La comunicazione interculturale è il filo rosso che attraversa quasi tutti i contributi di questo volume. Negli ultimi venti anni tale nozione è stata esplorata e, più recentemente, rivisitata in una prospettiva ELF in diverse aree di ricerca come, ad esempio, la comunicazione strategica d’affari, la consapevolezza interculturale, l’insegnamento delle lingue, la formazione docenti, i discorsi socioculturali, così come gli stessi studi interculturali. Scopo di questo libro è fornire ai lettori una selezione di articoli recenti e stimolanti, nonché contribuire alla fiorente crescita di pubblicazioni su ELF. Il libro è diviso in tre parti, che coprono tre temi principali: 1) ELF, insegnamento delle lingue e la formazione dei docenti; 2) La comunicazione in contesti migratori e plurilingui; atteggiamenti e interazioni; 3) ELF nel mondo degli affari e in quello universitario. Il volume contiene ventiquattro capitoli scritti da studiosi e ricercatori che hanno partecipato al Convegno Internazionale ELF6, svoltosi a Roma presso l’Università Roma Tre nel 2013. I contributi si fondano sulle presentazioni da loro fatte in occasione di tale convegno. DOI: 10.13134/978-88-97524-63-2

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.

This book is a guide to understanding and applying the essential, heretofore elusive, notion of context in language study and pedagogy. Éva Illés offers a new, critical, systematic theoretical framework, then applies that framework to practical interactions and issues in communicative language teaching rooted in English as a Lingua Franca. By linking theory and practice for research and teaching around the world, this book brings a new awareness of how context can be conceptualised and related to language pedagogy to advanced students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers of language teaching, applied linguistics and pragmatics.

Despite unsubstantiated claims of best practice, the division of language-teaching professionals on the basis of their categorization as ‘native-speakers’ or ‘non-native speakers’ continues to cascade throughout the academic literature. It has become normative, under the rhetorical guise of acting to correct prejudice and/or discrimination, to see native-speakerism as having a single beneficiary – the ‘native-speaker’ – and a single victim – the ‘non-native’ speaker. However, this unidirectional perspective fails to deal with the more veiled systems through which those labeled as native-speakers and non-native speakers are both cast as casualties of this questionable bifurcation. This volume documents such complexities and aims to fill the void currently observable within mainstream academic literature in the teaching of both English, and Japanese, foreign language education. By identifying how the construct of Japanese native-speaker mirrors that of the ‘native-speaker’ of English, the volume presents a revealing insight into language teaching in Japan. Further, taking a problem-solving approach, this volume explores possible grounds on which language teachers could be employed if native-speakerism is rejected according to experts in the fields of intercultural communicative competence, English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes, all of which aim to replace the ‘native-speaker’ model with something new.

This edited volume addresses perspectives and prospects of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in connection with other areas of linguistics. It is the first volume that brings together ELF scholars and experts from a wide range of areas in linguistics (such as corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language pedagogy, language policy, intercultural communication) in order to explore how ELF relates to these fields.

The use of English as a global lingua franca has given rise to new challenges and approaches in our understanding of language and communication. One area where ELF (English as a lingua franca) studies, both from an empirical and theoretical orientation, have the potential for significant developments is in our understanding of the relationships between language, culture and identity. ELF challenges traditional assumptions concerning the purposed 'inexorable' link between a language and a culture. Due to the multitude of users and contexts of ELF communication the supposed language, culture and identity correlation, often conceived at the national level, appears simplistic and naïve. However, it is equally naïve to assume that ELF is a culturally and identity neutral form of communication. All communication involves participants, purposes, contexts and histories, none of which are 'neutral'. Thus, we need new approaches to understanding the relationship between language, culture and identity which are able to account for the multifarious and dynamic nature of ELF communication.

English as a Lingua Franca, or ELF for short, is currently one of the most dynamic topics in the fields of applied and socio-linguistics and English Language Teaching. It has been a thriving field of research for the last twenty years with a growing number of books and journals dedicated to the subject. The field has also seen the foundation of an annual international ELF conference series, which started in 2008 and attracts growing numbers year on year. This book has developed out of contributions to the Second International ELF conference held in Southampton (UK) in 2009. The papers in this volume provide new insights into ELF, by presenting and exploring the implications of some of the latest findings of empirical research in key ELF research areas including business and academic ELF, intercultural communication, language attitudes and ideologies, code-switching, and accommodation. These papers will have a broad appeal among applied- and socio-linguists, both academics and under/post-graduate students, as well as ELT practitioners around the world. They will also be of interest to language planners because of the potential of the research to inform English language policies and practices.