Language Regulation in English as a Lingua Franca

Focus on Academic Spoken Discourse

Niina Hynninen

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781501500527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Language regulation has often been approached from a top-down policy perspective, whereas this book examines regulatory practices employed by speakers in interaction. With its ethnographically informed focus on language regulation in academic English as a lingua franca (ELF), the book is a timely contribution to debates about what counts as acceptable English in ELF contexts, who can act as language expert, and when regulation is needed.

1Introduction

In everyday communication, speakers are often reminded about how they should use language. In fact, whenever communication takes place, so does negotiation about the boundaries of what is acceptable language use. Sometimes speakers explicitly comment on and even correct each other’s language use, whereas sometimes the negotiation is more subtle. Speakers may be expected to resort to codified standards found in dictionaries and grammar books when talking in public, whereas when talking to their friends, the same speakers may not care about this kind of “correctness”. This raises questions about the ways in which language use is regulated in different settings and for different purposes, and to what extent speakers are constrained by, for instance, codified standards in their language use. In today’s world, these questions are particularly important for English, which is increasingly used as a lingua franca between speakers who do not share a first language (L1). Who can decide what is “acceptable”, “functional”, and indeed “correct” for this global lingua franca?

This book addresses language regulation in English as a lingua franca (ELF) from the perspective of local practices. I argue that it is important to anchor the phenomena being investigated to the local conditions in which the phenomena occur. What is relevant for language users in one setting may not be relevant for other users in other settings, but together a focus on the local appropriations of the phenomenon will shed light on the global issue at hand (see Pennycook 2010). The site investigated in this study is a multidisciplinary, multilingual university in Finland, Northern Europe. My particular focus is on languageregulatory practices in English-medium instructional contexts, where English is the lingua franca. With language regulation, I refer to the ways in which language users monitor and intervene in their own and each other’s language use. My focus is on the ways speakers regulate English in ELF interactions (e.g. by correcting others’ language), and on speaker perceptions of English and its regulation. I acknowledge the potential influence of more permanent, institutional guidelines and rules (e.g. language policies about acceptable usage), but will consider these only in relation to language regulation in the interactions, and the participant perspectives.

I focus on local practices of language regulation for the following two reasons: For one, previous research on language-regulatory questions in higher education has often focused on either language policy structures (e.g. Johnson & Ricento 2013; Ricento 2000), or language choice, particularly which languages are used in teaching and for research publication (e.g. Anderson 2013; Lindström 2012; McGrath 2014). Studies dealing with policy structures are important in explicating institutional constraints on language use. For example, language policies of higher education institutions typically determine which languages can be used for teaching, research and administration. However, at a practical level, individual language users may be more constrained in their language use by local concerns than institutional language policies (see e.g. Mortensen 2014). In addition, while the relationship of different languages in academia and questions of language choice are worth considering, language users do not only make choices about what languages to use, but also regulate speech and texts they produce in specific languages. This study, then, aims to shed light on the intricacies of local language-regulatory practices as they apply for English. For another, while English is a global lingua franca, if not the global lingua franca of today, in order to understand what ELF users treat as acceptable, functional, and correct in their use of English – and who actually decides this – it is essential to focus on everyday practices of using ELF.

Although my focus is on the regulation of English, I acknowledge that ELF communication takes place in multilingual settings and between (mostly) multilingual speakers for whom English is one of the resources available for them. This means that “English is available [for the speakers] as a contact language of choice, but is not necessarily chosen” (Jenkins 2015a: 73). I agree with Jenkins (2015a: 63) that “ELF is a multilingual practice”, and consider her suggestion to view ELF within the framework of multilingualism very useful. In the interactions I analysed for this study, several linguistic resources were used, although the setting of international English-medium studies meant that the main medium of interaction was English, and which is why I was also intrigued to find out how the English, rather than the mix of all available linguistic resources, was regulated. For instance, two Finnish students in a group of five students working on a joint presentation would often turn to each other and converse in Finnish before sharing their ideas with the rest of the group. These kinds of shifts are not my focus in this study, because my aim is to shed light on the practices of regulating English, that is, the repertoire that all the speakers shared, but it will be shown that part of the regulation of English in the ELF interactions is about speakers drawing boundaries about what counts as “English”. The multilingualism of the speakers thus reflects in their practices of regulating English used in the encounters.

