The importance of access to a standardised (and by implication powerful) variety of English is rejected by Balfour (2002, p. 10) when he says that [t]he need for common access seems to me to be another way of defining the need for one standardised variety available to all; yet the question of “whose standard?” has become, most unhelpfully, the focus of a now sterile debate. From an ELF perspective it seems necessary to revive the debate not in terms of a standard per se, but certainly in the form of what Seidlhofer (2009, p. 241) calls codification, “with a conceivable ultimate objective of making it a feasible, acceptable and respected alternative to ENL [English as a native language] in appropriate contexts of use”. By codification we mean the acknowledgement of native and non-native varieties of English in South Africa, since it goes much further than standardization towards a single South African English. When one thinks of English language use in terms of Kachru’s 1985 distinction between the inner, the outer and the expanding circle of English language users, it becomes difficult to find an easy fit for the country as a whole. We concur with Branford (1996, p. 48) when he says, “an intelligent respect for one another’s ‘Englishes’ is one of the many tolerances that must be learned and practised in a future South Africa”. However, the concern ought to be less the variety of English spoken but rather the quality of an English that can ensure success in a globalised world. English in education Very topical is the current national student drive (2015/2016) for decolonised, free education that again includes violent opposition against Afrikaans being permitted as a language of tuition at tertiary institutions. Ironically, English with its undisputed colonial roots is unquestionably the preferred language of learning and teaching despite few students being sufficiently academically literate in it (Smit, 2010; van Dyk, 2005). English remains the gatekeeper in higher education, although some academics call for increased attention to African languages (Maseko, 2014) and highlight the benefits of mother tongue education (Alexander, 2000, 2002; Heugh, 2005; Smit, 2010). Likewise, voices calling for English plus multilingual education seem louder (Koch and Burkett, 2005; Hibbert and van der Walt, 2014; Van der Walt and Klapwijk, 2016). 190 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? Since English is an additional language, often even third or fourth, for the majority of South Africans, its use as a language of learning and teaching (LoLT) has been blamed for low pass rates, particularly at school level, to the extent that the Department of Basic Education conducted research on the effectiveness of translating school-exit examinations into African languages. The experiment showed that “The translated paper[s] did not improve the performance of learners because of a lack of scientific concepts in African languages”1 (National Examinations and Assessment, 2009, p. 8). This conclusion is simplistic, but it does marginally suggest that English is not necessarily the problem, as Leibowitz (2004) also concludes in her study of academic literacy in English at higher education level. In his discussion of the future of English as a lingua franca in South Africa, Balfour (2002) relativises the role of English in school success by indicating that several issues play a role; among them poverty and poor resourcing of schools. Although all these issues demand the urgent attention and rigorous investigation that Balfour calls for, the NIDS results suggest that poor reading and writing proficiency in English implies that fewer students are able to gain access to higher education, because English is the main (if not only) language of learning and teaching. It is, therefore, worrying that surveys related to English language proficiency at tertiary level indicate serious problems (Van Dyk, 2005). For a language to be used as a lingua franca, it needs to be taught well and taught widely. In their study on the effect that teachers’ poor language proficiency in English has on their learners, Nel and Müller (2010, p. 645) conclude that, “A dark picture regarding teacher and learner English language proficiency emerges” with diverse factors (as Balfour (2002) also contends) conspiring against the teachers: overcrowded classes, lack of exposure to English print materials and media outside the classroom; in fact in any language. When this situation is coupled with “student-teachers’ perceptions of their own needs and proficiency in English, their perceptions of the level of support that they render to ESL learners, their perceptions regarding differentiated assessment of a diverse learner corps, and limited ESL resources availability” (Nel and Müller, 2010, p. 646), the future of English as a lingua franca seems dark. Moreover, voices against the dominance of English also argue that the language entrenches disadvantage because “language habits and perceptions are formed during the cognitive development of the rising generations, that is, in the process of education, and old habits tend to persist” (Kotzé, 2014, p. 17). After at least three years of instruction in a home language, the vast majority of learners switch to English as a LoLT in fourth grade making mastery of English crucial for knowledge transfer and meaning-making. It thus remains curious that in post-apartheid education, a colonial language rather than any of the indigenous languages is favoured as a LoLT. Elsewhere in Africa, education systems have been “looking for ways to promote literacy in the vernaculars as a means of erasing the colonial legacy” (Lilly, 1982, n.p.; see also Benson, 2004; Stroud, 2002; 2003). However, the strong rejection of the local Bantu languages as LoLTs by parents and policy makers appears to stem from the historic association with the pitiable quality of Bantu education and adds to the intricacy of the current language-in-education debates (Lafon and Webb, 2008). The use of English in the civic domain As the previous section showed, English is the preferred language of education, mostly owing to its perceived elite status that acts as a social marker and access to key professions. Despite desegregation at all levels, little cross-cultural socialisation occurs and most South Africans would be using their home languages for such interactions. Moving beyond the 191 Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans confines of the private space, geographical context and racial identity would generally determine which languages are used in service encounters. Even in urban areas, it would not be unusual to switch from an initial encounter in English to another regional language. English and the media National and regional daily newspapers appear in other languages and their readership tends to surpass that of the English dailies. According to the South African Audience Research Foundation (Readership Summary 2015), English language newspapers like the Cape Argus (358, 000), Citizen (426, 000), The Star (602, 000) and The Times (331, 000) all have a fairly steady readership. However, the true status of English as a lingua franca is clear when one compares these numbers to newspapers that were initially published for a readership that did not use English as a home language, for example, the Daily Voice (which includes Afrikaans articles and has a readership of 437, 000), The Sowetan (which started out as a so-called township newspaper, with a readership of 1, 611, 000) and The Sun (which uses a localized form of English with a readership of 5, 157, 000), it is clear that English is not merely used, but has been appropriated for local purposes. Although there are newspapers in other languages, notably the Son (Afrikaans with a readership of 934, 000) and Isolezwe (isiZulu with a readership of 1, 128, 000), South Africans who read newspapers seem to read them mostly in English. The picture is no different when it comes to popular magazines. Of the 78 monthly magazines, 70 are English (Readership Summary, 2015). According to the 2011 Census (Statistics South Africa, 2016), 10, 761, 27 people own television sets and 1 million fewer own a radio. For the latter group, there is a much wider choice of community language stations in addition to the public radio stations that include English. English is much more evident on TV. There are three main public television channels, of which one carries mostly English content. More importantly, people who can afford satellite TV have a slew of English language programmes, including British, American and African (outside of South Africa) channels to choose from. English and state departments Since the Constitution declares 11 languages official, one would expect adherence to this provision when it comes to service delivery at national and provincial levels as practically stated in Section 6(3) (b): The national government and provincial governments may use any particular official languages for the purposes of government, taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and the balance of the needs and preferences of the population as a whole or in the province concerned; but the national government and each provincial government must use at least two official languages. Municipalities must take into account the language usage and preferences of their residents. (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996) State departments have each drafted their own language policy; a selection of these will be described to show the differences in their responses to the call for department-specific language policies. 192 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? South African National Defence Force (SANDF) The SANDF was one of the first organs of post-Apartheid South Africa to draft its language policy, identifying English as its “thread language” (Language Policy for the Department of Defence 1998). Although this provision was opposed, mainly by Afrikaans-speaking members of the public, it was clear that the inclusion of former liberation army soldiers as well as troops from the former homelands called for a speedy decision regarding the language of command and operations (De Klerk and Barkhuizen, 1998). The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) This department’s language policy was tabled and approved on 30 October 2014, two decades after the adoption of the new Constitution. The policy seems more nuanced than that of the SANDF when it identifies six factors that “will be taken into account in arriving at the choice of official language(s) the DAC will use in each context/situation” (DAC, 2014, p. 4): usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and “the balance of the needs and preferences of the public it serves” (DAC, 2014, p. 5). In a table that lists the main contexts or situations, English is reserved for inter and intra-government as well as international communication. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) There is a clear positioning at the start of the DST policy, where it is stated that Compared to other government departments (e.g. the South African Police Service, or the Department of Home Affairs) the Department’s direct communication with the public is limited. Most of its communication is with the public entities and other government departments, where English is accepted as the language of common usage. (Language Policy of the Department of Science and Technology, 2014, p. 4) The responsibility for increasing access to science and technology in African languages is placed neatly at the door of another organ of state, the National Research Foundation: [T]he South African Agency for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a business unit of the National Research Foundation, does the most important work in raising public awareness of science and technology, and should therefore be encouraged to increase its communications in official languages other than English. (Language Policy of the Department of Science and Technology, 2014, p. 4) The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) The most recent language policy to be gazetted is that of the DCS (2016). Unlike the DAC and the DST, the policy provisions of the DCS are based on a survey (Department of Correctional Services Language Policy, 2016, p. 8): 193 Christa van der Walt and Rinelle Evans A survey was conducted in 2006 by the DCS. The survey findings indicated that the majority of the DCS community (personnel and inmates), prefer English as a business language. Although English came up as the preferred business language, the findings further suggested that the challenge facing the Department is that the quality of written and verbal communication in English is very poor. Eighty-one percent (81 per cent) of participants in the survey had at least NQF level 1 (Grade 7) proficiency in English. Two other preferred official languages were also identified by the survey for each Region and these differ from Region to Region. To our knowledge this is the only state department that explicitly mentions the level of English language proficiency, but it does not indicate any measures to address the problem despite the provision that “English shall be the business language of the Department” (Department of Correctional Services Language Policy, 2016, p. 9). Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DoJ&CD) In the final report of the Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG) the complexity of language use in the Department of Justice was already pointed out in 1996, when the Task Group acknowledges that in the case of the Department of Justice, the possible impact of an official language policy on inter-provincial and province-central Government relations, for example the language in which judgements are written, necessitates a special and perhaps urgent in-depth study of this sector. (LANGTAG 1996, p. 3) When one considers the use of English as a lingua franca in court proceedings, the language becomes a stumbling block for ordinary people who need to gain access to justice in a language that they do not use every day. For this very reason the draft2 language policy of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (2015) identifies at least three and in some cases five languages to be used in “service points” in the various provinces. English and Afrikaans appear in all the combinations (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 11). In addition, the policy states that “The doj&cd [sic] will for practical reasons, in general, use English to conduct its business and to provide services to all the citizens” (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 17). One of the biggest problems, however, is the provision that states, “Interpretation services will be provided where necessary, subject only to limitations imposed by lack of resources” (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 17). The role of court interpreters is a problematic and contentious issue, and Lebese (2013, p. 135) in one of the few studies on the topic, finds (among many other problems) that “court interpreters omit information uttered in the original utterance and add information which was not contained in the original utterance”. Needless to say, this situation does not support the exercise of justice sufficiently. From this admittedly brief overview, it becomes clear that “English is the undisputed de facto language of preference in government (including the Department of Education)” (Kotzé, 2014, p. 19), but this position is criticised by intellectuals who wish to raise the status of African languages. Prah (2007, p. 16) bemoans the decline of multilingualism 194 Is English the lingua franca of South Africa? in South African society and levels the following accusation: “African elites owe their positions of privilege and influence to the use of the colonial languages”. In Parliament Afrikaans is the only language other than English that is heard sometimes, despite the fact that interpretation services are available for the other languages. The situation has not changed since Luckett’s (1993, p. 39) description, where English is the “vertical medium” for higher domains such as education, politics and law … seldom heard outside middle class contexts … and African languages are typically used for the “lower domains” such as family, sport, religion … [and] … are not considered suitable for higher education or for serving the needs of the modern state. Conclusion The important point that emerges from this chapter is that despite its status as an apparent lingua franca, or maybe because of its status as a lingua franca, English also acts as a barrier to social and educational mobility, particularly as far as rural communities are concerned. Although its high status is undisputed, there are other contenders for the position of lingua franca. Urban vernaculars have developed rapidly and have been adopted by multilingual communities as localised lingua francas, for example, Pretoria Sotho, tsotsitaal, or flaaitaal. Young children growing up in such environments are increasingly heard to use these varieties as their language of communication. In the Western and Northern Cape, Afrikaans is still widely used as a lingua franca. With the influx of immigrants and migrants, a case could be made for an active development of Swahili or French as a Pan-African lingua franca, as Wildsmith-Cromarty and Conduah (2015) argue. It is in this diversity of languages, cultures and communities that English lives as one lingua franca among several and it is in this complex context that it acquires its particular shape and flavour. South Africans have developed a taste for it and its continued use will depend on the degree to which it maintains a reputation as a language that empowers. However, many voices argue that the dominance of English entrenches unequal power relations (Khokhlova, 2015, p. 990) or as Balfour (2002, p. 25) notes, “the position of English was, and continues to be, much more ambiguous; resented as an inaccessible lingua franca, envied as a ‘gateway to progress’”. Notes 1 This perception is widespread yet not valid. No translation will help if learners have not been exposed to translated terms in the course of their schooling. 2 Although the time for feedback on the policy has expired, there is no evidence at this stage that a final policy has been gazetted. Further reading De Klerk, V. (ed.) 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In essence, variable use in ELF communication means the use of language forms and functions that are not in accordance with standard language or conventionalised NS use of English. It is thus not surprising that such variable language use is challenging to capture. In this contribution, the experience gained from the part-of-speech tagging (POS tagging) of VOICE serves as an example of how to display variable aspects of language use. I argue that while it is a challenge to describe the degree and type of variability in ELF data with pre-defined, conventional linguistic categories, the attempt to ‘squeeze’ ELF into such categories also highlights where it varies from linguistic convention and as such challenges the validity of established linguistic concepts for variable, adaptable language use. Variability in ELF Variability of use is neither novel nor unique to ELF communication but an intrinsic feature of all language use, as was already recognised some 40 years ago by William Labov (Widdowson 2015: 360). This intrinsically dynamic and variable nature of language constitutes the very pre-requisite for it to be used as a tool in interaction. In this respect, variability in ELF can be seen as exemplifying a general feature of all natural language use. However, variability has also been found to be especially evident in ELF communication itself, because there, a certain linguistic flexibility is required as speakers do not belong to a single speech community and use ELF to bridge potential language- and culture-related gaps (Widdowson 2016: 35–36). For this purpose, English “continually gets appropriated and re-fashioned by its speakers” (Seidlhofer 2011: 111). It is this re-fashioning of English that is particularly characteristic of ELF communication, since it also involves drawing on linguistic resources other than English and an adaptation of these for the communicative situation at hand. As such, 201 Ruth Osimk-Teasdale variability in ELF interactions can be seen as connected to variable communicative settings, characterised by “temporary relationships, with speaker constellations frequently being tied and untied anew for each emerging interaction” (Hülmbauer 2009: 325). Hülmbauer argues that the interlocutors need to create meaning in these situations and hence, “[v]ariability, i.e. the particularity of constellations as well as their fleetingness, can be regarded as an inherent feature of ELF communication” (2009: 325). The variability in ELF use concerns language forms and functions, and various linguistic levels, e.g. phonology, lexis, morphosyntax or pragmatics. Variable forms are for example the zero-realisation of third-person -s (e.g. Breiteneder 2009), word coinages (Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger 2008) but also traditionally more ‘fixed’ forms such as chunks (Mauranen 2009), idioms (Pitzl 2012) or phrasal verbs (Märzinger 2012). Variability also occurs when certain paradigmatic forms are used with syntagmatic functions different to their codified ones (Osimk-Teasdale 2013, 2014, 2015). Moreover, certain communicative strategies can give rise to variability of forms. The third-person singular zero marking in ELF, for example, has been suggested to be in part result of accommodative moves between interlocutors (Cogo and Dewey 2006: 84). Variability in ELF data has been approached from a number of different angles. For example, Baird, Baker and Kitazawa (2014: 190) suggest that a fruitful way of explaining the “fluidity, variability and dynamism of ELF interactions” is Complexity Theory, and they stress in particular the importance of approaching a multi-faceted issue such as ELF from different directions. Another way of viewing variation is in terms of “some virtual capacity for exploitation, inherent in the encoded language itself” (Seidlhofer 2011: 110). The idea of this “virtual capacity” in ELF is that speakers exploit available language resources with regard to what is possible, though has not been codified, similar to creativity in poetry (Widdowson 1997). This does not eliminate “reference to some norm” (Seidlhofer 2011: 118), as the definition of creativity is that it diverts in some way from a norm (see also Pitzl, Chapter 19 this volume). Rather, in ELF interactions, these norms are different from Standard English as well as being stretched (Seidlhofer 2011: 118). Therefore, aspects of “adaptation and nonconformity” (Widdowson 1997: 140) in relation to norms are integral parts of the use of language as a virtual resource. As such, variability in language, or divergence from codifications, does not inhibit success in communication (Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2009: 94), but forms a prerequisite for it to function in a wide range of settings between speakers of different language and cultural backgrounds (see e.g. Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011; Seidlhofer 2011). However, ELF speakers are also “pragmatic” about variable language use (Ehrenreich 2009: 140), applying new forms especially when communicatively necessary (Pitzl 2012: 39). The issue of variability is central to ELF research because of the kind and degree of variability exhibited in ELF, which makes it difficult to gloss over such language use. On the contrary, recent ELF research has embraced and explicitly studied this variability, thus highlighting its prevalence. However, this variability is marked because rather than occurring within L1 speech communities, it takes place between speakers of different lingua-cultural backgrounds, and its use extends over a wide range of communicative contexts and purposes. The way variation is approached in ELF research is thus to be clearly distinguished from a view based on L1 speech communities where the focus is usually on which variable features are established in order to form a variety of English (Widdowson 2015: 363). Rather, the focus on ELF research is to investigate the “process of variation itself, on what motivates the variable use of linguistic resources in the achievement of communicative purposes in different contexts of use” (Widdowson 2015: 363; original emphasis). The investigation 202 Analysing ELF variability of the way linguistic resources are adapted in ELF contexts also calls for a reconsideration of established concepts, such as the role and usefulness of norms and standards (Dewey 2012; Widdowson 2012) or the usefulness of linguistic categorisation for actual language use (Osimk-Teasdale 2015). Analysing variation in ELF data by POS tagging In order to describe ELF interactions, a large amount of systematically collected data is needed. Since Seidlhofer’s identification of a “conceptual gap” (Seidlhofer 2001: 151) between the reality of a widespread use of ELF and the lack of description thereof, a number of spoken and written ELF corpora have become available. Apart from VOICE, one of the first ELF corpora was the spoken corpus of English as a lingua franca in academic settings (ELFA), as well as, more recently, the Asian corpus of English (ACE, which is based on the methodology of VOICE), and the corpus of academic spoken English (CASE), which all adopt a similar perspective and conceptual approach. The availability of the first ELF corpora constituted without any doubt a major milestone for ELF research and description, as it made the systematic analysis of ELF possible in a new way. At the time of its release in 2009, VOICE was the first freely available corpus of transcribed, spoken ELF interactions, and in 2013, the first ELF corpus to be annotated with part-of-speech (POS) tags (see VOICE 2013). POS-tagging is a common type of annotation in which word classes, including various morphosyntactic sub-categories, are assigned to each token in a corpus by automatic and manual procedures. This type of annotation is generally carried out with the purpose to increase the usability of corpora, as the addition of such categories opens the data to a larger number of research questions, and can, for example, yield insights into the ways speakers use language variably from conventionalised NS use or standard language. But how does one go about tagging a corpus that is characterised by variable forms and functions that often differ from those commonly assigned in works of reference, such as dictionaries? The only types of evidence available in corpora are the language forms and their co-textual and contextual environment, while the speakers’ intentions are not accessible to the (digital or human) tagger. This is true for both native and non-native language use in corpora alike. However, while for L1 corpora, taggers typically refer to commonly assumed standards and draw on native speaker intuition, this is far more difficult, if not impossible for unconventional corpus data such as contained in VOICE, as the speakers refer to various different language (and cultural) resources, and adapt these to the respective communicative settings. Hence, the tagging of VOICE was not merely a matter of letting an automatic tagger assign L1-based word class categories. While, in principle, these categories are needed in order to increase the usability for the corpus (and tagging is product oriented), the challenge consisted in finding a way to work with conventional categories and codifications, while departing from these in order to do justice to the variable language use present in spoken ELF data (for a discussion of the problems of describing natural language use with pre-defined categories see also e.g. Denison 2013 and Widdowson 2012). As a consequence, this process of using taggers to account for unconventional, variable ELF data in simple categorical terms drew attention to exactly those forms that were variable from codifications of English. In this sense, the tagging in VOICE had two sides: it was not only an analytic exercise for increasing usability of the corpus, but also – even mainly – a discovery procedure. These two aspects of POS tagging in VOICE, i.e. the product of POS tags on the one hand, and the conceptual challenges that arose from assigning these on the other, 203 Ruth Osimk-Teasdale created the need to assign word classes transparently without glossing over the variability that is so prominent a feature of the ELF data being tagged. But how does one do this and what compromises are called for? The tagging of data means a classification of language in terms of a reference, which defines which word class category a form belongs to. For the tagging of VOICE, a dictionary was chosen as the main point of reference. The choice for this reference dictionary was made for reasons of convenience, e.g. to ensure consistency in the annotation and spelling among the annotation teams, and because it presented the most customary NS usage at the time.1 While large amounts of the data could be tagged in reference to the dictionary or with the information supplied by automatic taggers, there were also numerous cases that occurred with categories other than those that were listed in the reference dictionary and that therefore presented a variation from codified language use. Notably, these issues are by no means unique to the annotation of ELF corpora, but reportedly occur in other (L1 and L2) corpora as well. However, in these other corpora, these issues are either only marginally addressed (if at all),2 or the variable character of spoken, spontaneous language use is compromised. This is done by, e.g. either editing the data to remove features typical of spoken language, or ‘normalising’ variable forms (especially by non-native users) in the tagging procedure to resemble standardised, written language. Naturally, some adaptation of spoken language is to some degree inevitable, as the only way to deal with spoken utterances is to convert them to written language, namely by transforming them into transcripts. However, it seems that the data, especially that of non-native users, have often been adjusted to suit the particular methodology in corpus annotation, and to ease the task of annotating the corpora. By this, inherently, the non-codified language use is measured against conventions of NS usage, judging any divergence from it as inferior and not worthy of linguistic description. In tagging VOICE, within a framework of ELF research, a different approach was chosen: The main aims were visibility of the variability as well as consistency and traceability of the tag assignment. The latter two mean that the tag assignment should be as consistent as possible among each type of variability, and the tag decisions become traceable for the corpus users. This traceability, in fact, is one of the main assets of the annotation of VOICE, as the corpus comes with a large amount of documentation, such as detailed markup and spelling conventions (VOICE Project 2007); tagging and lemmatisation guidelines (VOICE Project 2014); and the explanation of the decision processes behind these (e.g. Breiteneder et al. 2009; Osimk-Teasdale 2015). The visibility of variability means that variability in form or function should be displayed, rather than disguised, in each assigned POS tag. This also meant that a tag reflects how a form varies from codified norms, e.g. the word class categories listed in the reference dictionary, but, rather than resolving this ‘conflict’ between ELF usage and codified language use, the variability is merely made transparent, while leaving further analysis to the corpus user. In order to display as much information as possible about the variable language use, a dual tagging system was developed; each token in the corpus received a double tag, one for form followed by a tag for function of the token in brackets, in the format FORMtag(FUNCTION-tag). In cases that coincided with the word class(es) listed in the reference dictionary, both tags are identical, in cases where a discrepancy between ELF use in VOICE and the reference dictionary was found, the tags differ. The display of variability with the dual tagging system developed for VOICE will be illustrated below by three particularly frequent examples of variability found in the tagging process. 204 Analysing ELF variability The first type of variability encountered was the non-canonical use of paradigmatic forms, such as realistical in the example below: (1) S1: some questions are tricky@@ maybe not realistical (EDint330:634, L1= scc-RS)3 This type of variability concerned forms that are not listed in the reference dictionary at all, but are generally formed according to regular word formation processes. These forms, such as realistical, were marked <pvc> (pronunciation variations and coinages) during the transcription process (Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger 2008: 22). In the POS-tagged version these forms received a form-tag PVC, to indicate that the form is non-canonical. A function tag according to its syntagmatic function was also assigned, which was an adjective in the case of realistical above. The tagging of realistical was therefore realistical_PVC(JJ). Another type of variability were those forms listed in the reference dictionary but occurring with a different paradigmatic function in VOICE, e.g. single nouns in plural function, such as university in two university.4 (2) S3: th- there are there are two university in [place2] (PRint30:27, L1=ita) In such cases, the variability was made transparent by giving a form-tag for singular noun, but a function-tag for plural noun use: university_NN(NNS). The third type of variable language use in VOICE concerned words ending in -ing, which can function as adjectives, verbs or nouns in sentences, both when occurring alone, as exemplified for sharing in (3) below, as well as when they are part of a compound noun, such as steering crew in example (4). (3) S4: for the sharing in responsibilities (POwsd372:570_3, L1= mlt-MT) (4) S1: <6> er </6> (.) the most convenient (.) way for us AND (1) in accordance what we agreed last time the steering (crew) steering (crew) would me would be indeed to omit (.) the entire paragraph (1) (POmtg541:1020, L1=fin-FI) Although the ending -ing can be used for the formation of new words in English generally, the high number of occurrences of such tokens in VOICE that were not covered by the reference dictionary indicates that the use of the ending -ing by ELF users in VOICE is especially variable. In total we found 14,011 tokens ending in -ing that could be either classified as nouns, adjective or verbs, and for which a uniform tagging solution had to be sought. Given this high number, it was no surprise that the reference dictionary was not sufficient for the classification of such items. As a solution to this, a very open way of handling these cases was adopted, in which the tagging was decided upon from the immediate environment of a token ending in -ing in a manual tagging procedure. This meant that rather than comparing the tokens directly to the reference dictionary, the researchers would look at each individual case and decide what the most appropriate tag was according to the syntactic and contextual environment. For example, sharing in (3) above was decided to be a noun because of the article the preceding it. In addition, a tag was given to all tokens ending in -ing in order to facilitate the tracing of all such forms by corpus users. With means of the dual tagging procedure all tokens ending in -ing received the form-tag VVG, referring generically to all forms 205 Ruth Osimk-Teasdale ending in -ing. The function-tag (noun or verb) was assigned manually according to context, as demonstrated for sharing and establishing in examples (5) and (6).5 (5) for the sharing_VVG(NN) in responsibilities (6) so basically establishing_VVG(VVG) quotas xxx is this okay for everyone What emerges from the examples above is that the categorisation and display of variability is not straightforward, and involves finding an inevitable compromise between being transparent to corpus users and making room for the flexible language use of the ELF speakers. It was found that the dual tagging system was one way to achieve exactly that. It might be argued that the dual tagging system resembles conventional error tagging procedures carried out for L2 corpora, in that the non-codified use is marked in reference to an L1-based dictionary. Admittedly, using external points of reference does involve an inevitable compromise: labelling tokens with linguistic categories inevitably has to be done in reference to conventionally defined unit(s) in order to be recognisable for a large user base of researchers, and this referencing may detract from the individual character of the data. At the same time, however, it has been argued that a feasible way of displaying the character of ELF data is by describing it in terms of similarity or difference from a familiar point of reference (cf. Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger 2008: 25). For a non-codified form– function relationship as in two university above, for example, it can be said that in reference to a traditional linguistic category, university has the form of a singular noun, but functions as plural. The perspective taken in ELF research differs from that taken in other approaches to L2 use of language learner corpus studies, as it does not presume that such use is erroneous. Rather, the format chosen for such cases in the POS tagging of VOICE displays that use as different from certain codifications of English. While the tagging of VOICE highlights cases where ELF data is variable when compared to with conventional linguistic categories, an analysis of such cases is then left to the researcher working with the data, as in VOICE this information is merely displayed rather than resolved. As argued above, the POS tagging of ELF data in VOICE gives rise to numerous conceptual (re-)considerations of the way we think about and analyse language. One conceptual question, which is discussed in the previous paragraph, concerns the limited suitability of available categories for actual language use and how to handle this in analytical linguistic tasks. Another issue, which also relates to learner vs. ELF language described above, and that became prominent in the tagging process, was the treatment of (ELF) user vs. (EFL) learner data in corpus linguistics and linguistics generally (see e.g. Mauranen 2011 and Seidlhofer 2011 for previous discussion of the importance of this distinction). In particular, the question arose what exactly was the distinction between language learners and users and their respective data, as, though they exhibit similar characteristics, they tend to be treated very differently, i.e. that learner data is mainly annotated in terms of errors or ‘adapted’ to what is intuitively assumed to be native speaker usage (by, for example, means of error tagging or ‘normalising’ non-codified language use), while user data tends to be described and tagged ‘in its own right’, thus viewing differences from standard language as variable language use. In the POS tagging of VOICE we came to the conclusion that the main difference between learners and (ELF) users can be viewed as being one of different perspectives, rather than the communicative setting, language proficiency or characteristics of the data, as I have argued at length (Osimk-Teasdale 2015). Implications of these different perspectives are crucial. They relate to the way the language output of users and learners is described in the literature, where 206 Analysing ELF variability language learners are generally viewed in direct comparison to the target language speakers, whereas users’ language is assumed to be communicatively purposeful and to fulfil certain functions. This, in turn, has an influence on the different aspects of language output that are focussed on in the literature, depending on whether the speakers are defined as learners or users of the language, and on the conclusions that are drawn. Unfortunately, it also means that literature on learners and users is often not taken into account mutually, even though both fields could doubtlessly profit from such an exchange. Conclusion Although inherent to all language use, variability is undoubtedly a particularly prominent aspect of ELF data as well as a focus of ELF research. The tagging of VOICE provides an example of how to make this variability transparent in practical corpus annotation tasks. To achieve this, a number of novel solutions were required, as well as compromises sought between creating space for the linguistic variability evident in the data and developing a usable product in terms of a POS-tagged corpus. This is because conventional linguistic entities and existing tagging strategies are, though in some respects useful tools, too restrictive to describe the variability of natural language use, as is evident in ELF data. In the annotation of VOICE, the main aims were to make the difference between codifications and the language variability used in ELF communication visible (rather than dissolving this ‘disparity’), to annotate the variability consistently and to make all tagging decisions traceable for the corpus users. A ‘dual tagging system’, which was especially developed for VOICE was a way to achieve exactly this visibility, the detailed accompanying corpus documentation provided information about the tagging system and the underlying decision processes. The tagging of VOICE differs in approach from common annotation procedures applied to L1 and L2 corpora in that, rather than glossing over the kind of conceptual and descriptive problems that tagging gives rise to it explicitly engages with them. This is a different kind of tagging, appropriate for the phenomenon of ELF as described at the beginning of the article. The very nature of ELF data is a challenge to accepted ideas and practices in linguistic description. In particular, the attempt to describe variable aspects of ELF data with conventional categories clearly reveals the inadequacy of existing linguistic categories for the description of natural language use. But this inadequacy also highlights the more extensive variability of ELF usage as being more flexible than the conventional encodings of standard language. In carrying out a tagging exercise on ELF data, one cannot help but become aware of the complex adaptive ways in which the resources of English can be put to communicative use, nor, at the same time, of the limitations of conventional ways of thinking in seeking to describe them. Notes 1 For the transcription and annotation of VOICE, the seventh edition of the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (OALD7) was chosen as the dictionary of reference used for annotating VOICE. For a detailed discussion of the reasons for choosing the reference dictionary see Breiteneder et al. (2006) and Pitzl, Breiteneder and Klimpfinger (2008). Other points of reference used included grammars, frequency lists of other corpora and corpus descriptions. These as well as a more detailed account of the challenges and uses of using ENL points of reference for ELF data are discussed in Osimk-Teasdale and Dorn (2016). 