Negotiating Lingua Francas

This work was originally written as a PhD thesis at University of Southampton. It is inspired by The Butterfly Effect Theories to investigate lingua franca phenomena as complex adaptive systems within other complex adaptive systems. It focuses on English as a lingua franca and highlights Arabic as a lingua franca as well. This study’s large-scale surveys and interviews are aimed to explore users’ (in)tolerance towards misalignment with standard and native language usages and how their positions relate to their reported language practices, beliefs, attitudes, motives, identity management, ideologies, religions, context, and time. As a butterfly fapping its wings may cause a hurricane, this work shows how any small change in any small part, especially in contextual and temporal dimensions, has the power to set off a string of escalating changes in lingua franca and transcultural interactions.

This dissertation contributes to the study of English as a lingua franca in business negotiations focussing, among other aspects, on the pragmatic functions of conditionals. What sets English as a lingua franca apart from other forms of usage? Is there a regularity to the use of conditionals? What functions do different forms of conditionals have in lingua franca English business negotiation? The author uses business encounters recorded at an international music trade fair as her data and shows that non-standard as well as standard conditionals are used in different phases of business negotiations to indicate different degrees of commitment. Bettina Dresemann is a teacher of English and Spanish and has worked as a lecturer for English and Applied Linguistics at the Universities of Münster, Erfurt and Bochum. She is a passionate linguist and traveller, taught German as a Second Language in Germany and the USA and is currently living in Brazil. The current book is the published version of her PhD dissertation in Applied Linguistics (Sprachlehrforschung) presented at the University of Münster.

This was originally originally was written as a PhD thesis at University of Southampton. It is inspired by The Butterfly Effect Theories to investigate lingua franca phenomena as complex adaptive systems within other complex adaptive systems. It focuses on English as a lingua franca and highlights Arabic as a lingua franca as well. This study's large-scale surveys and interviews are aimed to explore users' (in)tolerance towards misalignment with standard and native language usages and how their positions relate to their reported language practices, beliefs, attitudes, motives, identity management, ideologies, religions, context, and time. As a butterfly fapping its wings may cause a hurricane, this work shows how any small change in any small part, especially in contextual and temporal dimensions, has the power to set off a string of escalating changes in lingua franca and transcultural interactions.

Today, academics, business professionals and private persons alike need to communicate successfully and establish relationships with people from various cultures through digital means. These skills have now become essential in virtual environments. This book provides an in-depth analysis of how interlocutors negotiate meaning and identities in intercultural video-mediated communication as an important step to improving interactions on a global scale. It contributes to understanding the complex negotiation processes and strategies involved in communicating successfully and in establishing rapport in an intercultural and video-mediated context. Speakers in this English as a Lingua Franca setting act as accomplished conversationalists who efficiently employ various strategies to make themselves understood and to preempt interactional difficulties. At the same time, interlocutors (re)negotiate identities on various levels in the process of their interactions with conversation partners. Based on these insights, this book concludes with practical suggestions for educational and professional applications.

Some of the most frequent questions surrounding business negotiations address not only the nature of such negotiations, but also how they should be conducted. The answers given by business people from different cultural backgrounds to these questions are likely to differ from the standard answers found in business manuals. In her book, Milene Mendes de Oliveira investigates how Brazilian and German business people conceptualize and act out business negotiations using English as a Lingua Franca. The frameworks of Cultural Linguistics, English as a Lingua Franca, World Englishes, and Business Discourse offer the theoretical and methodological grounding for the analysis of interviews with high-ranking Brazilian and German business people. Moreover, a side study on e-mail exchanges between Brazilian and German employees of a healthcare company serves as a test case for the results arising from the interviews, and helps understand other facets of authentic intercultural business communication. Offering new insights on English as a Lingua Franca in international business contexts, Business Negotiations in ELF from a Cultural Linguistic Perspective simultaneously provides a detailed cultural-conceptual account of business negotiations from the viewpoint of Brazilian and German business people and a secondary analysis of their pragmatic aspects.

This book investigates the cultural and intercultural aspects of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Authors discuss how ‘culture’ and the ‘intercultural’ can be understood, theorised and operationalised in ELF, and how the concepts can be integrated into formats of ELF-oriented learning and teaching. The various cultural connotations are also discussed (ideological, political, religious and historical) and whether it is possible to use and/or teach a lingua franca as if it were culturally neutral. The chapters consider the communication and pedagogical implications of the cultural and intercultural dimensions of ELF and offer suggestions for new directions in ELF research, pedagogy and curriculum development.

There have been considerable recent demographic shifts in the use of English worldwide. English is now undoubtedly (and particularly) an international lingua franca, a lingua mundi. The sociolinguistic reality of English language use worldwide, and its implications, continue to be hotly contested. This is one of the first books to provide a detailed and comprehensive account of recent empirical findings in the field of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Cogo and Dewey analyze and interpret their own large corpus of naturally occurring spoken interactions and focus on identifying innovative developments in the pragmatics and lexicogrammar of speakers engaged in ELF talk. Cogo and Dewey's work makes a substantial contribution to the emerging field of empirical ELF studies. As well as this practical focus, this book looks at both pragmatic and lexicogrammatical issues and highlights their interrelationship. In showcasing the underlying processes involved in the emergence of innovative patterns of language use, this book will be of great interest to advanced students and academics working in applied linguistics, ELF, sociolinguistics, and corpus linguistics.