On a conceptual level, it has long been argued that a language belongs to its users (see Widdowson’s 1994 discussion on the “ownership” of English). But the question here is whether and to what extent users of ELF actually claim “ownership” of English, and what that means in terms of the regulatory practices adopted. Seidlhofer (2009a: 242) points out that ELF research “document[s] ELF users’ degree of independence of ENL [English native language] norms”, and certainly much ELF research has shown that communication in ELF is not hampered if speakers use forms that differ from native English (e.g. Björkman 2013; Mauranen 2006a). In fact, some studies maintain that seemingly “incorrect” forms may even ease communication as speakers can draw on their plurilingual resources and (institutional) language learning histories to interpret their interlocutor’s utterances (Hülmbauer 2009). In addition, corpus studies have revealed differences in preference patterns between ELF and English native language (ENL) interaction, suggesting, for instance, that old forms may gain new functions in ELF contexts (e.g. Ranta 2006). These and other findings can be seen to illustrate what Seidlhofer (2009a: 242) in the above quotation describes as “ELF users’ ... independence of ENL norms”. Previous descriptive research on ELF thus attests to the increasing concern for language regulatory questions in ELF, but few studies have directly addressed language regulation, particularly from an empirical perspective. Some ELF studies have discussed language expertise (e.g. Smit 2010), and the use and acceptability of non-standard forms in ELF interaction (e.g. Firth 1996; Hülmbauer 2009; Mauranen 2012; Wang 2013), but an explicit link to language regulation is typically missing (however, see Hynninen 2012; Mauranen 2014; Švelch 2015). With its focus on language regulation, this book thus fills a gap in descriptive ELF research.

My focus in this book is on academic discourse. More specifically, I explore language regulation in spoken academic ELF interaction in English-medium instructional settings at a Finnish university, and the interlocutors’ (i.e. students’ and subject experts’) perceptions of English and its regulation. Since an English instructor happened to play a role in some of the interactions, I also take this perspective into account. Academia is a natural choice for exploring lingua franca communication, since much of it is inherently international. At the same time, academic communication is demanding topic-wise, and thus requires speakers to have good command of the lingua franca. In addition, as studies on academic and disciplinary literacy have shown (e.g. Geisler 1994), using a language for academic purposes is a learning process also for its native speakers. Speakers who partake in academic ELF interactions, then, may have different institutional roles, and they may be at different stages of socialisation. These aspects are likely to influence the interaction as well as language regulation in the interaction, but it may also be expected that native speaker status of the speakers plays a diminished role. Similarly, it may be expected that universities as institutions exert at least some influence on language practices, for example, in the form of language policies and other guidelines. While an investigation of the effects of such institutional guidelines are beyond the scope of this study, the institutional dimension of language regulation is relevant to the extent that speakers make such guidelines relevant in the course of their ELF interactions. In all, then, it can be concluded that these complex circumstances provide fascinating ground for an investigation of language regulation.

In the remainder of this introductory chapter, I will introduce the approach to language regulation adopted in the book by discussing the various ways in which languages are regulated in society, with particular focus on language regulation in academia (section 1.1). I will then move on to definitional issues, with focus on the ways the ELF approach adopted in this study contrasts with mainstream paradigms in second language (L2) research (section 1.2). This is followed by a discussion of the position of English in Finnish higher education (section 1.3). My aim in this section is to lay the ground for the focus of the study on a particular Finnish university context. The chapter ends with a section describing the structure of the book (section 1.4).

1.1Language regulation as a complex phenomenon

Languages are regulated in society in various ways, in different contexts and by different actors. Language policy decisions, for instance, influence the status of different languages and what languages are taught at school, whereas grammar books and dictionaries that codify language are often used by speakers as sources for “correct” usage. Language policies and codification can thus influence people’s language use, for example, in terms of guiding their language learning choices and notions of correctness. Against this backdrop, language regulation can be described as a multifaceted phenomenon, and it can be approached from different perspectives, similarly to what Spolsky (2004: 11–14, see also 2009, 2012) suggests for language policy. According to Spolsky (2004, 2012), language policy has three components: (a) language management, which he defines as being “the formulation and proclamation of an explicit plan or policy, usually but not necessarily written in a formal document, about language use” (Spolsky 2004: 11); (b) language beliefs or ideology, which he defines as being “what people think should be done” (Spolsky 2004: 14); and (c) language practices, that is, “what people actually do” (Spolsky 2004: 14). This means that language policy may be discovered in an individual’s or a group’s linguistic behaviour, in their beliefs about language or “in the formal language management or planning decisions of an authorised body” (Spolsky 2004: 217). The distribution of different languages and language varieties as well as language choice are perhaps the most central aspects of research on language policy, but Spolsky (2004: 8) is careful in also including efforts to constrain “bad” and encourage “good” language in the definition. Spolsky’s framework for researching language policy, then, comes close to the one developed in this study for language regulation. The main difference is that Spolsky (2004, 2009, 2012) seems to approach language-regulatory questions from the perspective of the product, that is, what language policies are established in different contexts, or domains, whereas in this study the focus is on language-regulatory practices, the potential influence of established language policies and guidelines on the practices, and the (re)construction of language norms (and policies) through the regulatory practices. What is more, it seems that despite his definition of language policy including efforts to intervene in the quality aspects, the relationships of different languages dominates Spolsky’s (2004) discussion, whereas in this study, the focus is on the regulation of English in lingua franca encounters.

