ELF authentication and accommodation strategies in crosscultural immigration encounters

Maria Grazia Guido,

doi:10.1515/jelf-2012-0017

Article

ELF authentication and accommodation strategies in crosscultural immigration encounters

Maria Grazia Guido,
Maria Grazia Guido is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Salento, Italy, where she is also Director of the Interfaculty Language Centre and of the Masters Course in ‘Intercultural and Interlingual Mediation in Immigration and Asylum Contexts’. Her research interests are in cognitive-functional linguistics applied to ELF in intercultural communication and specialized discourse analysis. Her monographs include English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains (2008), The Acting Reader (1999), The Imaging Reader (2005), Mediating Cultures (2004) and Register and Dialect in an Integrated Model of European English (1999).

Published/Copyright: October 16, 2012

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From the journal Journal of English as a Lingua Franca Volume 1 Issue 2

Abstract

This article explores the cognitive and communicative strategies involved in the use of ELF in situations of unequal encounters between non-western supplicants (i.e., African immigrants and asylum seekers) and western immigration officials in authority (in this case, Italian mediators – i.e., experts mediating between immigrants and institutions). Evidence from the case studies indicates that each contact group uses ELF with reference to different linguacultural conventions associated with their use of English, as the interactants come from the ‘outer’ and the ‘expanding’ circles respectively (cf. Kachru 1986). In consequence, each party in the encounters tends naturally to transfer the structural features and the meaning conventions of their L1 into the English that they use, each appropriating and “authenticating” the language in accordance not with native speaker norms, but with those of their own L1. Since these norms are not shared, there is the need for accommodation for communication to be achieved, but unequal power distribution in these encounters is not favorable to such accommodation – which, instead, normally obtains in relatively “equal” encounters. The case studies show how the lack of recognition of these variable versions of English may have critical consequences in contexts involving political and ethical questions concerning human rights. It is contended that only a “mutual accommodation” of variable usage would safeguard the participants' social identities and foster successful communication in crosscultural immigration encounters.

Keywords: ELF variations; ELF authentication; ELF accommodation; L1 typological and pragmalinguistic transfer; immigration encounters

About the author

Full Professor Maria Grazia Guido,

Maria Grazia Guido is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Salento, Italy, where she is also Director of the Interfaculty Language Centre and of the Masters Course in ‘Intercultural and Interlingual Mediation in Immigration and Asylum Contexts’. Her research interests are in cognitive-functional linguistics applied to ELF in intercultural communication and specialized discourse analysis. Her monographs include English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains (2008), The Acting Reader (1999), The Imaging Reader (2005), Mediating Cultures (2004) and Register and Dialect in an Integrated Model of European English (1999).

Published Online: 2012-10-16

Published in Print: 2012-09-13

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2012-0017

Keywords for this article

ELF variations; ELF authentication; ELF accommodation; L1 typological and pragmalinguistic transfer; immigration encounters