Journal | EL.LE
Journal Issue | 3 | 3 | 2014
Research Article | Pragmatic Strategies and Negotiation of Meaning in ELF talk
Pragmatic Strategies and Negotiation of Meaning in ELF talk
Abstract
The global spread of English and the different forms and shapes that the language has taken in the most diverse settings has contributed, especially in the last decades, to develop a peculiar sociolinguistic phenomenon which has had implications on a wide range of areas; linguis- tic, political, socio-cultural, ideological as well as pedagogical. Speakers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds have increasingly come into contact on a global scale and have adopted English as a contact language, a lingua franca, in contexts where the language is used for vari- ous communicative purposes. What communicative strategies and discourse practices speakers, belonging to different linguistic backgrounds, use to facilitate the achievement of mutual compre- hension, will be drawn attention to in the present paper. The need to re-examine what it means to learn and teach a global modern language from a different methodological perspective will be highlighted. It is therefore suggested that English as a lingua franca, ELF, needs to be investigated as a field of enquiry which requires empirical analysis, not only from a linguistic perspective, but also from a sociolinguistic one.
Published Nov. 1, 2014 | Language: it
Copyright © 2014 Anna Maria De Bartolo. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2280-6792/115p
