Understanding Context in Language Use and Teaching: An ELF Perspective 9780367223779, 9780367223793, 9780429274589

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UNDERSTANDING CONTEXT IN LANGUAGE USE AND TEACHING

This book is a guide to understanding and applying the essential, heretofore elusive, notion of context in language study and pedagogy. Éva Illés offers a new, critical, systematic theoretical framework, then applies that framework to practical interactions and issues in communicative language teaching rooted in English as a Lingua Franca. By linking theory and practice for research and teaching around the world, this book brings a new awareness of how context can be conceptualised and related to language pedagogy to advanced students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers of language teaching, applied linguistics and pragmatics. Éva Illés is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics at the School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

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UNDERSTANDING CONTEXT IN LANGUAGE USE AND TEACHING An ELF Perspective

Éva Illés

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First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Éva Illés to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Illés, Éva (Linguist), author. Title: Understanding context in language use and teaching: an ELF perspective / Éva Illés. Description: 1. | New York: Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | . Identifiers: LCCN 2020005136 (print) | LCCN 2020005137 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367223779 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367223793 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429274589 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Context (Linguistics) | Semantics. | English language–Study and teaching–Foreign speakers. Classification: LCC P325.5.C65 I44 2020 (print) | LCC P325.5.C65 (ebook) | DDC 401/.43–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005136 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005137 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​22377-​9  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​22379-​3  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​27458-​9  (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

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For Grandpa

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  Preface  Acknowledgements  List of Abbreviations  1 Context, ELF and Language Pedagogy 

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2 Cursory Definitions of Context 

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3 Perspectives on Context 

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4 Synthesis: Context in Language Use 

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5 Context in Language Teaching 

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6 Context in ELF 

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7 Towards an ELF-​Informed Approach to ELT 

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8 Implementation of an ELF-​Informed Approach to ELT  129 Index 

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

4.1 Photo of John Lennon Memorial in Central Park, New York.  6.1 Area of Shared Knowledge.  7.1 The Difference Between ELF Communication and Native Speaker ​Oriented Communication in ELT. 

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3.1  From SPEAKING to SEMIOSIS 

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PREFACE

Let’s suppose I say six numbers to you now. It’s just stupid. Pointless. But if the six numbers are the winning lottery numbers, then they mean something. They have consistency, value, almost beauty. The quote is from the movie Never Look Away (original title: Werke ohne autor, 2018) which, befittingly, encapsulates the function the main protagonist of this book, the notion of context fulfils. Without context, that is –​in this case without the knowledge of lottery and how it works –​the numbers remain meaningless. Of course, the same applies to words. We cannot make sense of language unless we relate it to a part of our knowledge about the world. Since we see and understand the world through our cognitive lenses, when studying context, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English-​ language teaching, I cannot but draw on my own experiences, which I have accumulated through many years as a classroom teacher and ELF speaker as well as a researcher. As a schoolteacher, I  wanted to find out what the communicative approach I was expected to adopt in my teaching practice was about. This then got me into pragmatics and the investigation of the theoretical background of Communicative Language Teaching. My hunch that Communicative Language Teaching represents two types of communicative approaches was also the driving force behind my doctoral research, the conceptual framework of which serves as the basis for the examination of context in this book. Then came ELF and, being an ELF speaker myself, the emergence of ELF and its study has proven a liberating experience. As for my researcher self, it is exciting and challenging to think about the ways

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ELF use and research may reshape the way we teach English. The themes of this book thus combine and directly relate to my three connected identities. I need to note here that the aim of the book is not the formulating and presenting of a new theory, but revisiting earlier theories and identifying connecting points with recent research findings. Similarly, by suggesting an ELF-​informed approach to the teaching of English (n.b., where the approach is based on theory that has long been around), the purpose is not to transform or divert teachers to it. Rather, it is meant to provide food for thought, to initiate critical consideration and to present teaching as a true profession.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The book is the product of a long journey from my early studies of pragmatics to my current interest in English as a Lingua Franca. My thanks go to Bill Louw at the University of Zimbabwe, who first introduced pragmatics to me many years ago and provided much needed stimulation during our discussions in Harare. I am grateful to my students and colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, who have often unknowingly contributed with their queries, comments and refreshing ideas. I am particularly thankful to Kata Csizér and Árpád Farkas for the invaluable help they gave me with the manuscript, for their time and patience when I needed it most. My thanks are also due to Barbara Seidlhofer for the research opportunity she arranged for me. Without them, this book would have never materialised. The influence of Henry Widdowson pervades the whole book, from the first page to the last sentence (literally). I am infinitely grateful for his always-​ challenging guidance and for showing me the beauty of disciplined thinking. I can only hope that this book approximates, albeit in a small way, the high standards he represents in the profession. My love and thanks to my family and friends for the joyful distractions and for keeping me grounded. My special thanks go to my husband for his unwavering support and for doing everything to allow me to concentrate on writing this book.

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ABBREVIATIONS

ACE CLIL CLT CoP CP EIL ELF ELFA ELT ENL ESP L1 L2 NNS NS PDP POA TL TLaC TLfC VOICE

Asian Corpus of English Content and Language Integrated Learning Communicative Language Teaching Community of Practice Cooperative Principle English as an International Language English as a Lingua Franca English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings English-​Language Teaching English as a Native Language English for Specific Purposes First Language Second Language Non-​Native Speaker Native Speaker Parallel Distributed Processing Production-​Oriented Approach Target Language Teaching Language as Communication Teaching Language for Communication The Vienna–​Oxford International Corpus of English

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1 CONTEXT, ELF AND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY

Introduction The aim of the book is to contribute to a pragmatically based, context-​ centred English-​language teaching approach that can prepare learners of English to cope with the challenges that the global lingua franca use of English presents. The book, therefore, revolves around and combines three themes, the notion of context, English as a lingua franca (ELF) and English-​ language teaching (ELT). All three topics have been receiving much attention in both the study of language and language pedagogy. Context, the central notion and main object of this inquiry, has been frequently evoked in the literature, with different meanings and definitions (e.g., Fetzer & Oishi, 2011; Flowerdew, 2014a, 2014b; Illés, 2001; Van Dijk, 2008). Despite its relatively brief history, ELF (and its research) has established itself as a distinguished field in linguistic inquiry. It now features a conference series (International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca), which started in 2008, a scholarly journal (Journal of English as a Lingua Franca), launched in 2012, as well as a series of books. There is also a plethora of publications, both in book and article form, ranging from general overviews (Cogo, 2015; Jenkins, Baker, & Dewey, 2018; Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011; Seidlhofer, 2011, 2017) to publications focusing on particular issues, including, among many others, creativity (Pitzl, 2018) or communities of practice in ELF (Kalocsai, 2013). With the spread of English and the global demand for its teaching, the third theme, ELT, can boast worldwide interest and an ever-​increasing field of research. The connection between ELF and ELT can be traced back to the beginnings of ELF research, which was instigated by the recognition of the mismatch between the global use of English and the conformity to local

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native-​speaker norms promoted by ELT (Seidlhofer, 1999, 2001). Language pedagogy has grown into probably the most researched area within ELF. As Firth (2009) observed, “Of late, the relationships between ELF and L2 pedagogy and ELT […] have occupied the most prominent position in terms of ELF research output” (p. 162). How ELF research is implemented in ELT is, therefore, of paramount importance in light of the worldwide impact of ELT (Leung & Lewkowicz, 2018). This chapter provides a brief introduction to the main themes of the book, that is, English as a lingua franca, context and language pedagogy. The aim is to highlight the interconnectedness of the three notions and the vital role context plays in the study of ELF and in the development of an ELF-​informed approach to the teaching of English.

English as a Lingua Franca The focal point of this book is context, a concept that is inextricably interwoven with language use. Since currently ELF use represents the dominant type of communication in English worldwide (Graddol, 2006), any study into the notion of context has to be linked with ELF if it is to grasp the sociolinguistic reality of the use of English in the 21st century. This reality is that English has become the global, “non-​local lingua franca” (Mauranen, 2018, p. 7) that transcends borders and has permeated not only privileged uses but also the discourse of migration (Guido, Iaia, & Errico, 2019; Gonçalves, 2015) and many domains of daily life all over the world (Lopriore, 2015). The spread of the use of English as a lingua franca does not seem to “spare” countries where English has traditionally been spoken as a native language (ENL). According to the BBC website, “[o]‌ver 300 languages are currently spoken in London schools” (www.bbc.co.uk/​languages/​european_​languages/​ definitions.shtml). This being the case, there must be many classrooms in the UK capital where English serves as the common language used between students from different backgrounds, as well as between students and their teachers. Similarly, there is a fair chance that Hungarians living in Britain use English as a lingua franca with the Polish plumber they have hired to do up their bathroom. These everyday experiences confirm the claim (House, 2013; Jenkins, 2007) that the use of ELF cuts across all three of Kachru’s circles, which include the Inner Circle where English is spoken as a native language (ENL), the Outer Circle, where English functions as a second language (L2), and the Expanding Circle with English used as a foreign language (EFL) (Kachru, 1992). As a result of the worldwide spread of English and, in fact, other languages, “ideas of mapping languages on particular territories and linking them to speakers inhabiting these territories have become anachronistic” (Seidlhofer, 2017, p. 399).

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As a consequence of the global spread of English, the number and the composition of its users as well as the function English fulfils have undergone considerable changes. The number of English speakers is estimated around 1.5 billion, and among them those who use English as a lingua franca represent the largest group of speakers (Jenkins, 2016). As a result, nowadays those who are considered non-​native speakers (NNS) outnumber native speakers of English (NS) by a considerable margin, and most non-​ native speakers use English in communication with other non-​native speakers (Graddol 2006). In 1991, Beneke estimated that about 80% of exchanges in which English was spoken involved non-​native speakers only (Beneke in Seidlhofer 2004). Fifteen years later, Graddol (2006) argued that the number of interactions involving native speakers only was on the decline but, still, similarly to Beneke, he put the ratio of non-​native and native speakers at four to one. It must be noted, however, that despite the prevalence of communication solely between NNSs, current definitions of ELF as a global lingua franca include NSs as well (Jenkins, 2007, 2014; Mauranen, 2018; Seidlhofer, 2011), since they also participate in ELF interactions. This is in contrast with earlier definitions (e.g., Firth, 1996) that reflect a traditional approach to lingua francas, where lingua francas are local and are used as contact languages between speakers who do not share a common L1. The changed constitution of speakers and the main function that English performs has necessarily impacted the ownership of English. Widdowson (2003) argues that English as native speaker property and English as the main vehicle of communication in international contexts of use represent a contradiction: How English develops in the world is no business whatever of native speakers in England, in the United States, or anywhere else. They have no say in the matter, no right to intervene or pass judgement. They are irrelevant. The very fact that English is an international language means that no nation can have custody over it. […] But the point is that it is only international to the extent that it is not their language. It is not a property for them to lease out to others while still retaining the freehold. Other people actually own it. (p. 43) With English not being the property of native speakers, the privileged status of native speakers as models and norm providers has also been called into question. In fact, Graddol (2006) goes so far as to consider native speakers with their cultural baggage a hindrance to international communication. And since most users are non-​native, English in international contexts is also shaped by non-​native speakers, who adopt and adapt English in a way

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that suits their communicative purposes (Seidlhofer, 2004). Interestingly, the considerable contribution non-​native speakers make to the development of English has been acknowledged by researchers who have published a study about language change in Nature, the foremost scientific weekly journal. In this journal, they identify the investigation of how “individual-​level cognitive processes in a language learner produce population-​level phenomena” as a theme for future research (Newberry, Ahern, Clark, & Plotkin, 2017). Although the reference here is to learners –​a term whose suitability has been challenged in relation to ELF  –​by acknowledging the language-​changing power of learners, NNSs are seen in this article, too, “as agents in the development of English” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 49) in the same way as Outer Circle English speakers (Seidlhofer, 2011). Establishing ELF use as the object of inquiry (Seidlhofer, 2001, 2017), viewing non-​ native speakers as competent and fully fledged users of English and putting them on an equal footing with native speakers, has also entailed abandoning a deficit view of ELF and guaranteeing “equal communicative rights for all its users” (Hülmbauer, Böhringer, & Seidlhofer, 2008). However, the notion of the native speaker as the target and yardstick still looms large, and it seems that it takes time to assert these equal rights, especially for non-​native speaker English teachers. Even studies that were conducted fairly recently with English language teachers in various European countries indicate that although non-​native speaker teachers are aware of the international and lingua franca use of English, “they still value native speaker norms as a reference point” (Bayyurt et al., 2019, p. 199) and lack the confidence to push native speakers off their pedestal and take their place (Illés & Csizér, 2015). While –​rightly –​ELF researchers have been critiquing the dominance of NSs, it is somewhat paradoxical that the Centre for Global Englishes is located in the UK with an NS director and deputy director in charge (www.southampton.ac.uk/​cge/​members.page). In addition, the flagship publication of ELF research, the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca was compiled by three native speakers, two of whom are also editors of the Developments in English as a Lingua Franca book series.

