Argentina

The nature of English as a lingua franca, as discussed in section 2.1, makes it different from English as a foreign language or interlanguage. Therefore, it is not proper to measure ELF against an ideal native speaker norm in terms of lexicogrammar or pragmatics and a new kind of interactive pragmatics approach has been applied in ELF

study. The two features of this new research paradigm in ELF study summarized by House (2009) are that first, the research has focused on interactions in real-life settings, rather than in the classroom; and second is the use of corpora in pragmatics research. Research in the pragmatics of ELF has been fruitful in Europe and Asian contexts, with various data ranging from business related telephone conversations to face-to-face conversations in academic settings and international conferences. The study of ELF pragmatics mainly concerns (1) the misunderstanding or non-understanding and strategies applied to solve the problem; (2) discourse interaction, such as the turn-taking system and back-channels; and (3) intercultural awareness and speech act realization, such as politeness conventions and refusals. These three aspects correspond to the communicative competences, namely strategic competence, discourse competence and sociocultural competence, which are important for ELF users (this will be elaborated in detail in section 2.3).

Similar results have been found in both Europe and Asian on the common strategies applied to responding to misunderstanding or non-understanding, including repetition, paraphrasing, clarification, self-repair, let it pass and topic change in order to ensure mutual intelligibility and the flow of conversation (Cogo & Dewey, 2006; Deterding, 2013; Firth, 1996; House, 1999; Kaur, 2009, 2011; Kirkpatrick, 2010a; Mauranen, 2006; Meierkord, 2002; Watterson, 2008). For example, early research in ELF pragmatics by Firth (1996) illustrated strategies of “let it pass” and “make it normal” to make ELF conversation “robust” and “normal” or “ordinary”. Later corpus research also reported various negotiation strategies to avoid miscommunication. Mauranen (2006) and Kaur (2011) examined self-repair practices employed in ELF as common and effective strategies to raise explicitness and prevent misunderstanding. Cogo and Dewey (2012) explored the interactional strategies used by ELF speakers, such as backchannels, simultaneous talks in ELF as a way to show interlocutors’ support and involvement. Their

data suggest that the general tendency of overlapping talk is “to avoid delivering new information” but show “engagement in conversation” (Cogo & Dewey, 2012, p. 150). These strategies may “serve a rapport-building function” (Cogo & Dewey, 2012, p. 139). It is agreed that ELF speakers exhibit a high degree of pragmatic competence in making their speech more intelligible by adopting suitable communicative strategies rather than adhering to native speaker norms. The willingness of ELF users to achieve successful communicative outcomes can overcome their linguistic limitations. Mutual cooperation is considered as the major characteristic of ELF communication (Jenkins et al., 2011). Therefore, most research has found ELF interactions are usually rather successful. In the Asian context and using ACE data, Kirkpatrick (2010a) illustrated Asian pragmatic norms in terms of request, address, compliments and turn-taking, and indicated the significance of Asian pragmatic norms in successful cross-cultural communication. He also summarises fifteen communicative strategies of Asian ELF speakers to ensure smooth communication, eleven of which are adopted by listeners and four by speakers. He concludes that multilingual English speakers are effective in cross-cultural communication and have high pragmatic competence. In order to facilitate mutual understanding, ELF speakers tend to avoid using lexis or idioms of local cultures with people from different speech communities. This finding may provide evidence for what Seidlhofer terms as unilateral idiomaticity, which is a sense of lack of concern for one’s interlocutor and a neglect of the need for accommodation (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 134). A recent study by Kirkpatrick, Subhan and Walkinshaw (2016), which investigated the use of ELF in ASEAN contexts, suggested that the fluent English speakers, especially native speakers needed to be sensitive to the first language culture and norms of the non- native speakers in their interactions, and that native speakers’ own variety may cause misunderstanding or non-understanding in diplomatic ELF interactions. They claim that

ELF users are more supportive to achieve successful communicationbut become more hard-edged when the stakes are high. Based on the Brunei component of ACE, Deterding (2013) analyzed the misunderstandings in terms of pronunciation, lexicogrammar and code-switching in ELF interactions in Southeast Asia. He concluded that lexical issues caused most of the misunderstanding while grammar rarely did, and code-switching generally achieved accommodation between the speakers. His data also showed that silence and minimal back-channels were the most common means of dealing with misunderstandings.