2 But see for example Rahman and Sampson (2000) or Meurers and Wunsch (2010) who discuss variable and non-codified language use and the display in corpus annotation in more detail. 207 Ruth Osimk-Teasdale 3 EDint330: ID of speech event; 634: utterance number in the speech event; L1=scc-RS: first language of speaker, here: Serbian, RS: corresponding country, here: Serbia (abbreviation of languages according to the ISO 639-2 codes, abbreviation of corresponding countries according to the ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 codes). Emphasis added. 4 These cases and the annotation of these are discussed in more detail in Osimk (2013), OsimkTeasdale (2014) and Osimk-Teasdale and Dorn (2016). 5 As it was often particularly difficult to decide between verbal and adjectival use of a token, the only options for function position were either noun or verb tags. The reference dictionary was used solely for adjectival use of tokens ending in -ing, such as interesting, ongoing etc., meaning that all items that were listed as adjectives in the reference dictionary received an adjective tag, as we considered them to be conventionalised. Related chapters in this handbook 4 Larsen-Freeman, Complexity and ELF 7 Seidlhofer, Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation 8 Widdowson, Historical perspectives on ELF 19 Pitzl, Creativity, idioms and metaphorical language in ELF 21 Björkman, Morphosynctic variation in spoken English as a lingua franca interactions: revisiting linguistic variety Further reading Osimk-Teasdale, R., (2014). “I just wanted to give a partly answer”: capturing and exploring word class variation in ELF data. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3 (1), pp. 109–143. Osimk-Teasdale, R. and Dorn, N. (2016). Accounting for ELF: categorising the unconventional in POS-tagging the VOICE corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21(3), pp. 372–395. Seidlhofer, B., (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H.G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), pp. 359–372. Widdowson, H G. (2016). ELF, adaptive variability and virtual language. In Pitzl, M.-L. and OsimkTeasdale, R. (eds) English as a lingua franca: perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer. Boston, MA and Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 31–37. References Baird, R., Baker, W. and Kitazawa, M. (2014). The complexity of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3 (1), pp. 171–196. Breiteneder, A. (2009). English as a lingua franca in Europe: an empirical perspective. World Englishes, 28 (2), pp. 256–269. Breiteneder, A., Klimpfinger, T., Majewski, S. and Pitzl, M.-L. (2009). The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE): a linguistic resource for exploring English as a lingua franca. ÖGAI-Journal, 28 (1), pp. 21–26. Cogo, A., and Dewey, M. (2006). Efficiency in ELF communication: from pragmatic motives to lexico-grammatical innovation. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 5 (2), pp. 59–93. Denison, D. (2013). Parts of speech: solid citizens or slippery customers? Journal of the British Academy, 1, pp. 151–185. Available from: www.britac.ac.uk/templates/asset-relay.cfm?frmAsset FileID=13251 [Accessed 6 May 2016]. Dewey, M. (2012). Towards a post-normative approach: learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1 (1), pp. 141–170. Ehrenreich, S. (2009). English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: exploring business communities of practice. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 126–151. 208 Analysing ELF variability Hülmbauer, C. (2009). “We don’t take the right way. We just take the way that we think you will understand”: the shifting relationship between correctness and effectiveness in ELF. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 323–347. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44 (3), pp. 281–315. Märzinger, K.. 2012. The use of phrasal verbs in English as a lingua franca. MA thesis, University of Vienna. Mauranen, A. (2009). Chunking in ELF: expressions for managing interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6 (2), pp. 217–233. Mauranen, A. (2011). Learners and users: who do we want corpus data from? In Meunier, F., Granger, S., Gilquin, G. and Paquot, M. (eds) A taste for corpora: in honour of Sylviane Granger. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 155–171. Meurers, D. and Wunsch, H. (2010). Linguistically annotated learner corpora: aspects of a layered linguistic encoding and standardized representation [online]. Available from: www.sfs.uni-tuebin gen.de/~dm/papers/meurers-wunsch-10.pdf (accessed 6 May 2016). Osimk-Teasdale, R. (2013). Applying existing tagging practices to VOICE. In Mukherjee, J. and Huber, M. (eds) Corpus linguistics and variation in English: focus on non-native Englishes (Proceedings of ICAME 31). Helsinki: VARIENG. Available from www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/13/ osimk-teasdale (accessed 9 May 2017). Osimk-Teasdale, R. (2014). “I just wanted to give a partly answer”: capturing and exploring word class variation in ELF data. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3 (1), pp. 109–143. Osimk-Teasdale, R. (2015). Parts of speech in English as a lingua franca: the POS tagging of VOICE. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Vienna. Osimk-Teasdale, R. and Dorn, N. (2016). Accounting for ELF: categorising the unconventional in POS-tagging the VOICE corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21(3), pp. 372–395. Pitzl, M.-L. (2012). Creativity meets convention: idiom variation and remetaphorization in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1 (1), 27–55. Pitzl, M.-L., Breiteneder, A. and Klimpfinger, T. (2008). A world of words: processes of lexical innovation in VOICE. Vienna English Working Papers, 17 (2), pp. 21–46. Rahman, A. and Sampson, G. (2000). Extending grammar annotation standards to spontaneus speech. In Kirk, J.M. (ed.) Corpora galore: analyses and techniques in describing English: papers from the Nineteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerised Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 295–311. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11 (2), pp. 133–158. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. and Widdowson, H.G. (2009). Conformity and creativity in ELF and learner English. In Albl-Mikasa, M. Braun, S. and Kalina, S. (eds) Dimensionen der Zweitsprachenforschung. Dimensions of Second Language Research. (Festschrift for Kurt Kohn). Tübingen: Narr, pp. 93–107. VOICE Project. (2007). VOICE transcription conventions [2.1]. Available from: www.univie.ac.at/ voice/voice.php?page=transcription_general_information (accessed 6 May 2016). VOICE. (2013). The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (version POS Online 2.0). Available from: http://voice.univie.ac.at/pos/ (accessed 6 May 2016). VOICE Project. (2014). VOICE Part-of-Speech tagging and Lemmatization Manual [1st revised version]. Available from: www.univie.ac.at/voice/documents/VOICE_tagging_manual.pdf (accessed 6 May 2016). Widdowson, H.G. (1997). EIL, ESL, EFL: global issues and local interests. World Englishes, 16 (1), pp. 135–146. Widdowson, H.G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1 (1), 5–26. Widdowson, H.G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4 (2), pp. 359–372. Widdowson, H.G. (2016). ELF, adaptive variability and virtual language. In Pitzl, M.-L. and OsimkTeasdale, R. (eds) English as a lingua franca: perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer. Boston, MA and Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 31–37. 209 17 The pragmatics of ELF Alessia Cogo and Juliane House Introduction This chapter offers an overview of research into the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca. We begin with an exploration of the initial work on the pragmatics of ELF, which focused on empirical studies of talk among non-native students of English, in controlled environments. We then explore current work, which focuses on accommodation processes and pragmatic strategies, including multilingual aspects. This more recent work delves into the intercultural nature of lingua franca communication, where more attention is dedicated to working towards pragmatic understanding, focusing on how speakers construct and negotiate understanding and how they solve miscommunication problems. An overview of this work includes the areas of negotiation of meaning, the use of interactional elements, discourse markers, idiomatic expressions and multilingual resources. We also explore pragmatic strategies in two specific domains, namely business and higher education, while addressing the relation between pragmatic aspects and issues of culture and identity. Throughout the examination of latest developments in ELF pragmatics, we emphasize how ELF is “an open-source phenomenon”, which is constantly adapted by its users and varies according to the context where it is used. Earlier studies in the pragmatics of ELF Earlier studies in the pragmatics of ELF were based on small-scale data collection of mainly international students’ talk in informal contexts. The findings of these early studies were influenced by the kind of data collected and the simulated nature of the conversations, which affected the level of engagement and pragmatic work done by the participants. In her early work on ELF, Meierkord (1996) examined ELF as a learner language that exhibited interlanguage characteristics, but also adaptations to the communicative potential of the English language. Meierkord looked at audiotaped English dinner table conversations elicited in a British student residence from students of many different L1 backgrounds. 210 The pragmatics of ELF She examined opening and closing phases, gambits, topic management, politeness, turntaking, overlaps and hesitation phenomena and found that ELF talk showed surprisingly few misunderstandings. If misunderstandings did occur, they were generally left unresolved. Further results included short turns, frequent use of non-verbal supportive back channels and little interference from L1 norms. This last finding is however problematic, as Meierkord had no contrastive baseline data for the many languages involved in her study. A further limitation of Meierkord’s study is that she collected simulated conversations, which may explain her participants’ lack of engagement in solving misunderstandings. Overall Meierkord’s initial work was influential in pragmatic terms for the emphasis on interactional elements and collaborative talk. Some of Meierkord’s findings were confirmed in other early work on ELF by Firth (1990, 1996). They analysed telephone conversations between employees of Danish companies and their foreign partners, supplementing their analyses with ethnographic information. The authors stress the “fleeting” nature of ELF talk, the fluidity of norms reflecting participants’ insecurity regarding which norms are operative, as well as their often strained attempts at conversational attuning. This tended to result in overtly consensus-oriented conversational behaviour and interactants’ attempts to “normalize” potential trouble sources in a preventive way, rather than attend to them explicitly, via for instance repair initiation, reformulation, or other negotiating behaviours. As long as a threshold of understanding was achieved, ELF participants appeared to adopt the “let-it-pass” principle, an interpretive procedure that makes the interactional style “robust”, and consensual. In general, ELF talk was found to be a joint achievement of interactants, who successfully engage in their interactional and interpretive work in order to sustain the appearance of normality. This behaviour is evident in the marked absence of “other repairs”, requests for information or confirmation. “ELF participants”, says Firth “have a remarkable ability and willingness to tolerate anomalous usage and marked linguistic behaviour even in the face of what appears to be usage that is at times acutely opaque” (Firth 1996: 247). Furthermore there are many remarkable collaborative actions, i.e. joint discourse production in the talk. In sum, ELF users appear to be competent enough to monitor each others’ moves at a high level of awareness, and to acquire new items as they become established in the ongoing talk. However, later work, especially in more domain-dependent talk, finds less frequent let-it-pass (only when talk is non-consequential) and tends to lose the over-emphasis on make-it-normal, which seems to assume a deficient perspective towards ELF ELF talk, which is considered “abnormal”. Similar results were presented by Lesznyak (2004), who analysed an ELF interaction at an international students’ meeting in the Netherlands and compared this interaction with talk involving groups of native speakers of English, Hungarian and German and with an interaction between native speakers of English and ELF speakers. Her focus was on topic management and, as opposed to her English as a foreign language (EFL) data where topic management corresponded to native British English norms, ELF interactions showed a lengthy process of finding common ground, negotiating footing and establishing communicative rules as participants’ initially divergent behaviour was gradually transformed into convergent behavioural patterns. ELF interactants were found to jointly work out the rules for their particular encounter arriving at a shared interpretation of the social situation they had found themselves in, including explicit marking of cohesion and coherence through deictic procedures as expressions of shared knowledge. 211 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House Recent work on the pragmatics of ELF In recent work the focus is on pragmatic understanding, especially on how interactants accommodate to each other, construct and negotiate understanding and how they solve miscommunication problems. This research can be divided into four main areas: negotiation of meaning, use of interactional elements, including discourse markers, idiomatic expressions and multilingual resources. All these aspects underlie the importance of accommodation in pragmatic work, which has been has been theorized as major characteristic of ELF communication from the start (e.g. Jenkins 2000). Negotiation of meaning Considerable research has been dedicated to the aspect of negotiating meaning in naturally occurring talk, focusing on the strategies used to construct meaning and/or solve non-­ understanding. Strategies research includes the moves that are performed after the trouble in communication and those that occur before any signal of non-understanding has taken place in conversation (cf. Cogo and Dewey 2012: 120–135ff.). Pre-emption signals draw attention to a specific point in the conversation before any obvious non-understanding has occurred, and strategies such as repetition and paraphrasing, can be used as proactive measures to avert understanding problems. Excerpt 1 shows one such example and focuses on pre-empting in relation to idiomatic expressions (transcript conventions are located in the appendix to this chapter (p. 221)). Here the participants discuss a work-related task one of them has just finished. Excerpt 1 01 S1: so she’s so relieved 02 S2: oh [all right that’s goo::d 03 S1: [that she passed messages 04 S2: mhm= 05 S1: =but I have to do that by Monday 06 S2: =mhm 07 S1: =it’s ok so she’s re-that’s why I said don’t step on the stones … cause so 08 relaxed you-you might feel 09 S2: (chuckle) 10 S2: oh all ri:ght [I see 11 S1: [yeah 12 S2: but is it just a Japanese:: eh:: way of saying? 13 S1: yeah and when we finish something 14 S2: mhm mhm 15 S1: sort of our concentration … will not be … ah how can I explain … not 16 disturbed … we can’t concentrate on something (Cogo and Dewey 2012: 131) This extract focuses on the expression “stepping on the stones” (line 07), which is the item pre-emptied by S1, when she refers to her colleague who has finished a task and was asked to be careful about stepping on the stones. The Japanese idiom is used to warn somebody who may be “relaxed” (line 08) and careless and therefore trip over and hurt 212 The pragmatics of ELF themselves. S1 has already started explaining the reason when this expression would be used (because she “passed messages” line 3) even before the expression is introduced (which happens only in line 07 “don’t step on the stones”). In line 12, a comprehension check is carried out to explicitly clarify if the expression used by S1 is a “Japanese way of saying” and this is immediately followed by S1’s confirmation and the addition that the idiomatic expression is used when a task is finished (line 13). The “we” in line 13 is a contextualization cue that refers to Japanese people who would use that idiomatic expression. S1 seems aware that these kinds of expressions may be culturally specific and not easily understood, therefore the engagement in pre-empting work. Pre-empting strategies, such as comprehension checks and paraphrases can prove to be quite useful in monitoring participants’ understanding, as they require speakers to engage in a constant joint effort, especially when explicit signals of non-understanding are absent. Other research shows how both paraphrasing and comprehension checks are used to enhance “understanding and to possibly even secure it in the event that shared understanding has not yet been achieved” (Kaur 2009: 113). A number of studies (e.g., Cogo 2009; House 2010; Lichtkoppler 2007; Mauranen 2012; Pitzl 2005 among others) have shown that strategies such as repetition, both self-repetition and other-repetition, and rephrasing are commonly used for this kind of interactional monitoring in intercultural communication. Furthermore, different kinds of repetitions, ranging from word-by-word repetition to rephrasing are used for various functions. Repetition, for instance, can be used both to draw attention to a possible non-understanding and to solve a communication problem afterwards. As with repetition, so-called “Represents” (cf. Edmondson 1981) are often used in ELF interactions in order to pre-empt potential communication problems (e.g. House 2002, 2010). Represents – in the literature also known as echo, mirror, or shadow elements – are multifunctional gambits that serve to repeat or “represent” (part of) previous speakers’ moves. Represents fulfill different functions: (a) as a strategy with which speakers’ working memory in comprehension and production is deliberately supported; (b) a coherence-creating strategy with which lexical-paradigmatic clusters are systematically built up for speaker and addressee; c) a signal of receipt and confirmation of comprehension of one’s interactant; d) a meta-communicative procedure that strengthens interactants’ awareness of their own and others’ talk. Represents are typical of genres such as psycho-therapeutic interviews, instructional and aircraft control discourse, where information is deliberately and routinely restated to create coherence and ensure understanding. Excerpt 2 is an example of the strategic use of Represents taken from the corpus of the Hamburg ELF project “Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in German Universities” Excerpt 2 A: B: a nd if erm things like Nigerian English, Indian English which is a sort of variety in itself it should be respected should be respected The repetition of “should be respected” by B is not just a simple echoing of A’s words, but provides a more obvious agreement and therefore alignment to the other speaker. In order to be in a better position to resolve the question of whether the use of Represents is an indication of L1 transfer (especially in Asian backgrounds where it could be used for politeness and consensus building) or an interactional strategy showing functions a–d above. 213 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House House (2010) collected additional ELF data featuring exclusively non-Asian interactants of varying L1s (German, French, Czech, Croatian), of the same educational level, age group and ELF competence. In these interactions, the use of Represents was also found to be remarkably frequent, which supports her hypothesis that Represents in ELF talk are proof of ELF users’ strategic competence. Other-repetition is also explored in Mauranen (2012)’s work, where it is also used to emphasize more explicit agreement in academic talk. Excerpt 3 S6 and the ASAT is all in the cytoplasm and in mitochondria so [that’s why] S5[yeah] S6 the ALAT rises more easily S3 and is more specific S6 yeah more specific that’s right, S5 and then there are the serum (Mauranen 2012: 222–223; transcript adapted for readability) In the conversation shown in Excerpt 3, from a seminar in internal medicine, the repetition of “more specific” by S6 has the effect of emphasizing the agreement, which is already expressed by yeah, thus making the message more explicit. Simply using other agreement tokens, such as yes or yeah, would not have had the same effect. Here S6 is not only agreeing, but siding with the interlocutor and showing that they align with their assessment. Mauranen (2012: 222) explains that this kind of repetition provides “added value” in that it emphasizes the speaker’s stance and contributes to making the message clearer and more explicit. Other studies (Björkman 2013; Cogo 2009; Kaur 2012; Gotti 2014; Lichtkoppler 2007) have shown that the various kinds of repetition, Represents and rephrase/paraphrase are often used as explicitness strategies. Self-initiated repair Another pre-emptive strategy of meaning negotiation is self-initiated repair. When recognizing a source of potential trouble, speakers often resort to the practice of “repairing” their own talk. In the Hamburg advising session data (House and Levy-Tödter 2010), the professor frequently undertakes such trouble-preventing self-repair, thus indicating awareness of potential miscommunication. Consider the following excerpt: Excerpt 4 A: Erm then you makes make a just a drawing about the distribution always you know something I can tell the results more or less from from the plot (…) (House and Levy-Tödter 2010: 36) A immediately self-repairs the item “makes”, which he seems to identify as an error in need of repair. This not only shows A’s awareness of his own production and capacity for self-monitoring and strategic competence, but also the relevance of normative language ideologies influencing speakers’ production (Cogo 2016). Overall, research has highlighted how increasing explicitness is an important process behind other strategies emerging from lingua franca communication, such as meta-discourse and utterance completion, which make the purpose and understanding of an utterance explicit. 214 The pragmatics of ELF Co-construction of utterances Another powerful strategy of meaning negotiation in ELF interactions is the joint construction of utterances by participants. Such a co-construction strategy acts as a solidarity and consensus booster. The Hamburg ELF data (House 2002, 2010) also reveals a strong and consistent demonstration of consensus in the face of linguacultural differences. In Excerpt 5 the three ELF users join forces to gradually (and successfully) build up the discourse in co-operation: Excerpt 5 A: the most of the most of Chinese in foreign countries they speak not Mandarin they don’t speak Mandarin but can only these erm B: dialects? A: yes dialects C: dialects A: dialects their dialects Participants’ attempts to negotiate what it is that one of them wants to convey may lead to a feeling of community and group identity. ELF seems to be used here as an egalitarian tool (cf. “We’re all in the same boat” in Cogo 2010: 303). Speakers often negotiate their meanings and routinely support each other, even paying each other compliments. Interactional elements Another aspect of ELF pragmatic research has been discourse skills related to the management of the interaction, such as discourse markers and back-channelling that aim at managing successful discourse. Discourse markers, like other interaction managing items, express meanings of information management and also mark interpersonal relations between interlocutors. They range from very short, fixed expressions to longer units of more or less variable sequence. House (2009) and Baumgarten and House (2010a) suggest that ELF speakers may not only use different discourse markers but also attribute different functions to them. For instance, in the case of the discourse marker you know, ELF speakers do not seem to use it for the interpersonal function, or for appealing to common knowledge but for different purposes. In House (2009) the hypothesis was put forward that you know is often re-interpreted by ELF interactants to become a more self-referenced way of highlighting both formulation difficulties and coherence relations in speakers’ own turns. Results show that a) as you know occurs with much greater frequency in so-called “considered talk” phases as opposed to ritualized phatic opening, closing and small talk phases; b) the more fluent speakers are, the more they use you know; and c) most importantly, there is a surprisingly frequent co-occurrence of you know and the conjunctions but, and, because. When you know co-occurs with these conjunctions, it acts as a re-enforcing or focussing strategy, making the connection expressed by these conjunctions more salient. You know is thus used as a focussing device, emphasizing the adversative, causal and additive relations expressed by the conjunctions but, because, and and. Excerpt 6 is an example of you know co-occurring with but in the sense described above: 215 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House Excerpt 6 H: n o matter how many people speak in the university they some of them speak really well English but you know the real life it’s different and you have to learn English S: yes (ehm)(1sec) A: this institute where you’re working at is this the only possibility to erm to learn English … A closer look at how the conjunctions but, because and and function in their co-occurrence pattern with you know shows that they often signal “externally operating relations” located in the external context of what is being said (i.e., not the socio-communicative process that constitutes the speech event in the forms of interaction between speaker and hearer, which would be internal). The fact that you know tends to co-occur with conjunctions that signal experiential relations rather than addressee-related ones seems to confirm the hypothesis that you know is here not primarily used interpersonally. Interestingly, you know is also used in ELF talk on its own as a relational phrase where speakers indicate implicit conjunctive relations of addition, contrast, opposition, concession and cause without the co-presence of the cue words and, but and because. Finally, you know also functions as a coherence marker in a different sense: it is used whenever the speaker is momentarily “incoherent”, fumbles for the appropriate formulation, and tries to repair her misstep using you know as a signal revealing planning difficulties. Here you know occurs in midutterance, often inside nominal, verbal and adverbial groups, acting at a more local, micro level. Taken together, in ELF talk you know – despite the overt presence of you as secondperson personal pronoun in this construction – does not seem to address co-participant(s) or elicit mutual engagement, and no response from the addressees is expected or given. So you know is primarily used to help speakers process and plan their own output, and to link spans of discourse. Other discourse markers, such as I think, I don’t know and I mean are also re-interpreted in ELF talk (Baumgarten and House 2010a). ELF speakers frequently use I think and I don’t know in their prototypical meanings, preferring formal structures (main clause complement structures) over the more grammaticalized structures and pragmaticalized meanings as these are expressed in the verbal routine forms preferred by native speakers of English. For instance, I think in ELF talk is used to express the speaker’s subjective opinion, and I don’t know is used to express speakers’ insufficient knowledge about a topic of the discourse. These uses indicate that ELF speakers have re-interpreted these discourse markers. I mean is often used with a strong evaluative element in ELF talk over and above its main function of clarification, i.e., I mean functions as a focalizing device serving as a point of departure for subjective evaluation, expressing speakers’ affective involvement. The marker so also seems to function more as a speaker-supportive than an interpersonally active element in the Hamburg ELF data examined. So is here used as a deictic element to both support the planning of upcoming moves and to help speakers “look backwards” summing up previous discourse stretches. So can thus be characterized as a complex double-bind element, acting as a sort of (mental) hinge between what has come before and what will occur next. So is used very frequently in the Hamburg ELF academic advising sessions. As opposed to uses of so as an interpersonal marker, ELF users realize it to express self-attention, as a discourse-structurer and a “fumble” to overcome formulation problems. 216 The pragmatics of ELF Consider excerpts 7 and 8: Excerpt 7 S: P: S: P: I actually better take some notes mhm (1 sec) so: there is ONE one man er he is working for erm for [company 1] mhm and erm so he is er in the erm working in (.) with the er design and calculation of [company 1] P’s use of so in both his turns in Excerpt 7 is clearly not back-referenced to S’s announcement that he will take notes. Rather, following the hesitation signal mhm, the pause, the connector and and the hesitation signal erm, P uses so to “get himself going again”, resuming the train of thought expressed in his previous move. Excerpt 8 S: and ja I also have a question about that I mean I think erm the erm procedures are a little different in Germany how do you generally apply to er firms like this for Diplomarbeit [diploma thesis] P: mhm mhm S: or master thesis P: okay S: is it just erm P: it should be at first a letter erm where you erm you are stating er WHO who you are and what you are doing so you are studying at this university and in this in this program and erm so within this program you have a a module in composites and so you are interesting in the subject and you are asking erm erm for a a a a a subject a a a master thesis subject in this= S: =in this field yeah In his first use of so in excerpt 8, P uses so in mid-turn, initiating an elaboration of the previous phrase “what you are doing”, using so to egg himself on with his explanation. In its second occurrence, so follows a hesitation marker, and in the third occurrence the connector and – in both cases so introduces elaborations and explanations. In sum, so operates here as a speaker-supportive strategy at particular places in the discourse, mostly following hesitations and breaks. So might also be interpreted as displaying the speaker’s mental processes anchoring the discourse in a particular co-text and context, and contextualizing the speaker’s processes of perception, planning, understanding, and affective stance. Another frequent interactional element is the minimal response or backchannel item (see, for example, Cogo 2009; Kalocsai 2011; Wolfartsberger 2011), that is, short verbal and non-verbal signals given to interlocutors to indicate that s/he can continue speaking, such as yeah, ok, mhm mhm. Early research in intercultural pragmatics (cf. House 1996) showed that L2 English speakers make limited use of back-channeling discourse markers but more recent work with naturally occurring interactions shows that backchannels are common and used for various functions. Baumgarten and House (2010a) and House (2013, 2014), for instance, draw a distinction between the agreement marker yes and the use of yeah as a presentation marker at the beginning or final stage of a turn. At the beginning of an utterance the marker is often used as a face-keeping device, to display attentiveness and gain time (similar to well), 217 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House while at the end of the utterance it is used for positive final emphasis. The following example, taken from Baumgarten and House (2010b), shows the marker in a turn-initial position in academic discourse at an oral examination. Excerpt 9 E: ehm (2) why is age relevant/ (1.5) or how is age relevant in the process of second language acquisition? S: yeah, in the ... (1.5) if you just start with the process of learning a language Here S is clearly not using yeah as an agreement token, but to introduce the answer, probably displaying attention, while gaining time to think about the answer. Mauranen (2009) explores how various kinds of interactive elements can be used in talk when managing the topic of conversation, when organizing the succession of turns and when displaying stance. One example she provides from her ELFA (English as a lingua franca in academic settings) corpus is the phraseological unit in my point of view (a conflation of in my view and from my point of view). As she puts it, this uncommonly long phraseological unit “is at the interface of linguistic convention and creativity” (Mauranen 2009: 231), in the sense that it uses known lexical material that is displayed in an unconventional sequence. As well as being used in turn-taking, this expression signals the opinion of the speaker, but over and above it also functions as a marker of a view divergent from that of the interlocutors. Backchannels, phraseological units and discourse markers of these kinds all contribute to supporting meaning making in intercultural communication. Other phenomena that facilitate communication in this sense are idioms and idiomatic expressions. Multilingual resources Unlike common assumptions, ELF talk is not only English-language based, but often includes items from other languages, most often from ELF users’ mother tongues. Such recourse to speakers’ L1 is of course most common whenever interactants share an L1. Code-switching into the L1 often occurs in routinized parts of an encounter such as small talk, opening and closing phases as well as at topic boundaries (House 2016). Excerpts 10 and 11 show how an academic advisor, a German professor (P), makes use of code-switching to get his meaning across to the other two participants who both know German. WM, his assistant, is a native speaker of German, and the Spanish student (S) has a working knowledge of German, the professor here uses code-switching as a strategy to overcome his own limitations in ELF: Excerpt 10 P: S: P: S: P: S: P: S: 218 (reads title softly) yeah then just take this off yes we’ll do it by quickly its so I need to (0.5) write= =ja ja [yes yes] this office for uh (1 sec) they approve the new ja ja ja [yes yes yes] without The pragmatics of ELF WM: without P:without this application always it it it it it is easily you can design a a a a a a cantilever slab within one week (0.5) not more to do it= WM: =or a shorter time P: (fast) for a shorter everything (…) S: erm P: joh ja können wir mal ruhig machen (to WM) [yes yes we can certainly do this] it should be no problem By using the German discourse marker ja, the professor also reassures the student about changing the title of her work. This is done automatically and subconsciously, and as soon as the phrase starting with ja is uttered, a switchback into English occurs. In the last move, P again resorts to German to give a brief instruction, but in mid-utterance he again switches back to ELF. Consider also Excerpt 11, in which another code-switching sequence occurs: Excerpt 11 P: Statements are sometimes aber [but] in general you just say here for example the code something something like this and then you you don’t say (0.5) basis is maybe about this one they made some tests or whatsoever or from the other equation you cannot read I I think somewhere did did you cho this one is ok (fast) in principle (fast) but the other equation the next one the cc equation cc equation you to your code so there must be some similarity there is literature available about this (0.5) mister [name3] has made some publication in Germany about this how he comes to this number this is for example the big discussion the be the debate about this number it is something which must be in your thesis S: (fast) Ja[yes] P: Okay? for this YES and erm haben sie noch was nee des is der erste Teil war fertig [anything else no this is the first part is finished] WM: Ja [yes] In Excerpt 11, P’s switch into German is followed by WM’s uptake with the German ja. P’s code-switching occurs at a critical point in the talk in that it marks the end of one part of the advising session where P asks whether the session should go on or not. We can characterize P’s utterance as an organizational move and liken it to the type of “management talk” frequently used in other instructional settings such as language classrooms. Code-switching often involves the use of discourse markers , in particular “uptakers” (Edmondson 1981). They usually occur as second-pair parts of an exchange, often expressed with reduced monitoring of one’s own production, i.e., automatically and with little conscious control. That switching into one’s L1 should occur in this particular interactive slot is thus easily explained. A similar finding is presented in Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006), where the authors document the use of Arabic gambits and other L1 discourse phenomena in ELF talk. Cogo (2009) also documents the use of code-switching in ELF discourse. Interestingly, she found that interactants sometimes switch not to their respective L1s but to a third shared language. Research has shown that multilingual strategies are used to various ends, which are often overlapping and inter-related. These are: (1) the sharing of a sense of non-nativeness (cf. Cogo 2009, 2012; Hülmbauer 2009); (2) the collaborative construction of meaning 219 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House (cf. Cogo 2010; Vettorel 2014); and (3) the creation of a sense of intercultural communitymembership or identity (cf. Pölzl and Seidlhofer 2006). Across most studies there is an understanding that using multilingual resources involves the development of accommodation practices, which ensure sensitivity to speakers’ cultural backgrounds and linguistic repertoires, while adapting their resources for communicative effectiveness. Other studies explore how speakers engage in collaborative co-construction of meaning, while signalling their community membership and making code-switching an intrinsic part of their ELF interaction. In the example below, a negotiation and expansion of meaning by using multilingual resources becomes an opportunity to display intercultural identities. A group of colleagues engage in small-talk and comment on a set of pictures posted by a wedding couple on a personal website, which are described as “cheesy”, before the interactants start elaborating on the meaning of “cheesy”. Excerpt 12 S2 yeah a bit too much I think @@ S1 so … blue flower we say … fleur bleue S3 why? …[ to say that it’s cheesy? S1 [fleur-yeah … fleur bleue means … you know when you have these pictures with little angels of S2 a:::h [yeah S3 [yeah S1 fleur bleu S2 kitsch- [kitschig S1 [kitschig yeah @@@ Cogo (2010: 301) The adjective cheesy provides an opportunity to engage in negotiation of meaning, and is taken up by participants and translated by means of code-switching into French first and German later, thus searching for common understanding and nuances of meaning. While S1 attempts to provide a different version of the cheesy meaning with fleur bleue, he pre-empts a possible non-understanding with a paraphrase of the meaning, i.e. the pictures of little angels carrying blue flowers, which are considered (in S1’s sociocultural community) cheesy. Then, S2 offers her own interpretation with the German kitschig and they confirm understanding with various repetitions and confirmatory discourse markers (yeah and laughter). In documenting the use of back-channelling, discourse markers and utterance completion characteristic of ELF intercultural exchanges, this extract is also another example of the sort of interactional supportive work explored above in the section on Interactional elements. Moreover, the interaction in Excerpt 12 seems to go beyond the search for meaning and negotiation of understanding. Participants resort to their own socio-cultural background, build on participants’ contributions, while at the same time creating a sense of comity, solidarity and in-group belonging. Conclusion In sum, recent findings with naturally occurring ELF data (as opposed to the earlier set-up, experimentally collected data) show that the let-it-pass strategy is not as frequent as earlier studies anticipated. This may be justified by the purpose-oriented nature of communication 220 The pragmatics of ELF (such as business context in Cogo 2012, 2016 and Pitzl 2005; academic contexts in Björkman 2013 and Mauranen 2006), which, unlike small talk, is consequential if understanding is not achieved. Such findings also support earlier observations (House 2002; Mauranen 2006) that communication problems are not very frequent in ELF discourse, because speakers resort precisely to the pre-emptive and negotiating strategies described above to ensure possible misunderstandings are either avoided or carefully negotiated. Overall, ELF research has developed exponentially in recent years and the initial emphasis on systematic and recurrent features has been replaced by a focus on ELF’s flexibility and fluidity, which, in pragmatic terms, has translated into more research on pragmatic processes and accommodation. Lately, more work was done on emergent multilingual practices, which highlight the complexity of ELF intercultural pragmatics. These include translanguaging practices (cf. Jenkins 2015, Cogo Chapter 29 this volume), which involve mobilizing a repertoire of resources in a flexible and integrated way, going beyond the stable and fixed separation between languages. Appendix: Transcript conventions = latching (i.e. speech following the previous turn without a pause) (.) short pause (unmeasured) (0.5) measured pause [ abc] overlapping speech [...] omitted transcript @ laughing <L1de>utterances in the speaker’s first language (L1) are put between tags indicating the speaker’s L1, such as de = German, sp = Spanish. <LNde> utterances in languages THAT are neither English nor the speaker’s first language are marked LN with the language indicated. Further reading Kaur, J. 2016. Using pragmatic strategies for effective ELF communication. In Murata, K. (ed.) Exploring ELF in Japanese Academic and Business Contexts. Oxford: Routledge, 240–254. Mortensen, J. 2012 Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity of epistemic stance marking. In N. Baumgarten, J. House and I. Du Bois (eds) Subjectivity in Language and in Discourse. Bingley: Emerald, 229–246. Zhua, H. 2015. Negotiation as the way of engagement in intercultural and lingua franca communication. