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This volume is a collection of studies that analyze cultural encounters in Europe from multidisciplinary perspectives. The book faithfully reflects the research conducted at various departments within the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Szeged, Hungary. The idea for the collection was conceived during a dissemination meeting for a four-year research project involving some of the authors known as Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE), cofounded by the European Commission (FP6, contract 28388), whose generous support also made the publication of this volume possible—for which I would like to extend my gratitude here. Our contemporary world has been persuasive...
ELF (English as a lingua franca) research counters the monocentric view of English based on norms of native speakers of English, and supports any usages reflecting sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic reality of ELF communication. Such an approach empowers any speakers of English to contemplate their own varieties of English as legitimate, providing them greater options for positive self-identification. Based on qualitative and interpretive methodology, this book illustrates how Japanese L2 English users establish identities related to L2 English as part of their multiple identities, and how they explore new identity options through ELF. Moreover, the author demonstrates how power relations r...
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.
The use of English as a global lingua franca has given rise to new challenges and approaches in our understanding of language and communication. One area where ELF (English as a lingua franca) studies, both from an empirical and theoretical orientation, have the potential for significant developments is in our understanding of the relationships between language, culture and identity. ELF challenges traditional assumptions concerning the purposed 'inexorable' link between a language and a culture. Due to the multitude of users and contexts of ELF communication the supposed language, culture and identity correlation, often conceived at the national level, appears simplistic and naïve. However, it is equally naïve to assume that ELF is a culturally and identity neutral form of communication. All communication involves participants, purposes, contexts and histories, none of which are 'neutral'. Thus, we need new approaches to understanding the relationship between language, culture and identity which are able to account for the multifarious and dynamic nature of ELF communication.
This volume examines the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in education in Europe. Following the implementation of the Bologna process, English has assumed a central role in European education offering institutions the opportunity to cater to the needs of an internationalized student body and increase their competitiveness. On the other hand, the increased use of ELF has become an issue of concern, often perceived as a threat to other languages, tilting the scale towards linguistic inequality and stressing the urgent need for the development of new language policies. Both aspects of ELF are at the center of discussion in the proposed volume, which consists of a variety of papers examining ELF in different parts of Europe (Eastern, Central and Western) and different levels of education. The volume makes a substantial contribution to the lively and controversial debate about what is recognized as a central topical concern of language education policy in Europe and beyond.
The volume collects original studies highlighting contemporary trends in historical sociolinguistics, as well as current research on the relationship between sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, social motivations of language variation and change, and corpus-based studies. Distinctive features of the book, which make it appealing to a wider audience, are the interdisciplinary nature of the chapters and the range of languages addressed.
This volume fills an important gap in exploring English in the domains of business and commerce through the prism of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, as opposed to analyzing business genres or taking a linguodidactic approach. It expands the regional coverage of English in Europe, with several studies based in Central Europe, and also considers contexts which interact with Europe even though they are physically outside of it (Asia, Africa). It addresses English as just one of several languages at play in the ecology of the countries. It focuses not only on the position of languages as declared in documents of various organizations, that is, language policy, but also everyday l...
This volume provides a focused account of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in European higher education, considering issues of ideologies, policies, and practices. This is an essential book for academics, students, policy makers, and educators directly or indirectly implicated in the internationalization of European higher education.
This volume addresses two current gaps in pragmatics research in English as a lingua franca (ELF): Firstly, the contexts, approaches and theories of pragmatics generally that remain under-explored in studies of ELF speakers; secondly, the paucity of ELF pragmatics studies investigating Asia, despite its economic and geo-political importance and the role of English as a region-wide lingua franca. The volume draws together a range of pragmatics-related chapters contributed by leading experts in pragmatics, both in English as a lingua franca and more broadly. These either present new research that extends the current state of the field, or introduce approaches and theories from other areas of pragmatics that translate readily to analysis of ELF interaction. Five of the chapters are Asia-focused, examining pragmatic aspects of communication among Asian ELF users. The volume therefore offers scope for ELF pragmatics researchers to further broaden the field’s theoretical and analytical horizons, and adds to the quantity of knowledge about pragmatics in ELF communication in Asia. Its publication raises the visibility of this research area within the broader field of pragmatics.
ELF researchers have been describing the dynamic and fluid ways in which multilingual speakers shape English in transcultural communication for more than two decades now. While this work seriously challenges traditional, static, and prejudiced views of English, the diverse and variable nature of its uses and users continues to be undermined in many EFL programs around the world. This is also the case in many Latin American contexts, which have been described as fertile ground for native-speaker ideology, but where the body of ELF literature is still scarce when compared to Asian and European settings. This book is the first to bring together a series of empirical studies on the implications ...