Context and ELF Context has come to the fore when the concern has shifted from ELF as a variety to ELF as language use. Initially, definitions of ELF referred to it as a variety, “a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture” (Firth, 1996, p. 240). The view of ELF as a variety also appeared in an earlier version of the definition of ELF on the Vienna-​Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) website (www.univie.ac.at/​voice/​), where ELF is understood as a notion

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“constituting an additionally acquired language system” (as cited in Berns, 2009, p. 194). In line with this conception, the first descriptions focused mainly on the formal properties of ELF and assumed the emergence in Europe of a distinct variety, Euro-​English (Jenkins, Modiano, & Seidlhofer, 2001) or European English (Firth, 2009). Even though, as will be seen below, the view of ELF as a variety has been challenged and by and large abandoned, there are still researchers who consider ELF as a variety (Medgyes, 2014), or who subscribe to the World Englishes paradigm (Modiano, 2009) and advocate the possibility of the emergence of Euro-​English resulting in a codifiable variety, very much like Indian English or Singaporean English (Modiano, 2018). Currently, however, many linguists and lingua franca researchers (see the debate about English after Brexit in World Englishes, 36/​3) disagree with Modiano. They stress that ELF “is NOT a fixed code” (House, 2013, p. 281, emphasis in original), nor is it “monolithic or a single variety” (Cogo, 2012, p. 98). As a result, the word “as” in the expression English as a lingua franca does not denote what kind of English is being used but how English is used in ELF interactions. The shift away from the linguistic analysis of ELF as a potential variety to the investigation of the underlying communicative processes has come about as a result of further research into the nature of ELF (Jenkins et al., 2011). First of all, it was found that forms which were considered to be typical of ELF use feature in English as a native language and in post-​ colonial Englishes as well (Jenkins, 2012; Sewell, 2013). As a result, ELF cannot be seen as a particular variety of English. In fact, ELF cannot be defined in reference to its formal features –​that is, as a variety, either. As Widdowson (2015) observes, “[v]‌ariety status is achieved when variations become conventionalised and so settle into what is taken to be a systematic state” (p. 363). For ELF, achieving such a status is out of reach. First of all, ELF cannot be conceived in terms of a community whose members “share the same primary socio-​cultural space” (Widdowson, 2015, p.  362), and there are no established conventions and practices that would make it possible to develop a variety. Secondly, the social and geographical unboundedness and the sheer number of ELF users give rise to an immense diversity of ELF speakers who come from a very wide range of different linguacultural backgrounds. As a consequence of this diversity and the lack of communal norms, ELF interactions are characterised by increased negotiation of meaning and the extensive use of strategies. The diversity of ELF speakers and their different ways of using English give rise to forms that are hybrid and variable (Canagarajah, 2007). Given the fluidity of linguistic forms in ELF communication, identifying a variety would imply “suspending animation” (Widdowson, 2015, p. 363) and would, in fact, deny the reality of ELF use as a particularly dynamic process. Interestingly, the fact that “ELF cannot be conceptualised as a language variety” (Jenkins, 2012, p. 490), in a

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sense, takes the wind out of the sails of those who view ELF as a deficient variety (e.g., Medgyes, 2014; Swan, 2012). If ELF is not a variety, what is it then? The following definitions attempt to answer this question. 1. “I therefore prefer to think of ELF as any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7; italics in the original). 2. “ELF, then, is an expedient translingual use of English where the interactants do not share a knowledge of each other’s language” (Seidlhofer, 2017). 3. “English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF) refers, in a nutshell, to the world’s most extensive use of English, in essence, English when it is used as a contact language between people from different first languages (including native English speakers)” (Jenkins, 2014, p. 2). 4. “Refer[s]‌to the use of English amongst multilingual interlocutors whose common language is English and who [usually] communicate in a country or area in which English is not used in daily life” (Smit 2005, p. 67). 5. “ELF is better construed as a dynamic context of use, since the notion of ELF would have to refer to an attempt to generalize over the multiplicity of specific contexts, where speakers coming from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds are attempting to use English as a shared means of communication” (Park & Wee, 2011, p. 369). 6. “[I]‌n using this term I  am referring to a specific communication context:  English being used as a lingua franca, the common language of choice, among speakers who come from different linguacultural backgrounds” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 200). In these more recent definitions, ELF is not a variety, a contact or an additional language but is, rather, a particular type of language use. On the surface, Definition 6 is different from the others in that it refers to ELF as a specific context. However, the definition itself bears a close resemblance to the other delineations that term ELF as use, so it can be assumed that what is meant by context in Definition 6 is, in fact, language use, and the two terms may have been used interchangeably. Language use is a pragmatic concept and entails the activation of the knowledge of language for communicative purposes (Widdowson, 1978), and as such comprises the everyday experience of speakers. In language use, language is inseparable from its speakers, who give it meaning and shape in actual interactions. The same applies, of course, to ELF, which is an “entirely

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‘ordinary’ and unsurprising sociolinguistic phenomenon” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. x). This being the case, in ELF interactions language users –​rather than the language they use –​prevail and should take precedence in research. In addition, if there are similar trends (e.g., regularisation) in the way English develops, the distinguishing feature of ELF communication is not the kind of language ELF speakers use but ELF speakers themselves, who by definition are bilingual and often multilingual speakers using English as the common language of their choice in multilingual communication. ELF users are, therefore, the defining components of ELF. Firth (2009) sums it up as follows: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to describe this ‘language’ a priori, for ELF –​as a form of discourse or as a putative variety of English –​cannot be characterized outside interactions and speakers in specific social settings” (p. 163, emphasis in the original). As a consequence of the untenability of the conception of ELF as a variety, ELF research has shifted the focus on to the “underlying processes that motivate the use of one or another form at any given moment in an interaction” (Jenkins et  al., 2011, p.  269). Therefore, the object of inquiry has been the ELF speakers and the ways they exploit the linguistic and other resources at their disposal to achieve particular communicative needs and purposes (Seidlhofer, 2010). So rather than investigating the language used by ELF speakers for linguistic analysis, the issue has been “what functions the features you observe are symptomatic of ” (Seidlhofer, 2010, p. 48). The aim is to take an emic perspective and find out what goes on in ELF speakers’ minds when they engage in interaction with other ELF speakers. Jenkins (2015) identifies this as Phase Two of ELF research. In Phase Two, the study of ELF is concerned with communication, with what speakers do when “absorbed in the ad hoc, situated negotiation of meaning”, which is, as Seidlhofer (2009) adds, “an entirely pragmatic undertaking in that the focus is on establishing the indexical link between the code and the context” (p. 242). ELF research has thus taken a pragmatic turn, which then necessitates a concern with context. In line with this, Jenkins and colleagues (2011) identify the focus of ELF research in Phase Two as the exploration of how “ELF varies according to contextual factors and, in particular, how these factors impacted on speakers’ accommodative behaviours” (p. 296). The investigation of contextual factors can shed light on what features and purposes of ELF interactants come into play and affect linguistic variation in language use. Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) emphasise the significance of context and focus on a specific feature of the notion, which is the location where a particular ELF interaction takes place. Following Widdowson (e.g., 2004), they conceive of context as a schematic construct, that is, in terms of the knowledge and beliefs that interlocutors possess and relate to language when making meaning. The observation Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) make in their research is that the location of an ELF

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interaction, whether the speakers are on home ground or not, affects the way they communicate with other ELF speakers. While ELF use represents “normal use of natural language” (Mauranen, 2009, p.  231) or is “ordinary”, as Seidlhofer (2011) put it above, it has features unique to ELF that represent systematic differences from native speaker use. Examples in the ELF special issue of the journal Intercultural Pragmatics include chunking (Mauranen, 2009), the use of the discourse particle you know (House, 2009), intonation (Pickering, 2009) or idioms (Seidlhofer, 2009), features that are indeed part of all language use. However, as the researchers conclude, the deviations from native-​speaker conventions do not comprise random idiosyncrasies but, rather, reveal regularities and systematicity in ELF use (Mauranen, 2009). The observations made here have a bearing on the study of context in ELF in the following chapters in that the investigation of context from an ELF perspective will have to identify features of context that are the same for all language use and also features that are unique to ELF use. Firth (2009) highlights the variability of ELF, which in the case of ELF necessarily refers to language use: “The study of ELF considers variability not in terms of variety at all but as the variable use of English as inter-​community communication, as communication across communities” (Widdowson, 2015, p. 362). Since ELF users cannot rely on established local conventions, they need to work out the norms of engagement online in an interaction. As a result, the pragmatic processes are more visible than in other types of communication (Widdowson, 2015). ELF thus provides a good opportunity for researchers to observe the otherwise hidden aspects of human communication. The need for a systematic investigation of context in the study of ELF has been discussed by Pitzl (2018), whose research on ELF users’ creativity relies on VOICE corpus data. She points out that theoretical deliberation would facilitate the development of ELF research methods. Interestingly, one of the three aspects that she considers particularly salient in this respect is the development of “a schematic or model for describing and representing the contexts in which ELF tends to be used” (p. 234). The other two aspects are the concept of “group as a social […] category and an increased emphasis on the development of ELF use in particular groups over time” (p. 234) –​both of which are, to some extent, related to the notion of context. Pitzl argues that such a model of context could and should provide the reference points that would enable researchers to generalise and identify those situational factors that have influenced and shaped the surface forms that appear in their findings. Without referring to the overlap between language use in general and ELF specific use as above, Pitzl also notes that a systematic account of context should be applicable to uses other than ELF and should, preferably, be developed by ELF researchers. In so doing, this call for a context model

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not only justifies the interest in context but also includes specifications, such as the possibility of context being schematic and the applicability to the analysis of ELF or other language use. The main challenge, it seems, is to create a context model which can offer reference points that can explain what has made a particular speaker come up with a particular form with a particular meaning in a particular situation. There have been suggestions regarding the research methods that can be applied in the investigation of context, and of theories of context in particular. In a brief note, Ferguson (2012) suggests that “the practice-​oriented approach to ELF would tend to favour ethnographic emic-​oriented styles of research targeting processes more than products” (p. 178, my emphasis). An emic, that is an insider perspective, has been promoted by Seidlhofer (2010), too, in a paper about the relationship between observable forms and invisible functions in ELF. Here she argues that “[f]‌unctions have to be inferred by engaging closely, and emically, with the contextual factors relevant in particular situations” (p. 49, my emphasis). How is it possible then for the researcher to engage emically to experience what a particular speaker has in mind when making an utterance at a particular stage of a one-​off ELF exchange? Context from an emic perspective is the user’s construct so the question is how it can be accessed. Widdowson (2009) distinguishes three methods, providing three different types of data with the caveat that none of them is able to shed light on all the aspects of actual language use. The first method is first-​person introspection, usually performed by researchers “using themselves as representative informants” (p.  194) and resulting in representing what is assumed to be all users’ knowledge as an abstract mental construct. Next, second-​ person elicitation comprises obtaining data of “actually performed language behaviour, but particular behaviour that has been induced” (p. 195). The shortcoming of this is that what is performed –​ especially if it is done through elicitation  –​might not be a true indicator of what the participants know. Lastly, third-​person observation yields data about naturally occurring behaviour. This type of method includes corpus data, or data obtained through observing language users in their own environment and taking notes of the observable details of the circumstances of a particular interaction. Observation is employed in ethnographical research, which necessarily entails an etic (outsider) rather than an emic perspective. So even though observing people communicating may contribute to the construction of a context model, the model will not be able to capture participants’ reality using ethnography as Ferguson (2012) has suggested.

