English as Lingua Franca

Abstract

As Bolton (2000, p. 265) points out, “Today it is something of a cliche that English is a global language.” As such, English is no longer used primarily by speakers for whom English is a native or first language (L1).

Receptive multilingualism versus ELF: How well do Slovenes understand Croatian compared to Croatian speakers’ English?

“…ELF started to receive attention from scholars during the early 1980s. In these initial stages researchers mostly focused on various aspects of intercultural contact between non-native speakers of English (Meierkord 2012), and it was only in the 2000s that ELF research gathered pace, with a host of theoretical, empirical and corpus-based studies published since then (see, for example, Jenkins 2000;Seidlhofer 2001, Seidlhofer 2011Cogo and Dewey 2012;Mauranen 2012;Deterding 2013).…”

English as a Lingua Franca: Forms and Features in a Swiss Context

“…The current situation of English across the world makes it quite clear that many older models classifying the types of English speakers in different countries no longer fully portray the entire situation and there are almost as many ways of categorizing world Englishes as there are varieties of English spoken. As noted by Cogo and Dewey (2012), Jenkins (2009) and Meierkord (2013), some groupings focus on the functions of English in different countries, others focus on the mode/manner of instruction (Modiano 1999) and yet others on the historical background of English use (Kachru 1982). None so far fully encompasses the multitude of options that exist in terms of how/why/where English is used today however.…”