Creativity in English as a Lingua Franca

Idiom and Metaphor

Marie-Luise Pitzl

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781501516887
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501510038
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book investigates formal characteristics and discourse functions of linguistic creativity at the level of idioms in spoken ELF as represented in the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). Building on the findings of previous ELF research, the book proposes that creativity might serve as a fundamental concept in accounting for the variation that seems to be central to describing and understanding English as a lingua franca.

1 English as a lingua franca: Why creativity?

Whether we like it or not, we live in a world characterized by globalization in which people need to rely on a shared language for the purposes of international communication in many public and private, professional, educational and informal situations. At present time, the *language chosen most often in these manifold international contexts is indubitably *English. To emphasize that English is not a homogeneous or clearly bounded linguistic entity or object (cf. Ritt’s 2016 reflections on the problems of language labels in linguistics), I will move beyond the use of single quotation marks for indicating critical distance in this book and instead refer to *English instead. (Direct quotations that refer to English will remain unchanged, so will set terms like English language teaching or names like Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English.) Conceptually, the same non-boundedness applies to all labels used to refer to individual languages (like *Mandarin or *Spanish) and also to notions of language/variety as countable, i.e. a/the *language (and the plural *languages) and a/the *variety (and the plural *varieties). Therefore, the *representation is also used for these.

Some of the reasons for *English – and not *French, *German, *Spanish, *Arabic, *Mandarin or any other *language – having become the world *language of our time are largely historical in origin (Crystal 2003: 29–70). Yet, the current position of *English at the top of the global language hierarchy has also been aided by world-political, economic and technological developments of the past decades. Global trends such as international mobility, increasing migration and the rapid expansion of international media and communication platforms on the World Wide Web have promoted the need for a global *language. These latest developments have thus reinforced the *language already in power at the time and they continue to do so. Although we witness vital efforts to promote the learning of other *languages, the “snow-ball effect” favors *English as the *language people learn: “The more people learn a language, the more useful it becomes, and the more useful it is, the more people want to learn it” (Myers-Scotton 2002: 80).

The much quoted and much discussed “spread of English” (e.g. Deneire & Goethals 1997; Truchot 1997; Widdowson 1997) has thus long gone beyond the former colonial territories affected by the “first diaspora” and “second diaspora” of *English (Kachru 1992; Jenkins 2009: 5–9). Over the past decades, *English has firmly made its way into the countries of Kachru’s (1992: 356) Expanding circle, i.e. countries where *English has no socio-political or colonial history but has gained importance through being taught as a foreign language in schools. While the Kachruvian circles date back to the 1980’s and, being based on history and geography, clearly have their shortcomings (see e.g. Jenkins 2009, Seidlhofer 2011), the labels Inner, Outer and Expanding circle will occasionally be used in this book because they constitute widely established points of reference. They continue to be used by many ELF and World Englishes scholars and have also made their way to more practical discussions in some ELT textbooks (e.g. Harmer 2007: 17–18; Siemund, Davydova & Maier 2012).

Almost 20 years into the new millennium, the presence of *English in the expanding circle is unquestionable. *English is the most commonly taught and learned foreign language in virtually all members of the European Economic Area (i.e. EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) and in Turkey (Eurostat 2008: 11, 2011). It is omnipresent in many domains of public and private life in Europe (see e.g. Mollin 2006b: 53–87; Seidlhofer, Breiteneder & Pitzl 2006: 36; Seidlhofer 2010b) but also on other continents. For instance, *English is the sole working *language of ASEAN, i.e. the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Kirkpatrick 2008: 27–28). Two billion people were estimated to be learning *English world-wide in 2010 (Graddol 2006: 98–99). Although it seems virtually impossible to give exact numbers, we can concur with Crystal in assuming that roughly a third of the world’s population currently speaks *English (Crystal 2008: 6). The global presence of *English is therefore a reality that can neither be denied nor ignored nor argued away, regardless of whether we consider it desirable or not.

On the ground, the use of *English is in many situational contexts essentially a bottom-up development. It is, in most contexts, a practical choice in order to allow for maximum participation and minimal exclusion of people in an international setting, a scenario that philosopher and sociologist van Parijs (2004: 115) refers to as “maximin communication”. Unless there is an explicit language policy that specifies another course of action (such as the use of translation or receptive multilingualism), there is a gravitation towards relying on *English in many international contexts. Crucially, however, it is not any particular L1 variety of *English that is used in these settings, but ELF.

Since this book is concerned with ELF, the research presented in it is in many ways a direct consequence of the global social and communicative developments of the first, second and third dispersal. Yet, it is important to note that this does not mean a promotion of *English above the rest. ELF research is not an endorsement of all trends connected to the global spread of *English, just like research on computer-mediated communication is not a celebration of all linguistic and societal consequences of new communication technologies.