Context in ELF-​Related Language Pedagogy In his refreshingly critical overview of the methodology of foreign-​language teaching, Rodgers (2009) makes a clear distinction between methods and

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approaches (also in Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Whereas methods are highly prescriptive in their application (see, e.g., The Silent Way proposed by Gattegno in 1972) and often, but not always, lack the support of theory or empirical data, approaches allow different interpretations of how they can be implemented and draw on a set of theories about language (including language use) and theories of language learning (Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Rodgers, 2009). Defined in this way, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), for instance, represents an approach whose core theories of language include the notion of communicative competence, Halliday’s functional description of language use and Speech Act Theory (Illés, 2011; Richards & Rodgers, 2001) (for more details about CLT see Chapter 5 in this book). For teachers, therefore, approaches allow more freedom of application but, at the same time, also imply the task of appraising theory in relation to their particular teaching contexts. In the case of ELF, any pedagogy related to it has to constitute an approach, and for the following reasons. First, as has been argued above, the novel phenomenon of ELF has necessitated a conceptualisation that differs from conventional and accustomed ways of thinking about language and language use. As a consequence, efforts to develop ELT in reference to ELF use have to include changes in the theoretical basis of ELT and the creation of a foundation that may comprise a novel set of revisited or newly formulated theories. Given the diversity of not only ELF language use but of the variety of the conditions of ELT all over the world, a suggested approach also needs to have the flexibility to allow for local adaptations. An ELF-​ related approach, therefore, should offer guidance but lack specificity, thus giving those involved in ELT the freedom they need in order to adapt the approach to their particular circumstances. Of the three modifiers –​ELF-​aware, ELF-​oriented and ELF-​informed –​ the adjective ELF-​informed seems to be suitable to describe what ELF in ELT comprises. Being aware implies the recognition of the significance of ELF but does not necessarily mean that ELF is a defining and integral part of an approach. And although ELF-​oriented adds direction to awareness, it still does not have the force of implementation present in the ELF-​ informed expression. It should be noted that this argument does not align with that of Bowles (2015), who approaches the interpretation of terminology from a more practical perspective. For Bowles, ELF-​informed means “the supply of appropriate ELF information to teacher educators, trainees, teachers and learners”, whereas ELF-​aware teaching involves “appropriate use of this information in the classroom” (p. 198, my emphasis). First, this understanding of the two terms seems to imply a unilateral direction of the flow of information from the applied linguist to those working in education. Second, it also raises the question of who judges what is appropriate ELF information or appropriate use of this information. A situation in which the

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researcher decides what counts as appropriate creates a hierarchical relationship, with researchers occupying the higher echelons. In this book, the use of the ELF-​informed expression entails no such hierarchy, as teachers and researchers are on an equal footing, both being professionals undertaking intellectually challenging work. There are a couple of conclusions that can be drawn here. First, in order to develop an ELF-​informed approach to the teaching of English, the formulation of theories of language use and language learning is necessary. Since ELF has been defined in pragmatic terms as language use, the notion of context is important not only for ELF research but for ELF pedagogy as well. Second, if an ELF approach entails the empowerment of not only NNSs but teachers as well, teachers need to know what abstract principles inform the decisions affecting the implementation of ELF in everyday teaching practice. Wen (2012) has proposed a pedagogical framework for an ELF-​informed approach to ELT that details what should be taught within three dimensions of English and its use. Within the linguistic component, learners should be taught both native and non-​native varieties, together with localised features of English. Similarly, the second dimension, cultural, contains target-​ language cultures, non-​native cultures as well as the students’ own cultures. In the third dimension, universal, target-​language and non-​native communicative rules are to be taught. Universal rules underlie language use in various cultures and include Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP). Wen (2012) considers it important to include rules that regulate native and non-​native speaker English use as well as the development of capacities that enable learners to apply relevant strategies online in ELF communication. The rationale for the inclusion of capacities is as follows: The underlying assumption of this objective is that in an ELF setting, strategies are dynamic and unpredictable. More often than not, L2 users cannot retrieve pre-​prepared strategies from their mind to deal with pragmatic difficulties. What is needed is a capacity to respond to the on-​going communication properly. (p. 375) In fact, Wen’s notion of capacity corresponds to Seidlhofer’s (2011) earlier notion of capability. In her reference to ELF-​informed pedagogy, Seidlhofer (2011) has argued that NS competence is not a viable objective and has proposed to formulate “the objective in quite different terms –​as the development of a capability for exploiting linguistic resources” (p. 188). Consequently, an ELF-​informed approach should aim to develop a general capability for use rather than a specific competence to comply with predefined NS norms (Seidlhofer, 2012). This capability, which entails online

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problem-​solving, can enable students to cope with the diversity and unpredictability of ELF communication. In the practice of ELT, this means a shift of attention from the product of learning to the learner and the process of learning (Seidlhofer, 2011): What really matters is that the language should engage the learners’ reality and activate the learning process. Any kind of language that is taught in order to achieve this effect is appropriate, and this will always be a matter of local decisions. (p. 198) The focus on the learners and their schematic world reflects the conceptualisation of the learner as user. On the one hand, this indicates the reality of ELF use outside the classroom, where learners function as ELF users (Seidlhofer, 2011). On the other hand, conceiving learners as users entails the need for a pedagogical approach that creates conditions whereby learners use English in the way they do in environments outside school. The pivotal role assigned to learners and their particular reality also carries the implication that in language pedagogy, too –​as in the case of ELF use –​the investigation of context needs to centre around the participant of classroom language use. There have also been other proposals for the theoretical foundation of an ELF-​informed approach. In terms of pragmatics, Grice’s CP has been put forward as the theory that can be deployed to raise students’ awareness of ELF use (Murray, 2012), or even as one of the theories to draw on for the development of an ELF-​informed approach (Illés, 2011). Apart from Grice’s CP, the proposals above carry further implications. First, the notion of context that can aptly describe ELF use has to be flexible enough to be able to account for the diversity of the interlocutors, and the malleability of linguistic and pragmatic norms. Second, a theory of context will have to include the notion of capability. In relation to pedagogy, the inquiry will have to revisit the concept of authenticity, the product versus process focus as well as the question of developing metaknowledge about language use. The brief overview of ELF, context in ELF and language pedagogy has shown that context is necessarily implicated in both the investigation of ELF use and the development of an ELF-​informed approach to ELT. The contributions in the ELF literature have also highlighted the significance of context and the issues related to the concept in ELF use and teaching. Since ELF interaction is a type of ordinary communication with distinctive features that include the multilingualism and multiculturalism of its speakers, the delineation of context will also have to be such that it can account for both the generality of communication and the specifics of ELF communication.

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Given the importance attached to the participants in ELF use, a suggested context model will have to put due emphasis on the description of ELF interlocutors and their schemata, which are entailed in context. The overview of research into ELF pedagogy highlighted the fact that the notion of capability, too, should form part of the context model. A suitable context construct will also have to be able to describe the processes that underlie ELF communication, define function and give rise to particular forms in ELF discourse. Since the distinct features of ELF use include fluidity, variability and a high level of complexity, a context model aptly reflecting ELF use must be dynamic rather than fixed and static.

Conclusion and Synopsis What seems to have emerged from this brief review of the literature is that because of the significance of context in ELF and the necessity of an ELT approach that realises ELF use in the classroom, the notion of context needs to be more foregrounded and given a more explicit focus in ELF research. In so doing, context has to be subjected to a critical and systematic examination so that it can contribute to a context-​oriented investigation of ELF use and the development of an ELF-informed ELT approach. However, it must be noted that what I suggest in this book is, of course, not a new theory or a discovery of any magnitude, but rather the demonstration of how the synthesis of what has been offered by research into ELF, pragmatics and language pedagogy can contribute to a kind of communicative approach that makes it possible for ELT practitioners to better meet the challenges that the use and teaching of English as a lingua franca present nowadays. Although the following chapters of the book are designed to stand on their own, their sequencing represents a line of argument that takes the reader from an analysis of context in pragmatics all the way to the methodology of a proposed ELF-​informed approach to ELT. The next three chapters investigate the notion of context in pragmatic study. Chapter 2 presents a selection of cursory definitions of context from the literature and identifies the main concepts, such as context of situation, schema and relevance, that pertain to the conceptualisation of context. The chapter also reveals that context can be approached from two perspectives, from that of an outsider analyst’s point of view and from that of a participant-​oriented perspective  –​each rendering different insights into the nature of the concept. Chapter 3 provides an overview of theories in reference to the two perspectives an inquiry into context can take. Theories investigating context from the researchers’ perspective identify features of the situation that are deemed relevant by the researchers, resulting in various configurations of context components. Hymes’s SPEAKING scheme and Speech Act Theory belong to this group in which contextual constructs serve as research tools in the examination

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of speech acts and speech events. Theories taking an emic perspective aim to reveal how participants apply their contexts when making meaning in online communication. Theories taking the participant’s perspective include Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Relevance Theory and Widdowson’s conception of context. Chapter 4 presents a synthesis and attempts to define context with regard to language use. The definition of context outlined in this chapter comprises the combination of language users’ schemata and their capability of realising schemata as linguistic behaviour. Chapter 5 transfers the findings of context research to the field of language pedagogy and identifies two long-​existing trends within Communicative Language Teaching, depending on the perspective they take on context. Teaching language for communication aims to prepare learners for future communication with native speakers and promotes the adoption of native speaker contexts in order to realise what is judged as appropriate language behaviour. On the other hand, teaching language as communication, engages learners as users and gives primacy to the exploitation of capability and the subsequent adaptation of learner contexts. The last three chapters address issues regarding context and language pedagogy, this time with a focus on ELF. In Chapter 6, the emphasis is on the nature of ELF context and its particular ELF features. Due to the diversity of speakers, there is a wide variety of contexts that ELF users engage in, which results in the increased exploitation of capability, including interpretative procedures and various strategies. Chapter 7 brings together the findings of the research of ELF context and the two strands within Communicative Language Teaching. The argument here is that it is Teaching Language as Communication that seems to be suitable for inducing language use in the classroom by engaging learners’ contexts and capability to realise linguistic behaviour. By creating circumstances of ELF use, Teaching Language as Communication can provide the pedagogical principles for an ELF-​informed approach to the teaching of English. Chapter 8 moves the present study into the realm of language teaching practice and suggests four ways that can be exploited for teaching English as communication in the classroom. The proposed methods include Content and Language Integrated Learning, the teaching of literature and translation and the use of Computer Mediated Communication.

References Bayyurt, Y., Kurt, Y., Öztekin, E., Guerra L., Cavalheiro, L., & Pereira R. (2019). English language teachers’ awareness of English as a lingua franca in multilingual and multicultural contexts. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 185–​202. Berns, M. (2009). English as a lingua franca and English in Europe. World Englishes, 28(2), 192–​199.

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Bowles, H. (2015). ELF-​oriented pedagogy: Conclusions. In H. Bowles & A. Cogo (Eds.), International perspectives on English as a lingua franca: Pedagogical insights (pp. 194–​208). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Canagarajah, S. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91(5), 923–​939. Cogo, A. (2012). English as a lingua franca: Concepts, use, and implications. ELT Journal, 66(1), 97–​105. Cogo, A. (2015). English as a lingua franca: Descriptions, domains and applications. In H. Bowles & A. Cogo (Eds.), International perspectives on English as a lingua franca:  Pedagogical insights (pp. 1–​12). Basingstoke, England and New  York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Ferguson, G. (2012). The practice of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 177–​180. Fetzer, A., & Osihi, E. (Eds.) (2011). Context and contexts:  Parts meet whole? Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Firth, A. (1996). The discursive accomplishment of normality: On “lingua franca” English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26(2), 237–​259. Firth, A. (2009). The lingua franca factor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 147–​170. Flowerdew, J. (Ed.) (2014a). Discourse in context. Contemporary applied linguistics, vol 3. London, England: Bloomsbury. Flowerdew, J. (2014b). Introduction:  Discourse in context. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.). Discourse in context (pp. 1–​25). London, England: Bloomsbury. Gattegno, C. (1972). Teaching foreign languages in schools: The Silent Way (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Educational Solutions. Gonçalves, K. (2015). The pedagogical implications of ELF in a domestic migrant workplace. In H. Bowles & A. Cogo (Eds.), International perspectives on English as a lingua franca: Pedagogical insights (pp. 136–​158). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of “English as a foreign language”. London, England: The British Council. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–​58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Guido, M. G., Iaia, P. L., & Errico, L. (2019). Promoting responsible tourism by exploring sea-​ voyage migration narratives through ELF:  An experiential-​ linguistic approach to multicultural community integration. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 219–​238. House, J. (2009). Subjectivity in English as a lingua franca: The case of you know. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 171–​193. House, J. (2013). English as a lingua franca and translation. Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 7(2), 279–​298. Hülmbauer, C., Böhringer, H., & Seidlhofer, B. (2008). Introducing English as a lingua franca (ELF):  Precursor and partner in intercultural communication. Synergies Europe, 3,  25–​36. Illés, É. (2001). The definition of context and its implications for language teaching. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of London Institute of Education, London, England. Illés, É. (2011). Communicative language teaching and English as a lingua franca. Vienna English Working Papers, 20(1),  3–​16.

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Illés, É., & Csizér, K. (2015). The disposition of Hungarian teachers of English towards the international use of the English language. In D. Holló & K. Károly (Eds.). Inspirations in foreign language teaching (pp. 170–​183). Harlow, England: Pearson Education. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca:  Attitude and identity. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2009). English as a lingua franca:  Interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes, 28(2), 200–​207. Jenkins, J. (2012). English as a lingua franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66(4), 486–​494. Jenkins, J. (2014). English as a lingua franca in the international university. Abingdon, England: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3),  49–​85. Jenkins, J. (2016). Global Englishes: A resource book for students. Abingdon, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Jenkins, J., Baker, W., & Dewey, M. (Eds.) (2018). The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A., & Dewey, M. (2011) Review of the developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), 281–​315. Jenkins, J., Modiano, M., & Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Euro-​English. English Today, 17(4),  13–​19. Kachru, B. B. (1992). Teaching World Englishes. In B. B. Kachru (Ed.), The other tongue. English across cultures (2nd ed.) (pp. 355–​365). Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Kalocsai, K. (2013). Communities of practice and English as a lingua franca. Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton. Leung, C., & Lewkowicz, J. (2018). English language teaching. In J. Jenkins, W.  Baker,  & M. Dewey, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 61–​73). London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Lopriore, L. (2015). ELF and early language learning: Multiliteracies, language policies and teacher education. In Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (Eds.), Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca (pp. 69–​86). Berlin and Munich, Germany and Boston MA: De Gruyter Mouton. Mauranen, A. (2009). Chunking in ELF:  Expressions for managing interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 217–​233. Mauranen, A. (2018). Conceptualising ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 7–​24). London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Medgyes, P. (2014). The native/​non-​native conundrum revisited. In J. Horváth & P. Medgyes (Eds.), Studies in honour of Marianne Nikolov (pp. 176–​185). Pécs, Hungary: Lingua Franca Csoport. Modiano, M. (2009). Inclusive/​exclusive? English as a lingua franca in the European Union. World Englishes, 28(2), 208–​223. Modiano, M. (2018). English in a post-​Brexit European Union. World Englishes, 36(3), 313–​327. Murray, N. (2012). English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence. ELT Journal, 66(3), 318–​326.

