Lingua Franca
Lingua Franca refers to a common language used for communication between people who do not share a native language. In geography, it often refers to a language used for trade, commerce, or diplomacy between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Historically, languages such as Arabic, Swahili, and English have served as lingua francas in various regions of the world.
7 Key excerpts on "Lingua Franca"
eBook - ePubThe Elusive Case of Lingua Franca
Fact and Fiction
- Joanna Nolan(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...Its fortunes depended on the cosmopolitan plurilingualism of the Regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, the Levant and European ports across the Mediterranean. It was, as such, a language ahead of its time. Its lexical mix and idiolectal fluidity are features more characteristic of today’s urban metropolises. * * * Today, a Lingua Franca is a term describing a language used by two or more linguistic groups as a means of communication, often for economic motives. None of the groups speak the chosen language as their native tongue. Largely as a result of colonialism, the three European languages that most often serve as Lingua Francas are English, French and Spanish. In addition, languages such as Swahili and Hindi are used as regional Lingua Francas. However, the original and eponymous Lingua Franca was a trading language, used among and between Europeans and Arabs across the Mediterranean. This commercial aspect meant that Lingua Franca was translated by some as ‘free language’, as Schuchardt explains, citing (and translating) MacCarthy and Varnier (1852) ‘doubtless because of the freedom from taxes it enjoyed in all the ports’ (Schuchardt 1909, trans. 1980: 74). There are linguists who interpret Franca as Franc, meaning French (Hall 1966 : 3). He claims that the term derives from the era of the Crusades. The French played a significant role in the religious conflicts of the medieval era, and their language(s), particularly Provençal, was adopted across the Mediterranean in much of the Levant and into North Africa. Hall maintains that much of the commerce across the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages came from South Eastern France, stretching from the port of Marseille as far North as Genoa...
eBook - ePub- Robert Phillipson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In the European context, the parameters determining hierarchies of language are multiple and mobile: there is an unresolved tension between the maintenance of the autonomy of national languages and the hegemonic consolidation of English both in the supranational institutions and within each state. How the linguistic mosaic of Europe will evolve in the coming decades is unpredictable, but manifestly there is a need for explicit language policy formation and implementation to maintain diversity. There are plenty of distinguished Europeans expressing resistance to the advance of ‘global’ English. For Bourdieu (2001), globalization means simply Americanization. Balibar (2004) affirms that English cannot be the language of Europe, and for Eco (1997), translation is the language of Europe. This presupposes proficiency in more than one language. Whether the expansion of English will be as a lingua frankensteinia remains to be seen, but clarification of the issue requires addressing the origins and uses of the term Lingua Franca. The history and evolution of Lingua Franca Mackey (2003) reports that the Germanic Franks moved into the territory of Gaul, later France, as early as in the 5th century, and that large numbers adopted the local language, a form of low Romance or early French, which became known as the language of the Franks, Lingua Franca. Ostler’s magisterial Empires of the Word (2005) covers the many functions of languages serving widely as instruments of international communication, from Akkadian and Aramaic to Quechua and Swahili. He and Barotchi (2001, 503–4) relate the use of the term Lingua Franca to the way speakers of Arabic, at the time of the crusades, referred to the language of Western Europeans whom the Franks were assumed to represent as lisan alfranj. The language that the Crusaders evolved derived from a vernacular Romance tongue, to which elements of many Mediterranean languages were added...
eBook - ePub- Karin Tusting, Karin Tusting(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...22 Lingua Franca scenarios Janus Mortensen Introduction and key concepts This chapter concerns research into Lingua Franca scenarios, highlighting the communicative complexity of Lingua Franca interaction and the value of adopting an ethnographic approach in studying Lingua Franca settings. Historically, the term ‘Lingua Franca’ refers to a pidgin called Lingua Franca, which is commonly believed to have developed as a contact language in the Mediterranean region, where it was in use until the second half of the 19th century (Schuchardt, 1909; Cremona, 1998; Nolan, 2005; Operstein, 2018). In contemporary usage of the term, any language may function as a ‘Lingua Franca’ when it is employed as a shared means of communication between speakers who do not have a common first language (Samarin, 1987). Thus, when French, just to mention an example, is used in international diplomacy by speakers who have different first languages, it is employed as a Lingua Franca. English is probably the most widely used contemporary Lingua Franca, but it is by no means the only language that is used in this function on a regular basis and at a large scale. Other widespread Lingua Francas include Arabic, German, Hindi, Malay, Putonghua, Russian, Swahili, Wolof and many others (see e.g. contributions in McGroarty (2006)). Latin is an example of a highly influential historical Lingua Franca (Haberland, 2009), and Esperanto is an example of a language deliberately constructed with a view to facilitate communication between people of different nationalities (and speakers of different languages). This chapter is not concerned with the historical Lingua Franca or any one particular language used as a Lingua Franca, although English, for reasons to be explained below, features prominently...