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4, 63–90. References Baumgarten, N. and House, J. 2010a. I think and I don’t know in English as a lingua franca and native English discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 45, 1184–1200. Baumgarten, N. and House, J. 2010b. Discourse markers in high-stakes academic ELF interactions: Oral exams. Paper given at the 3d ELF conference, Vienna, May 2010. Björkman, B. 2013. English as an Academic Lingua Franca. Berlin: De Gruyter. 221 Alessia Cogo and Juliane House Cogo, A. 2009. Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: a study of pragmatic strategies. In Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta (eds), English as A Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 254–273. Cogo, A. 2010. Strategic use and perceptions of English as a lingua franca. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 46/3, 295–312. Cogo, A. 2012. ELF and super-diversity: A case study of ELF multilingual practices from a business context, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1/2, 287–313. Cogo, A. 2016. “They all take the risk and make the effort”: Intercultural accommodation and multilingualism in a BELF community of practice. In L. Lopriore and E. Grazzi (eds) Intercultural Communication. New Perspectives from ELF. Rome: Roma Tre Press, 365–383. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. 2012. Analysing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-Driven Investigation. London: Continuum. Edmondson, W. 1981. Spoken Discourse: A Model for Analysis. London: Longman. Firth, A. 1990. “Lingua franca” negotiations: Towards an interactional approach. World Englishes 9, 69–80. Firth, A. 1996. The discursive accomplishment of normality: On “lingua franca” English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 237–258. Gotti, M. 2014. Explanatory strategies in university courses taught in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 3/2, 337–361. House, J. 1996. Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language: Routines and metapragmatic awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18, 225–252. House, J. 2002. Communicating in English as a lingua franca . In S. Foster-Cohen (ed.) EUROSLA Yearbook 2. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 243–261. House, J. 2009. Subjectivity in English as a lingua franca: The case of you know. Intercultural Pragmatics 6, 171–194. House, J. 2010. The pragmatics of English as a lingua franca. In A. Trosborg (ed.) Handbook of Pragmatics, vol. 7. Berlin: de Gruyter, 363–387. House, J. 2013. Developing pragmatic competence in English as a lingua franca. Journal of Pragmatics 59, 57–67. House, J. 2014. Managing academic discourse in English as a lingua franca. Functions of Language 21, 50–66. House, J. 2016. Own-language use in academic discourse in English as a lingua franca. In K. Murata (ed.) Exploring ELF in Japanese Academic and Business Contexts. Oxford: Routledge, 59–70. House, J. and Levy-Tödter, M. 2010. Linguistic competence and professional identity in English medium institutional discourse. In B. Meyer and B. Apfelbaum (eds) Multilingualism at Work. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 13–45. Hülmbauer, C. 2009. “We don’t take the right way. We just take the way that we think you will understand”: The shifting relationship of correctness and effectiveness in ELF communication. in A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds) English as Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 323–347. Jenkins, J. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. 2015. Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice 2/3, 49–85. Kalocsai, K. 2011. The show of interpersonal involvement and the building of rapport in an ELF community of practice. In A. Archibald, A. Cogo and J. Jenkins (eds) Latest Trends in ELF Research. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 113–137. Kaur, J. 2009. Pre-empting problems of understanding in English as lingua franca. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 107–123. Meierkord, C. 1996. Englisch als Medium der interkulturellen Kommunikation: Untersuchungen zum non-native-/non-native-speaker Diskurs. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kaur, J. 2012. Saying it again: Enhancing clarity in English as a lingua franca (ELF) talk through selfrepetition. Text & Talk, 32/5, 593–613. Lesznyak, A. 2004. Communication in English as an International Lingua Franca. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. Lichtkoppler, J. 2007. “Male. Male.” – “Male?” – “The sex is male” The role of repetition in English as a lingua franca conversations. Vienna English Working Papers, 16/1, 39–65. 222 The pragmatics of ELF Mauranen, A. 2006. Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177, 123–150. Mauranen, A. 2009. Chunking in ELF: Expressions for managing interaction. Journal of Intercultural Pragmatics, 6, 217–233. Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF in Academia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pitzl, M-L. 2005. Non-understanding in English as a lingua franca: Examples from a business context. Vienna English Working Papers 14/2, 50–71. Pölzl, U. and Seidlhofer, B. 2006. In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interaction. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177, 151–176. Vettorel, P. 2014. English as a Lingua Franca in Wider Networking. Berlin: De Gruyter. Wolfartsberger, A. 2011. ELF business/business ELF: Form and function in simultaneous speech. In A. Archibald, A. Cogo and J. Jenkins (eds). Latest Trends in ELF Research. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 163–184. 223 18 Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF interactions An analysis of initial clusters Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding Introduction It is nowadays well established that not all features of pronunciation are equally important in maintaining intelligibility in ELF interactions, and Jenkins (2000) has proposed a Lingua Franca Core (LFC) of the features of English phonology that are essential for avoiding misunderstandings in international communication in English. Jenkins (2007) further notes that, for features of pronunciation that do not cause misunderstandings to occur, variation in their realisation can contribute to the distinct accent of speakers, allowing them to maintain their own identity without too much danger of affecting intelligibility. However, further research involving more data in a wide range of different environments is needed to establish with greater confidence which features of pronunciation really are important for ensuring intelligibility in ELF settings. Jenkins (2000) claims that it is important for initial consonant clusters to be maintained, while there is scope for some simplification of final clusters without too much impact on intelligibility, and Deterding (2013) confirms these suggestions, showing that simplification of initial clusters such as /kl/ and /pr/ can often give rise to misunderstandings, while omission of a final /t/ in phrases such as mashed potatoes or a /d/ in bend back, is less likely to affect intelligibility. Indeed, speakers in the UK routinely omit /t/ and /d/ in phrases such as this (Cruttenden, 2014, p. 314), and Wells (2008, p. 145) suggests that any /t/ in Christmas is only present ‘in very careful speech’, so it would seem strange to expect ELF speakers to produce these sounds. The current study investigates ELF conversations that took place in Brunei, looking at initial clusters in more detail in order to determine the extent to which simplification or substitution occurs and focusing on the degree to which accurate production of initial clusters is important for maintaining intelligibility. Data Recently, a corpus of misunderstandings has been collated from ELF conversations that took place in Asia (Deterding, 2013). The corpus is based on nine recordings collected as part of 224 Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF the ACE project (Kirkpatrick, 2010), eight of them involving two speakers and one involving four speakers. Just the eight recordings involving two speakers are analysed here. All of the speakers in these eight recordings come from places in Southeast and East Asia: Brunei (Br), China (Ch), Hong Kong (Hk), Indonesia (In), Japan (Jp), Laos (Ls), Malaysia (Ma) and Taiwan (Tw). In addition, data from a second corpus is also analysed in this chapter, with 10 recordings of between 20 and 25 minutes each, all involving a Bruneian being interviewed by someone from elsewhere (Ishamina and Deterding, 2015). The non-Bruneian speakers in this second corpus come from China (Ch), France (Fr), Korea (Ko), the Maldives (Md), Oman (Om) and Vietnam (Vn). In both sets of data, the two speakers in each recording do not share a common first language, so the data fits the definition provided by Seidlhofer (2011, p. 7) that ELF involves ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’. In total, about 9 hours and 20 minutes of speech is investigated. The speakers are labelled with F or M (to indicate their gender) followed by a two-letter code to indicate their place of origin. In cases where there is more than one participant of the same gender from a country they are numbered, so, for example, the six female speakers from Brunei are labelled FBr1 to FBr6. Even though FBr6 and FCh5 are from the first corpus that was recorded, they are labelled with a high number, in order to ensure consistency with the labelling in other analyses (e.g. Ishamina and Deterding 2015). A total of 3,313 words with initial clusters have been identified in the data, 64 with three consonants, mostly /str/ (e.g. strong, stress) and /stj/ (e.g. student), while the remaining 3,249 tokens have two consonants in the cluster. Of the two-consonant initial clusters, 983 involve /s/ plus another consonant, particularly /st/ (e.g. study, still), /sk/ (e.g. school, skill) and /sp/ (e.g. speak, spicy), while the other 2,266 involve a consonant other than /s/ together with a liquid /r, l/, especially /fr/ (e.g. from, friend), /pr/ (e.g. probably, primary), /pl/ (e.g. place, play) and /kl/ (e.g. class, close), or a consonant other than /s/ together with an approximant /w, j/, such as /kw/ (e.g. quite, question), /fj/ (e.g. few, future) and /mj/ (e.g. music, museum). The clusters with the fewest tokens are /sf/, with just a single token of sphere, and /ʃr/, with two tokens of shrimp. Consonant omission Of the 64 words that begin with three consonants, the middle plosive is omitted in six words: MHk omits the /p/ in one token of split and the /t/ in one token of stroke, while MBr3 omits the /t/ in three tokens of stress and MBr2 omits the /t/ in one token of stressful. In all the other 58 cases, all three consonants are produced. Of the 3,249 words that begin with two consonants, the cluster is simplified in 136 tokens. In all cases, it is the second consonant that is omitted apart from two tokens: in one, /b/ is omitted from black by FCh5 who pronounces the word as [rɛk]; and in another case, FVn omits the initial /f/ in free, pronouncing the word as [riː]. The most common simplifications are: 31 tokens of /r/ omitted from /pr/ in words such as probably (5 tokens) and project (3 tokens); 19 tokens of /r/ omitted from /fr/ in a range of words including fry/fried (5 tokens), free/freedom (4 tokens) and from (3 tokens); 16 tokens of /r/ omitted from /br/, especially in brunei (10 tokens) and breakfast (5 tokens, all by MLs); and 15 tokens of /l/ omitted in /pl/, including play (5 tokens by MLs) and plastic (4 tokens by MHk). The only omission of consonants other than liquids and approximants involves /t/, which is absent from /st/ in 13 tokens, including 4 tokens of start/started. 225 Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding Consonant change A total of 74 words exhibit a change in the initial cluster. Five tokens exhibit both change and simplification, with the /bl/ at the start of black pronounced as [r] by FCh5 (as mentioned above) and 4 tokens beginning with ‘thr’ pronounced as [f], 3 tokens of three and one of throw, all by MHk. Of the 69 words in which there is a change in the consonant cluster but no simplification, a common change involves the 25 words beginning with ‘thr’: in 10 tokens the initial cluster is pronounced as [fr] by MHk, in 10 tokens it is pronounced as [tr] by a range of speakers, and in 5 tokens it is pronounced as [sr], 4 by FTw and 1 by MFr. However, given that variable realisation of voiceless TH is often regarded as acceptable in ELF interactions (Jenkins, 2007) and also that use of [t] for voiceless TH is widespread throughout Southeast Asia and might even be emerging as the norm in the region (Deterding and Kirkpatrick, 2006), it is questionable whether these words involving initial voiceless TH should be classified as involving consonant change in an ELF setting. The remaining 44 words mostly involve /l/ being pronounced as [r]: there are 19 tokens in which /pl/ is pronounced as [pr], especially in words such as play and place(s) by various speakers from China, and 17 tokens in which /kl/ is pronounced as [kr], particularly 10 tokens of class starting with [kr] by FJp. There is just a single token of /r/ in a cluster being pronounced as [l]: MLs pronounces brother with [bl] at the start. It seems that, while /l/ is sometimes omitted and sometimes pronounced as [r], in contrast /r/ may be omitted but is rarely pronounced as [l]. Misunderstandings Kaur (2009) makes a valuable distinction between a ‘misunderstanding’, in which the listener thinks they know what is said but gets it wrong, and a ‘non-understanding’, in which the listener is unable to guess what is said. However, in reality, it is often hard to make this distinction, so here we refer to all words that are not understood as misunderstandings. Only a small percentage of misunderstandings are signalled in the recordings, as many speakers, including speakers of ELF, have a tendency to adopt the ‘let-it-pass’ strategy (Firth, 1996) in the hope that a few misunderstood words will not matter in the long run. Deterding (2013, p. 113) estimates that only about 11 per cent of the instances of misunderstanding in the ELF interactions in his data are signalled by means of such strategies as asking for clarification or when the interlocutor makes an inappropriate response, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the interlocutor keeps quiet or provides some kind of backchannel to pretend that they actually do understand. Therefore, in order to identify misunderstandings that are not signalled, we depended on feedback from the participants. We asked them about what they did not understand, and in some cases, we asked them to transcribe a few words in a selected extract that we suspected might have been problematic. There are two limitations to this methodology. First, we cannot be sure, on the basis of a subsequent failure to transcribe some words accurately, that a misunderstanding did actually occur, as it is possible that, in the context of the conversation, everything was understood perfectly well, and it was only later, when listening to the recording, that some words were not clear. And second, we have almost certainly missed some tokens of words that were not understood. It would be ideal to get both participants in all the conversations to transcribe the whole recording, but transcribing speech is tedious and time consuming, and it is clearly not feasible to ask all participants to do this. 226 Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF Altogether we identified 321 misunderstandings. We then attempted to classify the factors that caused them, and in many cases more than one factor is implicated. For instance, in Example 1, FTw does not understand meal plan, and she hears view pen instead. (In these examples, the location from the start of the recording is shown in seconds. Short pauses are shown as ‘(.)’ while the duration in seconds of longer pauses is indicated inside the brackets. Misunderstood words are bold and underlined. In this case, FTw also does not understand dorm, but here we will just focus on meal plan.) Example 1: MHk + FTw (Location: 1969) Context: MHk is talking about the cost of tertiary education in America. 1 MHk you send the kid you know to the university (1.3) tuition is a major part of it 2 you know (.) all the (.) you know (.) dorm (.) the meal plan (.) just killing 3 FTw view pen what is that 4 MHk yeah meal you know eating you know 5 FTw ah meal There are two key factors that cause this misunderstanding of meal plan to occur: first, MHk omits the /l/ in plan; and second, FTw is not familiar with the term meal plan to refer to a schedule for university students in the USA to pay for their meals. So we classify this as involving both pronunciation and unfamiliar lexis. The classification of factors causing the 321 tokens of misunderstandings to occur is shown in Table 18.1, in which the figures do not add up to 100 per cent because of crossclassification. Clearly, pronunciation is the biggest factor in causing misunderstandings to occur, confirming the claims of Jenkins (2000) that pronunciation is crucial in international interactions in English, though unfamiliar lexis can also cause a problem. Bruneians sometimes use lexical items that are unfamiliar to speakers of English from elsewhere, including in our data words such as turrets, shawl, starchy and wharf and phrases such as acquired taste, for good, role playing and cooperating teacher, and they also occasionally use Malay terms such as ugama (‘religion’) and sekolah rendah (‘primary school’), forgetting that their interlocutors may not know these words. While such unfamiliar lexis and code-switching by the non-Bruneian speakers also sometimes causes misunderstandings, such as hotpot by FCh5, knuckle of pork by FTw, and pehin menteri ugama (‘the honorable minister of religion’) by MIn, most of the instances of misunderstanding involving lexis and code-switching in our data are by the Bruneian speakers. Grammar is implicated in just over 20 per cent of misunderstandings, though both Deterding (2013) and Ishamina and Deterding (2015) suggest that it usually only plays a minor role and is rarely the main factor in causing misunderstandings to occur. Table 18.1 Classification of factors that caused the 321 tokens of misunderstandings to occur Classification Misunderstandings Pronunciation Lexis Grammar Code-switching Miscellaneous 237 (73.8%) 106 (33.0%) 66 (20.6%) 17 (5.3%) 8 (2.5%) 227 Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding One further point should be made about the frequency of misunderstandings involving pronunciation: in some cases in which it is implicated as the main factor, it is actually the listener’s pronunciation that causes the problem. For example: MKo hears neuro-linguistic spoken by MBr3 with initial /nj/ as ‘nearer linguistics’ because he is most familiar with an American accent in which words which start with neuro would not generally have /j/ (Wells, 2008, p. 537); and FVn hears shrimp spoken by FBr2 as ‘trip’ even though the /ʃr/ at the start sounds perfectly clear. FVn subsequently confirmed that she knows the word shrimp, and we conclude that this misunderstanding may have occurred because Vietnamese has no /ʃ/ (Hansen, 2006), so FVn has problems differentiating /t/ from /ʃ/. We should remember that understanding is a cooperative venture by both parties, and phonological failures cannot always be attributed to the speaker (Smith, 1992). Misunderstanding of words with simplified initial clusters A total of 52 words that are misunderstood start with an initial cluster. In 19 of these tokens, there is no simplification or change in the cluster, so in most of these tokens the problem is lexical, not phonological. Examples include starchy, freshies, spinning (top), squash (the game) and stranded by various Bruneian speakers and great in the phrase ‘great leap forward’ by FTw. In other cases, the issue is phonological but connected with something other than the initial cluster. For instance, there is no simplification of the initial /sp/ in spade (in ‘garden spade’) said by MHk, but the word is misunderstood by FTw because the final /d/ is missing and she subsequently transcribed ‘garden spade’ as ‘gardens where’ with no final consonant; and pressure said by MIn has an initial /pr/ that is not simplified, but the word is misunderstood by FTw, probably because the medial consonant is voiced, though it is hard to be certain as in her transcription she was unable to make a guess about the word. In 29 words that are misunderstood, the initial cluster is simplified. Of these tokens, 20 are spoken by MHk; 18 tokens with simplified initial clusters uttered by him are not understood when he is talking to FTw and 2 are not understood by FMa; 9 tokens involve /l/ omitted from /pl/: plastic (4 tokens), plough (2 tokens), plant, planting and plan (1 each). Example 2 illustrates that even in the common phrase ‘plastic container’ in the context of talking about pollution, FTw hears past instead of plastic as a result of the omitted /l/. Example 2: MHk + FTw (Location: 1564) Context: MHk is talking to FTw about wastage and pollution. 1 MHk how long you know for the (.) nature you know to digest this plastic container MHk also omits the /l/ from /kl/ in two tokens of close and one of class, though the biggest problem with this last one is the absent final /s/, and he omits the /l/ from /fl/ in one instance of flaming (to be discussed below in Example 3), and one of floating. In addition, there are five words spoken by MHk that are misunderstood because of omission of /r/: three tokens of process and one each of provide, phrase and three, the last of which is produced with an initial [f ]. Even when simplification of the consonant cluster seems to be the main issue, it is not always the sole factor. In line 1 of Example 3, FMa understands freezing perfectly well, even though the /r/ is omitted, because ‘freezing cold’ is a common phrase; but when the /l/ is omitted from flaming, she hears fuming instead of flaming, largely because ‘flaming hot’ is not a common phrase. So we can conclude that this token of misunderstanding occurs because of unexpected lexical usage as well as the simplified consonant cluster at the start of flaming. 228 Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF Example 3: MHk + FMa (Location: 1211) Context: MHk is discussing why he does not like relocating. 1 MHk because every time when i relocate you know. either really cold freezing cold 2 FMa mm 3 MHk or flaming hot The eight misunderstood words with simplified initial consonants spoken by participants other than MHk are listed in Table 18.2. (In cases in which the listener, in subsequent feedback, was not able to make a guess, or in which, in the recording, the listener appears completely puzzled, the entry in the ‘Heard as’ column is shown as ‘?’.) In black spoken by FCh5, the initial /b/ is omitted, and in free by FVn, /f/ is omitted. In all other cases, it is the second consonant that is omitted. In the context in which they occur, some of these misunderstandings are surprising, but they were all confirmed either by feedback from the participants or occasionally they are signalled in the recording. An instance of the latter is shown in Example 4. Clearly FBr2 does not understand FVn as a result of the missing /f/ from the start of free, as in line 2 she says pardon, even though we might expect ‘free time’ to be understandable from context. (In this example, ‘?’ indicates rising intonation.) Example 4: FBr2 + FVn (Location: 1211) Context: FVn is asking FBr2 about her hobbies. 1 2 3 4 FVn FBr2 FVn FBr2 yeah e:rm and how about what do you often do in your free time? pardon? what do you usually do in your free time? well erm (.) i like to (.) mmm (2) play games? Clearly, simplified initial consonant clusters can be problematic. Of the 142 tokens with a simplified initial cluster, 52 (37 per cent) are misunderstood. It is not true that simplification of initial clusters always leads to misunderstandings, and for instance the /r/ in brunei is omitted on nine occasions by a range of different speakers but this word is never misunderstood, as there is not much else that [buːnaɪ] could refer to. Nevertheless, simplification of initial clusters does quite often have an impact on intelligibility. Table 18.2 Tokens with simplified initial clusters that are not understood Speaker Listener Word Heard as Context FBr1 FBr3 FCh3 FCh5 MLs MLs MLs MLs FVn FMd FCh2 FBr4 FBr6 FBr6 FBr6 FBr6 FBr6 FBr2 grandparents studied trick black swan break treaty present present free ?parents said tick rex one bake ? ? ? ? my late grandparents erm are was in korea like i i studied there right? and trick the mosquitoes yes i just saw the (.) black swan. i liked it. the food they serve in (.) coffee break or when we discussions er the treaty agreement i saw: some present from er: my former the former prime minister present to your what do you often do during your free time? 229 Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding Table 18.3 Misunderstood words with changed initial clusters and no simplification Speaker Listener Word Heard as Context FJp FCh5 FCh5 MIn FBr6 FBr6 FBr6 FTw fluently club trekking three poetry crowd (checking) three? to study abroad? can: speak English fluently the president of er international club they talk to er rafting? and trekking i have three children (.) how many you have Misunderstanding of words with changed initial clusters Of the 74 words with a changed consonant in the initial cluster, just 6 are misunderstood. Two of these have already been mentioned because they also involve simplification: black with initial [r] by FCh5, and three with initial [f] by MHk. The remaining four tokens are shown in Table 18.3. In the first token, fluently has [fr] at the start, and FBr6 subsequently indicated that she mis-heard it as poetry. In the second token, club starts with [kr], and after the recording FBr6 stated that she heard it as crowd. The third misunderstanding involves trekking pronounced with initial [tʃ], and the wider context is shown in Example 5. Although there is no evidence from the recording that a misunderstanding has occurred, in FBr6 subsequently transcribed the word as ‘(checking)’ to indicate that she did not know what the word was. Example 5: FCh5 + FBr6 (Location: 1415) Context: They are talking about outdoor exercise, such as walking through the forest. Temburong is a rural district in Brunei, with lots of forest. 1 FBr6 so what did you do in temburong 2 FCh5 er rafting? and trekking 3 FBr6 oh wow We might note that trekking as [tʃekɪŋ] is actually quite similar to the way that someone from the UK might say the word, as initial /tr/ is often pronounced as [tʃr] (Wells, 2011). It seems that mimicking native patterns of speech is not necessarily effective in maintaining intelligibility in ELF interactions. Finally, there is the misunderstanding of three because of the initial [tr], one of the very rare instances in our data in which use of a sound other than [θ] for initial voiceless TH seems to cause a problem, and we might note that variation in the pronunciation of TH is one of the key areas of variation which are seen as acceptable in the LFC (Jenkins, 2000). The context is shown in Example 6 (in which overlaps are shown with <1> and <2>, and laughter is shown with ‘@’). Example 6: MIn + FTw (Location: 1415) Context: FTw is asking MIn about his family 1 2 3 4 5 6 230 FTw MIn FTw MIn FTw MIn so all your family are here? yeah eventually er (.) i have three children (.) how many you have we got two oh great <1> @@@ </1> <1> and how about </1> you. do you <2> (have three) </2> <2> three i have three </2> i have three childrens yeah Pronunciation and miscommunication in ELF In fact, FTw seems to guess correctly in line 5 (though the overlapping speech makes it hard to be sure, which is why the words ‘have three’ are shown in brackets). However, even if she does appear to guess correctly, the fact that she needs to ask for clarification after MIn has just said that he has three children suggests that some kind of misunderstanding has taken place. We noted above that there are 69 words in which the initial cluster is changed (excluding the 5 tokens that also exhibit simplification). Here, we find that only 4 of these 69 words (6 per cent) are misunderstood, which is much less than the 37 per cent noted above for misunderstanding the words with a simplified initial cluster. It seems that, while using [r] in place of /l/ in an initial cluster can occasionally have an impact on intelligibility, substitution of consonants in initial clusters is generally less of a problem than simplifying them. Discussion In this chapter, we have focused on misunderstandings that occurred in ELF recordings made in Brunei of conversations between speakers from different countries, and we have analysed 321 tokens of misunderstanding. This is almost certainly an underestimate, as there are likely to have been lots of words that were misunderstood but that we cannot detect in the absence of full, detailed transcripts by all of the participants, something that is not feasible in many cases. Yet, at the same time, it can also be considered an overestimate, as many of the tokens that we have identified do not represent any kind of breakdown in communication. Even if the participants may not have understood every single word in some cases, the conversations nearly always proceeded smoothly with few awkward moments. Indeed, participants in ELF interactions are generally proficient in making themselves understood (Mauranen, 2006), in accommodating to the needs of their interlocutors (Cogo and Dewey, 2012; Jenkins, 2007), and by adopting a ‘let-it-pass’ strategy under which a few misunderstood words do not matter too much (Firth, 1996). Indeed, 321 misunderstandings in 9 hours and 20 minutes represents one every 1 minute and 44 seconds, which is not very frequent, confirming the successful nature of the interactions. Nevertheless, some misunderstandings do occur, and it is valuable to consider what contributes to them. Pronunciation has been identified as a key factor in many cases, and it seems that in more than one-third of tokens in which simplification of initial consonant clusters occurs, this results in a misunderstanding. While it is not necessary to retain all consonants in every case, as omitting the /r/ in brunei is not a problem (in the context of recordings taking place in Brunei), and the occasional omission of /r/ in from is unlikely to have much impact on intelligibility, other omissions, such as the omission of /r/ in process or the /l/ in plastic can be more problematic. Conclusion Overall, the study supports the claim by Jenkins (2000) that initial consonant clusters are important in maintaining intelligibility in English interactions in international settings, but it suggests that replacement of the second consonant is less of a problem than its omission. In particular, the current data finds that use of [r] in place of /l/ in an initial cluster is not often a problem, and this suggests that teachers should focus on maintaining the full number of consonants in initial clusters, but they might not need to worry too much about the exact nature of the second consonant. Of course, further research is needed in a wider range of contexts to confirm this conclusion, as it is likely that only some modifications are acceptable while others have a serious impact on intelligibility. However, if the result is replicated 231 Ishamina Athirah Gardiner and David Deterding elsewhere, it has important implications for priorities in the classroom. Furthermore, there is little evidence that use of [t], [s] or [f] for the sound at the start of words that begin with ‘thr’ has much impact on intelligibility, and this confirms the suggestion that the exact realisation of voiceless TH is not something that teachers should focus on. Related chapters in this handbook 11 Kirkpatrick, The development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN 22 Hynninen and Solin, Language norms in ELF 41 Llurda, English language teachers and ELF 42 Baird and Baird, English as a lingua franca: changing ‘attitudes’ Further reading Cruttenden, A. (2014). Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (8th edn.). Abingdon: Routledge. Deterding, D. (2013). Misunderstandings in English as a Lingua Franca: An Analysis of ELF Interactions in South-East Asia. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Jenkins, J (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wells, J.C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edn. Harlow: Longman. References Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2012). Analysing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-Driven Investigation. London: Continuum. Cruttenden, A. (2014). Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (8th edn.). Abingdon: Routledge. Deterding, D. (2013). Misunderstandings in English as a Lingua Franca: An Analysis of ELF Interactions in South-East Asia. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Deterding, D., and Kirkpatrick, A. (2006). Emerging South-East Asian Englishes and intelligibility. World Englishes, 25(3/4), pp. 391–409. Firth, A. (1996). The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, pp. 237–259. Hansen, Jette G. (2006). Acquiring a Non-Native Phonology. London: Continuum. Ishamina, A., and Deterding, D. (2015). The role of noun phrases in misunderstandings in Brunei English in ELF settings. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), pp. 283–308. Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaur, J. (2009). Pre-empting problems of understanding in English as a Lingua Franca. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds), pp. 107–123. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). Researching English as a lingua franca in Asia: the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) project. Asian Englishes, 13(1), pp. 4–18. Mauranen, A. (2006). Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as a lingua franca communication. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, pp. 123–150. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, L.E. (1992). Spread of English and issues of intelligibility. In The Other Tongue: English across Cultures, Kachru, B. (ed.), pp. 74–90. Urbana, IL and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wells, J.C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd edn). Harlow: Longman. Wells, J.C. (2011). How do we pronounce train? John Wells’s Phonetic Blog, 22 March 2011. Accessed 11 September 2016 at http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-do-we-pronounce-train.html. 232 19 Creativity, idioms and metaphorical language in ELF Marie-Luise Pitzl Introduction Idioms are semi-fixed (multi-word) expressions that have acquired a conventionalized, specific, usually figurative, meaning in the course of time and are usually codified with this meaning in reference works. There is an abundance of definitions of the concept in the literature, which usually also overlap with related terms like phraseology, fixed expressions, proverbs and multi-word units. Many idiom researchers have proposed a rough distinction between a broad and a more narrow definition of idiom, with the narrow meaning of idiom referring to a unit which is “fixed and semantically opaque or metaphorical” (Moon 1998: 4). Expressions in this narrow idiom category and their variable and creative use in ELF are the focus of this chapter. For a number of years, ELF researchers have been interested in the use of idioms in ELF, investigating phenomena like idiomatizing (e.g. Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2007; Seidlhofer 2009, 2011) and chunking (e.g. Mauranen 2009), but also metaphoricity (e.g. Pitzl 2009, 2011, 2012) and figurative language (e.g. Franceschi 2013) in relation to idioms. Idioms as discussed in this article (i.e. in the narrow sense) are typically low in frequency and high in metaphoricity; they stick out from the surrounding conversation because of their figurativeness. Other expressions often referred to as ‘idiomatic’ and captured by terms like collocations, phraseological units or formulaic language are very often just the opposite: high in frequency, but low in metaphoricity. These will not be discussed here in detail (but see e.g. Mauranen 2012; Vetchinnikova 2015 for insights on ELF phraseology). After introducing the concept of norm-following and norm-developing creativity and exploring the synchronic-diachronic link between idiom and metaphor, this chapter will use examples mostly from the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) to provide an overview of how ELF speakers vary idioms. It will discuss the multilingual aspect of metaphorical creativity in ELF settings and finally illustrate the range of functions that creative idioms and metaphors have been shown to fulfill in ELF interactions. 233 Marie-Luise Pitzl Creativity in language use, creativity in ELF Many descriptive studies have brought to light the variability and situational adaptability of ELF (see e.g. Jenkins et al. 2011; Seidlhofer 2011; Cogo and Dewey 2012; Björkman 2013; Vettorel 2014 and many chapters in this handbook). Although certain processes of variation as well as certain functional motivations, such as increasing explicitness or emphasizing (see below), recur, ELF is different in each context of use, influenced by “the situationality factor which determines every lingua franca interaction anew and on its own” (Hülmbauer 2009: 323; emphasis in original). Prompted by descriptive ELF insights (from the mid-2000s onwards), creativity has thus been proposed as an essential category for ELF to help us make sense of the variability that is so characteristic of it. Creativity is a phenomenon that psychologists often see as a precursor (or even prerequisite) for innovation and change in a particular domain (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi 1999). Fields of science or art or technology are usually seen as such domains, but so is language (cf. e.g. Carter 2004; Pope 2005; Pitzl 2012, 2013). It is therefore not surprising that creativity is generally viewed as one of the key properties of human language (e.g. Pope 2005; Yule 2010). Humans’ ability to coin new words, build novel sentences, write new texts is something that many linguists and non-linguists call creative. If we delineate the concept more concisely in relation to variability, i.e. a key characteristic of ELF interaction, we might define linguistic creativity as “the creation of new (i.e. non-codified) linguistic forms and expressions in ongoing interaction/discourse or the use of existing forms and expressions in a non-conventional way” (Pitzl 2012: 37). Defined in this way, linguistic creativity includes new (surface) forms as well as new meanings ascribed to conventional forms. Crucially, this does not imply intentional creation or even necessarily open-choice processing (see e.g. Sinclair 1991; Erman and Warren 2000); it only describes the occurrence of forms or meanings we might call ‘creative’. Whether these forms are brought about consciously by (ELF) speakers or not, is a different matter. As is evidenced in this definition, creativity in language use (and other domains) always relies on norms and conventions. As is discussed below, creativity needs norms, since without them, any attempt at creativity would be inappropriate, meaningless and unintelligible – and thus useless (and not creative) (see Pitzl 2013: 5–7). A crucial aspect of conceptualizing (linguistic) creativity therefore rests in the role we attribute to these norms and conventions. Norm-following and norm-developing creativity During the past decades of research in linguistics, linguistic creativity has, on the one hand, been conceived of as essentially rule-governed, even rule-generated by Chomsky (whose position is critically examined by Joseph 2003, for example). While Chomsky’s account of rule-generated creativity is certainly an extreme one (not shared by the author of this chapter), more moderate but similar positions on creativity being brought about through the more or less regular application of norms are also held by many non-generativists. Thus a new word can be created relying on the norms of morphology, for example. On the other hand, linguistic creativity has also been conceived as going beyond this rule-generated nature, subverting existing ‘laws’ and conventions (Ricoeur 1981 [2000]: 344). Like the first kind, this second kind of creativity necessarily involves the recognition of and reliance on existing norms. Crucially, it is not just generated by these norms; it tests their boundaries and expands them. We can therefore distinguish two types of creativity: norm-following and norm-developing creativity. Norm-following creativity is rule-generated, combinational, and exonormative 234 Creativity and metaphorical language in ELF (cf. Type 1 creativity in Pitzl 2012). It encompasses the infinite number of ways in which a normative system can be realized, resulting in a potentially infinite number of creative linguistic outcomes. In contrast to this, norm-developing creativity is rule-generating, exploratory-transformational, and endonormative (cf. Type 2 creativity in Pitzl 2012). It goes beyond what the normative system allows at a certain point in time. Variability, as is so characteristic of ELF, occurs as a result of both these types of creativity. But it is the second type of creativity that may prompt linguistic change, since it has the potential to transcend the boundaries of current norms and may therefore effect changes in the normative system itself (Pitzl 2012; cf. Larsen-Freeman 2016: 141). A crucial issue, which is the subject of ongoing discussion in ELF research (see e.g. Baird et al. 2014; Baker 2015b; Vetchinnikova 2015; Larsen-Freeman 2016) in this respect, concerns the question of what we mean by normative system. At which level are linguistic norms (creatively) applied and potentially transcended? On the one hand, it is common to conceive of ‘languages’ and ‘varieties’ as such systems. So one way of transcending conventional boundaries might be to transcend language boundaries. Code-switching, codemixing and multilingual practices might be viewed as examples of this in many contexts (see section on metaphorical creativity and multilingual resources below). Yet, if extensive code-mixing is the common mode of communication for a particular Transient International Group (cf. Pitzl 2016) of ELF speakers, transcending language boundaries might arguably not be seen as very creative for this group (cf. e.g. Jenkins 2015; Cogo 2016). On the other hand, it is equally commonplace to view different levels within a language as normative systems (such as grammar, lexis, morphology, pronunciation – and also idioms). Each of these levels is governed by norms that are more or less regular (at the level of morphology or grammar, for example) or rather intransparent and somewhat unsystematic (like at the level of idioms). Crucially, because of these different levels, it is possible for norm-following and norm-developing creativity to occur simultaneously. So although words like increasement, approvement, or bigness (cf. Pitzl et al. 2008; Seidlhofer 2011: 103–104) are instances of norm-developing creativity (Type 2) at the level of lexis, they are also norm-following (Type 1) since they conform to general principles of ‘English’ morphology by making use of ‘regular’ suffixation. It is this tension between conventionality and norm-following creativity at one level and nonconformity and norm-developing creativity at another level that ensures intelligibility and functionality of many new linguistic expressions. This is also central for the use – and variation – of idioms in ELF interactions. A second crucial issue, once again of particular (but not exclusive) relevance for idioms, is that norms and conventions are always tied to a particular context and point in time. Norms are not norms, once and for all. They are not generalizable across centuries, sometimes not even across decades or years. What used to be creative at one point in time, may become ‘normal’ and regular – and thus eventually un-creative. (Or it may not.) Linguistic creativity can thus be regarded as an essential driving force of language change. It offers a synchronic pragmatic window on developments that may (or may not) have more long-term diachronic effects. This synchronic-diachronic dimension of creativity is particularly relevant when we look at the notion of idiom and also metaphor, in the context of ELF, but also in L1 use of any language. Idioms, metaphors and re-metaphorization in ELF Considering the definition of idiom proposed at the beginning of this chapter, researchers commonly agree that the distinction between what is seen as an idiom and what as a 235 Marie-Luise Pitzl metaphor is, in many ways, a diachronic one. Best-example idioms of a language are often described as “frozen phrases that were originally metaphors” (Hanks 2006: 26). Idioms are regarded as complex linguistic constructions that are intrinsically creative because “their internal structure incorporates the systematic and creative extension of semantic structures” (Langlotz 2006: 11). Broadly speaking, metaphors – in themselves a highly complex category – can be viewed as instances of norm-following and potentially norm-developing creativity. They are normfollowing and combinational in that they combine previously unrelated words/concepts in individual realizations of the general convention ‘A is B’. This leads to instances of normdeveloping creativity at the level of semantics and idioms, i.e. new meanings and new syntagmatic combinations are created. The fact that some creative metaphors eventually become established as conventional idioms (as illustrated in Figure 19.1) indicates the link between dispersed individual instances of linguistic creativity and the general process of language variation and change. If we are interested in idiom variation and in creativity as it occurs in ELF, it makes sense to take on board the argument that the degree to which an idiom can be systematically and creatively manipulated in discourse is dependent on the degree to which the idiom’s intrinsic creativity [i.e. its metaphoricity] remains accessible to the language user or can be reestablished by him or her. (Langlotz 2006: 11) In other words, the degree of metaphoricity still inherent in a conventional idiom might be an indicator of how/in what way this conventional expression can be varied by a speaker. While the statement by Langlotz is made for L1 English use, it seems essential for ELF, which is characterized by linguistic variability (see e.g. Dewey 2009). What we might find in ELF – as well as in language play with idioms by L1 users (e.g. Carter 2004) – is that the possibly dormant metaphors ‘contained’ in idioms are actually quite active (or re-activated) and thus allow for a considerable degree of flexibility in the formal use of an idiom, while still maintaining intelligibility through the (re-)activated metaphor. I have thus proposed that idioms might undergo a process of re-metaphorization (Pitzl 2009, 2011, 2012; cf. also Franceschi 2013: 86) in ELF (and sometimes also L1 use), through which metaphoricity is re-introduced or re-emphasized in otherwise conventionalized idioms. Whether this is done intentionally (or not) by a speaker, is secondary; the underlying mechanism of re-metaphorization is the same. The path described by the upper arch and upper arrow in Figure 19.1 is thus the commonly known and generally accepted one in L1 use: Some creative metaphors turn into conventional, semi-fixed (and possibly codified) idioms. A conventionalized idiom (on the right) then has mostly ceased to be creative – at a particular time for a particular group of (L1) speakers in a particular context. It might still be interpreted as a creative metaphor, however, by someone who is not part of the particular group of speakers (or by someone who makes the interpretation in a different decade or century). If the idiom is varied in form, whether intentionally or not, and therefore different from what is conventional at the time for the group, this is an instance of linguistic creativity, as defined above. Some idiom variations might be norm-following creativity in that they are relatively systematic. Whether a speaker says smooth the way or smooth the path, for example, makes relatively little difference semantically, as way and path are nearly synonymous. 236 Creativity and metaphorical language in ELF Idiomatizing/idiom conventionalized taken up by other speakers creative metaphor (semi-)ixed, lexicalized codiied idiom formal variation Re-metaphorization Figure 19.1 Idiom building and re-metaphorization If an ELF speaker in VOICE says we should not wake up any dogs (cf. Pitzl 2009) or it will explore por- hopefully not in our faces but it will explore (cf. Pitzl 2012), however, this clearly transcends the boundaries of conventional syntagmatic idiom structures; so these examples would be instances of the second type of creativity (i.e. norm-developing). Crucially, this does not mean that these occurrences necessarily lead to long-term changes; it just means that they would have the potential to trigger them. Formal variation, especially when it transcends accepted conventional use, can thus heighten and re-emphasize the metaphoricity of an expression through the process of re-metaphorization (see the lower arch and lower arrow in Figure 19.1). Instead of regarding an idiom as a frozen or dead metaphor, one might therefore consider certain deliberate uses of metaphors in ELF as formally resembling already existing English – or also other language – idioms. Crucially, re-metaphorization is not a process that is ‘reserved’ or specific just to ELF; it also happens in L1 use (e.g. in language play and punning as well as unintentional idiom variation by ‘native speakers’). Similarily, idiom building is not just the prerogative of L1 speakers, but can also happen in ELF contexts (see e.g. Seidlhofer 2009). Starting with more conventional and systematic examples of idiom variation, the next section will outline how ELF speakers vary idioms. This will be followed by a short discussion of more complex instances of creative idioms that relate to the multilingual dimension of metaphorical creativity. Finally, the range of functions that creative idioms and metaphorical language fulfill in ELF interactions will be illustrated. How are idioms varied in ELF? In describing formal characteristics of creative idioms in ELF (i.e. idioms that are instances of linguistic creativity), it makes sense to start categorizing examples according to three types of idiom variation that are well attested also in L1 English corpora: lexical substitution, syntactic variation and morphosyntactic variation (cf. Langlotz 2006: 179). The examples cited in the following sections are produced by ELF speakers in speech events recorded in VOICE, unless otherwise indicated. Beginning with the first type, lexical substitution means that a speaker replaces one lexical element in an idiom with another lexical element. Original and substituted elements tend 237 Marie-Luise Pitzl to belong to the same word class, i.e. a noun is usually replaced by a noun, an adjective by an adjective. One way of classifying instances of creative idioms with lexical substitution is therefore in relation to the word class. Alternatively, however, it seems more interesting to look at the semantic relationship between the two words (cf. Langlotz 2006: 180). Not surprisingly, ELF speakers generally tend to substitute semantically related words, creating expressions like draw the limits (cf. ‘draw the line’) or turn a blank eye (cf. ‘turn a blind eye’). Sometimes these substituted words are hyponyms or superordinate terms, such as in don’t kill the messengers (cf. ‘shoot the messenger’) or sit in the control of (cf. ‘be in control of’) in VOICE. Examples of this are also found in ELF online use by Vettorel (2014: 202), for example play with phrases (cf. ‘play with words’), and in ELFA (English as a lingua franca in academic settings) by Franceschi (2013: 86), for example, don’t step on each other’s feet (cf. ‘step on somebody’s toes’). In the example by Franceschi, a term of embodiment is substituted for another (feet for toes), but lexical substitution also occurs with terms of embodiment being used in the place of more abstract concepts. Examples of this kind in VOICE are keep in the head (cf. ‘bear/ keep [sb/sth] in mind’) or doesn’t come to their head (cf. ‘come to mind’) (cf. also Seidlhofer 2009: 204–205; Pitzl forthc.). Only on rare occasions is the substituted word more abstract than the original. If this is the case, the substituted term is usually more closely linked to the topic of discussion, as in smooth the process (cf. ‘smooth the path/way’), which is uttered when ELF speakers are actually discussing a process. With regard to morphosyntactic variation, creative idioms in VOICE exhibit instances of pluralization, (such as carved in stones or pieces by pieces), flexible use of determiners (like in sit in the control of, already mentioned above), and prepositional variation such as in the right track, on the long run and remember from the head (cf. also examples in Vettorel 2014: 202–203 in ELF online use). Syntactic variation, i.e. changes in the constructions that are considered part of an idiom, happens either via extending constructions or, more frequently, via internal syntactic modification. Such internal modification may, for example, occur through insertion of adjectives, adverbs or pronouns. Some examples of this in VOICE are a bigger share of this pie, go er into much details, the big crest of the wave and two different sides of the same coin. As some examples indicate, the three types of variation are not mutually exclusive. They can occur in combination, up to the point where it becomes difficult to identify a particular type (or types) of variation. Thus, expressions like it will explode por-hopefully not in our faces but it will explode or the phrase i feel that many times i am pulling the brakes are varied considerably from potentially corresponding idioms, to the extent that it seems justifiable to regard them also without reference to conventional idioms. As ELF speakers build on, re-activate and exploit the “metaphoric potential” (Cameron 1999: 108) and inherent creativity (cf. Langlotz 2006: 11) of conventional expressions, it makes sense to look at some examples primarily as instances of metaphorical creativity, that is to say, new linguistic forms and expressions that rely upon and become possible through metaphor as a shared universal mechanism. Metaphorical creativity and multilingual resources Shifting the focus from idiom to metaphor, we can therefore posit that deliberate metaphors and metaphorical creativity in ELF interactions tend to arise in three different ways: they may be related to and varied from existing English idioms (like most examples in the previous section). Second, they may be entirely novel in that the metaphorical image seems to be 238 Creativity and metaphorical language in ELF created ad hoc by the speaker. And third, metaphors may be created when other language idioms are transplanted into ELF. While in theory, each of these scenarios can occur on its own, expressions like we should not wake up any dogs illustrate that more than one of them may also apply to the same expression. That is to say, the metaphor we should not wake up any dogs may have been influenced by an idiom from another language as well as by an English idiom (see Pitzl 2009: 308–310). The extent to which the individual multilingual repertoires (IMRs) of speakers in an ELF interaction will overlap in the shared multilingual resource pool (MRP) of a particular ELF group is unpredictable (see Pitzl 2016; cf. also Hülmbauer 2009, 2013; Cogo 2012). The shared MRP of a group of ELF speakers is bound to vary considerably from context to context and will often only be discovered gradually by participants throughout an interaction (see Jenkins 2015: 64). Sometimes speakers’ IMRs may overlap quite a bit; in other ELF contexts, they may be rather distinct. Of course, idioms in languages other than English are always present in ELF speakers’ IMRs – and any idiom that is part of the speaker’s IMR is linked to a particular metaphorical image. We can thus conceive of a speaker’s IMR as encompassing idioms in several languages as well as their corresponding metaphors. This means that the shared MRP in a particular ELF context also encompasses (the same or similar) idioms in different languages – as well as the corresponding metaphors and mental images. Participants in an ELF situation therefore do not only have a shared MRP, but, more specifically a shared multilingual idiom resource pool and a shared multilingual metaphor resource pool (see Pitzl 2011: 289–290; 2016: 301–304). If, to what extent and how ELF speakers make use of these (shared) non-English idioms and metaphors, however, is situationally dependent. When non-English idioms and/or their corresponding metaphorical images become relevant in ELF contexts, this can happen in essentially two ways. On the one hand, metaphorical images inherent in non-English idioms can ‘leak’ (see Jenkins 2015: 75 on ‘language leakage’) into ELF discourse without speakers’ (and listeners’) awareness, for example by means of implicit and usually unconscious transfer. This is, of course, a process that is not unique to ELF as a site of transient language contact in transient international groups (Pitzl 2011: 33–36; 2016; see also Jenkins 2015) but a process that is equally relevant for long-term language contact situations typical in postcolonial settings (see Schneider 2012). On the other hand, non-English idioms may enter ELF interactions as explicitly signaled and flagged instances of multilingual metaphorical creativity that function as representations of multilingual and multi/transcultural identities and repertoires. In these cases, the speakers themselves draw attention to the multilingual and transcultural nature of ELF as a site of language contact and emphasize that ELF is always more than just ‘English’ or ‘Anglo’. Such explicit signaling can occur with ‘Englishized’ versions, i.e. non-English idioms and metaphorical images from other languages translated into English. This happens, for example, when a Dutch ELF speaker introduces a saying in holland that er we don’t have savings but under the bed we have a lot of er money in the sock in an ELF business meeting in VOICE (see Pitzl 2009: 314–316). Yet, metaphorical creativity may occasionally also involve switches into another language, which may (or may not) be the speaker’s L1. When a Serbian ELF speaker in conversation with Maltese ELF speakers signals we [i.e. Serbians] have a proverb like Italians immediately before uttering the idiom fuma come un turco in its original Italian wording in VOICE, this switch is clearly motivated by the particular situation; it is appropriate and functional because of the shared MRP of these particular ELF speakers. Uttering the proverb in Italian, the Serbian ELF speaker indicates “a special bond to another language or culture” (Klimpfinger 2009: 361) with regard 239 Marie-Luise Pitzl to Italian, i.e. the language she switches into, but also with regard to Serbian (i.e. her L1), which, she says, has a proverb just like Italian. She displays her multilingual identity and builds linguistic as well as ‘cultural’ rapport with her Maltese ELF interlocutors, who, she knows, will understand her Italian phrase (see Pitzl 2016 for a more detailed discussion). Why do ELF speakers use metaphors and creative idioms? As is illustrated by this example of multilingual metaphorical creativity, ELF speakers’ use of idioms and metaphors – including non-English ones – tends to fulfill a range of functions in different ELF contexts. Signaling ‘cultural’ affiliation(s) and multilingual identities is particularly noticeable when non-English idioms are explicitly introduced, as in the examples in the previous section. Oftentimes ELF speakers negotiate their ‘cultural’ identities as individuals and/or members of particular communities in ELF encounters, affiliating (or distancing) themselves from others (cf. Baker 2015a, 2015b; Zhu Hua 2015). In this way, ELF speakers build inter/transcultural territories relevant to particular ELF contexts. As illustrated, this inter/transcultural dimension of (non-English) idioms and metaphors often also coincides with other functions, like creating solidarity and rapport in the case of fuma come un turco. When creative idioms and metaphors are used without explicit reference to other languages/cultures, they fulfill a range of specific functions in ELF interactions that can be broadly organized along the lines of Halliday’s (1985: xiii) distinction between ideational and interpersonal (see e.g. Pitzl 2012; Pitzl forthc.). A similar organization of two overall categories is also suggested by Franceschi (2013), who distinguishes communication strategies and social functions in relation to idioms in ELFA, a distinction that also partly corresponds to the Hallidayan one. With regard to the interpersonal/social dimension of idioms and metaphors, establishing and maintaining rapport and solidarity are just one aspect, illustrated for example by creative idioms like we are all on the same [. . .] on the same boat I think . . . on the bus on the train discussed by Cogo (2010: 303). Related to maintaining rapport, creative idioms and metaphors are also used by ELF speakers to mitigate propositions and minimize potential face threats, which may involve humorous undertones, as in the ball is in your corner in VOICE (Pitzl forthc.; see also examples in Pitzl 2009; Franceschi 2013). Humor and joking by means of metaphorical creativity can, however, also occur just for their own sake, i.e. without being intended to mitigate a face threat. Furthermore, ELF speakers sometimes use creative idioms and metaphors to express subjectivity, project stance and position themselves in relation to a particular issue, as in expressions like to my head or i feel that many times i am pulling the brakes in VOICE. When we turn to the second category, i.e. idioms and metaphors being used for ideational and transactional purposes, metaphorical expressions serve functions like emphasizing (e.g. i’m up to my hh big toe i’m a cargo guy; all this shit it takes hell a lot of time), summarizing (e.g. what i was trying to sort of like put together in a nutshell here) and increasing explicitness (e.g. a joint program doe- doesn’t exist in the air so to say) in different ELF interactions. On several occasions, these transactional functions become especially relevant when speakers are discussing rather abstract concepts or topics that they try to explain or describe by using metaphors and idioms. A central characteristic of many creative idioms and metaphors in ELF interactions is that they are multifunctional, that is to say they fulfill more than one specific function. Thus, many instances of metaphorical creativity cited above operate at an interpersonal as 240 Creativity and metaphorical language in ELF well as at an ideational level. The same phrase can express humor and mitigate a sensitive proposition (interpersonal/interactional) and summarize what was said before (ideational/ transactional). Although evidence in VOICE suggests that some ELF speakers have a greater tendency of using creative idioms and metaphors than others, metaphorical creativity as discussed in this chapter is widely used by ELF speakers from all kinds of L1 backgrounds. Individual creative expressions, as illustrated in this chapter, are generally not on the way to becoming new lexicalized ‘ELF idioms’, i.e. they are not on the way ‘back’ to becoming conventional idioms in the idiom-metaphor loop proposed in Figure 19.1. They are, however, part of localized practices of ELF communication. Rather than being a hindrance or the cause for confusion, they are usually successful in the respective ELF contexts in fulfilling a range of interpersonal and ideational discourse functions. Conclusion This chapter has summarized existing research on creativity and the use of idioms and metaphor in ELF. Having outlined the notion of norm-following and norm-developing creativity, it has discussed these concepts in relation to idiom and metaphor, paying particular attention to the synchronic-diachronic link of idiom and metaphor and to the process of re-metaphorization. In the second half, the article has attempted to provide insights to the questions how idioms are varied and why they are used by ELF speakers. Relying primarily (though not exclusively) on examples from VOICE, the chapter has provided an overview of different types of formal idiom variation, such as lexical substitution, syntactic and morphosyntactic variation. The multilingual aspect of metaphorical creativity was discussed, showing how non-English idioms may enter ELF either implicitly (without being flagged or noticed) or explicitly as ‘Englishized’ versions or code-switches. Finally, the range of interpersonal and ideational functions fulfilled by creative idioms and metaphors was illustrated, providing evidence that metaphorical creativity is part of ELF as situationally created by multilingual speakers. Related chapters in this handbook 4 Larsen-Freeman, Complexity and ELF 16 Osimk-Teasdale, Analysing ELF variability 17 Cogo and House, The pragmatics of ELF 24 Canagarajah and Kumura, Translingual Practice and ELF 27 Pullin, Humour in ELF interaction 29 Cogo, ELF and multilingualism 40 Wright and Zheng, Language as system and language as dialogic creativity: the difficulties of teaching English as a lingua franca in the classroom Further reading Franceschi, V. (2013). Figurative language and ELF: idiomaticity in cross-cultural interaction in university settings. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2 (1), pp. 75–99. 241 Marie-Luise Pitzl Pitzl, M.-L. (2009). “We should not wake up any dogs”: idiom and metaphor in ELF. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 299–322. Seidlhofer, B. (2009). Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a lingua franca. 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Director: Barbara Seidlhofer; Researchers: Angelika Breiteneder, Theresa Klimpfinger, Stefan Majewski, Ruth Osimk-Teasdale, Marie-Luise Pitzl, Michael Radeka. http://voice.univie.ac.at (accessed 1 April 2016). Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (4th edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhu Hua, (2015). Negotiation as the way of engagement in intercultural and lingua franca communication: Frames of reference and interculturality. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4 (1), pp. 63–90. 243 20 Grammar in ELF Elina Ranta Introduction Many ELF-related sources cite grammar as one of the “most studied” aspects of ELF. In actual fact, however, serious investigations into the syntax or structure of ELF are still rare, and ELF grammar easily loses out in popularity to descriptions of other linguistic levels, such as lexis or pragmatics in ELF. The impression of a vast number of grammatical studies may be due to numerous publications listing “frequently occurring” grammatical features of ELF – without analysing them further or sometimes even without providing their occurrence rates. This kind of listing could rather be termed “feature spotting” (see Seidlhofer 2009), which, without more in-depth investigation does not really help in describing ELF grammatically or in illuminating how (or whether!) ELF differs from other kinds of Englishes in terms of grammar. The reason why ELF syntax has drawn rather little scholarly attention so far may lie in the assumption that because ELF is (mostly) second-language1 use, SLA (second-language acquisition) studies on grammar have already covered the area and, thus, studies on ELF material could not bring out anything new. This assumption will be addressed below in the first section that argues for the importance of ELF-specific grammatical studies. To do this, we will also have to distinguish between ELF and SLA, and define ELF linguistically. Material-wise, there should no longer be hindrances for in-depth ELF grammar research as large enough databases – first and foremost the ELFA, VOICE and ACE corpora – on authentic ELF use from different parts of the world and from different domains of language use are already there for researchers to utilize. The present chapter seeks to answer three central questions of ELF grammar in light of what we know so far. After giving justification to ELF-specific grammatical studies (i.e. “Why study grammar in ELF?”) and after providing a brief linguistic conceptualization of ELF, I move on to ask: What can we expect from ELF grammar (on the basis of what we know about other fields of English studies)? And what do we know about ELF grammar so far? Why study grammar in ELF? So why undertake grammatical investigation into ELF, when there is already a large body of information on grammar in SLA? What distinguishes between SLA and ELF? The distinction 244 Grammar in ELF is actually two-fold. On the one hand, the circumstances for interaction we are looking at in each case are different, and on the other hand, the ways researchers look at their data differ dramatically in each field. Let us take a closer look at the differences, beginning with the circumstances of interaction. In essence, research into English as a lingua franca is research on language use in real-life circumstances between different speakers, while the goal of second-language acquisition research is to uncover the processes underpinning individual learners’ acquisition of a certain code – and most often in a classroom setting. Mauranen (2012) defines ELF as second-language use (SLU) in contrast to second-language acquisition (SLA). As she says, because SLA usually takes place in a classroom, educational goals (i.e. “getting it right”) often override communicative goals in interaction, and learners are also cognitively attuned to the language form (because that is what they will be ultimately tested on). Also, learners in ELT classrooms typically share an L1 and/or cultural background, which contributes to the fact that comprehensibility in interaction in L2 does not need to be top priority for learners as they can always fall back on their shared linguistic and cultural knowledge in case of possible communicative breakdowns in L2. In outside-classroom ELF/SLU situations, in contrast, the speakers do not share an L1 and may know very little about each other’s cultures. Thus, in SLU, guaranteeing mutual comprehensibility in L2 becomes of heightened importance to all participants – and because lingua franca speakers orient cognitively to contents over form (e.g. Mauranen 2012), it is quite acceptable to rely on whatever seems to work in interaction, whether this means diverging from standard language or, for example, mixing languages. This way natural, spontaneous norms arise to safeguard mutual intelligibility in SLU (Mauranen 2012: 6–8). Further, the cognitive load in ELF/SLU situations is bound to be far heavier than that in classroom settings. As the multitude of speakers using English for lingua franca communication around the world constantly increases and diversifies, it means that speakers have to be able to juggle simultaneously many more cultural practices, accents and proficiency levels than they would in a typical EFL class, where learners quickly get used to each others’ ways of speaking due to regular contact (Mauranen 2012: 7). The same speakers can, of course, assume the role of either a language user or a learner at different times, and in each role and context one thing remains, of course, the same: in both cases we are looking at people speaking English as their second or non-native language, and therefore, as pointed out by Mauranen (2011, 2012), the cognitive, bilingual processes affecting especially lexicogrammar in these speakers’ speech are bound to be the same, independent of the context. Therefore, we can also expect to find similar processes in operation in SLU as those postulated by SLA research. However, exercising due caution vis-à-vis some of the “taken-for-granted” explanations deriving from SLA is in order. In SLA, learners’ “deviating” forms have very often been ascribed to, for instance, transfer from the learners’ respective L1’s. This has happened regardless of the fact that the same kind of deviation may be present in the output of a number of learners coming from typologically versatile L1 backgrounds (cf. e.g. the transfer explanations in articles in Swan and Smith 2001). Another important observation is that we can also assume that L2 speakers’ second languages, especially language forms, are not as deeply “entrenched” (Mauranen 2012: 4) in their minds as their L1’s due to speakers having less exposure to L2 during their lifetime. This might show in things like ease and speed of retrieval of linguistic items from the memory. For instance Birdsong (2004: 85) also notes that L1 and L2 grammars are different by nature in their end-state realization. According to him, the L2 “steady-state grammar” actually seems “unsteady”, because it “admits more variability in surface realizations and more uncertainty of intuitions”. However, it is quite obvious that not all dysfluencies found in L2 245 Elina Ranta speakers’ speech are due to “less deep” entrenchment because, for example, reformulations, hesitations and pauses are just normal features of speech for any language user. In addition to the circumstances of SLA and SLU, it is crucial to see that the ways SLA and ELF research approach their data also differ in fundamental terms. Mainstream SLA has traditionally looked at learners from a “deficit” point of view trying to find explanations for second-language speakers falling short of mastering an L2 (see especially Jenkins 2006). The explanations have typically been found in first-language negative transfer, specific communication strategies employed by L2 speakers to compensate for (what SLA sees as) their lacking language skills, and/or other extra-linguistic sources (such as perceptions about lack of motivation). Moreover, the reference point for L2 production has typically been standard language, i.e. the written code, even when judging learners’ spoken language skills – not authentic (spoken) L1 production. This has, naturally, skewed the results at the second-language speakers’ disadvantage. Also, the emphasis in SLA studies has been on the differences between L1 and L2 production, not their similarities. The user perspective of ELF, on the other hand, departs from the deficit view and looks at L2 output from the same perspective as any other natural language. This means, first of all, that if, for instance, spoken ELF is compared to native English speaker production, the point of comparison has to be, of course, naturally occurring L1 speech, not a written standard found in reference grammars. This avenue has remained virtually unexplored in L2 studies. However, even in some descriptive ELF studies carried out so far a common drawback has been their failure to use any kind of baseline data to support claims for “ELF-specific” uses (see the discussion below), or alternatively, comparisons of spoken ELF with standard (written) language. Second, setting ELF on a par with native-speaker English means that also similarities between L1 and L2 use become relevant and interesting objects of study. It is only through this kind of approach that we can really discover what is particular to ELF communication and what is perhaps shared in “all” English, whether L1 or L2 based. Thus, the shift in the research perspective, from that of a learner to user, can open up new views on the linguistic output observed. Finally, on a macrosocial