Prot. 2015REZ4EZ
Research Project Abstract
This project intends to develop a cognitive-functional model for the analysis of variations and registers of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in intercultural communication. In particular, it will enquire into the use of ELF in professional discourses that, more than others, provide evidence of an appropriation of the English language by non-native speakers who no longer perceive it as a ‘foreign’ language, but rather as a ‘lingua franca’ through which they can express their own native linguacultural uses and rhetorical repertoires, experiential schemata and, ultimately, socio-cultural identities. Such professional discourses regard ELF used in: (a) unequal migration encounters in institutional settings; (b) digital media for global communication; (c) the multilingual classroom in today’s western societies. The research group (composed of internationally recognized ELF scholars), starting from the assumption that non-native speakers appropriate ELF by exploiting its virtual meaning potential without conforming to native speakers’ norms of usage, will seek to examine specifically how ELF users interact among themselves, how they understand each others’ ELF variations, and what kind of problems naturally arise when one set of L1 usage and register conventions – transferred by users to their ELF variations – comes into contact, and often indeed into conflict, with another. This research proposes to explore the relevance of such questions to spoken, written and multimodal domain-specific communication which is of relevance particularly to Italian multicultural settings. Since the awareness of the socio-cultural and political impact of ELF use in today’s globalized world is relatively recent, prominence will be given to the development of an original Cognitive-functional Model which will put into question the established notions of cognitive and functional grammars, text linguistics and discourse pragmatics focused on native-speaker norms of English usage, in order to investigate how ELF communication can be enhanced by strategies of meaning co-construction and register hybridization accounting for ELF speakers’ different native linguacultural backgrounds, and how it can be instead hindered by ELF accommodation failure. The methodological approaches adopted can be brought to bear on the fields of: sociolinguistics and language policy (investigating ELF in relation to language variation and identity in multilingual societies); cognitive linguistics and lexicogrammar (exploring processes of transfer of typologically different L1-features to ELF); intra- and inter-lingual translation and mediation in domain-specific discourses; language pedagogy; and the methodology of ELF description (concerning the ethnographic collection, analysis and interpretation of data). The ultimate aim is to open up this area of enquiry to a critical debate so as to further a fuller understanding of ELF as a crucial dimension of today’s international communication.