Before I go into more detail in terms of the approach adopted in this study, I turn to the different perspectives on language regulation that can also be found in Spolsky’s (2004) approach to language policy. First, language regulation can be approached from an institutional perspective by focusing on language policies and guidelines, and the application of such policies and guidelines, for instance, in the teaching of languages. Second, it can be explored from a language-ideological perspective, for instance, considering speakers’ ideologies about language and its regulation. The approach that has received least attention, though, is the interactional perspective, that is, a focus on the ways that speakers regulate language in their everyday practices, particularly in their interactions with others. Below, I will consider each of the perspectives in turn.

On an institutional “level”, the use of languages is regulated through language policies and guidelines, which determine or influence the status of different languages and what languages people (can) use. Institutional regulation manifested in policy documents and guidelines is typically a form of top-down regulation, which means that the regulation filters down from the institutional regulatory organ to language users. There are various institutional regulatory organs that operate internationally, nationally or on a more local level. In Europe, the European Union and the Council of Europe are influential language policy makers, whose decisions also filter down to national language policies, and in consequence influence, for example, language education programmes. For higher education, decisions made at the European level include the creation of a European Higher Education Area, which has meant the introduction of the Bologna Process and the Erasmus exchange programme, among others.1 While European language policy in general aims at plurilingualism, there seem to be at least two opposing forces at play: the strengthening of multi- and plurilingualism as support for the linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe, as opposed to the internationalisation of working life with its requirements of a shared language (Huhta 2005). What comes to the creation of a European Higher Education Area, especially the encouragement for mobility can be seen to reflect this dilemma: on the one hand, mobility enables students and staff to test and develop their plurilingual resources, but at the same time it increases the need for higher education institutions to establish courses and study programmes run in an international language – usually English – to attract international students and staff. In fact, there has been a tremendous increase in Englishmedium study programmes in Europe (as well as world-wide) within the last decade (Graddol 2006: 73–80; Smit & Dafouz 2012; Wächter 2008). This spread of English has given rise to much debate in Applied Linguistics (see e.g. Kirkpatrick 2009: 254–255; Phillipson 2006; Preisler 2008; Tardy 2004), and higher education English language policy has received its share of the critique (see e.g. Ammon 2007; Jenkins 2011, 2014). The aim of this research, however, was not to enter into these debates, but primarily to explore the use of ELF at the local level of English-medium university studies.

In addition to language policies that influence the status and role of different languages at different levels of society, there are institutional actors that deal with the regulation of individual languages. Language planning is sometimes the responsibility of institutes such as Académie Française and The Institute for the Languages of Finland2, which steer the use of standard languages, for instance, by issuing guidelines on standard language use that describe boundaries of acceptable usage. Such institutes as well as the codification of language in dictionaries and grammar books in general contribute to the belief that there exists a standard, “correct” language, which is more prestigious than other forms of the language (see Milroy & Milroy 1985). This belief is then further reinforced in language teaching, where grammar books and dictionaries are traditionally used as a yardstick for correct usage.

A focus on institutional language regulation has been typical for studies concerning university language policies, although in recent years there has been a shift in research towards local language practices and the ways that policies are adopted in practice (e.g. Ljosland 2011; Mortensen 2014). This shift is important in that it acknowledges that policies and guidelines that filter down from the hierarchical layers of the university may not be adopted as such in practice. Typically, language policies describe the status and relationship of different languages in relation to each other, and with the current position of English in academia, this means taking stock of the role of English in the university. Particularly in many Nordic universities, recent language policies have tended to raise the issue of parallel language use (for an overview of language policies in Swedish universities, see Björkmann 2014a; for Denmark, see Hultgren 2014; for Finland, see Saarinen 2014), a term that typically refers to a situation where two (or more) languages are considered equal in a particular domain and where either (or any) of the languages may be used, depending on the situation3. In the Nordic universities, parallel language use often concerns the national language(s) of the country and English. Parallel language use and other issues of language choice have been the focus of many of the more recent studies on university language policy, where the official policy has been compared to reported or observed practices (e.g. Haberland 2011; Hirvensalo 2012; Kuteeva 2014; Ljosland 2011; Mortensen 2014; Saarinen & Nikula 2013). Interestingly, these studies show that th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Language regulation
• 3 Previous research on ELF and language regulation
• 4 Exploring an academic ELF setting in Finland: the research site and methodology
• 5 Language-regulatory practices
• 6 Interview accounts: perceptions of English and its regulation
• 7 Comparisons: the construction of living norms
• 8 Conclusions and implications
• Appendices
• References
• Index
• Footnotes