In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions
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Ulrike Pölzl
Abstract
English as a lingua franca (ELF) typically involves the reconciliation of two factors: the intercultural intelligibility among its users and the cultural identity of its individual speakers. It is argued in this paper that the local context, referred to as the “habitat factor,” is of particular relevance with regard to the self-regulation of ELF. Investigating the habitat-specific realizations of pragmatic fluency, and drawing on the work of House (1999), we seek to show how ELF users integrate their mother tongue (L1) communicative norms efficiently into their second language English conversation. We consider the particular case of the use by L1 Arabic speakers of multifunctional discourse markers and strategies to achieve a culturally appropriate ethos of musayara in their interaction, and more generally how the high-involvement style characterized by cooperative overlaps displays a strong tendency toward an L1 discourse style. What our study illustrates is how the global phenomenon of ELF varies in its local realizations.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Lingua franca communication past and present
- Restandardizing localized Englishes: aspirations and limitations
- English as a lingua franca: Singapore
- Standardization and self-regulation in an international speech community: the case of Esperanto
- Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change
- The effect of Bahasa Indonesia as a lingua franca on the Javanese system of speech levels and their functions
- Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication
- In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Lingua franca communication past and present
- Restandardizing localized Englishes: aspirations and limitations
- English as a lingua franca: Singapore
- Standardization and self-regulation in an international speech community: the case of Esperanto
- Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change
- The effect of Bahasa Indonesia as a lingua franca on the Javanese system of speech levels and their functions
- Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication
- In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions
- Book reviews
