ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

The term “English as a Lingua Franca” refers to the teaching, learning and use of English as a common
means of communication (or contact language) for speakers of different native languages.
The British linguist Jennifer Jenkins points out that ELF is not a new phenomenon. She says that English has
served as a Lingua Franca in the past and continues to do so nowadays in many countries that were
colonized by the British Empire from the late sixteenth century on, such as India and Singapore. What is
new about ELF is the extent of its reach.
The world has tuned into an interconnected global system, which requires a shared means of communication.
English fulfils the need for a global lingua franca for it has spread to large areas of the world due to
colonisation, the widespread teaching of English as a foreign language, American and British influence
principally all over Europe due to their victory in World War II.
The way English is used as a Lingua Franca is heavily dependent on the specific situation of use. It is used
globally in many ways, and this includes politics and diplomacy.
Generally, ELF interactions concentrate on functions rather than form. As a consequence, speakers
accommodate to each other’s cultural backgrounds and may also use code-switching into other languages
that they know.
Since the start of the linguistic study of the spread of English, there have been a few models concerning how
English has become a global language. Kachru’s Circles of English are recognised as the most influential.
The Inner Circle: is characterized by the “traditional” bases of English where it has either originated or
been for a long time. Consequently, these locations are where English is primarily used as a native language:
- USA - UK - Australia - Canada - New Zeland - South Africa - Some Caribbean territories
The Outer Circle: refers to contexts where English has become an official language due to colonization.
The inhabitants of this circle do not have English as a native language, but rather use it as a communicative
facilitator. Countries that are included in this circle are.
- India - Bangladesh - Nigeria
- Pakistan - Tanzania - Kenya
- Malaysia - Philippines
The speakers of the Outer Circle are the ones responsible for developing the standards and the norms put
forth by the countries of the inner circle.
The Expanding Circle, refers to situations where English is used as a foreign language, indeed in countries
like China, Russia, France and so on, English is used by many people as their second language.
Kachru labelled the expanding circle as “norm-dependent” meaning they rely on standards set by those in
the inner circle and developed by the outer circle.
Largely due to the global spread of English, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) have become increasingly important in recent years.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is the teaching of the English language to university students or for
professional purposes, with reference to the particular vocabulary and skills they need. It’s language-
centered in terms of grammar, vocabulary, register, ability to study, speech, and gender.
Examples of ESP include English for business, medical, tourism and academic purposes.
EAP provides training in English language skills necessary for academic studies.
They include reading, writing, oral comprehension, fluency development, grammar and vocabulary.
EAP is used in educational settings and it is aimed to meet the academic needs of English students.
Furthermore, EAP and ESP are usually shorter and often more motivating for learners than general purpose
courses.
LANGUAGE AND AGE
The use of the language changes due to many factors: PROFESSION, AGE, LEVEL OF EDUCATION,
SOCIO-CULTURAL ORIGIN.
AGE is one of the dimensions on which we construct identities for ourselves and others in society.
Four life stages:
- young children - teenage years - (young) adults - elderly
 Children who learn languages go through 3 stages:
- Holophrastic stage: one word for sentence
- Telegraphic stage: 2/3 words, do not follow rules but they have their rules and the correct words order
shows their knowledge of the structure.
- Overgeneralization: they are acquiring rules

Children talk about ‘here’ and ‘now’. [That’s a puppy. The puppy is in the baket. Build me a tower
now..] When we talk to a child, we use a softer tone of voice, a lot of diminutives and sweet words
[Horsie, mommy, daddy].
We also use some typical words such as: honey, sweetheart, lovely, darling and so on. We use a typical
and simple vocabulary.

According to some studies, infants learn to speak sooner if adults refer to them as infants. So, that’s why
people use the so called «baby talk» with short and simple sentences and an exaggerated intonation.
Adults also repeat the words to let children understand them. Examples and gestures are very important.

 Teenagers and young adults do not share the same language and frequently they need intra-translation,
that is an adaptation of a word within the same language, and this is because they are people of different
generations. (stai sciallo, ti lovvo)

Teenagers: among the characteristics of teenage language, there is the intensification and accentuation of
parts of speech through the use of the so-called “intensifiers”, which are:
- adverbs such as " absolutely ", "totally " and " completely;
-"Very" is extremely frequent in the language of adults, but ‘really’ is used much more frequently by
teens;
- "So" is used more systematically by young people rather than adults;
- There seems to be a widespread tendency to use forms considered taboo or inappropriate, such as
"bloody;

 Elderspeak adjustements:
- simplifying the length and the complexity of the sentence;
- speaking louder and slowly;
- repeating and paraphrasing;
- using statements that sound like questions.

There is also a difference the use of a language by men and women.