note, research on syntactic features of ELF is of heightened importance from the perspective of possible language change in English. The sheer volume of ELF in the world is bound to have an effect on the English language at large, and a recent account of ELF by Laitinen (2016) already places ELF on a diachronic continuum with other varieties of English in this respect. Thus, studying ELF grammar can, at best, mean studying nascent or already ongoing syntactic changes in English. What can we expect from grammar in ELF? Before we can answer the question above, we must define ELF linguistically in order to know where and what to look for when talking about “ELF grammar”. Space does not allow for an in-depth discussion, but put briefly, ELF is obviously not a fixed code spoken by a uniform community the whole world over (see e.g. Jenkins 2000; Seidlhofer 2011; and Mauranen 2012), and therefore there cannot be a uniform entity called “ELF grammar”, either.2 In contrast, ELF is whatever it is in a situation where two (or more) speakers need to communicate through a lingua franca. Thus, ELF ranges from fleeting tourist contacts to daily interactions between business partners or married couples who share English as their (only) common language, and anything in between. The proficiency levels of speakers, understood in the SLA sense, are bound to vary tremendously – even of the interlocutors 246 Grammar in ELF in the same communicative situation – but that is what ELF is, and this reality has to be accepted as a fact also in ELF research if we want to stay true to the phenomenon at hand. Rather than a code, then, we can perhaps depict ELF as a series of more or less demanding communicative situations where speakers come with whatever their language skills to tackle the communicative tasks at hand. Harnessing this kind of huge entity for scientific scrutiny is, of course, challenging, and can be done only by studying various kinds of functional varieties of ELF (such as academic ELF, business ELF, etc.) one at a time, and seeing if the accumulating data brings forth recurrent phenomena and developments. It is precisely the larger scale processes that should be of interest to ELF grammar researchers, not so much the individual features. On the other hand, ELF is also linguistically a contact language. Mauranen (2012: ch. 2) describes ELF more precisely as a hybrid language or “second-order contact between similects” (2012: 29). By a “similect” Mauranen refers to a “variety” of English (or lect) that arises from contact between English and another language such as Finnish or Swedish, producing what, in lay terms, is known as, for instance, “Finglish” or “Swinglish” respectively. These lects display features of the L1 (e.g. Finnish or Swedish) of their speakers but are still understandable to speakers from other L1 backgrounds. In this sense they resemble regional dialects of a language, but as opposed to dialects, they never develop or undergo linguistic changes because they are not used for communication between the speakers of the same L1 (for example, Finnish speakers have no need to speak to each other in English among themselves). As Mauranen (2012: 29) puts it: these L1-based lects “remain forever first-generation hybrids: each generation’s, each speaker’s idiolect is a new hybrid” and thus they arise “in parallel, not in mutual interaction” (hence the term “similect”). But what makes ELF a complex matter is that in ELF communication, large numbers of these similects come into contact with each other rendering ELF a contact between hybrids – or “second-order language contact” as Mauranen (2012: 29) calls it. Even if ELF cannot be considered a uniform code, there are certain things we can expect from its grammar due to its nature as a contact language and due to the fact that it is mainly spoken by L2 speakers. First, from previous research into contact linguistics we know that processes such as simplification (especially in grammar and phonology) and leveling (i.e. convergence of grammatical systems in contact) typically take place when dialects or languages come into contact with each other, and thus we can predict that this is also likely to happen in ELF. Locally and temporarily, this may even happen during one conversation as interlocutors converge on a grammatical form or pronunciation that diverges from a standard – albeit hardly leading to any lasting change in the language. Examples of simplification in grammar include replacing bound morphology with periphrastic (or analytic) means to gain more transparency in production, and isomorphism (i.e. the principle of assigning one form to one meaning), which are used in an attempt to systematize language data but also to achieve ease of perception and production (see e.g. Winford 2003: 217–218) by eliminating opacity and/or redundancy in grammar. In addition to simplification, language-internal innovations may sometimes be used to serve the same purposes, as when derivational affixes are used in creative ways, yielding, for instance, unpossible instead of impossible. As Winford (2003: 220) points out, all these strategies and innovations are not necessarily manifestations of “incomplete mastery” of L2 but actually evince the learners’ command of the language. Also, they seem to testify for “the need to achieve maximum regularity and transparency in the grammar” as speakers “seek optimality in structure as far as possible” (Winford 2003: 220). Second, we know that in contact language situations, language universals often start to emerge. In a lingua franca situation, in particular, as speakers try to safeguard communication 247 Elina Ranta in a very complex and heterogeneous linguistic setting by seeking common denominators, it seems a sound strategy to rely on forms and features that can be assumed to be widespread in languages in general – rather than relying on, for instance, transfer from one’s L1. This way, ELF use could possibly tend towards what is universal in language (Mauranen 2012: 32). In fact, ELF provides an excellent testing ground for hypotheses of language universals as it manifests a contact between virtually all (major) languages in the world, that is, contact between typologically very versatile languages. The above-mentioned simplification/leveling and language universals are actually connected as these processes have been attributed to loss of marked forms in language, and thus steering the language towards “naturalness”. Language universals are best visible in unedited speech, which has not undergone deliberate modification – unlike (standard) written language – and that is why a “language universal” becomes a near synonym of a “spoken language universal”. Also a more restricted, language-specific term “angloversals” has started to gain popularity among English linguists (see e.g. Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann 2009). This term (originally launched by Mair (2003: 83–84) in reference to common tendencies found in the outer-circle Englishes) limits the scope of the search for universals to possible English-internal (spoken language) “universals”, for which ELF seems like an ideal testing ground (see Ranta 2013 for a more detailed discussion). What seems to be lying behind the universal tendencies found in contact-language situations are actually the general cognitive or processing constraints common to all speakers (whether L1 or L2) such as short-term memory limitations or time constraints in interaction. The processing principles that speakers resort to in these situations actually also help to impose order on the incoming language data, and according to Winford (2003: 226), such processing principles seem to override the influence of L1 on L2 and other kinds of creative innovations in L2. Third, because ELF is mostly spoken by L2 speakers, we can also expect to find similar processes in operation as those postulated by SLA research. However, as SLA is in actual fact only a particular instance of language contact, these processes are very much akin to the ones already mentioned (such as simplification and leveling). Another factor following from the L2 speaker status was also already noted above: L2 speakers’ grammars are likely to be “unsteady” or less well entrenched than L1 grammars are. This leads, among other things, to a phenomenon that Mauranen (2012: 41) calls “approximation”. As the less deeply entrenched language forms require more effort in retrieving and processing in L2 speech, L2 users may start resorting to processing shortcuts and thus approximating the ENL forms. As memory for sense in language is stronger than memory for form, the approximations usually retain the meaning of the ENL expression but may use a different wording (such as building stones for building blocks) (Mauranen 2012: 42). The approximations, however, give the interlocutors enough information to go on and other speakers may even adopt these approximations for use as well – thus they become mutually understood and shared items in conversation. This may happen with grammatical items just as well as with the lexicon, so such approximations are also to be expected in ELF grammar. What do we know about ELF grammar so far? As pointed out in the introduction, most references to ELF grammar thus far have been in the fashion of “feature spotting”, i.e. listings of individual non-standard features spotted in different datasets – frequently without statistical information on their occurrence or no further investigation of their syntactic context. These “ELF features” first started to draw researchers’ attention around the turn of the millennium, and one of the first lists 248 Grammar in ELF to appear was given in Seidlhofer (2004). The list has gained vast popularity as a set of “known” grammatical features of ELF although Seidlhofer notes that the features have mainly emerged in small-scale seminar projects carried out on the VOICE data and are only provided so as to generate hypotheses for further research. (Among the features Seidlhofer gives are, for instance, “dropping” the third-person -s, “confusing” the use of the relative pronouns who and which, invariable tag questions and non-standard use of articles and prepositions.) Indeed, for instance, Breiteneder (2005) in her study on the zero marking of the “third-person -s” in VOICE data concludes that this feature is not particularly salient in ELF, contrary to what the list in Seidlhofer (2004) gives us to understand. Other early remarks on grammatical features of ELF are made, for instance, in Erling and Bartlett (2006) who note the non-standard use of articles, prepositions and adverbs in ELF as well as fluctuation in time, tense and aspect markers (including extended use of the progressive), and the extended use of would in conditional if-clauses. Dewey (2007), on the other hand, reports on the following recurring features in his data: 3rd person singular zero, omitting the object/complement of a transitive verb, variable use of prepositions and articles, non-standard collocation patterns with high-frequency verbs, non-standard adverbial positions, and non-standard use of relative pronouns (especially who and which). And Björkman (2010), again, gives an extensive list of non-standard forms found in her data on noun and verb phrase levels, clause level, and morphology, which include, for instance, not marking the plural on the noun, non-standard article usage, double comparatives and superlatives, non-standard formulations of the passive voice and miscellaneous tense, aspect and word order issues (including the non-standard use of the progressive and indirect questions). Based on the ACE corpus, Kirkpatrick (2013) mentions non-standard features such as omission of articles and of plural “s”, omission of “be”, and base form of the verb for past tense as features spotted in the corpus data. Also Mauranen (2012) touches upon the non-standard use of prepositions and determiners in ELF but does not analyse them in further syntactic context. While mere spotting of features without proper quantification and in-depth syntactic analysis does not really help us to describe ELF further, the accumulating lists do bring forth one observation. Non-standardness in ELF seems to have a direction as many studies point to similar kinds of structural findings, and is not just a collection of random, idiosyncratic errors – as has been put forth by ELF critics (see e.g. Mollin 2006). A fairly popular approach to non-standard features in ELF grammar research has been to try to establish “ELF-specific” functional motivation for the non-standard (and sometimes also standard) uses (see e.g. Dorn 2011 on the use of the progressive in ELF, and Dewey 2007 on processes that he finds underlying the non-standard uses listed above). But often the drawback in such studies has been their non-use of baseline data to corroborate the findings. Without a doubt, some non-standard forms may well be motivated by functional criteria but whether the functions are ELF-specific or more general kinds of “functions” in natural, spoken language is a question that remains unanswered without reference data. Thus, at least for grammar, the general claims that in ELF “form follows function” (Cogo 2008: 60; see also Cogo and Dewey 2006; Seidlhofer 2009, 2011) seem somewhat premature. However, processes found in other linguistic domains of ELF research (cf. pragmatics, discourse and phonology) such as accommodation, enhanced explicitness and enhanced cooperativeness seem to find support in grammatical ELF studies. For instance, Dewey (2007; see also Cogo and Dewey 2012), Björkman (2010), and Ranta (2006, 2013) all point to the fact that nonstandard grammatical forms in ELF could, in various ways, serve the purpose of making what the speaker has to say more explicit e.g. by added prominence or by making the construction “heavier” than necessary and thus perceptually more salient. 249 Elina Ranta Enhanced explicitness and cooperativeness also shows in the fact that non-standard features in ELF do not, as a rule, cause misunderstandings in communication. For instance, Meierkord (2004) found in her data of 22 hours of informal student conversations between non-native English speakers in Germany and the UK that misunderstandings were extremely rare and suggests this is due to the speakers in her data employing strategies that “modify their utterances in a way which seems to render discourse easier to process” (p. 125). Björkman (2010; see also 2013) studied a corpus of approximately 500,000 words of lectures and student group-work discussions in an international engineering degree program at a Swedish university to see whether the found non-standard constructions caused communicative breakdowns and concluded that only the non-standard word order in direct questions (accompanied by flat intonation) “resulted in overt disturbance in communication” (2010: 85). Ranta’s (2013) study on four non-standard verb-syntactic constructions in the ELFA corpus (the progressive, embedded inversions, existential there-constructions and would in hypothetical if-clauses; see below) supports these findings, as no misunderstandings due to non-standard use were detectable in the features. On the whole, it is also notable that contrary to common beliefs, non-standardness in grammar in ELF actually seems to be fairly infrequent. For instance, Meierkord (2004) found that of the 2,063 utterances she analysed, only some 9 per cent diverged from Standard English. The same low trend is attested also in Breiteneder (2005) for the third-person singular zero, in Ranta (2006) and Dorn (2011) on the non-standard progressives, and in Björkman (2010) and Ranta (2013) on a number of different constructions. However, comparing ELF and L1 speakers, Ranta (2013) did find that overall, non-standard uses were more pronounced among ELF speakers – which is only to be expected on the basis of the above-mentioned less deep entrenchment of grammatical patterns in L2 users’ repertoire. Yet, it is noteworthy that in the case of existential there constructions in her study, it was actually the L1 speakers whose use evinced a much higher degree of non-standardness, so it is not necessarily always the ELF speakers whose use “deviates” most from the standard. Breiteneder (2005), Björkman (2010) and Ranta (2013) also note the qualitative similarities between the attested non-standard features in ELF and in other varieties of English in the world. As discussed in the previous section, such similarities would seem to point to language universals rather than ELF-specific uses. Ranta (2013) is the first ELF grammar study to explore the possibility of language universals (or “angloversals”) in ELF data, and also the first in-depth syntactic analysis of non-standard features. The study is based on a subset of ca. 760,000 words of the ELFA corpus with the findings compared to naturally-occurring L1 spoken data in a 1.7 million word reference corpus MICASE (The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English). As noted above, the non-standard features she investigated were the inverted word order in indirect questions or “embedded inversions” (as in I don’t know have they left yet / They asked how old is she), the extended use of the progressive (e.g. with stative verbs or general truths), the use of would in hypothetical if-clauses (as in I would leave immediately if she would come or I would have left immediately if she would have come), and the preference for singular agreement in existential there-constructions even with plural notional subjects (as in There’s still a lot of unanswered questions). The selection of the features was purely data-driven, as the attempt was to find reoccurring features in ELFA that diverged from the standard use but had no link to any particular L1 background. All the features are kinds of simplification (see Ranta 2013) and have been cited as features of many other L1- and L2-based Englishes around the world as well, which gives further impetus to the universality hypothesis. 250 Grammar in ELF The results indicated that qualitative similarities are, indeed, to be found in the nonstandard uses of the structures between spoken ELF and spoken L1 English. The similarities were not equally strong with all the four features but as a whole, nevertheless, compel us to reconsider at least the transfer explanation given to them in SLA literature, and also make questionable the “ELF-specificity” of the features. Most striking the similarities were in embedded inversions where the syntactic conditioning for the occurrence of non-standard use in speech appeared to be virtually identical for both L1 and ELF speakers. On the other hand, non-standard second conditionals (I would leave immediately if she would come) was the only feature of the ones studied that appeared to be clearly ELF/L2-specific as no common linguistic denominators for its appearance could be found in the L1 and ELF data. As the qualitative tendencies in the other features are in many respects the same, it seems reasonable to ascribe the occurring non-standardness in both datasets to a common source: most likely the general constraints of on-line, real-time speech production and processing that are the same for all speakers, whether from an L1 or L2 background, and that are often cited as sources of language universals. In other words, the results suggest that ELF speech is just “as normal” or natural as L1 speech in terms of grammar because ELF speakers seem to exploit the same affordances of the English language as native speakers to streamline their spoken production, thus actually demonstrating their competence in the language, rather than purported incompetence. This study challenges the views found in, for example, Dewey (2007) that regard nonstandard grammatical features in ELF as “innovations” by ELF speakers. Rather than being purely innovative use, it seems that many of the non-standard constructions in ELF resemble the use in other varieties of English. Further, it is likely that some of the found non-standard features are due to L2 speakers approximating the ENL forms (as discussed above) rather than having a communicative function in themselves. However, as the studies above indicate, the approximations “work” and serve the purpose of conveying the speakers’ propositions in ELF, as misunderstandings due to grammatical form are extremely rare. As seen from the above, practically all studies on ELF grammar to date have been carried out on spoken language – probably because this is the unedited mode of language where possible unique features and/or new developments of language will most readily be discernible, but also because of the lack of written ELF databases so far. This is likely to change with the advent of the first written ELF database, the WrELFA corpus (Written Academic ELF) by Anna Mauranen and her team (see www.helsinki.fi/elfa/wrelfa.html), but already, two pioneering case studies of grammatical constructions in written ELF exist. Laitinen and Levin (2016) look at subjective progressives (as in she’s always talking too much) in their own written ELF corpus and compare the uses to American English and to learner essays in the ICLE corpus. Most importantly their results show that ELF data and learner data clearly differ from each other both qualitatively and quantitatively in the usage of this particular construction. Laitinen (2016), on the other hand, delves into the ongoing changes in the use of modals in written and spoken American English, British English and ELF, i.e. the increase in the use of so-called emergent modals (e.g. BE going to, HAVE to, and WANT to) and a corresponding decrease in the use of core modals (e.g. can, may, will etc.). His results indicate that while ELF does not lead the change (AmE does), the same change is visible in ELF, too, and actually more pronounced than in BrE. Also, ELF seems to be polarizing the recent frequency changes (both the increase and the decrease) and thus assumably accelerating the diffusion of the ongoing change. These are fascinating preliminary findings that we will hopefully see more of in the near future as results from written ELF accumulate. 251 Elina Ranta Conclusion On the basis of the results discussed above, we can conclude in summary that ELF grammar does seem to manifest some simplification in structure but to a relatively low degree as non-standardness in (spoken) ELF is, overall, fairly infrequent. Further, the features found point to non-standardness in ELF having a direction, because many studies attest similar kinds of non-standard uses (that are also similar in L1 production). Non-standard structures do not generally appear to cause problems in ELF communication – which would, indeed, be unlikely at least with the constructions that seem to be English-internal universals (used to smoothen the communication through streamlining either the production or processing of language data). The fact that some non-standard uses clearly manifest universal tendencies in (spoken) English indicates that ELF is in many respects as natural language use as other (focused) varieties of English, including ENL – and not just a “learner distortion”. Indeed, the first tentative results from written ELF seem to further corroborate the distinction between SLA and ELF also in terms of grammar, and demonstrate how ELF does participate in and accelerate on-going grammatical changes in English. The latter-mentioned, fascinating results are gained through comparisons of ELF to other (focused) varieties of English. This is the kind of research we need more in ELF grammar to discover what actually is specific to ELF interaction and what perhaps general tendencies (cf. universals) in “all” (spoken) English. Obviously, studying ELF in a linguistic “void” without baseline data does not really further this kind of knowledge, although it is understandable that along with the new ELF research paradigm, researchers have wanted to take “a fresh look” at their data without reference to, for instance, L1 English. But whether ELF speakers use particular constructions in truly innovative ways for functions of their own still seems to be a moot point that would need to be verified against reference data. We also need more research on the differences and similarities between grammar in spoken and written modes of ELF – both within ELF and in relation to established varieties of English. This knowledge is sure to start to accumulate with the new written ELF databases in the near future. On the whole, however, we can say that the theoretical and methodological distinction between SLA and SLU/ELF has already provided new insights into (spoken) English L2 grammar that have very much gone unnoticed thus far. As reported above, recent evidence also suggests that the distinction is not only theoretical but also linguistically motivated. Thus, the fascinating journey into the grammar of ELF has only just begun – and will most likely also provide its researchers with a first-hand view of any grammatical changes in the English language at large. Notes 1 The term “second language” or “L2” is used in this chapter as a shorthand to refer to a person’s use of English as an additional language regardless of how many other languages (besides his/her mother tongue(s)) the person knows or the order in which s/he has acquired them. 2 This is also why English language teaching at school has to rely grammar-wise still on Standard English in the absence of endonormative models, at least in the expanding circle. However, the target of learning – i.e. what students are expected to produce themselves (see Melchers and Shaw 2003: 191 for a distinction between exposure, model and target in language learning) – could start to be informed by research results on ELF grammar thus shifting the expected “ultimate attainment” from that of “native-speaker competence” to “a proficient ELF speaker” (see Ranta 2013 for a more detailed discussion). 252 Grammar in ELF Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 11 Kirkpatrick, The development of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN 21 Björkman, Morphosyntactic variation in spoken English as a lingua franca interactions: revisiting linguistic variety Further reading Björkman, B. (2013). English as an Academic Lingua Franca: An Investigation of Form and Communicative Effectiveness. New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-Native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ranta, E. (2013). Universals in a Universal Language? – Exploring Verb-Syntactic Features in English as a Lingua Franca. PhD Thesis. University of Tampere. Available online at: http://urn.fi/ URN:ISBN:978-951-44-9299-0 References Birdsong, D. (2004). “Second Language Acquisition and Ultimate Attainment” in Davies, A. and Elder, C. (eds) The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 82–105. Björkman, B. (2010). Spoken Lingua Franca English at a Swedish Technical University: An Investigation of Form and Communicative Effectiveness. Unpublished PhD thesis. Stockholm University. Björkman, B. (2013). English as an Academic Lingua Franca. An Investigation of Form and Communicative Effectiveness. New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Breiteneder, A. (2005). “The Naturalness of English as a European Lingua Franca: The Case of the ‘Third Person -s’”, Vienna English Working Papers, 14 (2), pp. 3–26. Cogo, A. (2008). “English as a Lingua Franca: Form Follows Function”, English Today 24 (3), pp. 58–61. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2006) “Efficiency in ELF Communication: From Pragmatic Motives to Lexicogrammatical Innovation”, The Nordic Journal of English Studies 5 (2), pp. 59–93. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2012) Analysing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-Driven Investigation. London: Continuum. Dewey, M. (2007). English as a Lingua Franca: An Empirical Study of Innovation in Lexis and Grammar. Unpublished PhD thesis. King’s College London. Dorn, N. (2011). Exploring -ing: The Progressive in English as a Lingua Franca. Saarbrücken: VDM-Verlag Müller. Erling, E.J. and Bartlett, T. (2006). “Making English Their Own: The Use of ELF among Students of English at the FUB”, Nordic Journal of English Studies 5 (2), pp. 9–40. Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2006). “Points of View and Blind Spots: ELF and SLA”, International Journal of Applied Linguistics 16 (2), pp. 137–162. Kirkpatrick, A. (2013). “The Asian Corpus of English: Motivation and Aims”, Learner Corpus Studies in Asia and the World 1, pp. 17–30. Laitinen, M. (2016). “Ongoing Changes in English Modals: On the Developments in ELF”, in Timofeeva, O., Chevalier, S., Gardner, A. and Honkapohja, A. (eds) New Approaches in English Linguistics: Building Bridges. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 175–196. Laitinen, M. and Levin, M. (2016). “On the Globalization of English: Observations of Subjective Progressives in Present-Day Englishes”, in Seoane, E. and Suárez-Gómez, C. (eds) World Englishes: New Theoretical and Methodological Considerations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 229–252. 253 Elina Ranta Mair, C. (2003). “Kreolismen und verbales Identitätsmanagement im geschriebenen jamaikanischen Englisch”, in Vogel, E., Napp, A. and Lutterer, W. (eds) Zwischen Ausgrenzung und Hybridisierung: Zur Konstruktion von Identitäten aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Identitäten und Alteritäten 14. Würzburg: Ergon, pp. 79–96. Mauranen, A. (2011). “Learners and Users: Who Do We Want Corpus Data from?”, in Meunier, F., De Cock, S., Gilquin, G. and Paquot, M. (eds) A Taste of Corpora: In Honour of Sylviane Granger. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 155–171. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-Native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meierkord, C. (2004). “Syntactic Variation in Interactions across International Englishes”, English World-Wide 25 (1), pp. 109–131. Melchers, G. and Shaw, P. (2003). World Englishes: An Introduction. London: Edward Arnold. Mollin, S. (2006). Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Ranta, E. (2006). “The ‘Attractive’ Progressive. Why Use the -ing Form in English as a Lingua Franca?”, Nordic Journal of English Studies 5 (2), pp. 95–116. Ranta, E. (2013). Universals in a Universal Language? – Exploring Verb-Syntactic Features in English as a Lingua Franca. PhD Thesis. University of Tampere. Available at: http://urn.fi/ URN:ISBN:978-951-44-9299-0 (accessed November 5, 2016). Seidlhofer, B. (2004). “Research Perspectives on Teaching English as a Lingua Franca”, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics vol. 24, pp. 209–239. Seidlhofer, B. (2009). “Orientations in ELF Research: Form and Function”, in Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 37–59. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swan, M. and Smith, B. (eds) (2001). Learner English: A Teacher’s Guide to Interference and Other Problems. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szmrecsanyi, B. and Kortmann, B. (2009). “Vernacular Universals and Angloversals in a Typological Perspective”, in Filppula, M., Klemola, J. and Paulasto, H. (eds) Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. London: Routledge, pp. 33–53. Winford, D. (2003). An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. 254 21 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken English as a lingua franca interactions Revisiting linguistic variety Beyza Björkman Introduction It is now well known that in ELF settings, we have complex language contact situations with high linguistic heterogeneity. The linguistic diversity present in ELF settings naturally reflects itself in several areas, including variation in morphosyntactic use. While the conventional wisdom has been that non-standardness is associated with a speaker’s L1, ELF research has shown repeatedly that this variation cannot be fully explained by speakers’ L1 backgrounds (see e.g. Björkman, 2013a; Ranta, 2013), and that there are too many non-standard forms shared by a wide spectrum of L1 backgrounds, which in turn can be considered as candidates for commonalities. ELF research has revealed several trends in ELF syntax, such as reducing redundancy (e.g. Björkman, 2010; Ranta 2013) (e.g. ‘not marking the plural on the noun’), and creating extra explicitness (e.g. ‘unraised negation’, ‘double comparative and superlatives’). When it comes to morphology, similar trends have been observed (Björkman, 2010), namely non-standard word forms with semantic transparency (e.g. discriminization, levelize), analytic comparatives (e.g. more narrow, more cheap), and finally non-standard plural forms (e.g. how many energy, how much litres). As many chapters in this handbook document in different ways, English is the most predominant lingua franca in the world today, used as a vehicular language in a number of critical domains, often for very high-stakes purposes. While the need for a common language is not a new phenomenon in any way (see Mortensen’s discussion on the need for a common language; Mortensen 2013), one language achieving such a dominant lingua franca status globally is unprecedented. In many international domains, English is often the only vehicular language available to the speakers. Settings where English is used as a lingua franca (ELF) are by nature diverse in terms of individuals’ sociocultural, conceptual and linguistic backgrounds (Mauranen 2010). In ELF settings, speakers from different levels of proficiency, first-language backgrounds, and educational systems rely predominantly on one language for different communicative purposes. These different types of diversities lead to a high degree of morphosyntactic variability in ELF interactions. 255 Beyza Björkman While the review in the present chapter recognizes the fluidity of ELF as a resource employed primarily by multilingual speakers who perform in “transient multilingual communities” (Mortensen 2013: 37), it focuses predominantly on the well-documented morphosyntactic commonalities that emerge in ELF interactions as well as the processes behind them. It reviews the now well-known features reported from empirical ELF studies (e.g. Björkman 2010, 2013a, 2013b; Ranta 2009) along with a review of the features of different varieties of English covered in the World Englishes paradigm, showing a considerable degree of overlap. Its contribution in particular will be a discussion of this overlap, highlighting the need to problematize the theoretical construct ‘variety’ on empirical grounds. ELF research may have moved far away from earlier discussions of whether ELF is a variety or not; nevertheless, some leading researchers have suggested that the types of ‘innovation’ observed in ELF usage may as well spread (Mauranen 2013) and that it “may lead to stabilization of [such] usage habits in the course of time [in reasonably stable contact environments]” (Schneider 2012: 60). Taking into account the overlap of features from varieties covered in World Englishes, and what has been suggested previously in literature about stabilization and spreading (as mentioned above), a problematization of variation and variety does not seem irrelevant. This chapter will have as its primary focus morphosyntactic variation and will take into account morphosyntactic features only when problematizing the notion of variety. Any political or ideological discussions are beyond the scope of this chapter. Background In the early days of ELF research when the aim was to understand the phenomenon, research started with descriptive studies, investigating (any) commonalities of morphosyntactic usage from ELF settings. Seidlhofer, based on her following observations from the VOICE corpus data, called researchers to work on whether similar features would be found in ELF interactions in other datasets from different settings: ‘Dropping’ the third person -s (e.g., He say); The interchangeable use of the relative pronouns which and who (e.g. The man which was here yesterday … ); The non-standard usage of articles in general; Invariable tag questions, for example, isn’t it? No?; ‘Redundant’ prepositions, for example, study about; High frequency of some verbs of ‘high semantic generality’, for example, do, have, make; Using that clauses instead of infinitive clauses, for example, I want that … ; Increased explicitness, for example, black color. (Seidlhofer 2004: 220) The call made by Seidlhofer in 2004 paved the way to a number of empirical studies investigating (morpho)syntactic variation in different ELF settings in different geographical regions, some focusing on a selection of features (e.g. Breiteneder 2005 on the third-person singular -s, Ranta 2009 on the progressive -ing form) while others focused on larger pieces of spoken discourse (e.g. Björkman 2010, 2013a, 2013b; Cogo and Dewey 2006, 2012; see a thorough review in Jenkins et al. 2011: 288–290). While there were some striking 256 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken ELF differences in the findings of these studies in terms of the frequency of the features found,1 it is remarkable that similar tendencies were observed in ELF interactions, such as reducing redundancy (when the grammatical ‘standard’ form is not necessary for understanding, e.g. dropping the third-person singular present tense -s, Breiteneder 2005) and increasing explicitness (duplicating certain grammatical forms for increased semantic transparency, e.g. black color instead of black in Seidlhofer’s list above, 2004). I documented the following features elsewhere earlier (Björkman 2010, 2013a, 2013b), using 69 hours of naturally occurring data from a Swedish higher education setting where engineering lecturers and students from 19 different first-language backgrounds relied on English as their lingua franca:2 Not marking the plural on the noun in the presence of a quantifier, e.g. two system, five reactor; Non-standard article usage (absence or overuse of articles), e.g. Anyone can define the renewability?; Double comparative/superlatives, e.g. much more higher (seems to be triggered with the use of ‘much’); Non-standard analytic comparative, e.g. more big; Subject-verb agreement, e.g. A reactor have … ; Tense and aspect issues, using the continuous -ing form instead of Simple Present tense, e.g. In these systems, air is traveling through … ; Non-standard passive voice, e.g. It can be happened that… ; Non-standard question formulation (missing auxiliary), e.g. How many pages we have now?; What means endothermic? Word order issues, e.g. Salinity affects what kind of material you can use; Negation (not preceding what needs to be negated), e.g. This looks not sophisticated. The features found above show the tendencies observed in earlier work and observations (e.g. Seidlhofer 2004), namely that explicitness seems to be increased by devices that increase comprehensibility (e.g. the unraised negative) and redundancy seems to be reduced successfully (e.g. not marking the plural on the noun). The strict set of criteria used for the reporting of the features signaled further that these features could not have been caused simply by first-language (L1) transfer. Another interesting aspect of the research project at hand was the ratio of standard usage versus non-standard usage, where the non-standard features were found to have low frequency in the total number occurrences throughout for all features, standard usage making up at least 69 per cent of student talk and 89 per cent of lecturer talk (see Björkman 2013a and 2013b for a longer discussion of this ratio). This highlighted further that the proficiency in the setting investigated was quite high, as it can be expected of a higher education context where there are language proficiency-related admission requirements. What is perhaps even more interesting is a comparison of these features with features in varieties of English covered in the World Englishes (henceforth WE) paradigm. As stated by Jenkins et al. (2011: 284), “considering its [ELF] similarities to and differences from the well-established World Englishes paradigm” is crucial3 when trying to define and understand ELF as a phenomenon. I have reported elsewhere on a certain degree of overlap of these features and features found in the varieties covered in the WE paradigm, taking the review of features reported in Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008) as a point of comparison. The preliminary finding that 11 of the 257 Beyza Björkman 13 features documented in Björkman (2010 and 2013b) were actually found in documented WE varieties showed that this overlap was worth investigating, which will be undertaken in the present chapter. The immediately following section therefore aims