This raises the question of the necessity and practicability of an ELF speaker reflecting the local culture or the identity of speaker in ELF interactions and the conflict between identity and intelligibility. Some argue that ELF has no native speakers and thus, no proper culture of its own to speak of (Alptekin, 2010), and some claim that ELF is culture and identity neutral (House, 2003; Meierkord, 2002). However, some scholars argue that cultural influences exist in ELF contexts. Kirkpatrick and Baker share the same view regarding this aspect. “It is inevitable and desirable that speakers will transfer some of the pragmatic norms of their L1 to lingua franca English” (Kirkpatrick, 2006, p. 80). In ELF settings, “each participant brings with them their own unique cultural history which results in particular communicative behaviours and expectations” (W. Baker, 2009, p. 588). However, “the flow of cultural influences is multidirectional and its consequences hard to predict” (Kirkpatrick, 2010a, p. 119). How to cope with such rich and complex cultural practices has been addressed by some ELF scholars (see below). However, more research is needed on how pragmatic norms are adopted into lingua franca communication.

Kirkpatrick (2007, 2010a) has proposed the identity-communication continuum (I- CC), which demonstrates two major functions of language: language for communication

and language to establish identity. ELF users can adjust the degree of local culture involvement in their speech according to their communication settings. “The more localized the use of English as a lingua franca, the more variation it is likely to display. Conversely the more international its use, the less variation it is likely to display” (Kirkpatrick, 2010a, p. 140). For example, code-switching in Asian multilingual settings becomes an identity marker and a creative communication strategy (Kirkpatrick & Sussex, 2012). People need training to avoid cultural stereotypes and to recognize how cultural values may be reflected in the English of ELF speakers. Therefore, for learners of English as a lingua franca, the ability to negotiate and adapt to emerging communicative practices is as important as the knowledge of language (W. Baker, 2009).

In line with the I-CC proposed by Kirkpatrick, Seidlhofer (2009a) illustrates how ELF users co-construct expressions or idioms for their purposes so as to cooperate in communication, with the aim of increasing intelligibility while also to sharing a kind of territorial space. She uses the terms cooperative imperative and territorial imperative proposed by Widdowson in ELF communication and claims that ELF users “have to strike a balance between cooperative and territorial considerations” (Seidlhofer, 2009a, p. 210). It can be seen that for ELF users, one end is communication or cooperative imperative and the other is identity or territorial imperative. How to keep the balance and where to stand between these two ends is discovered by ELF users during interactions with reference to the settings and their interlocutors. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate ELF learners’ cultural awareness and accommodation skills for intercultural communication through ELF.

The research on the negotiation of cultural identities in intercultural contexts has been further explored by some scholars. Baker (2009) argues that culture and identity can be expressed through ELF. In ELF communication, culture is viewed as “dynamic,

complex, and negotiated” rather than “neutral” (W. Baker, 2009, 2015a). Due to the hybrid and emergent cultural resources in ELF interactions, ELF users not only represent their local cultural identities, for example through code-switching (Klimpfinger, 2009), but also negotiate and co-construct their multilingual and multicultural identities in ELF interactions, such as the adoption of creative idioms (Pitzl, 2012). Research investigating language teachers and students shows that English is used to construct dynamic, changing and multiple identities (Kalocsai, 2014; Phan, 2008). Baker (2015b) stresses that cultural identity is not linked with a fixed culture or national culture. The stereotyped and simplified view of conceptualisations of culture is not accepted by most scholars (Canagarajah, 2007; Cogo, 2012; Holliday, 2011; Kirkpatrick, 2010a; Meierkord, 2002; Pennycook, 2007; Zhu, 2014). However, the importance of national cultural identities cannot be ignored. As Baker has suggested (2015b), cultural identities can be constructed at various levels, from the local, to the national and to the global. In such construction processes, Pennycook (2007, p. 6) believes that there is a tension between fluid and fixed cultural expressions and “cultural forms move, change and are reused to fashion new identities in diverse contexts”.

Nonetheless, Baker argues that the participants of ELF communication are not free to construct any identity they wish. Both Baker and Zhu highlight the negotiated nature of cultural identity (W. Baker, 2015b; Zhu, 2015). They propose that an interculturality paradigm as an effective approach to study how and what participants do with their cultural identities. For example, participants can make their cultural identities relevant and irrelevant to interactions in intercultural communication. Zhu (2014) has provided a framework to investigate the process of cultural identity negotiation for speakers from different backgrounds. According to her framework, when a self-oriented identity does not match the identity ascribed by others, there is a need for negotiation. Speakers can

“accept, avow, display, ignore, reject or disavow cultural memberships assigned to them by others” (Zhu, 2015, p. 73). Interculturality offers a productive way to understand the cultural identity of speakers in ELF contexts by taking into account the fluidity and complexity of cultural identities. Based on data from VOICE, Zhu (2015) demonstrates how participants make use of their resources to negotiate cultural frames of references and cultural identities. Her findings suggest that even participants from the same cultural background might not share the same cultural frame of reference. Therefore, interculturality serves to create common ground among friends or colleagues, to negotiate social relationships among different generations and establish common territories for unacquainted participants (Zhu, 2015). The negotiation of cultural identity between Chinese and ASEAN ELF users is examined in Chapter Five.