Abstract
A lingua franca is a language chosen by people in need of a common language to communicate, and English is apparently the most widely selected lingua franca in today’s world. With a growing interest in the study of these uses of English, one main issue in defining them was whether or not ‘native speakers’ of English should be included as legitimate interactants in the exploration of such communication. Differing views sprang from a persistent myth that native speakers’ (referring only to British descendants in many cases) privileged status and ability are not something that can be questioned. Given that a vast number of speakers who identify English as their first language are not often considered in these discussions, the native versus non-native distinction is more about politics and power than a true representation of speakers’ language use and histories. Discussions of culture in lingua franca communication have been less focussed, but we argue that a vibrant display of the cultures and identities of interactants is evident in discourse, as people use English alongside non-language and multilingual resources. Early studies of English as a lingua franca communication centred on finding emergent common features, but they soon shifted to exploring variations that interactants bring to communication while managing variations other interactants bring. Thus, being sensitive to what comes with language users in any situation or context, adapting one’s own resources to suit their interactants’, and collaboratively making meaning are ways towards successful intercultural communication.
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Notes
- 1.
Our own use of speaking should be taken to include the production of sign languages. The focus on speaking fails to recognise not only that there is more to language than this but also that people may have specific expertise (e.g., they can be skilled writers but lack conversational skills).
- 2.
We do not think these are all cultures in the sense that, for example, a woman and man belong to separate cultures because of their different gender roles, or a bisexual and a heterosexual person, based on this alone, but these are all relevant as identities that interact with culture and can be important in interactions and understanding them. This is because (1) they may function together with cultures in creating particular experiences (see intersectionality in Chap. 3) or (2) a culture may have particular positions open to people based on these while others are not recognised (see Discourse in Chap. 3).
- 3.
We add the large sets comment because it is not really culture if it is just an interest and does not interact with the range of practices described. That is, being part of a music-based interest group that relates only to your musical interests is not the same as one that changes a wide range of things in how you live your life—the way you think, who you interact with, the activities you participate in, what you eat and drink, your spiritual beliefs, the objects you value, clothing and styling, how you decorate your living space, etc.
- 4.
It is more usual now to use multilingual to mean more than one, including two, rather than counting as two or more than two, but throughout this book we have kept bilingual/ism where the original author used it.
- 5.
Throughout this book, as is usual, real names have been replaced with pseudonyms, excluding instances where the interviewer’s name belongs to a researcher named on the project.
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Kim, H., Penry Williams, C. (2021). Shared Language, Different Cultures, and Common Communicative Goals. In: Discovering Intercultural Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76595-8_1
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