to provide a more thorough review of the overlap of features reported in the author’s earlier work (2010, 2012 and 2013a) and varieties of English organized into the following geographical regions “relevant for the discussion of varieties of English” (Kortmann and Schneider, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 3): the British isles, the Americas and the Caribbean, the Pacific and Australasia, and finally, Africa and South and Southeast Asia, in the comprehensive four-volume World Englishes (WE) textbook edited by Kortmann et al. (2004). It should be noted that the present review will only focus on the presence or absence of the features reported rather than their frequency, also following the “qualitative rather than quantitative” approach adopted in the volumes mentioned above (Kortmann and Schneider, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 4). Morphosyntactic features of varieties of Englishes: looking at the World Englishes paradigm The purpose of this section is to provide a general systematic review of the types of morphosyntactic usage reported in ELF interactions against features of different varieties in World Englishes. The present review is by no means exhaustive, including all morphosyntactic features in all recognized varieties of WE. Also, the review relies on one source (Kortmann et al. 2004) and is therefore dependent on the inclusion criteria made in this particular source. The source (Kortmann et al. (2004)) is a comprehensive four-volume handbook of World Englishes, which offers a thorough review of all 59 different varieties, covered in four main geographical areas. Kortmann lists the morphosyntactic features of WE varieties to serve as a reference point for all the four volumes (Kortman et al. 2004: xxv–xxix). The features listed amount to 76 items (numbered) under 11 main linguistic categories. A check of these features of WE reveal some overlap with morphosyntactic usage reported in ELF interactions: six of the linguistic categories listed by Kortmann and Schneider (cited in Kortman et al. 2004) actually include features that have been observed in ELF usage earlier, as shown in Table 21.1. The features in the right column in Table 21.1 have all been previously reported in ELF usage (see e.g. Breiteneder 2005; Cogo and Dewey 2006, 2012; Ranta 2009, and the brief review in the ‘Background’ section above). The corresponding feature numbers have been kept the same as listed in Kortmann’s list (Kortman et al. 2004: xxv–xxix). The picture in Table 21.1 F eature overlap reported in WE varieties and in ELF usage in general linguistic categories, drawing on Kortmann et al. (2004) Linguistic category Feature overlap (reported in WE varieties and in ELF usage) Noun phrase 17 19 21 52 54 69 73 Verb phrase: tense and aspect Negation Agreement Complementation Discourse organization and word order 258 Irregular use of articles Double comparatives and superlatives Wider uses of the progressive Invariant tags Invariant present tense forms Inverted word order Lack of inversion in Wh- questions Morphosyntactic variation in spoken ELF Table 21.1 provides us with a general overlap of features between ELF usage and features of WE varieties. For a clearer and more elaborate picture however, it is necessary to look at each of the 59 varieties covered in WE and check their features against the morphosyntactic features reported from ELF usage. A systematic review undertaken here of the varieties covered in the handbook4 by Kortmann et al. (2004) provide us with the following features, as summarized in Table 21.2. For reasons of space, the overlap is shown in terms of the broader geographical region (e.g. the British Isles), and the names of varieties are mentioned only when a particular variety shows a significant difference from the other varieties in the region. The four columns of Table 21.2 represent the broader geographical regions applied in Kortmann et al. (2004) while the rows include usage reported on ELF research earlier, in the author’s previous work (2010, 2013a and 2013b). The review summarized in Table 21.2 shows a significant overlap with features covered in ELF usage. If we look at the invariant present tense forms and concord in general, we see that they occur frequently in the British Isles (Kortmann et al. 2004: 482) and in the Americas and the Caribbean (Schneider, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 767). Another feature that is very much present in ELF interactions is the invariant question tag isn’t it, which Table 21.2 F eature overlap between ELF usage and usage reported in 59 WE varieties, drawing on Kortmann et al. (2004) The British Isles The Americas and the Caribbean The Pacific and Australasia Africa, South and Southeast Asia Invariant present tense forms Invariant concord tags e.g. isn’t it? Progressive ‘used with a wider range of uses’ (especially northern dialects, Irish English, the Orkney and Shetland Isles) Absence of plural marking Variability in concord in general – – – Invariant tag questions – Invariant tag questions – Lack of plural marking after numerals and nouns of measure (common in north America and the Caribbean) Absence or overuse of articles – – Absence of articles (e.g. in Aboriginal English) Absence of articles Word order issues Rising intonation used in questions (e.g. in Australian and New Zealand English) Word order – Lack of auxiliary inversion in questions Irregular use of articles (e.g. in Orkney, Shetland, the North and in the Celtic Englishes) Lack of inversion and auxiliaries in Wh- questions – – – Double comparatives 259 Beyza Björkman is common in parts of the British Isles (Kortmann et al. 2004: 484) in its variants. This usage is found in the varieties in the Pacific and Australasia as well (Burridge, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 599). The progressive has been reported to be ‘overused’ and used for different purposes in ELF interactions (see e.g. Ranta 2009; Björkman 2010). We see that it has a number of uses in the varieties in the British Isles, “display(ing) a wider range of uses” (Kortmann et al. 2004: 479). Kortmann refers to Gachelin (1997, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 34–36) who suggests that the progressive may even be in the process of turning into a general imperfective. An interesting feature found in my earlier work (e.g. Björkman 2010) was the absence of plural marking on the noun in the presence of a quantifier, e.g. ‘two reactor’. This particular feature to date has not been reported on in other ELF studies, including the work that has the ELFA corpus as their data source. It is clear from the review that absence of plural marking is common after numerals and in units of measure in the Americas and the Caribbean (Schneider, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 771), constituting yet another syntactic form that is in common between WE and usage observed in ELF interactions. Two other (sets of) features in common are irregular use of articles, lack of inversion and auxiliaries (and word order) in questions, observed in all four geographical regions (see Table 21.2). Finally, double comparatives, again reported in ELF usage is common in Africa, South and Southeast Asia (Mesthrie, cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 631). So what can be said in light of the above review with regard to the overlap observed between the morphosyntactic features in varieties covered in the World Englishes paradigm and the features observed in ELF interactions? First of all, it is noteworthy that so many varieties covered in WE share these features despite their very different sociolinguistic realities. Mesthrie draws the reader’s attention to these “similarities” noticed in the WE varieties (cited in Kortmann et al. 2004: 631): The large number of similarities across L2 Englishes needs to be explained more carefully than in the past, where the default assumption has often been the interference from the substrates. It is prima facie implausible, areal linguistics notwithstanding, that over a thousand languages should induce the very same (or very similar) influences. What Mesthrie says above gives support to what has been suggested in the ELF paradigm, namely that the morphosyntactic non-standardnesses found are not simply random ‘nonstandardnesses’ but actually successful reductions of redundancy and increased explicitness (e.g. Seidlhofer 2004; Björkman 2010). It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to investigate the underlying principles and the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes behind these tendencies, and they are to be left for psycholinguists and cognitive linguists (but see Cogo and Dewey 2012 and Mauranen 2012 for underlying principles). It is, however, certainly interesting that the same tendencies are found in ‘legitimate’ WE varieties. As Mesthrie maintains (above), it is impossible that more than a thousand languages should display similar tendencies, leaving the ‘substrate influence’ claim out of the question. Similarly, in ELF interactions where there is usage shared by a large number of first languages from different language families (Björkman 2010), the conventional wisdom that this is all caused by L1 transfer simply falls short. The fact that ELF usage, which is ‘contact use’, has so many features in common with features from varieties covered in WE, i.e. not contact features, signals some important cognitive processes that must be behind such usage (see Hall, Chapter 6 this volume). 260 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken ELF Kortmann and Schneider (cited in Kortman et al. 2004: 3–4) report that a large portion of the features are not unique to these (sets of) varieties. This is true both morphology and syntax and for phonology. As a matter of fact, quite a number of morphosyntactic features described as salient properties of individual varieties may strike the reader as typical of other varieties, too. This brings to the fore another question that descriptive ELF research on morphosyntax has had to answer, namely whether the observed features are unique to ELF usage. Researchers have seen and known all along that the features observed in ELF usage are not sui generis (e.g. Firth 2009), and they have been saying all along that they do not need to be sui generis. The features are simply the findings of empirical work describing ELF usage. Let us now turn to the implications of the above observations and overlap for the established construct of ‘variety’. Problematizing variety Henry Widdowson reminds us of the need to revisit established ‘convenient’ constructs, questioning “how far they remain convenient” (2012: 5). We can only make sense of the world by imposing our own order on it by devising abstract constructs so as to bring it under conceptual control. This is true of linguistics and language pedagogy as of everything else: both of them necessarily disconnect the continuum of actual experience to make simplifying distinctions so as to come to terms with reality distinctions between language and varieties […] Making abstract distinctions of one kind or another is a necessary convenience and cannot be avoided, […] but we also need to consider how they are related and how far they remain convenient. The question we will tackle here is to what extent, if at all, the construct variety is useful and reliable, and ‘convenient’ as Widdowson puts it for ELF usage. It may come as a surprise to ELF researchers that the present chapter re-opens the ‘variety’ discussion. Scholars have said in relatively recent publications repeatedly that ELF is not a variety; it cannot be a variety, because it simply lacks stability and a stable speech community (see e.g. Jenkins et al. 2011: 296). As will hopefully be clear in this section, the aim here is not to go into discussions of ELF usage and whether or not it has or can reach variety status. It is instead an attempt to show that the issue is much more complicated than achieving, having or lacking variety status, as the two prerequisites of the construct variety, i.e. stability (vs variation and variability), and speech community, are not unproblematic. As noted earlier here, the present chapter is certainly not the first one to discuss the relevance of the theoretical construct ‘variety’ with reference to ELF usage (see e.g. Ferguson 2009; Firth 2009; Seidlhofer 2009; Widdowson 2012). However, the overlap reported in the previous section between ELF usage and varieties in WE calls for further discussion. First, there is the question of how much variation is allowed in a variety, bringing into question its usefulness and reliability as a construct. If we take into consideration the fact that there is a considerable degree of variation in the varieties covered in WE, even in the inner-circle varieties in the Kachruvian model (Kachru 1992) (as shown in the previous section), one can easily question what degree of the stability suffices for a variety to qualify 261 Beyza Björkman as such. What the grammarians Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik said in their discussion ‘Varieties within a variety’ already in the early 1970s still seems to hold true, especially in the presence of globalization we are experiencing today: All societies are constantly changing their languages with the result that there are always co-existent forms, the one relatively new, the other relatively old; and some members of a society will be temperamentally disposed to use the new (perhaps by their youth) while others are comparably inclined to the old (perhaps by their age). But many of us will not be consistent either in our choice or in our temperamental disposition. Perhaps English may give rise to such fluctuation more than some other languages because of its patently mixed nature. (Quirk et al., 1972: 31) Quirk et al. (1972: 31) go on to discuss “variation in terms of the relationships”, where they acknowledge that there is a continuum for any given variety of English to be anywhere from “relatively uniform” to “relatively diverse”, allowing room for variation both in individuals’ and communities’ use. Variability has been reported to be largely present in ELF usage. As Canagarajah (2007) maintains, the form of ELF is context-bound, as it is determined and negotiated by the speakers for that particular setting, making variability inherent in ELF interactions. Variability has even been described as a characteristic of ELF (e.g. Firth 2009). As Firth puts it speakers within the same social setting, while engaged in interaction with the same co-interactants, have demonstrated variability of linguistic form – not as a result of ‘unstable learning’ – but, arguably at least, as a result of the need to adapt to locally unfolding interactional exigencies and demands. (Firth 2009: 163) How can one then reliably distinguish varieties from each other, with different types of variation present, and with so many features in common between them (see previous section). Widdowson, in his discussion of the “inconvenience of established concepts”, refers to Trudgill (1999), who described the classification of varieties from linguistic variation as being “linguistically arbitrary” (Trudgill 1999: 122, cited in Widdowson 2012: 9) (see also Seidlhofer (2006: 46) on the division between languages and varieties being arbitrary). Widdowson (2012: 10) continues on the hardships to define or “establish varieties on empirical grounds”, as they are “essentially abstractions, convenient fictions”. If these categorizations used as bases for general fields of studies such as WE and sociolinguistics are described as arbitrary, and if there is considerable variation and variability in the varieties of English, how are we to understand ELF usage? The problematicity of the construct variety has not stopped researchers from debating whether ELF has or can achieve variety status. On one hand, scholars have argued that it is impossible to say with certainty that ELF cannot develop into a type of variety after the first stage of high variability, followed in sociolinguistics by the stages of levelling, simplification and regularization, described by Trudgill (1986: 98, cited in Ferguson 2009: 123). On the other hand, scholars have also said that the variability in ELF usage is different since this particular type of variability “goes beyond the traditional understanding of variation as deriving from a common core of grammar and language norms” and that “variation is at the heart of this system, not secondary to a more primary common system of uniform norms” (Firth 2009: 163). 262 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken ELF What variation and variability will mean for the future of ELF usage is not by any means an easy question to answer. As Ferguson (2009) says, we cannot claim that the features observed in ELF usage by different first-language backgrounds cannot possibly stabilize. This is further supported by Mauranen (2013) and Schneider (2012), who have discussed the possibility of spread and stabilization of innovation and usage habits (see also the ‘Introduction’ above). At the same time, we know that all change (and stabilization) is preceded by variation but not all variation leads to change (stabilization) (Mesthrie et al. 2000). Another dimension the present chapter aims to enter into the equation is that of linguistic level. We are often able to make guesses as to where a speaker comes from and which variety s/he speaks, largely based on his/her accent features, more so than on lexis and pragmatics. When it comes to morphosyntax, however, things get complicated. Variety becomes a much less reliable notion when we focus on individuals’ morphosyntactic production. For example, a speaker from a variety in the British Isles (see Table 21.2) or a speaker in an ELF setting both could lack plural marking on the noun after quantifiers. I will suggest that the only area where the construct variety is most helpful is phonology, which is the linguistic level where ELF usage is highly variable. When phonology-related issues are left out, what we have left is morphosyntax (along with lexis and pragmatics), where variety as an organizational criterion falls (very) short. On this note, it can even be suggested with some degree of certainty that variety as a construct cannot really be applied to ELF usage. To sum up what I have said above then, the construct variety is not unproblematic for speech communities that are by nature transitory5 in varying degrees, but the construct presents challenges even for the varieties covered in WE since the “common core of grammar and language norms” (Firth, 2009: 163) used as a yardstick itself shows considerable variation even in the inner-circle varieties in the Kachruvian framework (Kachru 1992). The assumption that there is a standard, ‘legitimate’ type of English against which we can test features to be standard or non-standard is questionable, as discussed by leading scholars (Widdowson 2012: 10; Crowley 2003). The ‘standard language’ is not ‘uniform’, and this will continue creating difficulties for linguists (see Crowley 2003 for thorough discussions on the notion of Standard English6). As I have already mentioned, my aim in the brief discussion above has not been to discuss the variety status of ELF usage. The question is not whether ELF usage can constitute a type of variety or not. The issue is whether the construct is actually useful, or ‘convenient’ as Widdowson puts it (2012: 6), as a way of thinking about language use/usage in our times, with reference to the unprecedented impact English has had in the world. The term variety is becoming increasingly difficult to apply with the variation and variability observed in the use of English throughout the world with speech communities that are by nature ‘unstable’. The construct variety does not seem relevant for ELF usage where what we are able to document as candidates for commonalities are in the level of morphosyntax, which is where variety becomes a much less helpful notion. Conclusion My aim in this chapter has been to draw attention to the overlap of morphosyntactic features observed in ELF interactions and the features documented in varieties of English in the WE paradigm, previously documented by the author elsewhere in a more general fashion (Björkman 2010). The review of the features of the 59 varieties of English covered in the WE paradigm (Kortmann et al. 2004) and ELF usage has made it necessary to (re-)visit the construct variety, established in linguistics. I am suggesting here that, on top of being highly 263 Beyza Björkman problematic in general, the construct variety is not a reliable organizational criterion for ELF usage, as it applies mostly to phonology and much less to morphosyntax. This in turn suggests that discussions on the potential of ELF to reach variety status or not is not immediately relevant for the ELF paradigm. Acknowledgments The author is grateful to Professor Philip Shaw for very useful discussions on English as a lingua franca and World Englishes on the topic of variety. The author is also indebted to the editor Martin Dewey for his patience and help along the way. Notes 1 I have found in my previous work that subject-verb agreement was standard in more than 90 per cent of all the cases documented (Björkman 2010 and 2013a and 2013b), Breiteneder reports the -s variant to be 83 per cent (Breiteneder 2005) (also see Mortensen 2013: 32 for a discussion of these percentages). 2 Some of these examples can be found in my earlier publications (see Björkman 2010, 2012 and 2013a and 2013b). 3 Jenkins et al. (2011) say in their article that a discussion of similarities and differences between ELF usage and World Englishes is necessary to be able to define ELF. The aim in the present review article is not to provide a definition of ELF; however, a comparison of the features documented in ELF interactions and the features of varieties covered in the World Englishes paradigm reveal interesting morphosyntactic processes. 4 Which consistent of 11 in the British Isles, 18 in the Americas and the Caribbean, 12 in the Pacific and Australasia and 18 in Africa, South and Southeast Asia. 5 Relevant to the discussion above is the construct ‘speech community’, which is equally complicated. It is certainly true that ELF interactions take place most often in “transient multilingual communities” (Mortensen 2012: 37) unlike in more stable speech communities. What complicates matters though is the fact that these transient multilingual communities make up a substantial portion of the world’s population; an increasing number of communities in important domains are by nature ‘transient’. So with so many ‘transient’ communities globally, it must be fair to ask whether we should instead talk about “global discourse communities” in the Swalesian sense (1990). 6 Crowley’s conclusion is that there is no identifiable Standard English. The Oxford Dictionary of English has a section on Standard Englishes in its introduction where it defines the concept as “(word or senses) being in normal use in both speech and writing everywhere in the world, at many different levels of formality, ranging from official documents to casual conversation” (Ayto 2010: xv). This definition is largely vague and presupposes a high level of homogeneity not observed in any variety of English. Related chapters in this handbook 6 Hall, Cognitive perspectives on English as a lingua franca 7 Seidlhofer, Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation 20 Ranta, Grammar in ELF Further reading Ferguson, G. 2009. Issues in researching English as a lingua franca: a conceptual enquiry. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19(2), 117–135. Widdowson, H.G. 2012. ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 5–26. 264 Morphosyntactic variation in spoken ELF References Ayto, J. (2010). Oxford dictionary of English idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Björkman, B. (2010). Spoken lingua franca English at a Swedish technical university: An investigation of form and communicative effectiveness. Unpublished PhD thesis. Björkman, B. (2013a). English as an academic lingua franca: An investigation of form and communicative effectiveness (Vol. 3). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Björkman, B. (2013b). Grammar of English as a lingua franca. In Chapelle, C.A. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–9. Breiteneder, A. (2005). The naturalness of English as a European lingua franca: the case of the ‘third person -s’. Vienna: Vienna English Working Papers, 14(2), pp. 3–26. Canagarajah, S. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91(1), pp. 923–939. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2006). Efficiency in ELF communication: From pragmatic motives to lexicogrammatical innovation. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 5(2), pp. 59–93. Cogo, A. and Dewey, M. (2012). Analysing English as a lingua franca: A corpus-driven investigation. London: Bloomsbury. Crowley, T. (2003). Standard English and the politics of language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ELFA corpus. www.uta.fi/laitokset/kielet/engf/research/elfa (accessed 5 June 2015). Ferguson, G. (2009). Issues in researching English as a lingua franca: a conceptual enquiry. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19(2), pp. 117–135. Firth, A. (2009). The lingua franca factor. Intercultural pragmatics, 6(2), pp.147–170. Gachelin, J.M. (1997). The progressive and habitual aspects in non-standard Englishes. In Gachelin, J.M. Englishes around the world. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 33–46. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. and Dewey, M., (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), pp. 281–315. Kachru, B.B. (1992). Models for non-native Englishes. The Other Tongue: English across Cultures, 2, pp. 48–74. Kortmann, B., Schneider, E.W., Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R. and Upton, C. (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: a multimedia reference tool. 4 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Mauranen, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca: issues for research and practice. Higher linguistics seminar, Department of English, Stockholm University. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, A. (2013). Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts: Shaped by complexity. Discourse in context: Contemporary applied linguistics, 3, pp. 225–245. Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A. and Leap, William, L. (2000). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mesthrie, R. and Bhatt, R.M., (2008). World Englishes: The study of new linguistic varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mortensen, J. (2013). Notes on English used as a lingua franca as an object of study. Journal of English as a lingua franca, 2(1), pp. 25–46. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language (Vol. 397). London: Longman. Ranta, E. (2009). Syntactic features in spoken ELF-Learner language or spoken grammar. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 84–106. Ranta, E. (2013). Universals in a universal language?-Exploring verb-syntactic features in English as a lingua franca. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Helsinki. Schneider, E.W. (2012). Exploring the interface between World Englishes and second language acquisition and implications for English as a lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), pp. 57–91. Seidlhofer, B., (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, pp. 209–239. Seidlhofer, B. (2006). English as a lingua franca in the expanding circle: what it isn’t. In Rubdy, R. and Saraceni, M. (eds) English in the world: Global rules, global roles. Continuum: New York, p. 40. 265 Beyza Björkman Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, P. (1999). Standard English: What it isn’t. In Bex, T. and Watts, R.J (eds) Standard English: The widening debate. London: Routledge, pp. 117–128. VOICE. (2013). The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (version 2.0 XML). Widdowson, H.G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), pp. 5–26. 266 22 Language norms in ELF1 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin Introduction The question of language norms and normativity is central to studies on English as a lingua franca (ELF). It is relevant from the perspective of descriptions of ELF (what norms do ELF users draw on?), speaker orientations to norms (what counts as “good English” for different ELF users?) and the perspective of pedagogical applications (which norms, and to what extent, are relevant for English teaching?). In this chapter, we provide an overview of the concept of language norms, review recent research on normativity in ELF and discuss how the notion of language regulation can be used to analyse ELF settings. Much of the descriptive research on ELF has been concerned with the ways in which ELF communication differs from English used as a native language (ENL). The use of ENL as a point of comparison is necessary “in order to discern variation and innovation in ELF” (Mauranen 2005: 275). Indeed, ELF research has shown that non-conformity to ENL may be functionally motivated and even enhance mutual understanding (e.g. Björkman 2013; Cogo 2009), and in this sense, ELF research can be seen to “document ELF users’ degree of independence of ENL norms” (Seidlhofer 2009: 242). However, approaching ELF use in terms of how it diverges from ENL may be problematic if the analysis is mainly interested in mapping non-conformity and not the whole variety of normative orientations that participants in an ELF interaction might adopt, including moments when codified norms are made relevant (or imposed). On the whole, more attention has been directed at the creativity of individual ELF users than the processes through which norms are negotiated between individuals in particular interactions. We start from the assumption that ELF research also needs to consider the ways in which speakers construe what is “acceptable”, “functional”, or “correct” for them in specific ELF settings, which might also include a role for ENL norms. Within the ELF paradigm, there is relatively little conceptual discussion about language norms. In fact, Blommaert (2006: 520) claims that the notion of norms is “often invoked but rarely theorised” in (socio)linguistics in general (see also Piippo 2012). Thus, there is a need for a more in-depth discussion of language norms not only within ELF research, but also beyond. There is also a need for conceptual clarity: as Mauranen (2012) points out, a 267 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin term such as “native-speaker norms” can be used to refer both to prescriptive norms and to a corpus-based understanding of native-like usage, the latter of which is much more accommodating of variety. In this chapter, we discuss a number of different ways of conceptualising language norms, especially in terms of what they can give to the analysis of ELF. We also illustrate how language norms can be studied using the notion of language regulation. We approach both language norms and ELF from a social perspective. In line with, for example, Mauranen (2012) and Seidlhofer (2011), we define lingua franca use from a situation-based perspective, not in terms of shared features: English used as a lingua franca is a “vehicular language used by speakers who do not share a first language” (Mauranen 2012: 8). That is, we understand ELF as context-bound, functionally driven language use, not as a stable variety (see Jenkins 2015 for a discussion on defining ELF). In the following, we first outline three possible meanings of the term “language norms”, after which we move on to suggest a focus on language regulation as a means to empirically investigate how norms are created, maintained and negotiated. We then illustrate our approach with examples from ELF data from academic contexts. Our discussion mainly concerns spoken language, but it will also briefly touch on issues related to writing. While we will not consider ELF and English language teaching in any detail in this chapter, the discussion has relevance for pedagogical debates as well (on ELF and language norms in ELT, see Dewey 2012). The concept of language norms There are a number of typologically oriented characterisations of language norms, distinguishing between different types of norms (see e.g. Andersen 2009 on declarative vs. deontic norms; Bamgboṣe 1998 on code norm, feature norm vs. behavioural norm; for a review, see Hynninen 2016). For the purposes of a discussion of language norms in ELF we argue that the following three understandings of the concept are most important. Norms describe what is common in a particular setting In this meaning, language norms refer to how members of a particular community habitually behave linguistically. Norms can be identified by analysing usage, on the basis of recurring instances of behaviour. Evidence on recurrence and sharedness can be gained for example through corpora. Such norms are not understood as being upheld through codification or sanctions, but through repeated usage and the gradual achievement of acceptance in a given community. Corpus evidence can be used to gain access to what kinds of regularities there are in lingua franca interactions, what is typical and recurrent when English is used as a shared language by second language (L2) speakers (see e.g. Mauranen 2012; Ranta 2013). Thus, corpora allow us to make judgments about usage-based norms for ELF. Importantly, corpora are also used to show that ELF interactions are not non-normative (“anything goes”): there is regularity in ELF usage. Many ELF communities are relatively transient and short-lived and it may therefore be difficult to think of them in terms of typification or sharedness. It can be assumed, however, that speakers who frequently participate in interactions where English is used in such a way develop “habits” and recurring practices for dealing with possible challenges (see e.g. Pietikäinen 2016 on permanence in ELF usage). This recurrence can be seen to 268 Language norms in ELF create normative pressure, or a sense of “oughtness” (Piippo 2012) for speakers to act in certain ways. It is important to note, though, that what actually is common and what speakers experience as common may differ.2 Norms are what is expected/accepted in a particular setting In this conceptualisation, the term “norm” describes expectations and beliefs held in a particular community with respect to what kind of linguistic behaviour is acceptable. These expectations and beliefs are not made explicit in the form of written codes (cf. the next section), which means that they may remain relatively implicit from the point of view of discourse participants. The notion of “language ideology” is particularly useful in conceptualising such beliefs. Language ideologies are not interesting simply because they are often relatively ingrained/entrenched and thus have some permanence, but because they are likely to have an impact on language practices; witness, for example, the influence of “standard language ideology” on language education policy (on language ideologies, see e.g. Milroy 2001; Woolard 1998). Normative beliefs can be studied by analysing metalanguage, or “language about language”, as expressed for example in interview data. As Irvine (2002: 25) points out, participant accounts of sociolinguistic norms are necessarily partial and interested, offered from an individual’s specific social position. Interview data on beliefs should therefore be treated as a socially situated representation rather than a straightforward description of community norms. A number of ELF studies (e.g. Hynninen 2016; Kalocsai 2013) have used interviews in this way to analyse speaker beliefs, particularly how ELF users talk about what kinds of Englishes are functional in the speech events they have participated in. In addition to normative beliefs, it is important to analyse what language users treat as acceptable in their interactions with others. That is, normative beliefs need not be understood as static, as stable sets of beliefs that ELF users bring to all the interactions they engage in. Instead, we can assume that speakers vary in their normative orientations, depending on their interlocutors, the setting and what kind of speech event they are participating in. We have found Andersen’s (2009) concept of “living norms” useful in analysing acceptability and appropriateness as an emerging phenomenon, as a focus of collective negotiation within groups of speakers. One way of accessing such negotiation is to study interactional data. Such an approach is taken by Hynninen (2016) where interactions between ELF speakers are studied, for example, by looking at what kinds of English uses speakers intervene in and how they do it (e.g. by correcting another speaker or by commenting on a language feature). The findings suggest that it is important to go beyond standard native Englishes when analysing the normative expectations and beliefs construed in ELF settings. This observation is supported by earlier research on ELF: for example, Hülmbauer (2009) shows that seemingly “incorrect” forms may be treated as “correct” by speakers in particular interactional situations; and Ehrenreich (2009), Kalocsai (2013) and Smit (2010), with focus on three different communities of practice, report on ELF speakers establishing relatively permanent norms relevant for their communities of practice, norms that partly deviate from codified standards. Norms are what is codified in or for a particular setting This is perhaps the most prototypical lay understanding of norms: norms are what some authority lays out as correct, acceptable or preferable for a given situation, text or interaction. 