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Newberry, M. G., Ahern, C. A., Clark, R., & Plotkin, J. B. (2017). Detecting evolutionary forces in language change. Nature, Nov 9; 551(7679), 223–​226. Park, J. S-​Y., & Wee, L. (2011). A practice-​based critique of English as a lingua franca. World Englishes, 30(3), 360–​374. Pickering, L. (2009). Intonation as a pragmatic resource in ELF interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 235–​256. Pitzl, M-​L. (2018). Creativity in English as a lingua franca. Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton. Pölzl, U., & Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, 151–​178. Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Rodgers, T. S. (2009). The methodology of foreign language teaching:  Methods, approaches, principles. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer, & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 341–​372). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Seidlhofer, B. (1999). Double standards: Teacher education in the Expanding Circle. World Englishes, 18(2), 233–​245. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap:  The case for the description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 133–​158. Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 209–​239. Seidlhofer, B. (2009). Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a lingua franca. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 195–​215. Seidlhofer, B. (2010). Orientations in ELF research:  Form and function. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings (pp. 37–​59). Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2012). The challenge of English as a lingua franca. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 23(1),  73–​86. Seidlhofer, B. (2017). English as a lingua franca and multilingualism. In J. Cenoz, D.  Gorter, & S. May (Eds.), Language awareness and multilingualism (3rd ed.) (pp. 391–​404). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Sewell, A. (2013). English as a lingua franca: Ontology and ideology. ELT Journal, 67(1),  3–​10. Smit, U. (2005). Multilingualism and English. The lingua franca concept in language description and language learning pedagogy. In R. Faistauer, C. Cali, I. Cullin, & K. Chester (Eds.). Mehrsprachigkeit und Kommunikation in der Diplomatie. Favorita Papers 4. (pp. 66–​ 76). Vienna, Austria:  Diplomatic Academy. Swan. M. (2012). ELF and EFL: Are they really different? Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(2), 379–​389. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. VOICE (Vienna-​Oxford International Corpus of English). www.univie.ac.at/​voice/​.

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Wen, Q. (2012). English as a lingua franca:  A pedagogical perspective. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(2), 371–​376. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching English as communication. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G, (2003). Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2009). The linguistic perspective. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer, & H.  G. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 193–​218). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Widdowson, H. G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 359–​372.

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2 CURSORY DEFINITIONS OF CONTEXT

Introduction Reference to the difficulty of grasping context has been a recurring theme in the literature of pragmatics (Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012; Illés, 2001; Van Dijk, 2008, 2009). The claim made in the early 1990s about the impossibility of providing an exhaustive and precise definition of context (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992) is echoed 20 years later: “The heterogeneous nature of context and the context-​dependence of the concept itself have made it almost impossible for the scientific community to agree upon a commonly shared definition or theoretical perspective” (Fetzer & Oishi, 2011, p. 1). The magnitude of the task, however, has not stopped researchers from exploring, defining and redefining context according to their needs and purposes. Papers in a compilation with a focus on discourse in context (Flowerdew, 2014a) clearly demonstrate how the particular goals of different research agendas affect the way the authors perceive context. In every contribution, in a section titled “How context is understood in the study”, the researchers present their varying definitions of context. An example from among the papers is the study conducted in a business environment that investigates context at three embedded levels, that of the “various societal framework systems”, at the level of the multinational company where the research was conducted, “and at a micro level as related to the analysed text with its specific goal and intended readers” (Gunnarsson, 2014, p.  91). On the other hand, the paper  –​which is about turn-​allocation in the second language classroom –​focuses on the sequencing of communicative actions and how such sequencing affects context: “Every current action is shaped by the context set up by the preceding action, and every current action renews

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the context for its next action” (Waring, 2014, p.  304). In this compilation (Flowerdew, 2014a), in fact as elsewhere too in the literature, the definitions of context are formulated in relation to the particular circumstances of a specific study and, therefore, shed light on certain aspects of context while leaving out other, less important ones. The following section includes definitions of context that represent conceptions of context on a more general level and are less directly linked to particular studies than the examples above. The samples have been taken from three fields of inquiry concerned with context, such as pragmatics, which –​as has been seen in Chapter 1 –​by definition implies context, cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. The criteria for the selection of context definitions from a vast array of available delineations have been to present recent approaches as well as earlier perceptions of context that are still exerting considerable influence on how researchers view context. In what follows, the objective is to identify the common trends in conceptualisation and in features of context to serve as the basis for a theoretical framework in subsequent chapters. It should be noted that there are entries in the list that summarise or draw on definitions from the literature (Definitions 6, 9, 15), and combine more than one definition (Definition 6).

Selection of Context Definitions In order to make clear what constitutes one quotation, inverted commas have been inserted even in the case of quotations longer than 40 words. 1 “[C]‌ontext is used here in the broadest sense, since anything around a particular word can potentially affect its meaning. In Werth’s words: The context of a piece of language […] is its surrounding environment. But this can include as little as the articulatory movements immediately before and after it, or as much as the whole universe, with its past and future. (Werth, 1999, pp. 78–​79). In order to reasonably delimit the scope of context, it is widely agreed that context can be divided into linguistic and situational context. Linguistic context would encompass the phonetic, morphological, syntactic or textual material surrounding the word, whereas situational context entails anything to do with the immediate situation and the socio-​cultural background in which the language event takes place. Note that it is not only the objective situational context that should be taken into account, since the individual experiences, beliefs, intentions and perceptions of the participants can also affect the way in which meaning is constructed for a particular communication event” (Porto Requejo, 2007, p. 171).

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2 “The physical environment in which a word is used” (Yule, 1996, p. 128). 3 “Typically, there are three types of context to observe here: • • •

the situational context, what speakers know about what they can see around them the background knowledge context, what they know about each other and the world the co-​textual context, what they know about what they have been saying” (Cutting, 2002, p. 3, emphasis in the original).

4 “Context at a general level is here understood to be the environment that an object is embedded in or part of; in the case of language use, the two most relevant contexts are the social environment and the linguistic environment, although the comparative neglect of visual, physical and perhaps technological contexts may not be based on very good reasons” (Mauranen, 2011, p. 227). 5 “Context can be regarded as encompassing external (situational and cultural) factors, and/​or internal cognitive factors, all of which can influence one another in acts of speaking and listening. In many approaches, context  –​and the relationship between context and language  –​is regarded as dynamic rather than static. Context is taken to be more than a set of pre-​fixed discrete variables that impact on language, and context and language are considered to be in a mutually reflexive relationship, such that language shapes context as much as context shapes language” (House, 2006, p. 342). 6 “[C]‌ontext is seen as a set of propositions which participants take for granted in interaction. This allows for two different conceptions of context: a static conception in which context is external to the utterance, and an interactive one, in which context is imported into the utterance while at the same time invoking and reconstructing context […]. [C]ontext as a whole is classified into social context, sociocultural context, cognitive context, and linguistic context” (Fetzer & Oishi, 2011, p. 4). 7 “A context is a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer’s assumptions of the world. It is these assumptions, of course, rather than the actual state

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of the world, that affect the interpretation of an utterance. A context in this sense is not limited to information about the immediate physical environment or the immediately preceding utterances: expectations about the future, scientific hypotheses or religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assumptions, beliefs about the mental state of the speaker, may all play a role in interpretation” (Sperber & Wilson, 1986, pp. 15–​16). 8 “In other words, context is a schematic construct. It is not ‘out there’, so to speak, but in the mind. So the achievement of pragmatic meaning is a matter of matching up the linguistic elements of the code with the schematic elements of the context” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 63). “Context is a psychological construct, a conceptual representation of a state of affairs. In communication, what happens is that a first-​person party (a speaker or writer, P1) produces a text, which keys the second-​person party (listener or reader, P2) into a context assumed to be shared” (Widdowson, 2007, p. 22, emphasis in the original). “The context is the common knowledge of the two people concerned, which will have been established in their previous conversations. […] But the point is that the situation is thus made contextually relevant. It has no necessary relevance of its own” (Widdowson, 2007, p. 20). “Context, then, is not what is perceived in a particular situation, but what is conceived as relevant, and situational factors may have no relevance at all” (Widdowson, 2007, p. 21). 9 “Not all information that is present in a communicative situation plays a role in the production and comprehension of particular utterances, that is, in meaning construction (see, e.g., Van Dijk, 2009). It is the participants of the communication process who must decide which factors are relevant or not in meaning construction. This means that context is never predetermined and objectively existing; it must be created (and recreated) in the course of the communicative process” (Kövecses, 2015, p. xi). 10 “In other words, a context is what is defined to be relevant in the social situation by the participants themselves” (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 5, italics in the original). 11 “My view was, and still is, that ‘context of situation’ is best used as a suitable schematic construct to apply to language events, and that it is a group of

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related categories at a different level from grammatical categories but rather of the same abstract nature. A context of situation for linguistic work brings into relation the following categories: (A) The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities: (i) The verbal action of the participants. (ii) The non-​verbal action of the participants. (B) The relevant objects. (C) The effect of the verbal action” (Firth, 1957, p. 182). 12 “For the purposes of the present paper, I  want to emphasize the context as an active and creative, indeed proactive portion of the entire situation, without at the same time losing sight of the societal conditions that permeate the context and in fact co-​create it” (Mey, 2011, p. 178). 13 “Throughout this work, I distinguish two types of context: local and global. The local context involves the specific knowledge conceptualizers have about some aspect of the immediate communicative situation, while the global context consists of their general knowledge concerning the nonimmediate situation that characterizes a community. Thus, whereas the local context implies specific knowledge that attaches to the conceptualizers in a specific communicative situation, the global context implies knowledge shared by an entire community of conceptualizers. The distinction corresponds, at least roughly, to Clark’s personal vs. communal common ground” (Kövecses, 2015, p. 188). 14 “Contexts can thus be conceptualised as mental models in the sense that they subjectively represent personal experience and embody sociocultural knowledge about the participants and their social world” (Granato & Parini, 2011, p. 70). 15 “[I]‌n using the term ‘context’, I have in mind, on the one hand, the different situations and domains in which discourse is produced and, on the other, how analysts construe context in their work” (Flowerdew, 2014b, p. 1). 16 “Context contains a set of background assumptions, what the speaker presumes to be shared by the intended audience. The speaker’s presumption about the shared background with the interlocutor has a cognitive aspect” (Turan & Zeyrek, 2011, p. 149).

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“In almost all studies of context, context is believed to be a dynamic process both in spoken and written discourse. In interaction, speakers aim to construct context online as each utterance is accepted, negotiated and verified by the interlocutors to minimize any misunderstandings. Context is incrementally updated as new statements are added” (Turan & Zeyrek, 2011, p. 150). The selection begins with a broad and fairly vague Definition 1, which renders context unanalysable in that it does not provide any perspective or points of reference in relation to which context could be examined. The author of Definition 1 is aware of this deficiency and suggests that the all-​compassing delineation should be delimited by distinguishing types of context. In the samples above, this division into types is either situational and linguistic (Definition 1)  or social and linguistic (Definition 4). The componentiality of context can then be refined and include three types, such as the situational, the background knowledge and the co-​textual context (Definition 3). Alternatively, the situational context can be broken into the subcategories of social, sociocultural and cognitive contexts (Definition 6) or, as seen in Definition 3, can entail the separation of the background knowledge context from the situational context. Detaching knowledge from situation raises the question of whether context is a (partly) physical entity (Definitions 2, 4)  or a mental entity (Definitions 7, 8, 11). Firth (Definition 11), Sperber and Wilson (Definition 7), and Widdowson (Definition 9) argue that context is not a physical phenomenon. It is, rather, a psychological/​schematic construct that exists in the language user’s mind and comprises different kinds of knowledge. In Definition 3, this knowledge constitutes what the language users know about the immediate physical environment, about what has been said as well as the speakers’ and hearers’ knowledge about each other and the world. Kövecses’s (Definition 13) context consists of two types of knowledge. The global context is the general knowledge shared by a community of language users that, as such, roughly corresponds to the sociocultural knowledge in Definition 14. The local context, on the other hand, is a one-​ off medley that implies language users’ specific knowledge that they apply in a particular situation. The local context can be seen as individual, subjectively representing “personal experience” (Definition 14). Two definitions point out the importance of knowledge being shared by both the speaker and the hearer, which provides the common ground for mutual understanding (Definitions 8, 16). Sperber and Wilson (Definition 7) are concerned with the individual, idiosyncratic and fortuitous nature of context as a mental entity. They claim that language users’ interpretation of an utterance may not necessarily reflect the outside world since the context on which the interpretation is based may be affected by the individual and random experiences of speakers. Context, in this sense, is not reality itself but reality in relation to individual language

