English as an international language: description

The most wide-spread contemporary use of English throughout the world is that of a lingua franca, i.e. the means of communication regarded as the most convenient one by speakers from different first-language backgrounds. More often than not, there are no native speakers of English involved in these lingua franca interactions. When it comes to the teaching of English, however, native speakers are still regarded as the `authentic` source of the target language and culture(s), and as the authority deciding what is linguistically acceptable (grammatical, idiomatic) and what is not. There is, then, a discrepancy between the `ownership` of the language attributed to native speakers and the de facto majority use of it by non-native-speakers. But if English is used successfully as a lingua franca on a daily basis by millions of speakers who do not speak like native speakers, then clearly it is worth finding out just how the language is used in these situations. This is what this project seeks to make possible. Its objective is to compile a structured collection of language data - a computer-readable corpus of recordings and transcriptions - of spoken interactions in English as a lingua franca. The focus is on unscripted, largely face-to-face communication among competent speakers from a wide range of first language backgrounds whose primary and secondary education and socialization did not take place in English. The speech events being captured include private and public dialogues, private and public group discussions and casual conversations, and one-to-one interviews. These data will then be analysed to establish the extent to which salient systematic features of the lingua franca use of English can be identified. A description of such features, on the levels of lexicogrammar, phonology, or discourse/pragmatics, would be a prerequisite for making recommendations for how the use and learning of English as lingua franca can be made more efficient.