269 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin Such norms typically emanate from written codes such as grammars, usage handbooks and language policies or language authorities such as language teachers, editors and language revisers. Codified norms have relative permanence and (apparent) stability and may have broad scope across a variety of settings. Power relations are in operation relating to one party (e.g. speakers of a high-prestige native variety) having more symbolic resources (language competence) than another (e.g. L2 users). It may appear that this third type of conceptualisation is least relevant to ELF as ELF research typically emphasises users’ non-conformity to or divergence from codified norms. However, we believe that an understanding of language norms as an imposed, ratified “code” is relevant in the analysis of ELF use, for a variety of reasons: •• •• •• Divergence is typically described in ELF studies in relation to a construct such as “ENL norms” or the like, which typically draws on the “norms as what is codified” meaning. Codes and standards may have an impact on ELF usage even where “Standard English” is not the main normative order that participants orient to (see discussion below). There is much discussion in the research field on the implications of ELF for teaching and testing. This raises the question of whether competence in ELF can be described/ evaluated without drawing on the meaning of norms as imposed code. Overall, we believe that it is fruitful for ELF research to be clear about what is meant by the concept of language norm and also to go beyond the dualistic model whereby codified, imposed norms are contrasted with situated, emergent norms that may have no bearing beyond a particular interactional situation. We argue that is important to consider the complex interplay of codified and emergent norms in ELF communities. Recent studies on ELF data show that the analysis of normative expectations and what participants treat as acceptable linguistic behaviour in interaction helps us to gain valuable insights into participants’ understandings, and complements corpus approaches to the description of ELF interactions. An additional issue of much interest for ELF research is whether we conceptualise norms as stable or dynamic. From the point of view of “norms as code”, norms may appear fixed and non-negotiable, while an exploration of “norms as what is common”, for example through corpora, usually provides a view into much greater variability. Similarly, speakers’ normative expectations and what they treat as acceptable in interaction have been shown to be variable and context dependent. Thus, the conceptualisation of language norms an analyst chooses to draw on has implications for how stable language norms appear to be. Norms and language regulation On the whole, we find it important to approach norms from a social perspective, given the focus in ELF research on analysing communities and interactions that vary in their stability. This means that we analyse norms as socially negotiated, socially ratified and socially resisted. We will now turn to a theme that emphasises the social nature of norm negotiation, but that ELF research rarely engages with: language regulation. We understand language regulation as practices through which language users monitor, intervene in and manage their own and others’ language use (Hynninen 2016). The concept comprises both regulatory practices as they manifest in interaction (e.g. a speaker “correcting” his or her interlocutor’s language use) and also those that represent more organised forms of regulation (e.g. institutional language policies). The value of the notion for ELF is that it focuses our attention 270 Language norms in ELF on the ways in which norms are created, maintained and resisted, and the processes through which normative expectations and beliefs are expressed. In the literature on ELF (e.g. Seidlhofer 2011), it is typical that two types of norms are referred to: “native-like English”/ “ENL norms” and situated norms emerging in ELF interactions. The focus of analysis is how speakers use their varying linguistic resources creatively and intelligibly while not fully conforming to norms of native-like usage. As noted above, ELF usage is typically described with reference to how it diverges from ENL. Norms are often analysed in terms of how they are negotiated during interaction (rather than imposed), and speakers as orienting to the demands of the situation rather than preexisting standards. A good example of such discourse in the ELF literature is the following: “norms are tacitly understood to be established during the interaction, within the current possibilities . . . they are primarily regulated by interactional exigencies rather than what native speakers would say, or would find correct, or ‘normal’, or appropriate” (Seidlhofer 2011: 18). We find this view overly generic: while it may describe language use in everyday non-institutional interaction, in many institutional settings the situation is likely to be more complex. Participants may be obliged to orient both to norms that are transient and situation specific and to those that have more permanence and scope beyond the particular interactional situation, including codified norms. In any case, this is a question that needs to be empirically investigated rather than assumed. Moreover, it is not a generic feature of ELF interactions that participants are free agents who can just choose what works for them locally. There are many contexts where speakers face sanctions if they fail to orient to norms relevant to the situation, and such norms may include codified norms. In order to understand ELF scenarios, we cannot focus solely on individual creativity. The notion of language regulation is helpful specifically in mapping the ways in which language users are constrained, whether it is through top-down language policies or more ad hoc practices of intervening in language in everyday situations. We suggest that especially when studying institutional interactions, analysts need to look at what relatively stable practices of regulation are in place in the setting they are studying. Such constraints include, for example, how access to a given setting is regulated (see e.g. Jenkins 2014). There may be formal language competence requirements before a person is allowed entry to ELF-using institutional contexts (e.g. English-medium higher education, business meetings, EU press conferences). Regulation also includes practices whereby participants’ language use is monitored and intervened in. Such practices also need mapping since they vary across different settings and genres. For example, while English-language research articles by L2 users are typically objects of language revision prior to publication, this kind of regulation is usually not directed at research blogs (see Mauranen 2013). The presence of relatively permanent practices of regulating language use means that participants may orient to codified norms in some ways and at specific moments even in settings where English is not regularly policed with regard to correctness norms. We can assume that the more institutionalised the setting is, the more regulation we will encounter. We will now move on to discuss some data examples that illustrate practices of language regulation. The examples relate both to normative expectations and codified norms. When we analyse the regulation of “norms as what is expected/accepted”, a key focus of interest is speaker beliefs about language use (for example, how speakers construe “correct” English). Another focus is speaker expectations about language use (e.g. to what extent this “correct” English is seen to matter in a particular setting). To see what participants actually treat as acceptable, focus should also be laid on language regulation as it is manifested in interaction (for example, when and how speakers “correct” each other). 271 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin An analysis of the role of codified norms in language regulation involves, for example, exploring documents with a language regulatory intent (e.g. guidelines and manuals) as they are made relevant in a specific setting, including the processes through which such documents are created, disseminated and managed. It is also necessary to investigate participant understandings of the relevance of such documents and the ways in which they come to be used (or not used) as instruments of regulation. Examples of different forms of regulation Below we exemplify different forms of language regulation in academic contexts. Issues such as language choice (which languages can and should be used in specific settings) are typically regulated through institutional language policies, but language “quality” also often becomes an object of regulation. For instance, many forms of published research writing are heavily regulated through mechanisms which impose obligatory language revision prior to publication. Moreover, most institutions have formally established language competence requirements for applicants into English-medium programmes. Both types of regulation draw on “norms as code”, that is, standard English is the main reference point in evaluating language use. In the following we illustrate the regulation of “norms as what is expected/accepted” in academic speech events. The data presented in the examples (and analysed in more detail in Hynninen 2016; see also Hynninen 2012) come from English-medium instructional contexts at a multidisciplinary university in Finland (transcription conventions are located in the appendix to this chapter (p. 275)).3 The first example illustrates negotiation of acceptability in the form of language commenting. The example is from a seminar session in forestry, where a student (S8, L1 Arabic) has just given a presentation based on a written research report, and the participants are discussing the presentation/report. T2 (L1s Finland Swedish and Finnish), one of the seminar teachers, takes up language as a topic. Example 1 T2: er er <FIRST NAME S8> correctly used the the th- th- the name of the country as the sudan remember that this is the the name of the country the sudan like the gambia there are a few country names where you have the although the modern usage is (to omit it) the only thing you have to be con- consequent either you always say the sudan the sudan or then without the but there are this is one of the few country names where where it is BS2: [so why (is it why is it)] T2: [er and th- the] government uses it’s the republic of the sudan that’s (the) official name of the country <TURNS OMITTED> T2: ((...)) but it’s also correct to say without the [nowadays] <S2> [mhm-hm] </S2> especially in scientific contexts As the example illustrates, T2 takes on the role of language regulator by commenting on the use of the form “the Sudan” in a student’s presentation/report. The teacher first suggests that it is correct to refer to the name of the country using the definite article “the”. He evaluates 272 Language norms in ELF the students’ use of the article as correct, by referring to the official name of the country, as well as to a rule according to which some country names include “the”. What is interesting in this example, though, is that the teacher suggests that despite this, “the modern usage is (to omit it)” and that “especially in scientific contexts” it is “correct” to also talk about “Sudan”, that is, to refer to the name of the country without the definite article. What we see here, then, are alternative sources for norm construction. The teacher accepts a form that he regards as correct in scientific contexts, even if the form, according to the teacher, is not correct ENL usage. Example 1 thus illustrates the way the relevance of codified norms may be negotiated in interaction. The example further shows that non-native speakers of English can and do act as language regulators in ELF interactions, also when native speakers of English are present. A number of studies have suggested that in academic ELF contexts, academic expertise may override native speaker status (see e.g. Mauranen 2014; Hynninen 2016). The second example, from a tutored group work meeting in biology, similarly illustrates language commenting as a form of language regulation, but in this case, correctness is construed simply in relation to native speakers of English. Example 2 S3: and for example if you check(ed) the language it (would) be easier to, speak (right) <NS5> mhm-hm </NS5> like @right@ right way In Example 2, a student (S3, L1 Finnish) turns to another student (NS5, L1 Canadian English) for language support in proposing that the native speaker of English check the language of the group’s presentation slides that they were preparing together. The native speaker of English is construed as a language authority, who has the means to judge what is the “right way” of using the language. This suggests reliance on ENL as an/the accepted form of English and a willingness to defer to the presumed expertise of the native speaker. NS5 also commented in an interview that it was a typical practice among the students to assign her as a proofreader for collaborative writing tasks simply because of her status as a native speaker of English. It is clear, then, that speakers also orient to expectations concerning language use outside particular interactions. To exemplify analysis of speaker beliefs and expectations, we now turn to research interview data to see what it is that speakers bring with them to the interactions. The data also come from Hynninen (2016), from interviews conducted with the students and teachers participating in the interactions analysed. Example 3 is from a research interview with a student (L1 Brazilian Portuguese) and illustrates how talk about language can reveal both speaker beliefs about language use and speaker expectations of language use in particular situations. Example 34 ((...)) because here <I.E. IN FINLAND> it’s not an english er country everybody speaks a more or less correct english and because everyone understand each other you don’t pay attention that you are sometimes making some mistakes especially pronunciation or or some grammar mistakes but everyone is understanding you but when i had the chance to talk to somebody from america or from some other english-speaking country then i realise that i have bad english if i have to pronounce (ev-) everything correctly and try to make me er to to m- to make the other understand me well @@ 273 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin In the account, the interviewee separates two different types of interactions, talking to non-native speakers as opposed to native speakers of English. The need to orient to (codified) ENL norms is construed as relevant when talking to native speakers, whereas “mistakes” are not construed as a problem in ELF interactions. This suggests that speakers’ beliefs about language use (e.g. what is correct English) and their expectations about language use in specific settings (e.g. how English is used in ELF encounters) may not coincide. The account further illustrates how speakers may expect different norms to be relevant in different settings or with different people, and also how they may evaluate their own language use differently in relation to the contexts or positions from which they are talking. This also raises the issue of perceived social advantage of particular forms of English and how such perceptions may influence speakers’ regulatory practices (see Wang 2013). The three examples together illustrate a certain discrepancy between speakers’ notions of correctness and what is expected and accepted in ELF interaction (see also Hynninen 2016). Even if ELF users have been found to often attach correctness to (codified) ENL, analysis of interview talk suggests that such correctness is not always construed as relevant for ELF interaction (as suggested by Example 3). Analysis of ELF interaction suggests that such correctness may not necessarily be oriented to in interaction either (as illustrated in Example 1). As discussed in relation to Example 2, though, irrespective of whether such correctness is treated as relevant in a particular interaction or not, it may of course be construed as a relevant norm outside the particular interaction. It also seems that the mode of communication is an important factor. Hynninen (2016) found that more variability was accepted for speech than for writing in the context of English-medium instruction, and that the participants were more concerned with correctness in relation to writing than speech (however, cf. Example 2 where correcting the written English on slides is seen as an aid to speaking correctly). Another form of institutionally organised language regulation in many universities is provided by staff training courses intended as support for lecturers teaching in English. To exemplify regulation in one such course, let us look at Example 4.5 In the example, one of the course instructors (T1, L1 Finnish) comments on the English used by one of the participating lecturers (S2, L1 Finnish). The lecturer has just given a short practice lecture that is now discussed in class. Example 4 T1: ((...)) but a few things that i know erm are i often hear, in in finland so (you meet that in) other international contexts too that erm strictly speaking are a bit strange when you know if if we want(ed) to use some kind of erm proper english if if something like that exists er and on- one of these things is erm, (i believe) <NAME S2> said you said something can be found in net <FINNISH> netissä </FINNISH> in finnish <S2> mhm </S2> what would be the you know strictly speaking what what do you know if we want to be a bit more correct everyone understands in net, but that’s not the the phrase that would be used among let’s say canadian english speakers The example shows that the instructor pays attention to the use of a particular preposition in the participating lecturer’s talk when the preposition diverges from (codified) 274 Language norms in ELF ENL norms (see the reference to Canadian English speakers). What is notable, though, is the extensive hedging in the instructor’s turn: “strictly speaking” the usage could be “a bit more correct”, “if something like that [i.e. proper English] exists”. The primary aim of the course was to encourage lecturers to teach in English and allow them to practice lecturing in a supportive environment. Thus, we may assume that in terms of regulation, the instructor did not wish to establish rigorous top-down correctness norms for English-medium instruction, but to generate awareness and negotiation of what kind of English is functional in EMI settings, for example in terms of values such as intelligibility (“everyone understands in net”). We have selected these four examples to illustrate the negotiability of language norms in ELF settings. All the examples suggest that norm negotiation is a feature of ELF interactions and that even in a language teaching setting, the instructor is careful not to impose specific norms on academic speech events. The challenge is to understand when regulation remains situational, and when it has a more long-term bearing on language use and gains some degree of permanence. What is clear, though, is that without focusing on language regulation as a social practice and as experienced by speakers, we cannot understand the range of different norms speakers may need to orient to. Conclusion We have argued in this chapter for an approach to language norms that emphasises the process (how norms develop situationally through practices of language regulation), rather than the product (what “the norms” are). In this approach, norms are understood as socially based, rather than as something natural, pre-given or stable, and as ideologically invested and necessarily subject to negotiation and struggle. This means that norms need to be analysed in terms of what contexts they arise in, and how and by whom they are promoted, maintained and resisted. The assumption that norms are context-bound and situated also means that a fair amount of variability in what participants treat or ratify as acceptable is to be expected. For example, there may be variation in the degree to which speakers intervene in the use of a particular feature. To approach norms in this way is particularly relevant for researching complex language contact situations such as ELF interactions, where we can expect some negotiation of norms, simply because of speakers’ different linguistic backgrounds. However, focusing on the ways in which language is regulated situationally may very well reveal new insights concerning the formation of norms also in other, more homogenous and stable settings. Appendix: Transcription conventions Speaker codes S# Student (non-native speaker of English) NS# Student (native speaker of English) BS# Student (bilingual speaker with English as one of the L1s) T# Teacher/instructor 275 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin Transcription symbols , Brief pause 2–3 sec. . Pause 3–4 sec. te- Unfinished utterances [text 1] [text 2]Overlapping speech (approximate, shown to the nearest word, words not split by overlap tags) (text) Uncertain transcription @@ Laughter @text@ Spoken laughter <S#> text </S#> Back channelling when marked within another speaker’s turn <NAME S#> Names of participants in the same speech event <TEXT> Descriptions and comments between tags ((…)) Text omitted from transcription bold Portion of transcript emphasised by authors Notes 1 This article has been written in the “Language regulation in academia: the shifting norms of English use” project (see www.helsinki.fi/project/lara), funded by the Kone Foundation. 2 We are here drawing on Andersen’s (2009) distinction between “descriptive” and “experiential” norms. 3 The data were collected for the “Studying in English as a Lingua Franca” (SELF) project directed by Professor Anna Mauranen at the University of Helsinki. The project received funding from the University of Helsinki Research Funds for the three-year period of 2008–2010. For more information, see www.helsinki.fi/elfa/self (accessed 29 March 2016). 4 Note that interviewer back channelling has been removed from the transcript. 5 These data were also collected as part of the SELF research project, see note 3. Related chapters in this handbook 3 Ehrenreich, Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca 7 Seidlhofer, Standard English and the dynamics of ELF variation 9 Sherman, ELF and the EU/wider Europe 24 Canagarajah and Kumura, Translingual practice and ELF Further reading Andersen, H. (2009). “Living norms”, In Lunde, I. and Paulsen, M. (eds), Poets to Padonk:. Linguistic authority and norm negotiation in modern Russian culture (Bergen Series in Linguistics 9), pp. 17–33. Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen. Hynninen, N. (2016). Language regulation in English as a lingua franca: Focus on spoken academic discourse. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 276 Language norms in ELF Nekvapil, J. and Sherman, T. (eds) (2015). “Special issue: The language management approach: Perspectives on the interplay of bottom-up and top-down”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 232. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. References Andersen, H. (2009). “Living norms”, In Lunde, I. and Paulsen, M. (eds), Poets to Padonki. Linguistic authority and norm negotiation in modern Russian culture. (Bergen Series in Linguistics 9), pp. 17–33. Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen. Bamgboṣe, A. (1998). “Torn between the norms: Innovations in World Englishes”, World Englishes, 17 (1), pp. 1–14. Blommaert, J. (2006). “Language ideology”, in Brown, K. (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 510–522. Björkman, B. (2013) English as an academic lingua franca. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Cogo, A (2009). “Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: A study of pragmatic strategies”, In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 254–273. Dewey, M. (2012). “Towards a post-normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1 (1), pp. 141–170. Ehrenreich, S. (2009). “English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations: Exploring business communities of practice”, in Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 126–151. Hülmbauer, C. (2009) “’We don’t take the right way. We just take the way we think you will understand’: The shifting relationship between correctness and effectiveness in ELF”. In Mauranen, A. and Ranta, E. (eds), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 323–347 Hynninen, N. (2012). “ICL at the micro level: L2 speakers taking on the role of language experts”. Special issue: Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education at Mainland European Universities, eds U. Smit and E. Dafouz Milne. AILA Review, 25, pp. 13–29. Hynninen, N. (2016). Language regulation in English as a lingua franca: Focus on spoken academic discourse. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Irvine, J. (2002). “‘Style’ as distinctiveness: the culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation”. In Eckert, P. and Rickford, J.R. (eds), Style and sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–43. Jenkins, J. (2014). English as a lingua franca in the international university: The politics of academic English language policy. Abingdon: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca, Englishes in Practice, 2 (3), pp. 49–85. Kalocsai, K (2013). Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca: A study of students in a Central European context. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Mauranen, A. (2005). “English as lingua franca: An unknown language?’, In Cortese, G. and Duszak, A. (eds), Identity, community, discourse: English in intercultural settings. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 269–293. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, A. (2013). “Hybridism, edutainment, and doubt: Science blogging finding its feet”, Nordic Journal of English Studies, 12 (1), pp. 7–36. Mauranen, A. (2014). “Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts: Shaped by complexity”, in J. Flowerdew (ed.), Discourse in context. Bloomsbury, London. pp. 225–245. Milroy, J. (2001). “Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization”, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5, (4), pp. 530–555. Pietikäinen, K.S. (2016). “Misunderstandings and ensuring understanding in private ELF talk”, Applied Linguistics. doi:10.1093/applin/amw005. Piippo, I. (2012) Viewing norms dialogically: An action-oriented approach to sociolinguistic metatheory. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Helsinki. 277 Niina Hynninen and Anna Solin Ranta, E. (2013). Universals in a universal language? Exploring verb-syntactic features in English as a lingua franca, Doctoral dissertation, University of Tampere, Tampere, accessed 23 March 2016, http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-44-9299-0. Seidlhofer, B. (2009). “Common ground and different realities: World Englishes and English as a lingua franca”, World Englishes, 28 (2), pp. 236–245. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Smit, U. (2010). English as a lingua franca in higher education. A longitudinal study of classroom discourse. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Wang, Y. (2013). “Non-conformity to ENL norms: A perspective from Chinese English users”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2 (2), pp. 255–282. Woolard, K. (1998). Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In Schieffelin, B., Woolard, K. and Kroskrity, P. (eds), Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–47. 278 23 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters Christopher Jenks Introduction The global spread of English has shaped, and continues to shape, how scholars approach the study of languages. Notions of what a speaker of English looks and sounds like, and what nations and ethnicities are associated with the language, are being challenged. New communicative contexts have emerged that require, or are mediated through, English; individuals from distinct, and often geographically dispersed, speech communities are communicating in English more now than ever before. Such issues and phenomena complicate previously held assumptions and theoretical constructs within sociolinguistic scholarship, including global and English as a lingua franca (ELF) research. A number of advancements have been made within this body of work (for criticisms, see Swan 2012). Researchers have examined the cultural and intercultural dimensions of ELF (e.g. Holmes and Dervin 2016), the pedagogical implications of the global spread of English (e.g. Seidlhofer 2004; McNamara 2012), and the language ideologies of multilingual speakers (e.g. Jenks and Lee, in press). Scholarship has also investigated the phonology of global Englishes (e.g. Jenkins 2000), the theoretical and practical issues related to English varieties that do not conform to so-called native speaker models (e.g. Kachru 2005), the politics of linguistic imperialism (e.g. Phillipson 2008), and the communicative and pragmatic conventions of interacting in lingua franca encounters (e.g. Matsumoto 2011). For this latter body of work, a key finding of early pragmatic research is the observation that ELF speakers are overtly mutually supportive and consensus oriented (e.g. House 1999, p. 75; Seidlhofer 2001, p. 143; Kordon 2006; p. 78). Many of the aforementioned studies observe that speakers follow the “let-it-pass” principle, which entails letting an “unknown or unclear action, word or utterance ‘pass’ on the (common-sense) assumption that it will either become clear or redundant as talk progresses” (Firth 1996, p. 243). The let-it-pass principle, as well as the observation that speakers of global Englishes are overtly mutually supportive and consensus oriented, have been highly influential in shaping how scholars view lingua franca encounters. Indeed, such findings shed light on the professional and institutional contexts in which the let-it-pass principle and related lingua franca observations are 279 Christopher Jenks largely based. Despite the contributions made by this line of work, scholarship has not fully explored non-institutional settings and the extent to which the let-it-pass principle is applicable in “casual” or less formal interactions. This gap in the literature has created a number of empirical questions, including the possibility that, in some contexts, ELF speakers are pragmatically uncooperative and unruly. In a recent study of lingua franca interaction, Jenks (2012) examines precisely this issue; his study of online chat rooms shows how lingua franca speakers interact in a mutually unsupportive way and do not seek to build consensus. The study demonstrates that interactants in lingua franca encounters highlight problems or troubles in communication through laughter, joking, and ridicule. These findings expand the current ELF literature by demonstrating that interactants in non-institutional settings deviate from the pragmatic norms observed in business and academic encounters. In this chapter, I expand on Jenks’ (2012) examination of reprehensive talk in online chat rooms by reporting on the ways in which lingua franca speakers are disagreeable, objectionable, confrontational, and generally unpleasant. To this end, the analysis explores how interactants are demonstrably uncooperative interactionally, pragmatically, and socially, and what this form of interaction means for ELF research. I examine a range of communicative situations and interactional contexts, including online chat rooms, conversations in a shared kitchen space, and project group work at an international university. Furthermore, I investigate how uncooperative talk is organized interactionally, and identify the pragmatic and social actions and practices involved in being mutually unsupportive. Uncooperative interaction Grice’s (1975, p. 45) seminal work on the “cooperative principle,” though conceptually vague and methodologically clumsy (see, for example, Thomas 1995, p. 87), provides an appropriate starting point for a discussion of uncooperative interaction. In setting up his discussion of the cooperative principle, Grice (1975, p. 45) states this of conversational norms: Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This characterization of talk is used to identify four conversational maxims (i.e. quantity, quality, relation, and manner), which will not be discussed in this chapter, that entail what and how to say and do things in social interaction. The quote above is useful in making sense of pragmatic research in ELF scholarship, as Grice’s (1975) discussion of the cooperative principle recognizes that the bulk of what interactants do in most social encounters is mutually supportive and consensus oriented. Societies, communities, businesses, industries, and the like would simply not be able to maintain order and social progression otherwise. The main theoretical aim of the cooperative principle is to provide a way of understanding how social encounters are managed (cf. four conversational maxims; see also the politeness maxims by Leech 1983), but one of the underlying messages is that people do not typically go about their daily lives being rude, recalcitrant, and/or reprehensive. This observation does not suggest that impolite or uncooperative behavior is absent in social interaction. Numerous opportunities and situations present, or lead to, such acts and behavior 280 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters (e.g. Arendholz 2013). The notion that social interaction is inherently cooperative does, however, suggest that deviations from Gricean norms (see also Brown and Levinson 1987), which may include being rude, recalcitrant, or reprehensive, are noteworthy empirically and socially given the marked nature of such talk. Arendholz (2013, p. 89), in her book-length study of inappropriate behavior in online message boards, shares a similar view when discussing scholars’ propensity to investigate cooperative and polite interaction to the detriment of understanding unruly or uncooperative talk (see also House 2010). This sustained lack of interest for impoliteness is also astonishing considering the fact that negatively marked behavior was always assumed to be easier to detect than behavior which conforms to politeness norms … As impoliteness was hastily dismissed as a by-product of or a deviation from politeness, unworthy of being treated as an autonomous field of research, scientific approaches inadequately tried to explain impoliteness in terms of politeness, either by making use of models and methods which were originally designed for a completely different phenomenon or by deriving models for the description of impoliteness from politeness models. If communication is inherently cooperative, then what is the empirical value in investigating such behavior or by making claims that a particular speech community is mutually accommodating? Put differently, the characterization that individuals are interactionally supportive merely establishes what is already known about human interaction. What then is there to be gleaned from investigating such interactions or by characterizing speech communities as inherently cooperative? This question is partly addressed by scholars working in the larger area of study concerned with pragmatic issues (e.g. Levinson 1983; Barron, Gu and Steen 2017). The work of Brown and Levinson (1987), for example, identifies the social “tools” that are used by participants to engage in social interaction, which are the same resources employed by researchers examining such encounters (see also, for example, Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008). These theorists add to pragmatics scholarship by providing the methodological tools to examine and understand social interaction. While similar methodological contributions have been made by lingua franca researchers, the impact of such work is comparatively small (for a discussion of theory and methodology in ELF research, see Seidlhofer 2011). That is, ELF research has yet to develop methodological tools or theoretical constructs that have been used in any significant way by social interaction researchers working in other disciplines. Rather, existing methodological tools, such as conversation analysis, are used to investigate linguistic and interactional patterns in lingua franca contexts. While this is not a criticism, the somewhat theoretically insular nature of ELF scholarship means that, in order to make contributions to other disciplines, researchers must demonstrate the extent to which their observations are different than other English-speaking contexts. For example, research that characterizes lingua franca encounters as being mutually supportive and consensus oriented must demonstrate how such observations add to the larger body of work devoted to pragmatic issues. Are there reasons to believe that lingua franca speakers are inherently uncooperative? Do lingua franca contexts make it difficult for interactants to be mutually supportive? In other words, what is interesting and/or revelatory about the observation that lingua franca speakers are consensus oriented and mutually supportive? I am not suggesting here that such observations have little empirical value, nor is the discussion above an attempt to argue that stating the obvious or reporting on pragmatic 281 Christopher Jenks “givens” amounts to shoddy research. What I am arguing, however, is that if ELF scholars want to make a contribution to the larger body of work that deals with pragmatic issues, then such researchers must discuss the extent to which their research participants (and/or contexts under investigation) are pragmatically different (or similar) than other situations where (1) English is used as the primary mode of communication and/or (2) multiple languages are being used. For example, my 2012 research cited above that examines lingua franca encounters in an online setting could have discussed more fully the extent to which the interactions are similar to other chat rooms hosted and participated by “non-ELF” interlocutors. I can imagine, for instance, a pragmatics scholar working on French as a lingua franca in online settings asking of my research whether my findings are simply a reflection of technological affordances and constraints. Put differently, the onus is on lingua franca researchers to demonstrate that situations where English is spoken by individuals that do not share a common primary language are different than contexts where English is spoken among speakers that all possess the same linguistic background. This would seem to be a sensible requirement for any body of work attempting to create a distinct empirical identity. Furthermore, in order for lingua franca researchers to make empirical contributions to the larger body of work devoted to pragmatic issues, as well as beyond such disciplinary boundaries, they must demonstrate what is interesting about, for example, being mutually supportive and consensus oriented. To this end, I do not make the claim that the lingua franca contexts investigated in this chapter are somehow different than other English-speaking situations. Apart from not sharing the same primary language as their fellow interlocutors, the interactants examined in the present study are no different than speakers of English communicating in monolingual contexts. Therefore, what makes this study unique and/or interesting is not the fact that the speakers are communicating in lingua franca contexts. Rather, this chapter contributes to the larger body of work devoted to pragmatic issues by uncovering some of the ways uncooperative interaction is organized in different lingua franca contexts. Put differently, a study of uncooperative interaction contributes to both ELF research and pragmatics scholarship. The chapter adds to the body of ELF scholarship by demonstrating how speakers deviate from the prototypical consensus oriented talk reported widely in the literature (for a critique of such findings, see Jenks 2012). Furthermore, the chapter adds to the body of work devoted to pragmatic issues by uncovering the social and interactional features of uncooperative communication; again, this is an empirical issue that has not received a great deal of attention in the literature. Uncooperative interaction is defined here as communication that does not attempt to create a harmonious encounter between interactants. Culpepper (1996, p. 350) uses the term “social disruption,” but is largely concerned with “strategies oriented towards attacking face, an emotionally sensitive concept of the self.” Although face and self are potentially interesting and important factors in understanding uncooperative interaction, much of the work in this area is based on theoretical frameworks designed to understand politeness norms. The extent to which such frameworks can adequately address disharmonious or social disruption interaction remains unclear. The social discord that is experienced in and through uncooperative interaction may stem from a single utterance within a larger conversation or can manifest as a series of actions and/or utterances. In other words, uncooperative interaction is not bound to a particular time frame or spate of talk. Creating discord between interactants can be accomplished by disrupting norms that are established either a priori (in the case of a chat room with official rules or in situ (as with an impromptu meeting between two unacquainted interlocutors). 