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users’ knowledge of the world, what they experience of it, and not necessarily what is objectively there (Definitions, 7, 8). This can, of course, be extended to all human understanding:  “[T]‌he mental representation of knowledge about the world is not a direct reflection of reality. Reality is not directly accessible to us, and what we experience as reality is a projected reality” (Kövecses, 2015, p. 80). It is because of this projected reality that meaning making is connected to the language user’s world and may have little to do with the actual state of affairs. Misheard lyrics bear testimony to this claim. For example, when a child understands the lyrics, “Gladly the cross I’ll bear,” of a hymn sung in church as “Gladly, the cross-​eyed bear” www. classicfm.com/​discover-​music/​latest/​misheard-​lyrics-​classical-​music/​cheese-​ beans-​wine/​), they demonstrate natural language use and understanding by matching up the words with what is familiar to them (e.g., toys) to make sense of the text. Interestingly, from the top ten misheard lyrics on the above website, the misheard lyrics of three classical music pieces are related to food (“Oh four tuna” for “O Fortuna”, “Come for tea my people” for “Comfort ye my people” and “Cheese and beans and wine” for “Jesus bids us shine”), pointing to listeners’ apparent preoccupation with eating. Definitions 9, 10 and 11 distinguish situation from context. Whereas situation includes the total setting with all its components available en masse, context, or context of situation in Firth’s terms, consists of only those features of the situation that come into play when interlocutors produce or interpret an utterance. The device that enables language users to single out these components from a multiplicity of features in a situation is relevance. The relevant features of the situation are identified by either the insider participants (Definition 10) or by the analysts who construct context from an outside perspective (Definition 15). In either case, the situation itself does not have relevance, but it is the human agent who assigns relevance, thus turning a perceived situation into conceivable context (Definition 8). The question of the relationship between language and context, and the related issue of whether context is a static or dynamic phenomenon are also addressed in the definitions (Definitions 5, 6, 9, 12, 16). One view is that context is pre-​fixed and static. If contexts are ready-​made, formatted (sic) and a priori given in a specific discourse event, then the text-​context relationship must be unidimensional. The context is “brought along” in the discourse event and as a consequence it is only the context which influences the text and its linguistic expression and not vice versa. (Moser & Panaretou, 2011, p. 16) If, however, context is not considered given and rigid but is seen as “active and creative” (Definition 12), the relationship between context and language

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is bidirectional, with context being construed online. In this dynamic process of meaning making, each utterance affects and modifies the interlocutors’ contexts, and context “is incrementally updated as new statements are added” (Definition 16). According to this view, therefore, “context needs to be conceived of as a complex dynamic network, which undergoes a permanent process of structuring and re-​structuring” (Fetzer & Oishi, 2011, p. 3).

Issues Arising The selection of context definitions in this chapter contributes to the development of a theoretical framework in two ways: In terms of the notions necessary for the conceptualisation of context and in terms of the polarities that represent the different perspectives that can be taken on context. Regarding terminology, first of all, context has to be distinguished from situation, resulting in the concept context of situation (Firth, 1957). It must be noted here that in this book when the term context is used, it is understood in the sense of the context of situation. The notion of the context of situation then implies relevance in that relevance is the device that enables the language user to reduce the situation to those features that come into play for meaning making. In Chapter 1, the defining role of the language user in ELF has been highlighted, and a similar focus on the language user is detectable in the sample definitions that conceive of context as a person’s schema. The exploration of context above has also given rise to dichotomies in reference to which context can be perceived differently. The resulting dichotomies include the physical versus mental, the abstract versus concrete, the social versus individual or the dynamic versus static oppositions. In what follows, the key notions for context and the dichotomies will be briefly discussed.

Context of Situation Whereas situation incorporates all the features of a situation, the context of situation comprises only those features of the situation that contribute to the production and interpretation of language use. When buying a train ticket, for example, the relevant feature of one of the interlocutors is that the person is the customer wanting to purchase a ticket. Other features, such as the age of the customer, may become important if the person is a pensioner who can buy the ticket at a reduced price. However, such characteristics of the person as their height or weight might be perceivable at the ticket office but, if they do not play a part in the interaction, these characteristics remain irrelevant and do not constitute the context of situation. The context of situation, or simply context in this book, forms a systematic connection with the use of language in that it is the context that affects or may even determine

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the kind of language that is used in a particular situation. Given the specific circumstances of buying a train ticket, usually a very brief utterance containing the most important information suffices (e.g., the destination or the kind of ticket to be purchased). Other occasions may allow for a more personal exchange, but that again will be dependent on what the speaker and hearer make relevant in the situation.

Relevance It is relevance that makes it possible for the participants to identify those features of the situation that come into play when they make sense of a situation and use language in accordance with the requirements of the particular situation (e.g., they are not chatty when there are people queueing behind them at the ticket office). In the above example, relevance enables the customer to select the information necessary for the transaction, and to judge that while the age may be relevant, telling the booking clerk about visiting the grandchildren may not. Relevance, therefore, is a key notion in the investigation of context in that it plays a vital role in how context is created out of the situation. An important issue in this regard is the question of who assigns relevance and construes context, the insider participants or the analysts in their capacity as expert users.

Schema As the discussion above demonstrates, context is an abstract mental concept that is derived from concrete situations, but which is also projected into a new situation. In the train ticket situation above, the customer can buy the ticket only if they recognise and identify the surroundings as an instance of buying a ticket situation –​in other words, if they have the abstract schema of what buying a train ticket normally entails. So even if the immediate surroundings are physical and concrete, they make sense if the customer can relate them to their abstract schema of the particular social activity.

Dichotomies The conception of context as an abstract schema renders the physical/​mental and concrete/​abstract polarities obsolete but retains issues regarding the social versus individual and dynamic versus static dichotomies. Context as a social construct consisting of the knowledge of conventions that govern communication practices within a group is accessible to members of the community. As a consequence, the analyst as a member of a community has first-​hand insight into the group’s social practices and can utilise their 1st person introspection or observation

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(Widdowson, 2009) for identifying features of the situation that are conventionally taken as relevant and constitute typical contexts. The outcome of this type of investigation is an abstract construct that is general enough to enable researchers to analyse instances of language use from an etic perspective. In fact, this is the kind of context conceptualisation to which Pitzl (2018) refers (see Chapter 1) when she argues for the need of a context model that could be used by researchers for the analysis of data obtained from ELF corpora and observation. However, incorporating the individual and fortuitous features of context in the investigation means that it is difficult, if not impossible, for the outsider analyst to identify which features of a situation are relevant for the participants in a particular instance of communication. In order to capture context in such cases, the insider participant’s view, that is, an emic perspective needs to be taken to reveal how language use is experienced by speakers in actual communication (Widdowson, 2004). Seidlhofer (2010) seems to be in favour of this approach when investigating ELF use (see also in Chapter  1):  “[F]‌unctions have to be inferred by engaging closely, and emically, with the contextual factors relevant in particular situations” (p. 49, my emphasis). In a casual conversation between two people who know each other well, knowledge abstracted from personal experiences may be activated, giving rise to contexts with idiosyncratic features. In this way, individual preferences may result in a particular interpretation of a situation. Take the following example: “Virginia: Do you like my new hat? Mary: It’s pink!” (Peccei, 1999, p. 25). In this exchange, the meaning of Mary’s answer depends on, among others, what she and Virginia think of the colour pink and of the pink hat in particular. It is this knowledge together with the knowledge of their relationship and many other things in the situation that, it must be stressed, create the context in reference to which the dialogue makes sense for the two interlocutors in the conversation. The observation of a situation from an etic perspective creates contexts wherein the relevant features of the situation have been identified by the outsider analyst in their capacity as a member of a particular community. As a result, they assign relevance to those features of situation that are conventionally deemed relevant in that community. An etic perspective thus requires that the social contexts enjoy relative stability for the members of the community to acquire them and, in our case, for the researcher to be able to recognise, identify and exploit them. From an emic perspective, however, the way contexts are created is less predictable because any feature of the situation may become relevant in an often ad hoc manner. This then necessitates assigning relevance online as the interaction progresses, which results in context that keeps being recreated even when the changes made to it at different stages of the interaction are not substantial. An emic perspective thus may give rise to context that is dynamic by nature.

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The following chapter will elaborate on the two perspectives that have been briefly discussed above as well as on the key notions of the context of situation and relevance. The notion of context as a schematic construct is implied throughout the next chapter, but without being analysed in depth by the researchers. Given the importance of the notion of schema and the lack of its elucidation in the theories concerned with context, the next section of this chapter is devoted to a more detailed overview of what schema entails together with the different takes on it in the literature.

Schemata Schemata are building blocks of cognition, mental representations of the outside world that enable humans to deal with the infinite diversity of everyday life by reducing it to manageable proportions. Schemata are abstracted from past experiences through extracting the common elements in situations (Howard, 1987) and forming structures of stereotypical knowledge. These mental representations consist of expectations which, when applied, enable people to make sense of and categorise new experience. This process can be described as follows: Schema theory suggests that people understand new experiences by activating relevant schemas […] in their minds. They then assume, unless there is evidence to the contrary, that the new experience conforms to their schematic representation. Schematic processing allows people to interpret new experiences quickly and economically, making intelligent guesses as to what is likely, even before they have explicit evidence. (Cook, 1997, p. 86) Schemata are, of course, crucial in the use of language as well. Not everything is expressed in language: The knowledge speakers assume to be shared with hearers is not made explicit. If it were, communication would be a tedious enterprise. With not much taken for granted, everything would have to be made explicit and explained from scratch. Texts as linguistic products direct us in our quest to the section of reality that the other party assumes to be shared. The schema thus activated then creates the common ground on which the communication proceeds. Understanding a text, therefore, means reading one’s reality into a text. As Widdowson (2004) puts it: “We achieve meaning by indexical realization, that is to say by using language to engage our extralinguistic reality. Unless it is activated by this contextual connection, the text is inert” (p. 8). Thus, language users make sense of language when they relate it to a schema, to something they know (Widdowson, 2007). In the case of misheard lyrics, this is what listeners to hymns and songs are trying to do –​to link up text with something they preconceive as

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familiar. This explains the understanding the lyrics of a hymn, “Gladly the cross I’ll bear,” as “Gladly, the cross-​eyed bear” by children in the example above:  What is familiar to them differs from what is known to an adult church-​goer. The relativity of schematic representations is particularly pertinent in L2 learning. On hearing the word polo, a Hungarian is likely to think of water polo, which is a much more popular sport in Hungary than the kind of polo that is played on horseback. So even though they sound roughly the same in English and in Hungarian, the word polo evokes images of different sports in the minds of the speakers of the two languages. Cook’s (1997) example shows how schema explains the use of the definite article. In the utterance “We ordered a taxi. The driver took a long time finding the house” (p. 86), the first sentence activates the taxi schema that implicates a driver. This, in turn, makes the driver a known entity, which is marked by the use of the definite article. Schemata as social constructs are ideational constructs that contain shared assumptions about the outside world and about what comprises normality for a group of people (Widdowson, 2007). This definition of ideational schema roughly corresponds to the background knowledge context (what interlocutors know about each other and the world) and to a lesser extent to the situation knowledge (what interlocutors know about what they can see around them) in Definition 3. The other type of context as a social construct is the interpersonal schema that comprises knowledge of the customary ways of how people participate in acts of communication, what is acceptable and appropriate in interaction with other members of their community. Initially, although schemata underlying objects, events, sequence of events and actions were described as “flexible” (McClelland, Rumelhart, & Hinton 1986, p. 18), they were still considered to be stable enough to be analysed into units to establish what schemata are made up of and how the various units and structures are embedded within each other. The schema of FACE, for instance, can be broken up into the schema of MOUTH, EYES, NOSE and EARS, each of which consists of parts called variables or slots (Howard, 1987). A face is recognised as a face if the components are organised in a particular way. If, however, the parts of the face are jumbled up in a random manner, the image will not be recognised as a face any more (Howard, 1987). Schemata are embedded in each other, thus the FACE schema is part of the HEAD schema, which is then embedded in the schema of the BODY. Schemata can also encapsulate knowledge about situations or sequences of events. For example, the BUY schema comprises slots like buyer, seller, goods purchased and money paid for the goods. The participants also play a particular role in the transaction, the buyer gives the money to the seller who, in return, gives the buyer the merchandise (Howard, 1987).

