English as a Lingua Franca (eBook)

Practice and Research

William J. Crawford, Marcella Caprario (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
197 Seiten
Wiley-Blackwell (Verlag)
978-1-394-21554-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Provides clear and comprehensive guidance to advanced students to perform their own research in the fast-changing field of English as a Lingua Franca

English as a Lingua Franca: Practice and Research serves as a vital means of communication among speakers from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, facilitating connections across global domains such as academia, business, and healthcare. English as a Lingua Franca: Practice and Research equips readers with the tools to explore the dynamic phenomenon of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), tracing its history, linguistic characteristics, and societal implications. Assuming no previous background in the field, this accessible textbook provides step-by-step guidance for designing, conducting, and sharing original ELF research.

Structured in two parts, the text first provides a balanced understanding of ELF and highlights its role in promoting intercultural communication and challenging traditional language ideologies. The second part equips readers with the necessary tools to perform ELF research, covering the entire research process from identifying research topics to choosing appropriate methodologies. Reflective questions, activities, and practical tips in each chapter deepen engagement with the material and encourage critical exploration of ELF. The first textbook of its kind to combine foundational concepts, theoretical insights, and hands-on practices in a single volume, English as a Lingua Franca: Practice and Research:

• Provides a framework to explore real-world language use and contribute meaningfully to the field
• Covers corpus analysis, conversation analysis, and narrative inquiry
• Offers practical strategies for selecting topics, structuring research projects, and presenting findings as papers, presentations, or posters
• Discusses the role of ELF in language attitudes, policies, and multilingual communication
• Reflects upon cutting-edge ELF research and future directions for the field

English as a Lingua Franca: Practice and Research is an indispensable resource for students and researchers seeking to navigate this emerging field and engage with its growing community of scholars. It is ideal for advanced undergraduate and master's degree students, as well as linguists and TESOL professionals wanting to conduct research on global language practices.

WILLIAM J. CRAWFORD is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University and Director of the Program in Intensive English. His research spans corpus linguistics, second language writing, and task-based language teaching. His recent works include Doing Corpus Linguistics and Teaching Grammar.

MARCELLA CAPRARIO is an Assistant Professor of TESOL at Wenzhou-Kean University. Her research interests include Global Englishes, pragmatics, and language attitudes at the crossroads of applied linguistics, intercultural communication, and language education. Her work has appeared in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Contrastive Pragmatics, and The Language Learning Journal.

Textauszug

2
What Is English as a Lingua Franca?

As people move to different places around the world, they come into contact with other people who do not share the same language backgrounds. When this type of language contact occurs, there are various outcomes. In some cases, people can adopt the language of the place to which they have moved. A person who immigrates to Brazil will likely learn Brazilian Portuguese; a person who immigrates to Chile will likely learn Chilean Spanish. In other cases, the language of the people who have moved can replace the language of the local indigenous people. To understand this situation, consider that Portuguese was not originally used in present‐day Brazil and Spanish was not originally used in Chile, nor in Honduras, Mexico, or the vast majority of Central and South American countries. The examples of Portuguese and Spanish in these areas illustrate the effect of language contact, in which a group travels to a new place and imposes its language and culture on the original inhabitants. Although this is, of course, an oversimplification of the complex processes at play, under this view of language contact two languages confront each other and one language “wins out,” eventually replacing one dominant language with another.

While there are numerous examples of the effect of language contact through colonization on the spread of different languages throughout history, in our current sociopolitical world the spread of English has been the most evident. In its different forms, English has spread to replace or endanger languages in places such as the British Isles, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. English has also spread in places where people have retained their language background but use it as an additional language, such as India and Malaysia. Despite the complications in reliably counting the number of “speakers” or users of English around the world, it is generally believed by both scholars and the general public that (1) English is the most widely used language in the world; and (2) there are more people who use English as an additional language than those who use it as a main or “native” (L1) language (Crystal, 2008). This chapter will introduce different conceptions of English use around the world as important background for understanding the use and study of English as a lingua franca (ELF).

Investigating English Around the World

There are various ways in which researchers can investigate the use of English around the world. One way is to document the use of English in various locations where it functions as a primary language. Research of this type identifies the linguistic and sociopolitical processes that have resulted in English being a primary language in places such as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand as well as one of two primary languages in Canada. Research of this type also illustrates how English is used in countries such as India and Uganda, former British colonies that continue to use English in addition to other languages. This results in different varieties of English where words, grammar, and pronunciation are influenced by the other frequently spoken languages in the country. The spread of English also extends to countries where English is used but not as a primary language (English in China or Japan, for example), which allows for research that describes more recently recognized varieties of English (e.g., Chinese English or Japanese English).

