This is because many NNESs use English as a language of wider communication, or as a lingua franca, largely in order to communicate with other NNESs, and it is argued that English teaching should reflect this state of affairs. If people learn English for use as a lingua franca, the language need no longer be related to a particular native âtarget cultureâ in which certain ways of speaking and behaving are appropriate. On the contrary, rather than imitating the norms of NESs, users of English as a lingua franca (ELF) should adopt ways of speaking (with their bi- or multilingual English-speaking interlocutors) which aid mutual intelligibility and successful communication. Such is the logic underlying ELF.
English as a lingua franca
The term âlingua francaâ comes from a contact language used in the eastern Mediterranean from the eleventh to the early nineteenth centuries. 2 Today, the term âEnglish as a lingua francaâ is used to refer to âany use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only optionâ (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). ELF is an alternative term for English as an international/global/world language, and International English (see Seidlhofer 2004: 210). 3 Of course ELF is an applied linguistsâ term; most users probably just think they are speaking English.
As well as being used â often in a very simple form â by tourists, ELF is prominent in international politics and diplomacy, international law, business, the media, and in tertiary education and scientific research â which Yamuna Kachru and Larry Smith (2008: 3) call ELFâs âmathetic functionâ â so it is clearly not a reduced lingua franca in the termâs original (Frankish) sense. Yet it usually differs from English as a native language (ENL), the language used by NESs. Spoken ELF contains a huge amount of linguistic variation and non-standard forms (although formal written ELF tends to resemble ENL to a much greater extent). To use Noam Chomskyâs (1986: 20) term, in ELF there is no fixed or shared E-language (external language) as such.
This could result from the fact that ELF users â âdifferent constellations of speakers of diverse individual Englishes in every single interactionâ (Meierkord 2004: 115) â are uninterested in the lexicogrammatical norms of any particular NES speech community (Seidlhofer 2001 b, 2009a, 2011), or simply from the âshaky entrenchmentâ (Mauranen 2006: 138) or the fuzzy processing (Mauranen 2012: 41), or â from another perspective â the imperfect learning to be expected in a second language (L2). Either way, the leitmotif of the proponents of ELF is that it is different from but not inferior to ENL. Henry Widdowson (2003: 48â49) describes âthe virtual language, that resource for making meaning immanent in the language which simply has not hitherto been encoded and so is not, so to speak, given official recognition,â and Barbara Seidlhofer (2011: 120) describes ELF as âa different but not a deficient way of realizing the virtual language, or playing the English language gameâ: instead of restricting themselves to the realizations of NESs, ELF speakers exploit unused latent possibilities of English morphology, syntax and phraseology.
Dell Hymes (1972: 286) described âcommunicative competenceâ in terms of âthe systematically possible, the feasible, and the appropriate,â but in relation to native speaker (NS) norms; ELF speakers expand what is possible, feasible, and appropriate. As Widdowson (2004: 361) puts it, the ELF perspective is that
the modified forms of the language which are actually in use should be recognized as a legitimate development of English as an international means of communication. The functional range of the language is not thereby restricted, but on the contrary enhanced, for it enables its users to express themselves more freely without having to conform to norms which represent the sociocultural identity of other people.
Not everybody shares this perspective, of course; for example, conference interpreters, who in general view ELF very negatively, often use the acronym BSE, for âbad simple Englishâ (Reithofer 2010: 144). From a formal point of view, one might agree with Michael Swan (2012: 387), who argues that
The most appropriate conceptualisation of ELF is surely a negative one. It is not that its speakers conform to identifiable ELF norms; it is that, like the speakers of all foreign languages, they do not conform to all NS norms; and this in various and largely uncodifiable ways.