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Schemata that consist of a sequence of actions are called scripts. One of the most enduring and still-​quoted examples (e.g., Pezzulo, 2007) is the RESTAURANT script by Schank and Abelson (1977). The detailed description of a visit to a restaurant includes the props (e.g., tables, food), the roles (e.g., customer, cook, cashier), the entry conditions (e.g., the customer hungry, has money), the results (the customer not hungry, has less money) as well as the sequence of scenes beginning with entering and finishing with leaving the restaurant. Some details of the depiction of the restaurant visit by Schank and Abelson (e.g., the cashier among the roles) reveal that the script features a particular type of restaurant –​coffee shop –​in a particular culture. If, however, the modelling of the restaurant script was less exhaustive, it would be able to incorporate several variations to the theme –​for example, places where customers pay at the table, and so forth. Either way, the conception of schema as a script depicts what is customarily done and said in a certain situation but does not capture what Kövecses (2015) terms as the local context, that is, the individual and one-​off features and their dynamic interplay in an actual instance of communication. There are, however, models that aim to make up for this deficit and attempt to grasp the complexity and dynamism of schemata in everyday interactions. One such example is a study conducted with officers in the US Army who had extensive intercultural experiences as a result of their having been posted in many countries all over the world. The intention was to gain insight into the expert intercultural schemata of these individuals, who were assumed to have good cultural understanding and strategies to cope successfully when encountering new cultures (Rentsch, Mot, & Abbe, 2009). The basic tenet regarding schema was as follows: A schema for cultural understanding is more than just a stereotype about the members of a culture. Whereas stereotypes tend to be rigid, a schema is dynamic and subject to revision. Whereas stereotypes tend to simplify and ignore group differences, a schema can be quite complex. In fact, research suggests that schema complexity is indicative of higher expertise in a domain. (Rentsch et al., 2009, p. 3) The results of the research include not only the identification of the core content of intercultural schema (e.g., concepts such as religion, family), but also how the various components within the schema are interlinked. The outcomes of the study were to be used with novice personnel whose “shallow schemas consisting of many details connected to a few general ideas” (Rentsch et al., 2009, p. 8) were, through training, to be developed into multilayered, multiconnected and highly flexible expert schemata. In fact, the need for schemata to be flexible and dynamic in order to avoid fossilisation

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is relevant for ELF research and will, therefore, be taken up in the discussion of ELF contexts and their implications for ELF-​informed pedagogy in the subsequent chapters of this book. The model that aims to reveal what is actually happening when people make sense of situations by drawing on their schemata is Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) or Connectionism, which captures and replicates the nature of the human information-​processing system. The PDP approach models information processing on the way it is carried out in the brain: “[T]‌he brain consists of a large number of highly interconnected elements […] which apparently send very simple excitatory and inhibitory messages to each other and update their excitations on the basis of these simple messages” (McClelland et al., 1986, p. 10). The PDP model is similarly built in that it consists of networks of large numbers of simple units that interact through excitatory and inhibitory links, representing building blocks of cognition at a microlevel. Similarly to the brain, processing in the PDP model takes place simultaneously in many locations, in a parallel rather than a serial manner. The PDP model works as a constraint network, wherein each unit comprises a hypothesis and each connection represents constraints among the hypotheses. If, for example, feature B is expected to be present when feature A is there, there should be a positive connection from A to B. If, however, B is not expected to be present with A, there should be a negative connection from A to B. Within the PDP framework, inputs can be perceived as constraints: The stronger the input, the greater the evidence. If such a network is allowed to run it will eventually settle into a locally optimal state in which as many as possible of the constraints are satisfied, with priority given to the strongest constraints. (Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland, & Hinton, 1986, p. 9, italics in the original) The PDP model thus constitutes fluid patterns where there are no discrete symbols or explicit rules, the assumption being that rules come about as a result of the interaction of primitive elements and processes, and with the network behaving as if it knew the rules (McClelland et al., 1986). The question then arises about the implications the PDP model has for the conceptualisation of schemata. Schemata in the PDP model do not comprise representational objects. Schemata here are not explicit; they are implicit in people’s knowledge and are created by the environment the schemata are exploited to interpret. Schemata “emerge at the moment they are needed from the interaction of large numbers of much simpler elements working in concert with one another” (Rumelhart et al., 1986, p. 20). Since the PDP model of schema consists of networks wherein all the units are interconnected and come about as the result of a relative and temporary

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equilibrium of connection strengths between units, the PDP schemata are characterised by inherent dynamism and fluidity. Learning is seen as the adjustment of connection strength. The interpretation of the following extract demonstrates how schema adjustment takes place until all the constraints are satisfied and the schema reaches the temporary state of “goodness-​of-​fit” (Rumelhart et al., 1986, p. 15). John was on his way to school last Friday –​ He was really worried about the maths lesson –​ Last week he had been unable to control the class –​ It was unfair of the maths teacher to leave him in charge –​ After all, it is not a normal part of the janitor’s duties. (Sanford and Garrod, 1981, as cited in Widdowson, 1983, p. 61) When reading the first line of the text, probably the strongest connection that exists in the reader’s mind is between school and students. Therefore, at this stage John is assumed to be a schoolboy on his way to school. The second line seems to confirm this hypothesis and strengthens the connection between school and student. However, the information in the third line refutes the original hypothesis, which makes the reader turn to the second-​strongest connection, which is between school and teachers. The fourth line disproves this assumption and leaves the understanding of the text to individual schemata. Prospective teachers in a teacher-​ education course often think of John as a trainee teacher –​this being for them the strongest connection and the most relevant participant in the situation. Other readers may, of course, come up with another interpretation of this line before the final line reveals who the central character of the story is.

Summary Context in this book will represent those features of a situation that pertain to the understanding and creation of meaning in an act of communication and come about as a result of the human agent’s interaction with their environment. As opposed to situation, which is “out there”, context is a schematic construct that comprises language users’ knowledge about the world in general and about how to communicate in particular. As a result of this, the participant, either as an insider or as an expert outsider, is key in context since they are the active agents who, through their mental lenses, create context. The participant who establishes relevance will determine the perspective taken on context. If relevance is assigned by the insider interlocutor, the investigation is to capture what goes on in the speakers’ and

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hearers’ minds when they use language. The investigation of context from this perspective can highlight the dynamicity of context but cannot account for all the random and individual features that come into play when insiders make meaning. On the other hand, if relevance and the identification of the relevant features are under the outsider expert’s control, generalisations can be made about the features that customarily pertain and give rise to typical contexts. The relevant features abstracted from actual instances of communication comprise the components of the analyst’s context schema that serves as a research tool for the investigation and categorisation of speech events. Even though the outsider’s perspective makes a componential analysis possible, it is unable to grasp how context is constructed and reconstructed online by individuals in a particular act of communication. Since the two perspectives highlight different aspects of context, there will always be aspects left out of focus and the scope of inquiry. Something is always lost, not only in translation. The analysis of context in this chapter has been partly carried out in reference to dichotomies. When dealing with major theories of context in the next chapter, a similar approach will be taken. However, this reliance on binary contrasts calls for a word of caution. Dichotomies in this book are employed as a research device and are by no means true reflections of reality. They are aids “to understanding, and they are based on the principle of idealization upon which all systematic enquiry must depend. They do not represent reality, but act as points from which bearing on reality can be taken” (Widdowson, 1983, p. 2).

References Archer, D., Aijmer, K., & Wichmann, A. (2012). Pragmatics: An advanced resource book for students. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Cook, G. (1997). Schemas. ELT Journal, 51(1), 1. Cutting, J. (2002). Pragmatics and discourse: A resource book for students. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Fetzer, A., & Oishi, E. (2011). Introduction. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts:  Parts meet whole? (pp. 1–​8). Amsterdam, The Netherlands:  John Benjamins. Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics. 1934–​ 1951. London, England:  Oxford University Press. Flowerdew, J. (Ed.) (2014a). Discourse in context. London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Flowerdew, J. (2014b). Introduction:  Discourse in context. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 1–​25). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Goodwin, C., & Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking context:  An introduction. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 1–​42). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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Granato, L., & Parini, A. (2011). Context and talk in confrontational discourses. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts: Parts meet whole? (pp. 68–​89). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Gunnarsson, B-​L. (2014). Business discourse in the globalized economy: The construction of an attractive workplace culture on the internet. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 91–​ 112). London, England and New  York, NY: Bloomsbury. House, J. (2006). Text and context in translation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(3), 338–​358. Howard, R. W. (1987). Concepts and schemata: An introduction. London, England: Cassell Educational. Illés, É. (2001). The definition of context and its implications for language teaching. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of London Institute of Education, London, England. Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Mauranen, A. (2014). Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts:  Shaped by complexity. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 225–​245). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. McClelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E., & Hinton, G. E. (1986). The appeal of parallel distributed processing. In D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland, & PDP Research Group (Eds.,) Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition, vol. 1 (pp. 3–​44). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mey, J. I. (2011). Speech acts in context. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts:  Parts meet whole? (pp. 171–​180). Amsterdam, The Netherlands:  John Benjamins. Moser, A., & Panaretou, E. (2011). Why a mother’s rule is not a law: The role of context in the interpretation of Greek laws. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts: Parts meet whole? (pp. 11–​40). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Peccei, J. S. (1999). Pragmatics. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Pezzulo, G. (2007). Schemas and schema-​based architectures. Technical report, ISTC-​ CNR. Retrieved from https://​pdfs.semanticscholar.org/​72d9/​f4140a34784c40a061 94b2284a0995d0b406.pdf. Pitzl, M-​L. (2018). Creativity in English as a lingua franca. Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton. Rentsch, J. R., Mot, J. R., & Abbe, A. (2009). Identifying the core content and structure of a schema for cultural understanding. Arlington, VA: United States Army Research Institute. Requejo, M. D. P. (2007). The role of context in word meaning construction: A case study. International Journal of English Studies, 7(1), 169–​179. Rumelhart, D. E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J. L., & Hinton, G. E. (1986). Schemata and sequential thought processes in PDP models. In J. L. McClelland, D. E. Rumelhart, & PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing vol. 2:  Psychological and biological models (pp. 7–​ 57). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Seidlhofer, B. (2010). Orientations in ELF research:  Form and function. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings (pp. 37–​59). Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Turan, Ü. D., & Zeyrek, D. (2011). Context, contrast, and the structure of discourse in Turkish. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts: Parts meet whole? (pp. 147–​168). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Society and discourse: How social contexts influence text and talk. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Waring, H. Z. (2014). Turn-​allocation and context: Broadening participation in the second language classroom. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 301–​ 320). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1996). Linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. (2009). The linguistic perspective. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer, & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 193–​218). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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3 PERSPECTIVES ON CONTEXT

Introduction Overviews of various approaches to context categorise theories in different ways (Fetzer & Oishi, 2011; Flowerdew, 2014; House, 2006). Theories of context are either grouped in relation to the different conceptions of context (e.g., context as a given, a multilayered, or dynamic construct in Fetzer & Oishi, 2011), or in reference to the different traditions in the research of context (e.g., philosophical, psychological or the pragmatics tradition in House, 2006). A third approach to categorisation is according to the fields in which various conceptions of context are rooted –​for example, Grice in pragmatics (Flowerdew, 2014). Theories therefore may appear under different categories –​Grice in pragmatics in Flowerdew (2014), for example, and in the psychological tradition in House (2006). The niche this book aims to fill in this respect is the proposal of a theoretical framework that makes possible a more systematic analysis of various theories of context. In Chapter 3, theories of context are investigated in reference to the key notions and the dichotomy of perspectives identified in the previous chapter. The criteria for the selection of the context theories have partly been the influence these theories have exerted on language pedagogy (e.g., Speech Act Theory). Theories have also been included because of their connection with previous theories (e.g., Hymes’ and Pennycook’s theories) or for providing additional aspects for the development of a model (Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Relevance Theory and Widdowson’s theory of context). Since context has been defined as a schematic construct (Firth, 1957; Widdowson, 2004, 2007) in this book, the main question in the research of the notion is whose schema prevails, that of the outsider analysts or

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the insider language users. As in the previous chapter, two perspectives on context are distinguished. One such perspective is that of the outsider analysts, who either observe speech events in their physical environments or apply their introspection as expert language users in order to arrive at abstractions of context that are general enough to be employed for the analysis of particular speech events. The analysts’ perspective necessarily implies that it is the expert users who are in control of relevance and determine the relevant features of situation. Therefore, it is their schema –​that is, their conception of context –​that takes precedence. Context in this perspective resembles the schemata or scripts in schema theory and comprises a particular set of pertinent and generalised features representing the social knowledge the analysts share with other speakers. The other, emic perspective on context, reflects how insider language users assign relevance to particular features of a situation in a particular instance of language use. Contexts created from the insiders’ perspective are likely to contain idiosyncratic and fortuitous features and are more dynamic, with context being created and recreated interactionally at each stage of the communicative event. Context in this perspective bears the hallmarks of the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) model of schema where, given the microlevel interconnectedness, it is difficult  –​if not impossible  –​to identify all the components of context that come into play for meaning making at a particular stage of a speech event. In what follows, selected theories of context will be presented according to the dichotomy outlined above. It must be noted that this categorisation has come about as a result of the preliminary investigation of context in the previous chapter and therefore might not coincide with or reflect how the theoreticians themselves would judge and categorise their work.

Context from the Analyst’s Perspective Firth’s Definition of Context Firth’s definition is one of the seminal works on context (e.g., Flowerdew, 2014; Van Dijk, 2008; Widdowson, 2004). A possible reason for the prominence of Firth’s context construal may be the fact that, years before pragmatics became mainstream, Firth had already emphasised the importance of context. He asserted that “the complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete context can be taken seriously” (Firth, 1957, p. 7). Therefore, for Firth only those sentences make sense that can be related to the observable experience of language use. Another reason why Firth’s definition has stood the test of time is that it comprises the notions that have been playing a key role in the research of context: Context of situation, schema and relevance.