282 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters Examples of uncooperative interaction may include violating turn-taking norms, ridiculing or making fun of co-interlocutors, impeding progress when the interactional goal is to reach consensus, excluding speakers from participation, and withholding information when it is requested, to name a few. Uncooperative interaction may result from unintentional acts or individuals may strategically create a disharmonious social encounter. Uncooperative interaction should not be confused with impoliteness or rudeness (cf. House 2010), as these two latter terms may mean nothing for the interactants communicating in such contexts. That is to say, the degree to which a social encounter is impolite or rude is an issue that is jointly determined by speakers as talk unfolds. Furthermore, an uncooperative exchange does not necessarily mean that speakers are being impolite or rude (for definitions of impolite communication, see Bousfield and Locher 2008, pp. 3–4). The methodological challenge in identifying and analyzing uncooperative interaction is that it requires analysts to not only demonstrate how the interactants themselves create discord within a social encounter, but also possess an awareness of the communicative norms and expectations that shape the context under investigation. This is because not all exchanges deemed uncooperative (or impolite, for that matter) by the analyst are treated as such by the interactants under investigation. In the analysis that follows, several data extracts that exhibit uncooperative interaction are investigated. The analysis adopts applied conversation analysis, which can be interpreted in several ways (e.g. Antaki 2011). In this chapter, applied refers to the adoption of next-turn proof procedure, a core conversation analytic principle that privileges how utterances are responded or oriented to, with a detailed treatment of the cultural and social aspects of the people and interaction under investigation. In analytic terms, this means balancing emic observations of interaction with macro, and often critical, descriptions of communicative contexts. The analysis, in other words, reflects the understanding that conversation analytic principles can assist in uncovering the mechanics and dynamics of interaction, but also recognizes that the degree to which an exchange is uncooperative is based on a complex set of pragmatic norms and expectations that require a treatment of context that extends beyond a turn-taking system. That is to say, examining uncooperative interaction requires the analyst to identify, or at least know, what norm is being broken. Again, norms are sometimes established a priori, but interactants have resources to negotiate them during a communicative encounter. In many cases, interlocutors themselves reveal when a norm is being broken in and through interaction. In many other situations, however, an uncooperative act or practice may not be explicitly attended to during a communicative encounter. Uncooperative lingua franca encounters An oft-cited definition of a lingua franca encounter states that such contexts comprise the communication of English between speakers that do not share a common primary language (Jenkins 2007). A small group of academics from different Asian countries discussing research in English at a conference represents a prototypical example of a lingua franca encounter. While this definition may cover a range of lingua franca contexts, this study also includes encounters where English is spoken by at least one monolingual speaker or an interactant that grew up speaking the language. For instance, a monolingual speaker from England interacting in English with a Korean is considered a lingua franca encounter. The five data extracts examined below represent a range of communicative contexts and include a number of different uncooperative acts. The first two data extracts are taken from a 283 Christopher Jenks voice-enabled chat room used for interactants wanting to practice English. The third extract is an exchange in a shared kitchen space for international students living in England. The last two data extracts are from studies conducted by different scholars: the first encounter is a US soldier interacting with several Iraqi boys at an undisclosed location in Iraq and the second is an exchange during group work at an international university in Denmark (Bysouth, Ikeda, and Jeloos-Hagi 2015; Day and Kjærbeck 2011, respectively). These last two extracts are included in this study to demonstrate the range of lingua franca contexts in which uncooperative interaction takes place. Furthermore, the goal in examining the five extracts below is to establish that because lingua franca encounters take place in a plethora of settings, they also consist of varied participatory structures (e.g. asymmetries in power and the distribution of interactional privileges, such as turn-taking rights); the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers that engage in ELF communication additionally varies from context to context. The first data extract is a greeting exchange taken from the beginning of a longer recording of a chat room used by speakers from different countries to converse in English. S5 has not participated in the chat room leading up to the beginning of this extract (transcription conventions are located in the appendix to this chapter (p. 289)). Data extract 1 1 S4: so, can you introduce yourself 2 (1.6) 3 S5: eh? (0.4) me 4 (0.9) 5 S4: ye↓ah↑ 6 (0.8) 7 S5: .hhhhhhh 8 (1.6) 9 S5: uhm (0.5) hi. (0.3) >hehe> .hhhh (1.1) eh- (0.2) 10 uh::[m 11 S4: [yeah↓ (0.3) yeah don’t be (shy) yeah like (* * *) 12 (0.5) let’s↑ talk. let’s open your mouth S4 begins the exchange by nominating S5 to speak by asking her to “introduce yourself.” This question either surprises, and/or does not provide enough information for, S5, as she responds by requesting clarification; the first request for clarification “eh” does not specifically identify what or where the trouble is in the previous turn and the second clarification “me” seeks to confirm whether she is being nominated. After S4 confirms that S5 is to whom he is speaking, S5 begins her self-introduction in line 7 with a deep audible inhalation. After a relatively long pause for this communicative setting (cf. Jenks 2014), which contributes to an already slow beginning of a turn, S5 continues with six disjointed constructions: “uhm,” “hi,” “hehe,” audible inhalation, “eh,” and “uhm.” The slow and stilted turn could be responded to in a polite or cooperative situation with words of encouragement, by providing more time to respond, or any other utterance that does not threaten the face of the speaker. In this uncooperative situation, however, S4 promptly commands S5, as indicated by the latching of turns in line 11, to “talk” and “open your mouth.” In so doing, S4 uses a moment of disfluency, and possibly embarrassment (as indicated by S5’s laughter tokens), to provide a scolding response. The exchange between both interactants continues to unfold beyond this data extract in an uncooperative manner. 284 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters The speaker in the next data extract also treats a moment of disfluency as an opportunity to be uncooperative. Below S7 is engaging in his first meaningful exchange in this data extract. Data extract 2 1 S7: 2 3 4 S6: 5 =where y- f- f- f- uh:: (.) g- uh:: (.) go to (.) where f- (.) go to (1.5) I go to shit (2.5) ∙hh.hhh∙hhh (.) hhhh he.hh∙ (.) oh you mean where are we from? (0.4) I am from India The extract begins with S7 attempting to get acquainted with S6. S7’s turn, however, is made up of several disfluent features, including abrupt stops, the elongation of utterances, pauses, and restarts. Although it appears that S7 is attempting to construct the phrase “where are you from,” a prototypical utterance in a getting-to-know-you exchange (Jenks 2009), what he actually utters is “where you go to.” A recipient in this situation responding in a cooperative manner could respond by answering the question that S7 presumably attending to utter (i.e. “where are you from”). In so doing, the recipient ignores the disfluency in the previous turn and mitigates a potential face-threatening situation for S7. In perhaps a less face-saving act, yet still polite and cooperative, the recipient could request S7 to repeat the previous question or seek clarification. In so doing, the recipient does not ignore the disfluency, but nonetheless demonstrates an interest in answering the question. In this uncooperative exchange, however, S6 decides to overlook the pragmatic conventions of getting acquainted by not answering what is likely a question seeking where he resides. S6 does, in fact, demonstrate this awareness at the end of line 5 by correcting the previous disfluent turn and providing his current place of residence. By answering the question that is uttered (and not intended), S6 treats the moment of disfluency as an opportunity to provide a joke at the expense of S7 (“I go to shit”). Like the first data extract, linguistic disfluency is used as a resource to engage in uncooperative interaction. This finding is noteworthy, as it establishes that interactants may have no predisposed interactional or institutional reason (e.g. engaging in an argument during court mediation or closing a business deal) to engage in uncooperative interaction. The next data extract is between acquainted speakers. The interlocutors in this example all use a shared kitchen space for international students. In the data extract below, Shine and Wendy are preparing a food dish. Pete is in the kitchen, but is not participating in the actual food preparation event. Data extract 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Shine: Wendy: Shine: Wendy: Shine: tomato? m:: just cut it into half and then just drop it there (3.5) ((looks at Wendy)) can I use all↑ (1.0) too much. half 285 Christopher Jenks 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 (0.6) Pete: yeah. [only half Wendy: [mmm only half (0.5) Pete: yeah. Shine: ((points to Pete)) hehe DO YOU KNOW THAT you seem like you cook you know (0.3) but can’t cook (0.4) but Wendy cook The data extract begins with Shine asking what to do with the tomato and Wendy telling her what to do with it. In line 9, Shine asks Wendy whether half the tomato is to be used. However, Wendy does not provide an immediate answer; instead, Pete confirms that half is the correct quantity. After the “yeah” confirmation, Wendy and Pete in overlap state that only half is needed. Pete provides an additional acknowledgement token in line 14. In so doing, Pete positions himself as a participant capable of assisting in the food preparation activity. In this situation, Shine could acknowledge Pete’s attempt to position himself as a knowledgeable participant, thereby creating a polite, cooperative, and otherwise harmonious encounter. She could, for example, allow Pete to take part in the food preparation activity or even thank him for his assistance. Shine, however, chooses to threaten Pete’s face by explicitly treating him as an illegitimate participant. This face-threatening act is accomplished in several ways: Shine points to Pete, laughs at him, questions and ridicules his knowledge, and reconfirms her orientation to Wendy as the expert in this food preparation activity. Unlike the first two data extracts, the students in the shared kitchen space engage in uncooperative interaction while managing a task that is of mutual benefit to all participants (i.e. preparing and eating food). The intimacy shared by these students allows them to situate their uncooperative interactions within the boundaries of their friendship. It can be said, in other words, that uncooperative interaction is one of many resources that these students deploy while engaging in communication in a shared kitchen space. The data extract below is an exchange between a US soldier and several Iraqi boys. The interaction takes place at a checkpoint in Iraq. The entire exchange is centered on a soldier making fun of the boy. Data extract 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 286 ((camera pans down towards three young boys below the checkpoint position)) (2.0) Soldier 1: DO YOU LIKE POOP? (2.0) Soldier 1: DO YOU LIKE POOP? ((camera zooms in on Boy 1)) (1.0) Boy 1: WHAT? (.) Boy 2: [WHAT? Boy 3: [WHAT? Soldier 1: [DO YOU LIKE POOP? Boys: WHAT WHAT= Uncooperative lingua franca encounters 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Boy 1: Soldier 1: Boy 1: Soldier 1: =YE::S YOU LIKE POOP? ((nods)) Yeah. DO YOU WANT ME TO THROW YOU SOME POOP (2.0) Soldier 1: IT’S LIKE CHOCOLATA, (2.0) Soldier 1: EXCEPT THERE’S CO(h)RN IN IT! ((camera shakes up and down)) (from Bysouth et al. 2015) The uncooperative exchange begins with the soldier asking the boys “do you like poop.” As reported in Bysouth et al. (2015), the boys ostensibly possess a limited understanding of English and do not appear to understand the target tease word. This is most demonstrably evidenced in line 16, when one of the boys nods and utters “yeah.” The soldier responds to this affirmation token by continuing with the tease. This final tease sequence is constructed in two parts: a question (“do you want me to throw you some poop”) and a declaration (“it’s like chocolata . . . except there’s corn in it”). After this data extract, the tease is met with laughter by the soldier and his nearby colleague. In this dehumanizing encounter, there are no cooperative alternative approaches to dealing with a tease like this. A cooperative (or polite) encounter would simply not exhibit such behavior. Conversely, the exchange between the soldier and boys possesses several distinct uncooperative features. The soldier exploits the interactional function of requests. That is, the soldier conceals his tease by giving the boys the impression that he is offering them something nice. The solider thus abuses the boys’ limited understanding of English in order to dehumanize them. The boys’ presence and participation in this encounter is simply used for the enjoyment of others. More troubling and problematic, the soldier exploits the boys’ desire, and possibly need, to receive a nice gift or food. While this data extract provides an extreme case of uncooperative interaction, the exchange above nonetheless demonstrates that such behavior is potentially bound to power imbalances between interactants and a demonstrable disdain for, or hostility towards, a co-interlocutor (see also the first two data extracts). The final data extract is an exchange between students at an international university in Demark. PET, who is from the US and Denmark, and ERN, a German student, are discussing when to meet for the next group project discussion. Data extract 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PET: when do you wanna meet wednesday= ERN: =you’re you’re really really fast I’m (xx) I’d say PET: well that’s because like we’ve been doing this (.) for a little while now [hehh hh hhh ] ERN: [yeah but that’s] because you didn’t wait until something else was ↑done so you’ve got to repeat it (from Day and Kjærbeck 2011) 287 Christopher Jenks The data extract begins with PET suggesting a meeting time. Rather than provide an assessment of the proposed time, which would demonstrate an attempt to be cooperative even if Wednesday is not ideal, ERN immediately (as indicated in the latching of turns) evaluates, and thus complains about, PET’s approach to group work (“you’re really really fast”). PET also does not respond in a cooperative manner; he could, for example, mitigate the already face-threatening sequence by asking ERN to suggest an alternative time. However, PET defends his proposed time by being critical of the time it takes to do group work. In so doing, PET provides a veiled criticism of ERN (“we’ve been doing this . . .”). ERN treats the previous assessment as an opportunity to explicitly criticize PET (“you didn’t wait . . .”), and thus continues the uncooperative exchange. This final data extract establishes that historical issues may shape, and be the impetus for, uncooperative interaction. PET and ERN possess a history of conflict and disagreement, as reported in Day and Kjærbeck (2011). This shared history can manifest in many ways. In the exchange above, the different approaches to group project work adopted by PET and ERN lead to both interactants deviating from the immediate task of establishing a meeting time. Conclusion This chapter contributes to the body of work devoted to pragmatics by analyzing how uncooperative interaction unfolds in a number of contexts. The examples analyzed above demonstrate that it does not matter whether a speaker is intentional in performing an uncooperative act (cf. Terkourafi 2008), but rather what is significant is the interactional repercussions of such behavior. Furthermore, the findings add to lingua franca scholarship that is concerned specifically with uncooperative interaction (e.g. Guido 2012; Jenks 2012); by providing additional examples of the ways in which speakers from different language backgrounds engage in uncooperative talk, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of, for instance, teasing and mocking in lingua franca encounters. The findings established that uncooperative interaction can potentially occur in a number of contexts and be accomplished in many ways. In this study, uncooperative interaction occurred between both unacquainted and acquainted speakers. Interactants can be uncooperative in institutional settings, such as the project group work exchange, and informal encounters, as in the case of the shared kitchen space example. Speakers engage in uncooperative interaction because of some inherent hostility towards a co-interlocutor or such behavior is a characteristic of interacting in a convivial setting. Uncooperative interaction can occur capriciously and suddenly for no immediate reason or may be the result of a shared history of conflict. The range of contexts in which uncooperative interaction takes place demonstrates that such behavior is a rich and complex area of study that deserves more attention than what has been given hitherto. Although this chapter aimed to understand how English is used in contexts where speakers do not share a common primary language, this analytic focus should not be interpreted as an attempt to refute existing lingua franca research (namely, the let-it-pass principle), nor is the analysis above an effort to establish an “ELF feature.” In other words, uncooperative interaction is not a communicative feature unique to lingua franca encounters. The observation that uncooperative interaction is not unique to lingua franca encounters does not mean, however, that such contexts are devoid of contextual features that may lead to teasing, mocking, and ridicule. For example, lingua franca encounters present opportunities for interactants to exploit differences in proficiency levels. Although there are many 288 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters reasons why such exploitation occurs (e.g. achieving an institutional goal or taking advantage of a service encounter transaction), the data extracts above showed that speakers use differences in proficiency levels to tease, mock, and ridicule co-interlocutors (a theoretical lens that may assist in understanding why this occurs, but requires space that is not available in this chapter, is Bourdieu’s 1984 cultural capital). In other situations, speakers use their familiarity of, and friendships with, co-interlocutors to be uncooperative. In the most extreme case of uncooperative interaction, speakers may exploit differences in proficiency levels to dehumanize co-interlocutors. In many of the situations examined above, uncooperative interaction takes place at the expense of a speaker’s participation in a lingua franca encounter. That is to say, speakers engage in uncooperative interaction because they simply want to tease, mock, or engage in other similar rude behavior. The absence of an underlying institutional purpose or role in engaging in uncooperative interaction establishes that such behavior is a mundane resource that can be deployed at any time and for a number of communicative goals. Appendix: Transcription conventions (modified from Atkinson and Heritage 1984) [] Overlapping utterances = Contiguous utterances (or continuation of the same turn) (0.4) Represents the tenths of a second between utterances (.) Represents a micro-pause (one-tenth of a second or less) : Elongation (more colons demonstrate longer stretches of sound) . Fall in pitch at the end of an utterance , Slight rise in pitch at the end of an utterance ? Rising in pitch at utterance end (not necessarily a question) - An abrupt stop in articulation CAPITAL Loud/forte speech __ Underline letters/words indicate accentuation ↑↓ Marked upstep/downstep in intonation °° Surrounds talk that is quieter hhh Exhalations .hhh Inhalations he or ha Laugh particle (hhh) Laughter within a word (can also represent audible aspirations) (( )) Analyst notes () Approximations of what is heard 289 Christopher Jenks Related chapters in this handbook 1 Mauranen, Conceptualising ELF 2 Baker, English as a lingua franca and intercultural communication 17 Cogo and House, The pragmatics of ELF 22 Hynninen and Solin, Language norms in ELF Further reading Bousfield, D. and Locher, M.A. (Eds.) 2008, Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. Firth, A. 1996, “The discursive accomplishment of normality: On conversation analysis and ‘lingua franca’ English,” Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 26, pp. 237–259. Holmes, P. and Dervin, F. (Eds.) 2016, The cultural and intercultural dimensions of English as a lingua franca, Multilingual Matters, Bristol. References Antaki, C. (Ed.) 2011, Applied conversation analysis: Intervention and change in institutional talk, Palgrave, London. Arendholz, J. 2013, (In)appropriate online behavior: A pragmatic analysis of message board relations, John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. (Eds.) 1984, Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Barron, A., Gu, Y., and Steen, G. (Eds.) 2017, The Routledge handbook of pragmatics, Routledge, London. Bourdieu, P. 1984, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Bousfield, D. and Locher, M.A. (Eds.) 2008, Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bysouth, D., Ikeda, K., and Jeloos-Haghi, S. 2015, “Collateral damage: An investigation of non-combatant teasing by American service personnel in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan,” Pragmatics and Society, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 338–366. Culpepper, J. 1996, “Towards an anatomy of impoliteness,” Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 25, pp. 349–367. Day, D. and Kjærbeck, S. 2011. “Educational practices in the international university: Language as a resource for intercultural distinction in a project group meeting,” in Language and learning in the international university: From English uniformity to diversity and hybridity, Eds. B. Preisler, I. Klitgård, and A. Fabricius, Multilingual Matters, Bristol, pp. 99–121. Firth, A. 1996, “The discursive accomplishment of normality: On conversation analysis and ‘lingua franca’ English,” Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 26, pp. 237–259. Grice, H.P. 1975, “Logic and conversation,” in Syntax and semantics, Eds. P. Cole and J. Morgan, Academic Press, New York, pp. 41–58. Guido, M.G. 2012, “ELF authentication and accommodation strategies in crosscultural immigration encounters,” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 219–240. Holmes, P. and Dervin, F. (Eds.) 2016, The cultural and intercultural dimensions of English as a lingua franca, Multilingual Matters, Bristol. House, J. 1999, “Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in English as a lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility,” in Teaching and learning English as a global language: Native and non-native perspectives, Ed. C. Gnutzmann, Stauffenburg, Tübingen, pp. 73–93. House, J. 2010, “Impoliteness in Germany: Intercultural encounters in everyday and institutional talk,” Intercultural Pragmatics, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 561–595. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. 2008, Conversation analysis, Polity, Cambridge. 290 Uncooperative lingua franca encounters Jenkins, J. 2000, The phonology of English as an international language, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Jenkins, J. 2007, English as a lingua franca, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Jenks, C.J. 2009, “Getting acquainted in Skypecasts: Aspects of social organization in online chat rooms,” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 26–46. Jenks, C.J. 2012, “Doing being reprehensive: Some interactional features of English as a lingua franca in a chat room,” Applied Linguistics, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 386–405. Jenks, C.J. 2014, Social interaction in second language chat rooms, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Jenks, C.J. and Lee, J.W. 2016, “Heteroglossic ideologies in world Englishes: An examination of the Hong Kong context,” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 384–402. Kachru, B.B. 2005, Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Kordon, K. 2006, “‘You are very good’: Establishing rapport in English as a lingua franca: The case of agreement tokens,” Vienna English Working Papers, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 58–82. Leech, G.N. 1983, The principles of pragmatics, Longman, London and New York. Levinson, S.C. 1983, Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. McNamara, T. 2012, “English as a lingua franca: The challenge for language testing,” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 199–202. Phillipson, R. 2008, Linguistic imperialism of neoliberal empire,” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–43. Matsumoto, Y. 2011, “Successful ELF communications and implications for ELT: Sequential analysis of ELF pronunciation negotiation strategies,” The Modern Language Journal, vol. 95, no. 1, pp. 97–114. Seidlhofer, B. 2001, “Closing the conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca,” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 133–58. Seidlhofer, B. 2004, “Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 24, pp. 209–239. Seidlhofer, B. 2011, Understanding English as a lingua franca, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Swan, M. 2012, “ELF and EFL: are they really different?,” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, vol. 1 no. 2, pp. 379–389. Terkourafi, M. 2008, “Toward a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness, and rudeness” in Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice, Eds., D. Bousfield and M.A. Locher, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 45–74. Thomas, J. 1995, The study of pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 291 Part lV Contemporary domains and functions 24 Translingual practice and ELF Daisuke Kimura and Suresh Canagarajah Introduction In this chapter, we trace the theoretical and research developments in both translingual practice and ELF to show their evolving convergence and remaining distinctions. Though ELF was initially focused on identifying the core linguistic features shared among multilingual speakers of English (e.g., Jenkins, 2000, 2002; Seidlhofer, 2001, 2004), it has adopted the position that ELF involves situated practices of constructing intersubjective norms that are always changing according to participants and contexts (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey, 2011; Hülmbaner and Seidlhofer 2013; Seidlhofer 2011). Translingual practice has similarly evolved from its focus on code-meshing in a product-oriented manner (Canagarajah, 2006) to consider the situated practices that lead to meaning making (Canagarajah, 2007). However, there are still some minor differences in theory and research focus between the two approaches. The understanding of community, the relationship between sharedness and diversity, the place of grammar in communication, and the connection between language and other multimodal resources suggest some differences. We discuss the strengths of both approaches in hopes that scholars of the two schools might learn from each other. ELF researchers have conducted empirical studies adopting analytical tools from conversation analysis (CA) and corpus research, which reveal the ways multilinguals negotiate English in their interactions. Translingual practice has focused more on issues of literacy, pragmatics, and pedagogy. These strengths can prove to be complementary as both approaches continue to research and theorize the diversity of English in a globalized and multilingual world. Translingual orientation to communication Moving beyond the notion of multilingualism as a collection of discrete language systems, the translingual orientation offers a more integrated and nuanced way of understanding how people communicate. Without assuming the need for shared norms for communicative success, the translingual orientation attends to negotiation practices and diverse semiotic resources. One way to explain the term translingual is to consider its prefix—trans—because it highlights the two central premises of the term. First, the prefix acknowledges the fact that 295 Daisuke Kimura and Suresh Canagarajah communication transcends individual languages. Since modernity, societies have had a long tradition of labeling languages and varieties within them, such as English, Japanese, and African American Vernacular English. However, partly because of the postmodern social conditions, featuring the increasingly immense mobility of people across geographical and digital spaces, scholars (e.g., Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2007, 2013b; Pennycook, 2012) are now compelled to view communication as involving mobile semiotic resources that can be put together for particular contexts, audiences, and purposes. In recognition of this social backdrop, Blommaert (2010), for instance, has proposed a shift from sociolinguistics of community to sociolinguistics of mobility: “a sociolinguistics of speech, of actual language resources deployed in real sociocultural, historical, and political contexts” (p. 5). Aligned with this practice-oriented perspective, translingual practice regards linguistic boundaries not as empirically attestable objects, but as ideological constructs. By the same token, the binary relationship between native speakers and nonnative speakers is also abandoned in the translingual perspective. Second, the prefix also enables us to attend holistically to diverse semiotic resources beyond words. Though often unconscious, people always juxtapose various modalities (e.g., oral and gestural) and make use of ecological resources (e.g., physical objects) in creating meanings for their communicative purposes. For this reason, focusing solely on words is not reflective of everyday communication practices. In short, translingual practice allows us to move beyond the “lingual bias” (Block, 2014) of language as bounded and communication as involving only words and provides a more complex means of viewing language use that aligns closely with people’s everyday practices. Though translingualism is a newer theoretical perspective in linguistics, it is important to stress that translingual practices are neither a new phenomenon nor a unique tradition of certain areas of the world (see Canagarajah, 2013b, ch. 3). Rather, it has always existed everywhere for many centuries. This becomes apparent if we break away from the traditional notion of communities as bounded, static, and homogenous. More than two decades ago, Mary Louise Pratt (1991) proposed an alternative model to conceptualize communities— i.e., contact zones—which she defined as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or other aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (p. 34). Contrary to the traditional notion of community, contact zone foregrounds the interplay between diverse languages and cultures. Importantly, contact zone is not a secondary, liminal space between more primary communities; rather, all communities are contact zones by definition. As such, even so-called monolingual native speakers are engaging in translingual practice to negotiate different registers, semiotic resources, and cultures on a daily basis, even if they feel that their communities and languages are homogenous. Given that shared norms can hardly be assumed in contact zone interactions, the type of competence translinguals possess cannot be defined solely in terms of some pre-existing grammatical knowledge. Thus, the translingual orientation requires us to redefine the notion of competence to accommodate the possibilities for achieving shared understandings out of linguacultural diversity. From this perspective, rather than predefined grammatical knowledge, it is the ability to respond strategically to unexpected norms and to collaboratively generate meanings out of diverse resources that constitutes competence. In other words, the type of competence translinguals have is a performative one, which does not exist independently of communication. Enabling this performative competence are their cooperative dispositions. Developed through socialization and practice, the dispositions provide them with the readiness to deal with unpredictable contact zone interactions. By focusing on 296 Translingual practice and ELF meaning-making practices, rather than fixed norms, the translingual orientation allows us to stay open to further diversification of seemingly stable norms. García and Li Wei (2014) theorize that the prefix in translingual refers to transformation of existing norms. Crucially, negotiation of diverse codes for successful communication need not imply that all communicators in all situations have equal rights, nor does translingual practice assume there are no established norms. In fact, through the process of sedimentation (Pennycook, 2010), a set of linguistic resources can acquire the appearance of stability, which in turn may become symbolic of power (e.g., Received Pronunciation). Partly because of this process, contact zone interactions are always influenced by power differentials among interactants. Ignoring the powerful can lead to negative consequences. For instance, when completing a writing section of a standardized test, like TOEFL, the test taker is expected to closely observe the conventions of English academic writing, or he/she will not receive a good grade. Thus, however arbitrary they may be, linguistic conventions must not be disregarded because communicative success involves gaining the desired uptake from one’s intended audience. Importantly, however, the translingual orientation views power as contextdependent and negotiable. Through careful attention to contextual expectations and use of negotiation strategies, such as code-meshing (Canagarajah, 2006), one can interweave his/her identity and voice even in seemingly rigid genres. The academic writings of sociolinguist Geneva Smitherman (1999) demonstrates how she includes different varieties of Black English for rhetorical effect in texts mainly constructed in standard written English. The translingual orientation is most extensively applied in literacy studies (Canagarajah, 2013a; Horner, Lu, Royster, and Trimbur, 2011). Holistically entertaining the production, circulation, and reception of texts, the translingual orientation moves our understanding of literacy beyond the existing frameworks that are either exceedingly product oriented (i.e., autonomous literacy) or local-practice oriented (i.e., new literacy). Breaking away from these traditional approaches, the translingual orientation views language as one type of semiotic resources that can be packaged together for particular contexts, audiences, and purposes. Rather than relying on linguistic norms to account for communicative success, the translingual approach considers the ways in which linguistic differences and multimodality might contribute to meaning making endeavors. Put differently, this approach does not treat linguistic differences as problems in and of themselves, but as resources for producing meanings. To date, a great deal of research has been conducted from this perspective, attesting to the fact that the translingual approach is in close alignment with the everyday language practices in various domains, e.g., classroom (Canagarajah, 2013b), scientific writing (Poe, 2013), and everyday business landscapes (Ayash, 2013). Translingual orientation and the global use of English The contemporary use of English on the global level can be conceived as a form of translingual practice. Sharing the translingual orientation to language and communication,1 a number of studies in various contexts have explored diverse communicative practices involving English (Blackledge and Creese, 2017; Canagarajah, 2016; Han, 2013; Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015). Research shows that while it is a matter of fact that English is the most widely used resource for international communication (Crystal, 2008), the ways in which English is used are not always restricted by the ideological boundaries of languages. To understand the kind of competence needed for translocal professional work, Canagarajah (2016) examines the interview narratives of 65 highly skilled African migrants in universities in the US, the UK, Australia, and South Africa. His analysis reveals that multiple 297 Daisuke Kimura and Suresh Canagarajah norms co-exist within translocal workplaces and that they are open to interpretation and negotiation. While showing vigilance to linguistic norms and power, Canagarajah’s participants exhibit the ability to foreground their profession, class, and education to (re)frame interactions in advantageous manners. By contrast, Han (2013) and Blackledge and Creese (2017) study relatively unskilled migrants. In her ethnographic study of Africa Town in China, Han argues that one’s multilingual repertoire reflects and to a certain extent determines his/her life trajectory in line with Blommaert and Backus (2011). Hailing from low socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, her participants are unable to fulfill the requirements of elite multilingualism, and as a consequence, their global mobility is immensely compromised. Nevertheless, within the local space of Africa Town, their incomplete linguistic repertoires, or grassroots multilingualism, enable them to successfully perform their work. Furthermore, they keep expanding their multilingual repertoires through everyday interaction. Similarly, Blackledge and Creese’s (2017) work on Chinese butchers in a market in the UK underscores the interplay between translingual practice, life trajectories, and learning. One notable difference between the two studies is that Blackledge and Creese construe learning as encompassing both linguistic resources and voices, adopting a Bakhtinian approach. In other words, individuals continue to become what they are by adopting and adapting words of the other. Demonstrating this type of learning, Blackledge and Creese’s analysis of an interaction at the butcher shop shows the ways in which the Chinese shop owner takes and appropriates his customer’s words. Focused specifically on urban contexts, Pennycook and Otsuji (2015) examine interactions at two international restaurants in Tokyo and Sydney to underscore the socially dependent nature of communicative competence. That is, since one has to simultaneously deal with multiple tasks and people through an array of linguistic and ecological resources, one’s ability to participate in social activities cannot be reduced to the linguistic resources at his/her disposal. From this perspective, the authors advance the notion of spatial repertoire: “the available and sedimented resources that derive from the repeated language practices of the people involved in the sets of activities related to particular places” (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015, p. 166). Spatial repertoire is not individually owned. Rather, it is tied to a particular social space and its associated activities and materiality. In this sense, it offers a middle ground between the individual and the social; particular social purposes call for the use of certain resources, and the use of such resources construct the social space into existence. To sum up, the studies reviewed in this section consistently point to the fluidity of linguistic norms and boundaries, though they examine dissimilar groups of participants and contexts. Even without advanced proficiency in an established variety of English, one can adopt negotiation strategies to orchestrate the resources at his/her disposal to collaboratively achieve intersubjective understanding. Again, it is important to underscore that global contact zone interactions are not free of norms and conventions. In situations where there is a sedimented variety that is associated with power (e.g., Standard American English), a person without such knowledge may be at a disadvantage. Conversely, a native speaker of English who does not have the ability and/or willingness to negotiate linguistic differences may experience communication breakdowns in global contact zone encounters. Each contact situation features a unique mix of speakers and resources, giving rise to different constraints and affordances. Thus, rather than the knowledge of established varieties per se, it is the sensitivity to contextual expectations and the ability to deploy appropriate resources that constitute competences needed for mobile users of English in contact zones today. 298 Translingual practice and ELF Changing orientations of ELF research A vibrant field of research, ELF has developed at a rapid pace over the past two decades. A cursory look at some key publications reveals the extent to which their research orientations have evolved in this relatively short period of time, particularly with regard to the definition of ELF as a topic of inquiry and the objective of ELF as a research field. While early research focused on showing how multilinguals shared norms that differed from native speakers of English, more recent research on ELF has largely abandoned the distinctions between native speakers and nonnative speakers in recognition that “communication via ELF frequent