But from a functional point of view, what is intrinsic to ELF â what Alan Firth (2009: 150) calls the âlingua franca factorâ â is not any specific language or discourse forms, but rather âthe inherent interactional and linguistic variability that lingua franca interactions entail,â and a âlingua franca outlookâ on language that ELF users adopt. As Seidlhofer (2011: 77) puts it, ELF should be âfunctionally not formally defined; it is not a variety of English but a variable way of using it.â 4
However, stress on the inherent variability of ELF, and on function rather than form, is a recent development. 5 Previous work suggested that ELF could be codified and taught. For example, Seidlhofer (2001 b: 150) floated âthe possibility of a codification of ELF with a conceivable ultimate objective of making it a feasible, acceptable and respected alternative to ENL in appropriate contexts of use.â She suggested that a codified ELF could be âa possible first step for learners in building up a basis from which they can pursue their own learning in directions (ELF or ENL) which it may be impossible, and unwise, to determine from the outsetâ (p. 151). 6 More recently, Jennifer Jenkins et al. (2011: 287) have written that
in line with increasing evidence of the fluidity and flexibility of ELF communication, the focus of research has shifted from an orientation to features and the ultimate aim of some kind of codification (an aim which, nevertheless, has not been dismissed out of hand), to an interest in the processes underlying and determining the choice of features used in any given ELF interaction.
Yet a few pages later they also state that âwe can identify emerging patterns of lexical and grammatical formsâ (pp. 288â89) and that there is âa certain degree of typicality in the more salient features that occur in lingua franca interactionsâ (p. 289), meaning that there are features that could be codified and taught. Similarly, Seidlhofer (2009b: 239) writes about how ELF speakers are making a significant contribution to norm development, so that ELF could become âendonormativeâ or in Braj Kachruâs (1985: 16ff) terms, norm-developing or (ultimately) norm-providing rather than norm-dependent. Drawing on Ayo Bamgboᚣe (1998), she compares ELF with endonormative World Englishes, stating that âcodification is recognized as a crucial requirement in this process, and one that does not deny the inherent fluidity of ELFâ (p. 240). At first glance this seems contradictory, but Seidlhofer stresses that Bamgboᚣe discusses behavioural norms as well as code norms and feature norms, and argues that these are compatible with a focus on the underlying significance and functional motivation of particular ELF forms.
A further reason for the linguistic variation and non-standard forms found in ELF is that English is in contact with the majority of the worldâs languages, so there are ELF speakers whose English is influenced by (and contains recognizable transfer features from) a great many first languages (L1s). Given that all ELF speakers are bi- or multilingual, ELF interactions are likely to include borrowing, code-switching, and other types of crosslinguistic interaction. Transfer leads to people of many different typologically diverse L1s speaking recognizable varieties or âlects.â These lects differ from regional dialects, which arise in local communities of speakers talking to each other, as, e.g. Japanese speakers do not normally need to speak to other Japanese speakers in English; they speak English to people with different L1s. So these lects come into prolonged contact with each other in ELF, in linguistically heterogeneous situations. Because âthey arise in parallel, not in mutual interaction,â Anna Mauranen (2012: 29) describes these hybrid variants as âsimilects,â and says 7 that ELF can be characterised as âsecond-order language contactâ â a contact between hybrids:
Second-order contact means that instead of a typical contact situation where speakers of two different languages use one of them in communication (âfirst-order contactâ), a large number of languages are each in contact with English, and it is these contact varieties (similects) that are, in turn, in contact with each other. Their special features, resulting from crosslinguistic transfer, come together much like dialects in contact.
(p. 30)
Because speakers have a natural tendency to adapt to variability and to accommodate to each otherâs uses, Mauranen suggests that second-order language contact will lead to the spread of innovations inspired by different L1s. Certain hybrid forms will diffuse into common usage, so that ELF will become more stable (p. 32). The features likely to be diffused are those that are widely shared among the worldâs English speakers, because they are common in other languages, and therefore acquired comparatively easily in English as an additional language.8 As in all language contact, there is also likely to be simplification, and a convergence or levelling of phonological and grammatical systems, so that irregular and marked features are replaced by regular, unmarked alternatives (see Trudgill 1986; Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001; Winford 2003). These processes will be examined in Chapters 3â6.
ELF researchers insist that ELF speakers are users and not learners. As Mauranen (2006: 147) puts it, we need to
stop considering second and foreign language users as eternal âlearnersâ on an interminable journey toward perfection in a target language. Speakers may opt out of the role of learner...