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Firth claims that communication is, to a large extent, governed by firmly established conventions that lend a similar order and structure to speech events as grammar does to language: [M]‌ost give-​and-​take of conversation in our everyday life is stereotyped and very narrowly conditioned by our particular type of culture. It is a sort of roughly prescribed social ritual, in which you generally say what the other fellow expects you, one way or another, to say. (Firth 1957, p. 37) Firth’s definition of context has been based on repetitive and fairly stereotypical situations where the relevant components of the speech event are predictable and relatively easily accessible to the researcher. As in science, Firth has also aimed to be dealing “with large average effects” (Firth, 1968, p. 13). Firth’s delineation of context reflects his effort to reach a high level of generality: My view was, and still is, that “context of situation” is best used as a suitable schematic construct to apply to language events, and that it is a group of related categories at a different level from grammatical categories but rather of the same abstract nature. A context of situation for linguistic work brings into relation the following categories: (A) The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities. (i) The verbal action of the participants. (ii) The non-​verbal action of the participants. (B) The relevant objects. (C) The effect of the verbal action. (Firth, 1957, p. 182) Firth had borrowed the term context of situation from Malinowski (1935) and turned the immediate and actual reality of Malinowski’s context of situation into an abstract notion. In Firth’s conception, the context of situation is a mental construct that has been extracted and generalised from language events by the researcher. The resulting conception of context is a schematic construct that can serve as a research device, with the reapplication of which language events can be analysed. In the definition, as in ELF, the foremost components of context are the participants, distinguished as persons and personalities. Persons represent the social side, the relevant features of whom include the knowledge of the norms of behaviour, both linguistic and non-​linguistic in a community. Personality in Firth’s scheme is a broader concept and includes not only nurture but nature as well, the participants with their individual characteristics.

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Given his conception of communication and context as predominantly social, issues related to personalities in Firth’s scheme have been assigned to stylistics, with linguistics focusing on “persons rather than individuals” (1957, p. 186). Participants, therefore, represent stereotypes who have little room for manoeuvre in their verbal and non-​verbal actions. As a result, there is an almost one-​to-​one correspondence between context and language where certain contexts are accompanied with certain lines. Firth (1957) illustrates this as follows: A very rough parallel to this sort of context can be found in language manuals providing the learner with a picture of a railway station and the operative words for travelling by train. It is very rough. But it is parallel with the grammatical rules, and is based on the repetitive routines of initiated persons in a society under description. (p. 183) To demonstrate what he means by the relevant object of a situation, Firth (1957) provided the recontextualisation of the Cockney utterance “Ahng gunna gi’ wun fer Ber” (“I’m going to get one for Bert”) (p. 182) by applying the ‘customers in a pub’ schema. Once the schema has been activated, the most plausible interpretation of the relevant object is the pint, and the effect is getting it for Bert. Due to the vagueness of Firth’s definition, objects can alternatively be understood as the purposes to which language can be put, such as praise or greeting. Firth notes that some of these speech functions can be legally binding, while others not, but even the non-​binding ones produce effect in everyday communication (Firth, 1957, 1968). In fact, Firth here makes reference to speech acts that will be discussed in detail later in this section of the chapter. Because Firth’s notion of context is highly abstract and consists of typical linguistic and non-​linguistic features of repetitive social routines, it is particularly suitable for the analysis of stereotypical or ritualistic speech events, such as the ones where restricted languages are used. A good example of this is air traffic control (Firth, 1957), where individual interpretations of a situation may have serious consequences.

Hymes’s SPEAKING Mnemonic1 The study of Hymes’s highly influential context construct is given additional relevance here due to the fact that it is the model that has been proposed as a potentially suitable design for the analysis of ELF use (Mortensen, 2013). The other connection relates to the pedagogical theme of this book in that Hymes’s definition of communicative competence (CC) is one of the theories that have informed the communicative approach to language teaching  –​a

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topic that will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Both the context model and the notion of communicative competence have contributed, albeit in different ways, to postulating a theory of language use by Hymes. Context features in the discussion of CC and is linked up with the CC component of appropriateness (Hymes, 1972a). This means that, apart from knowing what is formally possible, feasible or is actually performed, language users have the knowledge of “whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated” (Hymes, 1972a, p. 281). According to Hymes (1972a), just as there are rules of grammar, there are also rules of use: We have then to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where and in what manner. (p. 277) The proposed notion of communicative competence has expanded on Chomsky’s (1965) concept of competence, which includes knowledge of grammar. The introduction of CC has been the outcome of Hymes’s anthropological observations of communication practices in various speech communities, which has also resulted, among others, in the widening of the scope of linguistic inquiry. Hymes (1971) has suggested the ethnography of speaking: Linguistic theory has mostly developed in abstraction from contexts of use and sources of diversity. But by an ethnography of speaking I shall understand a description that is a theory –​a theory of speech as a system of cultural behaviour; a system not necessarily exotic, but necessarily concerned with the organization of diversity. (p. 51) In order to be able to provide a systematic description of the diversity of communication practices, Hymes has abstracted rules of use that regulate communicative behaviour in different speech communities. These rules include Hymes’s context of situation, which contains those relevant features of the situation that enable interlocutors to display appropriate behaviour. The identification of the relevant features of situation has been carried out from the researcher-​observer’s perspective, with the end-​construct necessarily reflecting Hymes’s view of what constitutes context. This schematic construct then serves as a research device that provides a template for the collection, interpretation and analysis of empirical data obtained about various speech events within different communities. Since this type of context

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is highly abstract and general, it is accompanied with the exclusion of idiosyncratic and random features. Thomas’s (1995) criticism thus highlights this inherent limitation of Hymes’s model of context when she observes that “Hymes’s framework leaves no room for the individual’s contribution, for showing how one speaker successfully exploits a situation to achieve his or her goals, while the other fails dismally” (p. 189). Hymes (1967, 1972b) has suggested two configurations with different sets of components for his definition of context. One is more detailed and consists of 15 features: Message form and content, setting, scene, speaker, addressor, hearer, addressee, purposes–​outcomes, purposes–​goals, key, channels, forms of speech, norms of interpretation and genres (Hymes, 1972b). Realising that this model puts considerable pressure on human memory, Hymes (1972b) has reduced the number of components to seven and coined the mnemonically convenient SPEAKING term. In this scheme (Hymes, 1967), the letter S stands for setting or scene, where setting refers to the physical environment in which a speech event takes place, for example, the classroom in a school. Scene is the psychological setting that, in our example, may be a class or lesson in the classroom. The letter P refers to participants, the speaker and hearer or addressor and addressee whose contributions are constrained depending on the type and formality of the situation and the relationship between the participants, among others. The letter E is for ends, incorporating ends as goals and purposes and ends as outcomes. The letter A in SPEAKING entails act sequences (Hymes, 1972b), referring to the ordering of speech acts within a speech event. The letter K comprises key, the tone, manner and spirit in which speech acts are performed. Seriousness, for example, is part of a church scene that also assumes a particular type of participant and a limited number of genres. Instrumentalities correspond to the letter I, consisting of two main components, that of channel (e.g., written, oral) and code (choice of languages, varieties). The letter N stands for norms of interaction and interpretation, which include, for instance, rules of interruption. The final letter is G, which stands for genres and also types of speech events (Hymes, 1967). In an act of communication any of these features can come into play, and it is the researcher’s task to establish which configuration of components describes a speech event. The presence or absence of certain features and their relationship will result in a combination of relevant features that defines and renders a particular speech event comparable to other speech events or to the comparison of the same speech event in different communities. For instance, applying the SPEAKING grid against the act of using proverbs in Yoruba reveals that the channel is, by and large, irrelevant as proverbs are always spoken among the Yoruba. In the same way, the status of adult participants is invariant. However, appropriate behaviour on the part of children is making a formulaic apology before reciting a proverb (Hymes, 1972b).

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Hymes’s model of context has been deemed suitable for describing ELF acts of communication. Mortesen (2013) provides two examples that evidence that peculiarities of ELF speech events can be explained in reference to Hymes’s mnemonics. The first example contains communication between ELF speakers, some of whom are on home ground and therefore make their linguaculture prevail in the interaction (Pölzl & Seidlhofer, 2006). The specifics of this situation can be expounded in reference to setting and scene, how the physical environment, the habitat of one group of speakers, affects their perception of the situation (i.e., scene) and their standing in the conversation. In the other example, Hymes’s ends pertain to and explain the observed difference between the findings of two studies. In one study, the conclusion has been that ELF speakers make every effort to achieve mutual understanding (Mauranen, 2006). In the other, the researcher has found evidence of cooperation to a lesser degree (House, 1999). The data in the first study come from academic discussion seminars, while the second study contains data from a simulation game. Mortensen (2013) argues that in the first case a good understanding between the participants is important whereas in the simulation, the outcome of the meeting is less significant so there is no pressing need to arrive at mutual understanding. The idea of the suitability of Hymes’s model in ELF study and ELF-​informed language pedagogy will be followed up in the subsequent chapters.

Pennycook’s SEMIOSIS Mnemonics Pennycook has drawn on Hymes’s idea of using a mnemonic and recast it to meet the new and different purposes of his inquiry. Table 3.1 replicates Pennycook’s model (2018, 2019).

TABLE 3.1  From SPEAKING to SEMIOSIS

SPEAKING (Hymes, 1974)

SEMIOSIS

Situation –​setting and scene Participants – people present Ends and goals of communication Acts –​sequence of speech acts Key or tone of speech Instrumentality, channel or mode Norms or rules Genres –​cultural models

Social and material relations Economic background Metro-​and translingual resources Iterative practices Objects and distributed actions Spatial repertoires Interactivity –​gesture, embodiment Sensorial affect

Sources: Pennycook (2018, 2019).

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The fundamental changes made in the theoretical framework are the result of a multidimensional perception of context that is aptly summarised by Van Dijk’s (2014) definition: [C]‌ontext models are multimodal and defined by the ongoing visual, auditory, tactile, proxemics and emotional properties of the communicative situation, not only of talk or text (and its layout, pictures and schemas) itself, but also featuring or expressing the embodied representations of gestures, facework, handshakes, touching or distance of the participants. (p. 54) Context as a multimodal and multidimensional construct also reflects the changed circumstances of ethnographic research. Like that of Hymes, Pennycook’s model also serves ethnographic observation in the multilingual and multicultural settings of Australia. One such observed setting is a Bangladeshi-​owned shop in Sydney, the analysis of which has indicated for Pennycook that there is more to the description of the situation than Hymes’s SPEAKING grid. Pennycook (2017) argues that there are many things together with the linguistic resources of the participants that can become relevant in that particular interaction, and which can include the conversation in Bangla over the freezer centring around the frozen fish, the Assalamualaikum greeting, the confusion over the term for small bitter melon, the negotiation of code between English and Bangla, the written signs on packets and food labels  –​but also the conditions of possibility that enable this conversation the material artefacts, the spatial layout, the people moving about, the affordances of the spatial repertoire. (p. 273) From this quote it transpires that what Pennycook has in mind as the context of situation is a multitude of features of the observed situation, including multisensorial aspects, for example, a “smellscape”  –​a coinage based on linguistic landscape (2017, p. 273). In Pennycook’s scheme, objects, bodily movements, places, times, and so forth, all may play a role in meaning making as do the bodily aspects of communication, such as voice, posture or clothing. Pennycook thus incorporates the visual and physical aspects that have been neglected in others’ research (Mauranen, 2014). In Pennycook’s semiotic construct, the physical and mental components of the situation, including the body and mind, are separate entities as he gives agency to both animate and inanimate entities. This is justified by “thing power” or “material schematism” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 272), where inanimate things,

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too, are able to act and produce various effects. The emphasis is on “moment analysis” of “how different trajectories of people, semiotic resources and objects meet at particular moments and places” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 280). In the moment analysis, the more abstract social features are mixed with fortuitous and idiosyncratic ones, putting the focus on the here and now of interaction rather than on generalisable constructs like culture. The SEMIOSIS model is the product of the researcher’s identification of those features of the situation that are assumed to be sufficient but also detailed enough to describe any situation in its entirety. The all-​embracing SEMIOSIS model thus represents the observer researcher’s schema of the context of situation  –​an assemblage of components which, to a certain extent, resembles a 5D cinema providing physical experiences on top of the visual ones. As in a cinema, an assemblage incorporates both stability and fluidity: “the notion of assemblages addresses the need to combine qualities of both stasis and change together in any understanding of the properties of a thing” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 277). So on the surface, SEMIOSIS and the resulting assemblage accomplish the feat of being able to account for all the levels of context, such as the macrosocial, the individual or cognitive and the microsocial level of face-​to-​face interaction (Mauranen, 2014, p. 227), as well as the dynamism of local speech events. However, the fact remains that Pennycook’s model of context is the reflection of how the researcher assigns relevance to particular features of the observed situation, thus creating the researcher’s schema, which serves as a research tool to analyse how language is used rather than to describe how language use is experienced (Widdowson, 2004) by the insider participants. The dynamism in this model reflects the observable flow of what is going on in a particular situation but not what is going on in the participants’ minds, how their schemata are modified by the features of the situation they, and not the observer, find relevant at each step of the speech event. Similarly, the novel feature of the SEMIOSIS model, the agency given to inanimate objects to create their own schemata, is debatable because it is the researcher who assigns relevance to these objects as and when they come into the picture in the participants’ meaning making.