For example, men in the workplace tend to be direct and to the point. Meanwhile, women take longer in
comparison to get to the point.
Since childhood, boys and girls tend to learn rituals that are socially ingrained, according to Harvard
Business Review. For example, girls typically learn to avoid sounding overly sure of themselves. While boys
tend to show themselves as confident.
LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY
No one talk in the same way, we have our specific IDIOLECT that is characterized by:
- Accent: phonological differences caused by one’s native language.
- Regional dialects.
- Lexical differences. (lift – elevator)
- Syntactical differences.
- Social dialects: Spanglish, Frenglish…
[Spanglish is a hybrid language, resulting from the overlap and contamination between English and Spanish.
Spanglish is currently used in those geographical areas where Spanish speakers and English speakers
coexist, in the border areas between Mexico and the United States.
TELEVISION DIALOGUE
Dialogue is a source of information, a popular cultural product and an influential model of F2F conversation.
TV dialogue fulfils a range of functions relating to the audience. It is both similar and different to
spontaneous speech; it is innovative and contains non-codified language.
There are several dialogue typologies:
- Voice-over by narrator
- Voice-over by a character
- Dyadic interaction
- Multiparty conversation
The television narrative is a multimodal and multisemiotic text and a dialogue does not capture all elements
of meaning-making. Tv series ate both creative and commercial products.
Dialogues start from the assumptions that characters talk to each other, but also to viewers.

Other than dialogues, there are: recap (previously on), teaser/cold opening.
A wide range of linguistic features can contribute to characterisation in drama, including: conversational and
syntactic structure, affective language, lexical richness, accent/dialect, impoliteness strategies.
WHY? Because tv series are useful for analysis of ideologies, indexicality, stylisation.
Repetition and multimodal strategies are used to compensate for incomprehensible dialogues.
TV DISCOURSE:
- Needs to be comprehensible to the audience.
- Entertain the audience.
- Create realistic characters.
- Attract a large audience.
TV SERIES
Tv shows are a form of “social practice”. There are different people involved in it, both actors and viewers,
and viewers construct and reconstruct social practises by appropriating these texts.
 Grice's Maxims
Grice's conversational maxims were created by the British philosopher Paul Grice in the 1970s. These
maxims are based on Grice's Cooperative Principle, which aims to explain how people achieve effective
communication in everyday situations.
Grice believed that meaningful dialogue was characterized by cooperation and based his Cooperative
Principle theory on the assumption that participants in a conversation usually attempt to be truthful,
informative, relevant, and clear in order to facilitate successful communication. Based on these assumptions,
Grice divided his principle into four conversational maxims, which are:
- Maxim of Quality > try to be truthful and do not give information that is false or that is not supported by
evidence.
- Quantity > make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary.
- Relevance > say only things that are relevant.
- Manner > avoid the obscurity of expression, ambiguity, be brief and orderly in expression and try to be as
clear as possible.
OVERLAP: Overlap is simultaneous talk by two or more conversational participants. Overlap usually
happens when a listener interrupts the speaker but the speaker doesn't stop talking, resulting in two speakers
who talk over each other.
TEXT ANALYSIS
In order to produce an analysis of a spoken or written text, there are 2 key categories that can be drawn
upon: COHESION and COHERENCE.
- Cohesion > refers to the parts of the languages system which tie sentences and clauses together.
Elements that create cohesion are: repetition, substitution and ellipsis (refers to when material has
been missed out as it is not essential for the meaning of the text to be conveyed).
- Coherence > is a broader category which also has a cognitive dimension. Texts may have cohesion
but not coherence – just because a text is made up of clauses and phrases that give cohesion does not
by default make a text coherent.
 INDEXICALITY
Indexicality is the language variation to characterization, this means that we can understand where
characters are from and what society they represent by their way of talking, their pronunciations and even
their intonations, the words they use, and how they use them.
Indexicality has always been used in the cinematic industry for different reasons: sometimes to make the
audience laugh but mostly it is used as a label that indicates if the character is dangerous, stupid, ignorant,
primitive, smart or powerful.
Italians in American movies
One of the most important examples of indexicality that we can make is the way Italians are seen through
movies. Italians or Italian-Americans in movies, have some things in common: they are either part of the
mafia or they have a very violent way of solving problems; they have extended families; they always eat;
women are always housewives; most of the times they come from south Italy and they are extremely
attached to their mothers.
The influence that indexicality has on children
The presence of indexicality in animated movies would often give kids a fake image of how that specific
person is; fortunately, nowadays it’s almost impossible to find linguistic stereotypes in movies for children.
Will indexicality continue to be a problem?
Some nationalities that are often considered villains in American tv products are Russians, Arabs and
Hispanics.
Indexicality doesn’t just have an influence on children, but also on grown-ups, who will take for granted
that what they see in movies represents the real world and how people really are; this is why Italians are
always called “mafiosi” and Latin Americans are seen as people who can’t be trusted.
Lately, in some situations, it seems that indexicality is slowly disappearing.
However, in recent years, in animated movies for children, indexicality has been used to show the positive
aspects of other cultures, of other accents and languages.

WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of a language and many topics are studied under this umbrella term.
It looks at the nature and the structure of a language and uses a scientific method and a comprehensive,
precise, objective, and systematic analysis.
The heart of linguistics is the search for language. Linguistics investigate on how people acquire their
knowledge of a language, how this knowledge interacts with other cognitive processes, how it varies across
speakers and geography.
The linguist is the person who works with linguistic and studies its different branches.
Linguistics deals with many aspects of the human language, including sounds (phonetic, phonology), words
(morphology), sentences (syntax) and meaning (semantics). It can involve:
- Sociolinguistics > how the language varies from situation to situation, group to group;
- Historical linguistic > how languages change overtime;
- Pragmatic > how people use language in context;
- Language acquisition > how people learn languages.
Language and linguistics are two different words.
- A language is a mode of expression of thought by means of articulate sounds. Articulation brings life to a
language.
- On the other hand, linguistics is a branch of study that deals with languages. Therefore, it can be said that
THE VARIETIES OF ENGLISH
There are many varieties of English spoken around the world.
- The oldest variety of English is British English, spoken in the United Kingdom. About 60 million people
are native British English speakers.
- The variety of English with the highest number of native speakers is American English, with 200 million
native speakers.
Some linguists also recognize another classification of a variety of English known as World English.
All varieties of English share the same basic principles of the language, but certain words, phrases or
linguistic constructs may differ.
There are quite a few differences, the most obvious one is pronunciation. For example, British accent
sometimes uses extra letters. The major difference is vocabulary, because they use different words for the
same things sometimes, for example:
Australian > if you walk down the footpath
British > if you walk down the pavement
- B. E one says: Have you got a problem? / I’m going to hospital. / He is going to the cinema.
- A. E one says: Do you have a problem? / I’m going to the hospital. / He is going to the movies.
Of course, that’s nor right or wrong type of English, one is not better than any other.

But we have also other major varieties of English:

● Canadian English
- Phonologically, Canadian and American English are classified together as North American English,
emphasizing the fact that most fail to distinguish typical accents of the two countries by sound alone.
Even if Canadian English tends to be close to American English in many respects, has elements of
British English and some distinctive Canadian characteristics.
The Canadian spelling of the English language combines British and American conventions. Spelling
in Canadian English varies based on regional and social variables.
Canadian spelling sometimes retains the British practice of doubling the consonant -l- when adding
suffixes to words, even when the final syllable is unstressed (cancelled, travelling)
In American English, this consonant is only doubled when stressed.
British and American terms also can coexist in Canadian English, sometimes with new nuances in
meaning. For example: holiday (British) is often used interchangeably with vacation (American),
though, in Canadian speech, vacation can more closely mean a trip.

● Australian English
● New Zealand English
● Irish English
● South African English
● Indian English
● Caribbean English
PIDGIN: Grammatically a Pidgin is a simplified form of a language, typically English or Dutch, some
elements of which are taken from local languages, used for communication between people with different
languages.
 WORLD ENGLISHES
WORLD ENGLISHES is a term for emerging localised varieties of English, especially varieties that have
developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States.

GLOBAL ENGLISH
Global English is a style of writing that makes written English more easily understood by non-native
speakers. Global English does this by being precise, logical and literal.
It is the language of manual and technical writers who want their writing to be extremely clear to anyone
who reads it.
Additionally, because of its transparency, global English is the preferred style of translators. The rules and
guidelines of global English make it ideal for translation by either machine technology or humans.
Global English vs. Standard English
Standard English presents nuances that are difficult to translate into foreign languages. Unusual grammatical
conventions like the passive voice and implicit pronouns create confusion quickly in translation.
Global English modifies the rules of Standard English to eliminate that confusion.
In Global English:
- sentences are short
- word order is consistent.
- the passive voice is avoided.
- the relationship between the sentence’s subject and its modifiers is explicit.
- no metaphors or other types of figurative language are used.

NON LITERARY TEXT

Guide books, infographics, radio broadcasts, blogs, brochures, magazine articles, travel writing and
photographs.

LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES are:

Loanwords, Code switching, neologisms, paraphrasing, describe words, idiomatic expressions and slang in
order to have a better comprehension.
Linguistic strategies are the ways speakers manipulate their linguistic content of speech for their purpose.
Consistently, linguistic strategies for lying are the ways liars manipulate the linguistic content of speech to
mislead others.

PURPLE PROSE is a writing that is too elaborate or ornate. Overly extravagant, it has a flowery text that
makes a sentence too dramatic and fancy.
Furthermore, in order to do a better text analysis and understand the meaning of the text, we can answer to
some questions about it, in this way we will know:
- When the facts occurred.
- Who took the lead.
- Who are characters.
- Why a character did a specific thing.
- If the story teller witness the scene.
- What concepts of affection are built in the text.
- The type of speeches.
- Who is right.