eBook - ePub- Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Matteo Bonotti(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Pivot(Publisher)
...Before proceeding, some clarifications are required. First, the chapter does not defend English as a Lingua Franca per se. A number of authors in recent years have offered a defence of lingue franche in general, for example, by claiming that linguistic barriers in multilingual polities can be an obstacle to economic efficiency (e.g. Barro 1996 ; Grin 2006), democracy (Weinstock 2003), or equality of opportunity (Pogge 2003), and that therefore it is important for people in these societies to share and be able to communicate in a common language. Some authors, like Van Parijs (2011) himself, have endorsed the more specific view that English should be the Lingua Franca through which individuals should communicate both within and beyond their state, and within supranational bodies such as the EU. The chapter does not assess the merits of this position per se. Instead, it defends an ‘if,… then’ line of argument. If one embraces the Van Parijsian idea that English should be the EU’s (as well as the global) Lingua Franca, then the injustices resulting from this within the EU would be much less significant after Brexit than they are now. As a consequence, the moral case for English as a Lingua Franca in the EU would be significantly strengthened. Second, there are different levels at which language plays an important role within the EU, as it was already illustrated in Chap. 1. The first concerns the internal working of the EU’s institutions; the second concerns the communication between the EU and its citizens; and, finally, the third more informal level concerns the public sphere of the EU, where citizens have the chance to exchange ideas through various forums such as newspapers, TV, radio, and the Internet, and to enjoy opportunities for work and study in each of the EU member states...
eBook - ePubThe Ambiguity of English as a Lingua Franca
Politics of Language in South Africa
- Stephanie Rudwick(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...English Lingua Franca usage cannot be regarded as communicative in function only, as it always raises “issues of identification and representation in relative degrees” (Canagarajah 2006 : 200). There are various and differentiated scales and levels of communicative and identity-endowing processes in the use of English as a Lingua Franca in South Africa. My earlier studies (Rudwick 2008, 2017, 2018; Parmegiani & Rudwick 2014) demonstrate that many Zulu people, for instance, highlight the importance of English for (academic and socio-economic) communication in their lives but they only reluctantly acknowledge English influence in their cultural and ethnic identities. In most Lingua Franca contexts, individual socio-cultural background, communicative goals, and speakers’ competence influence the encounter (Meierkord 2002 : 129). African language speakers might well construct distinct boundaries between an English and an African cultural identity, but this does not mean that African identities do not also find extensive expression in and through English ways of speaking and writing. Language remains one of the most pervasive resources in identity politics and it is often flexibly employed among people to form loyalties and alliances, on the one hand, and to construct difference and boundaries, on the other. This flexibility is a source of ambiguity in particular in English Lingua Franca discourse where different ways of speaking English have different currencies in different contexts. While it could be argued that few languages in the world have triggered loyalties beyond specific cultures, nations, or territories to the extent that English has, the English language is far from being culturally ‘neutral’. It is helpful to adopt an epistemological orientation to language politics around English as a Lingua Franca that exposes the significance of power and ideology in metalinguistic discourse...
eBook - ePubLinguistic Justice
Van Parijs and his Critics
- Helder De Schutter, David Robichaud, Helder De Schutter, David Robichaud(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...More plausibly, she must mean that a crucial task, if only because of its impact on linguistic justice, is to fight for greater social justice, both within and across nations. If this is her view, I could not agree more. But this is precisely what lies at the heart of my plea for the democratization of the Lingua Franca: We need a Lingua Franca, and only one, if we are to be able to work out and implement efficient and fair solutions for our common problems on a European and on a global scale, and indeed if we are to be able to discuss, characterize and achieve linguistic justice itself. (LJ, p. 209) Secondly, however, Réaume forcefully disputes that the existence of a Lingua Franca is ‘a necessary precondition of robust democratic engagement and a vibrant transnational civil society’. She concedes that ‘some movement across the linguistic divide must occur to have a conversation about matters of mutual interest’, but argues that ‘we should be able to ensure communication by encouraging multilingualism in a fairly small population’, for example by ‘promoting multiple language competence as an important qualification for employment in media organizations, the civil service, and the universities’. This suggestion reveals a frightening misperception of the nature and size of the task ahead, especially but not only in the context of the European Union, which is LJ ’s primary focus. What we need today, in Europe at any rate, is far more than press coverage and academic exchanges. What we need is the collective capacity to realize something tantamount to the construction of institutionalized solidarity at the level of nation states, and such a capacity has strong linguistic prerequisites. Think, for example, of the linguistic challenge faced by the European Trade Union federation. 3 It is not just the huge cost and inconvenience of a large number of interpreting booths...
eBook - ePub- Pekka Lintunen, Maarit Mutta, Pauliina Peltonen, Pekka Lintunen, Maarit Mutta, Pauliina Peltonen(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
...(1996) The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘Lingua Franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26 (2), 237–259. Götz, S. (2013) Fluency in Native and Nonnative English Speech. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. House, J. (1999) Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in English as Lingua Franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.) Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language (pp. 73–89). Tübingen: Strauffenburg. House, J. (2002) Developing pragmatic competence in English as a Lingua Franca. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds) Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 245–268). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Hüttner, J. (2009) Fluent speakers – fluent interactions: On the creation of (co)-fluency in English as a Lingua Franca. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings (pp. 274–297). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hynninen, N. (2012) ICL at the micro level: L2 speakers taking on the role of language experts. AILA Review 25, 13–29. Hynninen, N. (2016) Language Regulation in English as a Lingua Franca: Focus on Academic Spoken Discourse. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 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. Kachru, B.B. (1996) Opening borders with world Englishes: Theory in the classroom. In S. Cornwell, P. Rule and T. Sugino (eds) On JALT96: Crossing Borders. The Proceedings of the 23rd Annual JALT International Conference on Language Teaching/Learning, Hiroshima, Japan, November 1996 (pp. 10–20). JALT, Tokyo. Kaur, J. (2009) Pre-empting problems of understanding in English as a Lingua Franca. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings (pp. 107–123). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kaur, J...
