Abstract
Studies of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) suggest that some speakers of ELF are willing to mark their (national) identity in their ELF pronunciation, which we call the liberal stance, while others want to strive towards native models (e.g. Jenkins, World Englishes 28:200–207, 2009), which we describe as the conservative stance. A recent study (Stanojević and Josipović, Euro-English and Croatian national identity. Conference paper presented at the New Challenges for Multilingualism in Europe, Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 11–15, 2010) confirms this, suggesting that liberalism versus conservativism towards ELF among Croatian university students is correlated with their major field of study. In this paper we show that there may be a more pervasive process at play behind the liberal versus conservative attitudes to ELF, namely identity construction. Based on the results of a questionnaire conducted among secondary school pupils, university students and employees of a company, we show that different attitudes to one’s own accent, the accent of one’s conversational partners and teaching models primarily hinge on belonging to different groups of participants: learners versus speakers of ELF. Our results support a non-monolithic, stratified ELF model, which allows changes in accordance with the needs and identity construction of its speakers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Revised and extended edition. London: Verso.
Baxter, James. 1991. How should I speak English? American-ly, Japanese-ly or internationally. In Teaching English pronunciation: a book of readings, ed. Adam Brown, 53–71. London: Routledge.
Canagarajah, Suresh. 2007. Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. The Modern English Journal 91:923–939.
Cogo, Alessia. 2009. Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: A study of pragmatic strategies. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 254–273. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Crystal, David. 2004. The language revolution. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Dewey, Martin. 2007. English as a lingua franca and globalization: An interconnected perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17:332–354.
Dewey, Martin. 2009. English as a lingua franca: Heightened variability and theoretical implications. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 60–83. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ehrenreich, Susanne. 2009. English as a lingua franca in multinational corporations – exploring business communities of practice. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 126–151. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Erling, Elizabeth J, and Tom Bartlett. 2006. Making English their own: The use of ELF among students of English at the Free University of Berlin. Nordic Journal of English Studies 5: 9–40.
Firth, Alan. 2009. Doing not being a foreign language learner: English as a lingua franca in the workplace and (some) implications for SLA. IRAL—International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 47:127–156.
Firth, Alan, and Johannes Wagner. 1997. On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. The Modern Language Journal 81:285–300.
Gatbonton, Elizabeth, Pavel Trofimovich, and Michael Magid. 2005. Learners’ ethnic group affiliation and L2 pronunciation accuracy: A sociolinguistic investigation. TESOL Quarterly 39:489–511.
Görlach, Manfred. 2002. Still more Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The phonology of English as an international language: new models, new norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2002. A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics 23:83–103.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2005. Implementing an international approach to English pronunciation: The role of teacher attitudes and identity. TESOL Quarterly 39:535–543.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006a. Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly 41:157–181.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006b. English pronunciation and second language speaker identity. In The sociolinguistics of identity, ed. Tope Omoniyi and Goodith White, 75–91. London, New York: Continuum.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2009. English as a lingua franca: interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes 28: 200–207.
Josipović Smojver, Višnja. 2010. Foreign accent and levels of analysis: interference between English and Croatian. In Issues in accents of English 2: variability and norm, ed. Ewa Waniek-Klimczak, 23–35. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Kaštelanac, Anamarija. 2010. The attitude of secondary-school pupils from Zadar to English pronunciation. (ms.) Unpublished graduation thesis. University of Zagreb.
Mauranen, Anna, and Elina Ranta. eds. 2009. English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena. 2007. Croatian EFL learners’ affective profile, aspirations and attitudes to English classes. Metodika 8: 115–126.
Phillips, Elaine M. 1992. The effects of language anxiety on students’ oral test performance and attitudes. The Modern Language Journal 76: 14–26.
Pitzl, Marie-Luise. 2009. ‘We should not wake up any dogs’: Idiom and metaphor in ELF. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 298–322. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Poljak, Ana. 2011. Attitudes of secondary-school EFL learners towards the pronunciation of English. (ms.) Unpublished graduation thesis. University of Zagreb.
Prodromou, Luke. 2008. English as a lingua franca: a corpus-based analysis. London, New York: Continuum.
Pullin Stark, Patricia. 2009. No joke—this is serious! Power, solidarity and humour in Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF). In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 152–177. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ranta, Elina. 2009. Syntactic features in spoken ELF—learner language or spoken grammar? In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 84–106. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2001. Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11:133–158.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2009. ELF findings: form and function. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 37–59. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Smit, Ute. 2009. Emic evaluations and interactive processes in a classroom community of practice. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings, ed. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta, 200–224. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Stanojević, Mateusz-Milan, and Višnja Josipović Smojver. 2010. Euro-English and Croatian national identity. Conference paper presented at the New Challenges for Multilingualism in Europe, Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 11–15 2010.
Stanojević, Mateusz-Milan, and Višnja Josipović Smojver. 2011. Euro-English and Croatian national identity: Are Croatian university students ready for English as a lingua franca? Suvremena lingvistika 37: 105–130.
Trudgill, Peter. 1973. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trudgill, Peter. 2000. Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society. Penguin.
Woodrow, Lindy. 2006. Anxiety and Speaking English as a Second Language. RELC Journal 37: 308–328.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Moira Kostić Bobanović, Snježana Kereković, Višnja Kabalin Borenić, Mario Brdar, Zrinka Jelaska, Kristina Cergol, Jelena Parizoska, Ivanka Rajh, Ana Poljak, Anamarija Kaštelanac, Žarko Magdić, Maja Bradić, Marina Mioč, Katarina Seljan, and Marijana Pejaković for their help in administering the questionnaire.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix A: Questionnaire About the Pronunciation of Croatian and English
Appendix A: Questionnaire About the Pronunciation of Croatian and English
Please fill in this anonymous questionnaire, which examines the attitudes concerning the pronunciation of Croatian and English. The questionnaire consists of two parts: four statements about Croatian and seven statements about English. Please circle the answer which best corresponds to your opinion. When you are asked to assess a statement on a 5-point scale, please use the following values:
Strongly disagree | Partially disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Partially agree | Strongly agree |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smojver, V.J., Stanojević, MM. (2013). Stratification of English as a Lingua Franca: Identity Constructions of Learners and Speakers. In: Waniek-Klimczak, E., Shockey, L. (eds) Teaching and Researching English Accents in Native and Non-native Speakers. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24019-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24019-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24018-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24019-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)