EAN: 9783039116898

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA IN CROSS-CULTURAL IM...

This book explores the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the use of English as
a Lingua Franca (ELF) within cross-cultural specialized contexts where non-native speakers of
English - i.e. Western experts and non-Western migrants - interact. The book argues that the
main communicative difficulties in such contexts are due precisely to the use of ELF  since it
develops from the non-native speakers' transfer of their native language structures and
socio-cultural schemata into the English they speak. Transfer  in fact  allows non-native
speakers to appropriate  or authenticate  those English semantic  syntactic  pragmatic and
specialized-discourse structures that are linguistically and conceptually unavailable to them.
It follows that there are as many ELF varieties as there are communities of non-native speakers
authenticating English. The research questions justifying the ethnographic case studies
detailed in this book are: What kind of cognitive frames and communicative strategies do
Western experts activate in order to convey their culturally-marked knowledge of specialized
discourse - by using their ELF varieties - to non-Westerners with different linguistic and
socio-cultural backgrounds? What kind of power asymmetries can be identified when
non-Westerners try to communicate their own knowledge by using their respective ELF varieties?
Is it possible to ultimately develop a mode of ELF specialized communication that can be shared
by both Western experts and non-Western migrants?

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