One approach to the description of Englishes around the globe, called World Englishes or WE (Kachru et al., 2009), illustrates how English has spread from centralized locations (called inner‐circle varieties, such as British English and Australian English) to countries where English has an official status (called outer‐circle varieties, such as Indian English or Ghanian English) and then to countries where English does not have an official status (called expanding‐circle varieties, such as Chinese English or Japanese English). Research in the WE tradition (Sadeghpour & D'Angelo, 2022) is interested primarily in identifying these various forms of English and describing how they emerge and become established in a specific country or region. This line of research also describes the linguistic features that are common among users of a given variety, such as distinct vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and/or pronunciation features. For example, an overview of Hong Kong English (Bolton et al., 2020) explains that this variety incorporates words with Cantonese roots, such as “dim sum” (a local type of snack), as well as words originating from other British colonies that were brought to Hong Kong through colonization, trade, and migration, such as “congee” (rice porridge) and “chit” (a note or letter), which both derive from Indian languages. The description goes on to distinguish Hong Kong English grammar and pronunciation, both of which are heavily influenced by Cantonese, the predominant local language. This includes a lack of tense marking (e.g., “I go there yesterday”) and frequently interchanging “l” and “n,” such as pronouncing “night” as “light” and “line” as “nine.” WE research often focuses on users of English who share national and cultural identities as well as other factors contributing to a common identity. Researchers examine how these factors help to shape the corresponding varieties of English that emerge in these contexts, as can be seen from the Hong Kong example. WE are primarily related to national identity. Thus, we can speak of British English or American English or Ghanian English or Indian English.

Another way to view contact with English is from the perspectives of intercultural communication and multilingualism. As the name implies, intercultural communication refers to the act of communicating with people from different cultures. The term “culture” refers to the shared practices, beliefs, and values of a group of people and in this sense can be related to many different aspects of a person's life. A person can share the culture of a spiritual background (yoga culture), a group of people with shared musical interests (punk rock culture), or people who identify with a specific nation (Greek culture). This perspective on culture supports the view that people do not have a single culture but rather identify with many different cultures and consequently that each person's identity comprises many different cultural components. One aspect of cultural identity is language background. When people with different language backgrounds come into contact with each other, they engage in intercultural communication. They may communicate by using a shared language, one language of which everyone present has some knowledge. The communication between people with different language backgrounds is not only influenced by their shared language but also by their non‐shared languages. For example, communication in ELF is naturally influenced by the English language, while influences from each speaker's other language backgrounds, such as linguistic features and cultural concepts, will surely also influence communication. Multilingual individuals rely on all their linguistic and cultural knowledge to navigate intercultural communication. From this perspective, multilingualism can be seen as “the ability of societies, institutions, groups and individuals to engage, on a regular basis, with more than one language in their day‐to‐day lives” (European Commission, 2007, p. 6).

It is with the perspectives of language contact, intercultural communication, and multilingualism that we can understand the concept of ELF in its current form and in the way it will be used in this book. The term lingua franca was originally taken from 17th‐century Italian to mean “Frankish language” and referred to a mixture of Italian, French, Arabic, Greek, and Spanish that was used by sailors, merchants, and other workers in various ports in the Mediterranean Sea. The term later came to refer to any common language used by people of different language backgrounds, and it is in this sense that ELF (often pronounced like the word elf) is used. Given the vast spread of English around the world and the fact that there are more people who use English as an additional language (LX) as opposed to a primary language (L1), it is not surprising that English is used as a lingua franca by people from a variety of language backgrounds. Communication between people in these circumstances is, by definition, intercultural and multilingual.

Furthermore, unlike the perspective of language contact where one language or culture endangers the existence of another, ELF is more commonly seen as an intercultural phenomenon where ELF users employ a variety of linguistic resources when communicating: these users share knowledge of English, but they also bring their own cultures and languages with them. The ELF perspective shifts the focus away from whether English is threatening or replacing non‐shared languages to instead viewing English as a communicative tool, one part of a person's communicative repertoire alongside their other languages. The ELF perspective also moves away from measuring a person's command of English based on comparisons with standardized English varieties spoken in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. Instead, ELF explores how English is used along with...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.12.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: ELF applied linguistics • ELF global Englishes • ELF intercultural communication • ELF language policy • ELF multilingual communication • ELF research • ELF teaching • english as a lingua franca • how to conduct ELF research • TESOL research methods ELF
• ISBN-10: 1-394-21554-1 / 1394215541
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-21554-6 / 9781394215546