In many ways, the opposite is true. Most ELF researchers, including myself, strongly object to an ‘*English only’ view and have done so for many years (e.g. Hülmbauer, Böhringer & Seidlhofer 2008; Seidlhofer 2011; Cogo 2012; Hülmbauer & Seidlhofer 2013; Jenkins 2015 and many others). Taking ELF speakers and their language use seriously means taking seriously the reality of a world in which multilingual speakers are actually the norm, not the exception (cf. e.g. Busch 2012). Accordingly, multilingualism, multi/transcultural identities, continuous intercultural negotiation and the mixing and meshing of languages in use are not the exception but actually ‘normal’ in many situations. In recent years, we seem to be witnessing a multilingual turn in applied linguistics and also ELF research (see e.g. Hülmbauer, Böhringer & Seidlhofer 2008; Cogo 2012; Hülmbauer & Seidlhofer 2013; Jenkins 2015), with researchers increasingly highlighting that ELF as a research paradigm is very compatible with a multilingual postmodern perspective on language (see below). Yet, the challenges that come with this changed perspective in favor of individual and societal multilingualism are considerable.

1.1 Characterizing ELF: Initial remarks

Hoping to have clarified in the previous section that ELF research is not to be equated with the promotion of (global) *English at the expense of other *languages, we will now move on to initial remarks on terminology. This task proves to be rather tricky for anyone concerned with researching ELF. Throughout the past two decades, many articles and book chapters have been written on what ELF is – or is not – both by ELF scholars, as well as by researchers critical of those researching ELF.

Debates circling around the question ‘What is ELF?’ took place especially from the mid-2000’s onwards, when ELF research began to attract more attention. Prominent examples of such debates include the exchanges between between Jenkins (2006a) and Prodromou (2007a), Saraceni (2008) and Cogo (2008), and between Seidlhofer (2006) and World Englishes scholars like Berns (2009) and Pakir (2009). A more recent example is O’Regan’s (2014) so-called critique of ELF, responded to by Baker and Jenkins (2015), Baker, Jenkins and Baird (2015) and Widdowson (2015a). The body of publications that has accumulated in this respect is substantial, so the list provided here is necessarily non-exhaustive.

One of the key challenges in ‘defining’ ELF lies in the fact that the ‘beast’ to be defined is also the ‘beast’ to be described and researched. A book about ELF needs to contain some notes on terminology and provide some conceptual framework early on. Yet, the research itself is likely to influence, refine, and potentially alter our understanding of ELF (as well as my understanding of creativity and of creativity within and through ELF). So defining, or rather “characterizing” (cf. e.g Baker 2015b: 17), ELF is necessarily a multi-step process that goes beyond this chapter and beyond this book. In this section, I will start to outline my take on ELF by teasing out a number of salient perspectives and terminological issues.

1.1.1 Early definitions and the role of the *native speaker

With interest in international communication via *English at the end of the twentieth century came the first definitions of ELF. One of the very prominent and often quoted ones comes from Firth, who defines English “used as a ‘lingua franca’” as “a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication” (Firth 1996: 240, italics in original). What is prominent in Firth’s definition, and has been taken up by many scholars subsequently, is the idea that ELF is a ‘contact language’. Leaving aside the issue of ELF being/not being ‘a language’ for the moment (see Section 1.2), a notion that has been, and continues to be, central to conceptualizing ELF is the notion of contact. Cogo and Dewey (2012: 12) for example, define an ELF setting as “any language contact setting in which English is spoken as the primary medium of communication” (see also e.g. Mauranen 2012, 2018; Pitzl 2016b).

A point to be raised in this respect is the question of whether or not such a language contact setting of ELF can include *native speakers2 of *English or not. Firth (1996: 240) in his early publication refers to ELF as a “foreign” language, thus making its foreignness an essential condition for lingua franca use and thereby excluding *native speakers (cf. also House 1999: 74). This “strict sense” (Seidlhofer 2001: 146) of the term was also present in an early (much quoted) definition by Seidlhofer where she refers to a lingua franca as

an additionally acquired language system that serves as a means of communication between speakers of different first languages, or a language by means of which the members of different speech communities can communicate with each other but which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• 1 English as a lingua franca: Why creativity?
• 2 Creativity, idiom and metaphor
• 3 Describing ELF: Analyzing VOICE
• 4 Creative idioms in ELF interactions: Exploring forms
• 5 Functions of creative idioms and metaphors in ELF interactions
• 6 Metaphorical creativity in ELF interactions: Discovering patterns and systematicities
• 7 The multilingual dimension of metaphorical creativity
• 8 Implications of metaphorical creativity
• Appendix
• References
• Index