Volume 2, Issue 1

(B)ELF research has highlighted the consensual and co-operative nature of (B)ELF interaction, i.e., the presence of comity or harmony. This paper aims to explore the role of stance markers in achieving comity within a business context. The study of stance markers has broadened its scope considerably in recent years, notably focussing more on spoken interaction in context, yet linguistic stance in (B)ELF remains a largely unexplored field. This paper will analyse the use of stance markers, which comprise a range of lexical and grammatical features of language, in authentic audio-recorded BELF interaction in meetings. Stance markers are of interest in that they reflect the multifunctional nature of language in contributing to the dynamic enactment of both interpersonal and transactional functions of language. In expressing opinions, evaluation, and affect, stance is also intrinsically linked to facework and relational work, which are important for nurturing and maintaining comity. Fine-grained analysis of the data, focussing in particular on the use of hedges and boosters, illustrates the way stance markers contribute to the achievement of comity, for example in negotiating tasks, dealing with disagreement, or clarifying understanding. The data also reflect the way business conventions, knowledge, and relations impact on communication.

This article discusses how English used as a lingua franca (ELF) can be defined as an object of study. It offers a critical appraisal of a high-profile definition of ELF (the VOICE/Seidlhofer definition), and argues that definitions of this kind, whether purposely or not, in effect invite conceptualizations of ELF as a reified entity. This kind of reification is shown to entail a number of problems, the main one being that reified conceptualizations of ELF as an object of study are at odds with the available empirical evidence. On the basis of this critique, the article suggests an alternative approach to the conceptualization of ELF where ELF is defined in straightforward functional terms as the use of English in a lingua franca language scenario. This definition underscores the complexity and breadth of ELF as an object of study, and highlights that researchers in the field of ELF studies need to acknowledge this complexity and adopt structured methods in dealing with it. Using well-known examples from the literature, the article shows that Dell Hymes's SPEAKING heuristic may be employed as one such tool.

This article explores the shifts of form and meaning involved in the use of unconventional language in English as a lingua franca (ELF). Assuming that ELF speakers as intercultural communicators are less inhibited by standardising forces than speakers in a primary lingua-cultural environment, it points to the fact that “virtual” resources, i.e., latent linguistic possibilities within English beneath the surface of the encoded, play a crucial role in the lingua franca mode. Since ELF emerges in multilingual contexts and can itself be considered a multilingual mode, the virtuality aspect is claimed to interact with elements from without English, namely plurilingual resources from the speakers’ first or other language backgrounds. While the discussion of virtual resources has thus far mainly been focused on morphological flexibility, in this article their interconnection with the plurilingual aspect of ELF is shown to also affect the dimension of meaning. It is thus argued that a valid semiotic framework of ELF needs expansion both on the morphological and on the pragmatic levels. Such an expansion acknowledges virtual and plurilingual aspects as integral parts of the lingua franca and eventually nullifies the initial distinction between influences from within and from without.

The academic community has relied on English as its working language in official settings such as international conferences and publications for a long time. University internationalization has thus fostered the use of English as a language of international communication among students and staff, particularly in face-to-face interaction. This paper explores spoken multiparty interaction among non-native speaker students and teachers engaging in academic discourse (i.e., seminars, group work), and aims at investigating the role of idiomatic language in such settings by examining data drawn from the ELFA (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) and SELF (Studying in English as a Lingua Franca) corpora, compiled in Helsinki (Mauranen 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2010; Mauranen et al. 2010). Data analysis focuses on the identification of potential ELF-distinctive patterns involving idiomatic language. The research attempts to determine whether idiomatic items appear as the pivotal elements in problemsolving sequences and to identify other idiom-related communication strategies, as well as describe the social functions they fulfill in cross-cultural academic interactions. Attention is also paid to the issues of idiomatic variation and creativity (Pitzl 2009) as well as unilateral idiomaticity (Seidlhofer 2009), that is, how figurative language may challenge the successful achievement of cross-cultural communicative acts.

In ELF research, ample evidence has been collected to show that communication in (dialogic) ELF interactions works and that it does so in intriguingly creative ways. In a questionnaire survey and an in-depth interview study, simultaneous conference interpreters present a less optimistic view with regard to (monologic) mediated multilingual settings, which are increasingly shaped by a growing number of non-native English-speaking participants. Moreover, the interpreters put the adverse effects of ELF speaker output on their cognitive processing down to the speakers' restricted power of expression. This is paralleled by empirical evidence from ELF speakers in TELF (the Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca corpus and database), who put into perspective their general feeling that they can cope in ELF interactions (which is in line with the ELF study findings mentioned above) by voicing dissatisfaction with their restricted capacity of expressing what they want to convey with the required or desired degree of precision. In a theoretical discussion, the Express-ability Principle is introduced to capture the nature of the human effort for expression (complementary to Bartlett's effort after meaning ). In the subsequent presentation, sociocultural and psycholinguistic research sheds light on express-ability in the context of ELF by applying Slobin's Thinking for Speaking (TFS) hypothesis to second-language contexts. It reveals the interface between verbal (L1) thinking and externalized (L2) speech and explains expression-related problems in terms of transfer effects in connection with age of acquisition and linguistic environment. This directs further ELF research into the nature of express-ability towards an examination of production processes, developmental and procedural aspects in early and late bilingual ELF speakers, a shared languages benefit to compensate for cross-linguistic transfer and the (relative) effectiveness of unmediated and mediated ELF communication.

Scant attention has been paid to written academic ELF and international scholars' perceptions of coping with writing academic papers in English. Available studies seem to have an ENL stance with a few exceptions. This article describes the views of Icelandic academics on using English in their scientific pursuits. The findings are based on a survey administered to faculty members at the University of Iceland where English has historically had a high profile as a utility language . The survey was followed up with interviews with ten academics. The findings indicate that even though respondents claim that their general English is good, the majority confess to an added workload and needing assistance with their academic English. Despite pressure from the university to increase international publication where ENL writing standards seem to be the only accepted norm, no official writing support is offered. It is not clear whether writing in English increases competitiveness when the writing does not meet ENL norms. The results call for more discussion on the appropriateness of adhering to ENL standards by journals to which non-native users of English contribute. The results also highlight the need for more emphasis in ELF research on the nature of written ELF academic discourse.

The presence of English in Europe is increasingly pervasive: experiences “from above” in educational contexts combine with contacts with English “from below” in the linguistic landscape at large. In educational contexts, international school partnerships create increasingly frequent opportunities for learners at different school levels to experience language use in ELF contexts. International exchanges can thus be seen as a point of intersection between bottom-up and top-down contact with English, where learners step into the role of ELF users deploying their linguistic resources to communicate in international ELF settings. This paper explores how English is used in its role of a lingua franca in a set of written and spoken data gathered within two such international projects which took place in the Verona area, Italy, in school years 2009–2011. As part of the project primary school pupils aged 9–11 interacted with peers from European countries using English as the shared lingua franca of communication. Besides the children's awareness of the presence of English and of the role of ELF in outside-school contexts, these interactions are characterised by several elements which are found in ELF communicative settings: for example, lexical innovations, code switching employed to signal cultural identity, and deployment of pragmatic strategies in oral communication. In this way these young ELF users appear to stretch their linguistic resources of self-expression and communication. Therefore, findings can bear significant potential implications in terms of teaching practices.