English as a lingua franca and intercultural communication

The contributions collected in this book provide a wide range of perspectives on and prospects for the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), and explore various contexts where ELF is used predominantly: Academic and research settings as well as teacher and general population education, including pronunciation teaching. The chapters look at ELF data and concerns taking into consideration the areas of phonology, grammar, pragmatics alongside more specific, sociolinguistic ones such as attitudes and identity. The chapters also seek to invoke and provoke further discussion and research on the complex and multifarious forms of the «Englishes» that people are using around the world in their daily encounters in English. Accordingly, most of the studies described in the chapters orient their methodology and discussion to a particular macro- or micro-context of intercultural communication (IC), as the main scope of the exploratory work presented here is not so much the system of ELF, but the pragmatics of communication and its strategies. The specific interest of this volume thus lies in bridging the gap between two distinct areas of scholarship, ELF studies, on the one hand, and IC studies, on the other, and in doing so from a «semiperipherical» European perspective and from a view of ELF as social practice.