Accommodation and the Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca

  • Barbara Seidlhofer
  • Henry Widdowson
Chapter

Abstract

Although it is acknowledged that English is now being appropriated as a lingua franca by users all over the world, and being put to effective communicative use without needing to conform to native speaker norms of ‘correctness’, there remains an entrenched reluctance to grant the same kind of legitimacy to this ‘Expanding Circle’ variation that is now generally accorded to ‘Outer Circle’ varieties (Kachru 1985; Seidlhofer and Jenkins 2003). The non-conformity of English as a lingua franca (ELF) still tends to be stigmatized as an aberration. Our purpose in this paper is to argue, and demonstrate, that the very non-conformity of its formal features is symptomatic of processes that characterize any natural use of language.

Keywords

Native Speaker Language User Outer Circle Apply Linguistics Community Membership 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Barbara Seidlhofer and Henry Widdowson 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  • Barbara Seidlhofer
  • Henry Widdowson

There are no affiliations available

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