The

1
The cultural and intercultural in English as
a lingua franca?

• ELF7 Pre-conference event
• Athens
• Prue Holmes
• Durham University
• 8th May 2014

2
Getting started

• Prue (from NZ), Richard (Irish/English??, from
  the UK), Natasha (from Athens??, Greek), Yasemin
  (from Istanbul?? Turkey) are having a coffee in
  the student canteen at Deree College. Richard
  described how, in Spain, a pig is fed, then
  killed, and prepared for eating. Natasha agrees,
  making reference to the Greek context. Prue
  remains quiet, thinking about her experience of
  helping her (male) neighbour carve up a lamb
  after it had been hung to bleed for 24 hours
  (from Prues farmlet). Then the talk shifts back
  to language education and ELF.
• Are they speaking ELF?
• How do their identities inform their
  communication?
• Is their communication intercultural?

3
Identity, culture, power

• Who we are informs how we use language to relate
  to and understand others our intercultural
  communication
• Identity professional, social, class, gender,
  family, educational, group, language, religion,
  locality, memory/history, nationality, ethnicity,
  etc
• Culture (re)constructed, (re) negotiated,
  (re)contested in communication with others,
  through lived and creative experience,
• Power who speaks for whom, when, how, and why?
  When is silence permissible?

4
Some exploratory questions

• In the ways that we understand the cultural and
  intercultural in foreign languages education,
  is it meaningful to speak of the cultural and
  intercultural when using a lingua franca? What
  might this entail?
• What are the possibilities for a lingua franca
  pedagogy that includes interculturality (the
  cultural and intercultural dimensions of
  communication)?
• (exploratory Qs considered vis-à-vis English)
• ,

5
The situation (E)LF IC

• Lingua francas have always existed and have
  enabled interaction and communication, business
  negotiation, agreement, debate, love and hate
  (Dervin, 2010, p. 3, translated from French).
• Research on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has
  tended to focus on the linguistic aspects of an
  emergent variety of English, and less on the
  cultural and intercultural aspects of ELF.
• Research into ELF has not ventured into the
  applied linguistics territory of, for example,
  the methodological implications of ELF for
  teaching English globally.

6
The ELF literature

• The use of ELF is generally characterised by a
  high degree of fluidity and hybridity gt shift in
  focus from linguistic forms (phonology, lexis,
  grammar, pragmatics) to communicative processes
  (Jenkins, Cogo Dewey, 2011)
• gt maximising mutual intelligibility
• ELF users have been shown to skilfully negotiate
  and co-construct English for their own purposes,
  treating the language as a shared communicative
  resource within which they innovate, accommodate
  and code-switch, all the while enjoying the
  freedom to produce forms that NSEs do not
  necessarily use (Jenkins et al., p. 297).
• gt language is culture-free (or free of
  specific national anchors)
• gtcultured within the context
• (The WEAK form)

7
The IC literature

• ICC in (foreign) language learning and teaching
  (Byram, Kramsch, Risager, etc.)
• The cultures communicators inhabit, and the
  cultural practices they manifest within them, are
  both contested and (re)claimed (especially where
  political, ideological and religious positions
  are at stake) through attempts at intercultural
  dialogue (Ganesh Holmes, 2011).
• There has been a shift in how the intercultural
  is conceptualized and researched by questioning
  the meaning of the cultural in the notion and
  by emphasizing its processual, constructionist
  and intersubjective dimensions (Dervin, Holliday,
  Piller).
• gt ELF ICC
• (The STRONG form)

8
Some exploratory questions (about this
situation)

• Is it possible to imagine communication/dialogue
  without thinking
• about language?
• about culture?
• What is the relationship among language, culture,
  identity, power (etc.) in multilingual and
  intercultural contexts of communication?
• Where (English as) a lingua franca is concerned,
  how are the cultural and intercultural
  imagined/understood/constructed/negotiated in
  intercultural communication?
• ,

9
Aims of the book(co-edited by Prue Holmes Fred
Dervin)

• To investigate the cultural and intercultural
  dimensions in the use of English as a lingua
  franca, and if possible, in relation to recent
  changes in the way these notions are used and to
  consider possible pedagogical implications with
  regard to these dimensions
• To discuss how culture and the intercultural
  can be understood, theorised and researched in
  ELF
• To explore how the concepts of culture and the
  intercultural are dealt with and can be
  integrated into formats of ELF-oriented learning
  and teaching
• To challenge whether it is possible to use and/or
  teach a lingua franca as if it were culturally
  neutral, or with no cultural connotations (e.g.,
  ideological, political, religious, historical,
  etc).

10
Conclusion

• If we dont teach the cultural and intercultural
  in ELF, are we doing a disservice to our
  students?
• Are we denying the complexity of language and its
  cultural influences?
• Through language we come to (critically)
  understand the other, all the while interpreting
  and negotiating (positions of) identity, power,
  and interculturality.
• - e.g., linguacultures
• - e.g., immigration
• - e.g., political movements in response to
  positions of power and access to resources
  (UKIP, Golden Dawn)