Speech Act Theory The basic tenet of Speech Act Theory (SAT) is that whenever we use language, we perform actions, such as promising, complaining, requesting, and so forth (Austin, 1962). So rather than being concerned with situation types, with the schemata of everyday interactions, such as buying a ticket at the railway station as in Firth’s (1957) example, or shopping as in Pennycook’s study (2017), the focus in SAT is on the intention that underlies an utterance by the speaker and which is to be recovered by the hearer in order to arrive at mutual understanding. The seemingly unconnected exchanges in the

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following dialogue make sense as soon as the function of each utterance has been identified. (A)  That’s the telephone. (B)  I’m in the bath. (A) OK. (Widdowson, 1978, p. 29) Even though the first utterance looks like a statement, it is in fact a request by A, asking B to answer the telephone. The request is followed by B’s rejection of the request, which is implied in the excuse by B, which explains why B cannot comply with the request. B’s rejection is then accepted by A, who probably undertakes the action. Apart from highlighting the role of the function utterances fulfil in the interpretative process, the sample dialogue above also sheds light on three issues in relation to language use and speech acts in particular. One is that, in actual instances of communication, always less is said than is meant. The gaps left by language are filled by the context, that is, by the common knowledge of the participants because they share the same physical setting, and mainly because they share the schema of what usually happens, what needs to be done when the phone rings (Widdowson, 1998). The dialogue also demonstrates the three acts that make up a speech act. The first act is the actual uttering of words, the locution. The illocution refers to what is done by saying something, that is, the specific purpose the utterance serves. The third act performed by an utterance is perlocution, the effect of the utterance on the hearer (Austin, 1962). Philosophers working on SAT assign the analysis of locution to linguistics and are mainly concerned with the illocutionary act. Perlocution, despite being a pragmatic concept, has also been excluded from the inquiry because it poses problems, such as the distinction between the perlocutionary effect intended by the speaker and the actual effect of an utterance on the hearer. For instance, if an apology is sincerely intended but is rejected, “has an apology been made or not?” (Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012, p. 37). The telephone exchange above also demonstrates that there is no one-​to-​ one correspondence between what is said and what is meant by the speaker. The exceptions in this respect are highly conventional speech events, like the rituals of marrying or naming a ship, where the function of an utterance is often explicitly indicated, as in, “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” (Austin, 1962, p. 5). The question then arises: If the language of an utterance does not indicate the speaker’s intention, how do language users understand each other? Austin’s (1962) answer is that “the illocutionary act is a conventional act: an act done as conforming to a convention” (p.  105). Since the knowledge of social conventions creates the common ground between speakers and hearers,

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what the researchers need to do is to identify the conditional conventions that come into play when an utterance is intended and understood as a promise, for instance. Context in SAT thus comprises those features of the situation that conventionally make up the conditions that render a speech act successful or felicitous in Austin’s terms, in the sense that it is interpreted as the realisation of a particular type of speech act. House (2006) makes a similar point when she associates the necessary conditions with context: “Austin perceived that to perform a speech act depends on the relevant felicity conditions, which are in effect specifications of the context enveloping them” (p. 339). Since the conditions that need to obtain for an utterance to count as a particular speech act are not accessible through observation, speech act theorists have to rely on introspection and resort to the knowledge they possess as expert language users. Searle (1969) sums up the methodology as follows: I am a native speaker of a language. I  wish to offer certain characterizations and explanations of my use of elements of that language. The hypothesis on which I  am proceeding is that my use of linguistic elements is underlain by certain rules. I  shall therefore offer linguistic characterizations and then explain the data in those characterizations by formulating the underlying rules. (p. 15) Since the researchers’ knowledge as ordinary language users is largely intuitive, when formulating rules of use, the expert user has to make them explicit, which means “converting knowing how into knowing that” (Searle, 1969, p. 14), that is, converting knowing how to use language into knowing what conditions must obtain to render an utterance a felicitous speech act. In SAT, relevance thus keys in with appropriateness. The reason for this is that an utterance can only be recognised as a particular speech act if the conditions that evoke it are in line with the conventions that customarily define a speech act in a community. In Austin’s (1962) words: “It is always necessary that the circumstances in which the words are uttered should be in some way, or ways, appropriate” (p. 8; italics in the original). Austin’s felicity conditions define the conditions necessary for the successful conveying of a speech act. There are three conditions, each consisting of two components. If any one of the felicity conditions is not satisfied, the utterance will be “unhappy”: (A) (i)  There must be an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect; (ii) The persons and the circumstances must be appropriate. (B) (i)  The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly  and (ii) completely.

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(C) (i)   The participants must have the requisite thoughts, feelings or intentions and (ii) Must actually so conduct themselves subsequently. (Austin, 1962, pp. 14–​15; parts abridged) In Austin’s definition of context, the knowledge of conventions and adhering to them are of much significance. In fact, the reason for this fairly rigid conception of context is that Austin (1962) started his theoretical investigations with the observation of ritualistic situations, such as marriage ceremonies or naming a ship, which are legally binding only if they are carried out in accordance with strictly prescribed social rules. These situations also require that the verbal and non-​verbal actions of the participants avoid ambiguity, which is why the action, more precisely the illocution, is often made explicit through the use of performative verbs, as in “I name this ship”, or “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother” (Austin, 1962, p. 5). Since the illocution hinges on the speaker’s intention, the interlocutors’ sincerity, including their thoughts and feelings, becomes important. But because Austin’s speech events are highly prescriptive, the kind of feelings and thoughts the bride and groom supposedly have is common knowledge within a community. In sum, Austin’s concept of context is a schema containing the social knowledge of the conditions that define an utterance as a particular type of speech act. The relevant features of the situation comprising context are identified by the analyst whose perspective takes precedence. Since a speech act is felicitous only if the necessary conditions prevail, context here, as in the case of Hymes’s SPEAKING, comprises the knowledge of what is appropriate communicative behaviour in a speech community. Another speech act theorist, Searle, also views context as the knowledge of a set of conditions necessary for the successful rendering of illocution. Unlike Austin, Searle is not concerned with the whole procedure in which a certain speech act is embedded. Instead, Searle focuses on the analysis of speech acts independently of speech events and defines the illocutionary act as “the minimal unit of linguistic communication” (Searle, 1991a, p.  254). However, in agreement with Austin, Searle (1991a) also stresses the importance of complying with social conventions:  “To perform illocutionary acts is to engage in a rule-​governed form of behaviour” (p. 255). It follows from this that if language use is rule governed, formulating these rules will enable the researcher to describe how contextual meaning is created in communication. Searle distinguishes two types of rules: regulative and constitutive ones. The former sort of rules “regulate existing forms of behaviour” (Searle, 1991a, p. 255) and are like the rules of etiquette that tell people what to do in order to behave in accordance with what counts as appropriate. Constitutive rules, on the other hand, make up an activity and, at the same time, define it. Searle’s examples

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include the rules of chess or football. So, whereas regulative rules can be formulated as “Do X”, constitutive rules can be expressed as “X counts as Y” (Searle, 1991a, p.  256). When analysing an illocutionary act, the researcher is concerned with constitutive rules in order to be able to identify the conditions that are necessary for a particular speech act to be understood in the way it has been intended by the speaker. For example, according to Searle (1969), in order for an utterance to count as a promise, the following conditions must obtain: Propositional content:     Future A (act) of S (the speaker) Preparatory condition: 1. H (the hearer) wants to perform A 2. It is not obvious that S will do A  in the normal course of events Sincerity condition:     S intends to do A Essential condition:     Counts as an undertaking by S of an obligation to do A (Culpeper, Mackey, & Taguchi, 2018, p. 36; based on Searle, 1969) In Searle’s framework the focus is on the speaker, whose intention, if conveyed in the appropriate way, is recognised as such by the hearer. For example, even if the propositional content of the utterance “I promise I’ll punch you in the nose” (Peccei, 1999, p. 50) indicates the speaker’s future action and contains the performative verb “promise”, the utterance is more likely to be understood as a threat because the first part of the preparatory condition does not obtain: In normal circumstances people do not want to be hit. Similarly, the statement “I promise that you’ll make me a wonderful dessert” (Peccei, 1999, p. 50) is infelicitous because it is not the speaker who promises to undertake the act of making a dessert. It must be noted, however, that the examples present texts out of context to illustrate how Searle’s conditions, that is, his schema of promise, work rather than what interlocutors would make of the above utterances in actual instances of communication. In ordinary language use, there are no strict rules. In fact, Searle (1991a) is aware of this limitation of his inquiry when he notes the following: “I am confining my discussion, therefore, to the centre of the concept of promising and ignoring the fringe, borderline, and partially defective cases” (p. 260). By avoiding messy cases, it is possible to make generalisations that enable the analyst to describe and categorise speech acts in reference to the felicity conditions. The assumption was that once all the speech acts have been identified and defined, the entirety of language use can be captured. With

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the number of speech acts estimated between a thousand and nine thousand (Austin, 1962, p.  150), this task presents an impossible challenge. In addition, this undertaking would render a highly atomistic view of language use, which is a far cry from what happens in actual interactions, as it is highly unlikely that language users have thousands of schemata with masses of rules in mind when they produce various speech acts. In a similar vein, it is doubtful whether language users go through ten steps to interpret the illocution of an indirect speech act, such as Can you pass the salt? as a request (Searle, 1991b), since this kind of processing would be time consuming and tedious. Searle’s context, therefore, does not reflect actual language use but comprises the outsider analyst’s schemata of conditions that customarily obtain for an utterance to be understood as a particular speech act. The purpose of identifying contexts corresponding to different speech acts is to devise a research tool that enables the analyst to provide a systematic description of language use. In fact, Searle was aware of how the overall purpose has imposed limitations on the inquiry: Of course, this analysis so far is designed only to give the bare bones of the modes of meaning and not to convey all the subtle distinctions involved in actual discourse. [… T]his analysis cannot account for all the richness and variety of actual speech acts in actual natural language. Of course not. It was not designed to address that issue. (Searle, 1991, as cited in Thomas, 1995, p. 99) Theories that aim to make up for this gap and attempt to describe how speakers/​hearers use language in online interaction are included in the second part of this chapter. But before moving on to theories of context adopting an emic perspective, another context model is discussed which, interestingly, aims to capture context as a subjective and dynamic entity but still arrives at a componential model of context, where the relevant features of context are defined and are continuously refined by the researcher.

Van Dijk’s Model of Context As in Firth’s definition, context here, too, is separated from the situation and makes up the features identified as relevant. In Van Dijk’s (2008) words:  “contexts are not some kind of social or communicative situation, but the subjective constructions or ‘definitions’ of the relevant dimensions of such situations by the participants” (p. 110). It must be noted that Van Dijk makes reference to an emic perspective here –​an issue that will be taken up later in the discussion of Van Dijk’s model of context. In this framework, context is viewed as a “special kind of mental model of everyday experience” (Van Dijk, 2008, p.  71) that encapsulates a wide

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range of properties. According to Van Dijk, contexts as mental models are like schemata in that they are based on socially shared sociocultural knowledge  and represent particular communicative events, such as genres, for example. On the other hand, contexts are also “personal, unique and subjective” and “may feature opinions and emotions about an ongoing event” (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 71). In addition, contexts as mental models are dynamic and are continuously updated during a speech event. Thus, Van Dijk’s theory of context encompasses dichotomies, including the social versus individual and stable versus dynamic. Context incorporates both the individual and social constraints and is able to explain “both the socioculturally shared, and the individual and unique properties of all discourse” (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 73). For Van Dijk, the reason for making context such a complex notion is to break away from sociolinguistic accounts that assume a direct influence of social constraints on language users. Van Dijk (2008, p. 212) claims that if there were a direct link between social structures and discourse, people would speak in the same way in a particular type of speech event. Van Dijk argues against this simplification and aims to provide a comprehensive, explicit and articulated theory of context instead: Such a theory avoids the determination of direct social influences or causation, accounts for differences in among speakers, and hence accounts for the uniqueness of all discourse and discourse comprehension, even in the “same” social situation, offering a much more sophisticated analysis of the complex structures of contextual influence on text and talk. (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 217) For Van Dijk (2008), the methodological problem that the formulation of such a theory presents is how to have access to the individual mental models of language users. He is aware of the fact that observation, participant diaries or think-​aloud protocols, among others, allow only limited insight into participants’ context models and cannot avoid observer biases. For Van Dijk, one way out of this conundrum is designing a context model where the general features of context are broken down into subcategories, including more and more details for an increasingly accurate account of a social situation. The suggested schematic structure of social situations in Van Dijk’s scheme comprises the following: Situation Setting Time Location Circumstances, props

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Happening Actors (individuals and groups) Personal: Personality, interests, appearance Social: Age, gender, “race”, social roles, social relations Mental: Knowledge, rules, opinions, intentions, goals Activity/​Conduct (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 39) The components in this schema then have numerous subcategories and within each subcategory further details are included. The setting, for example, comprises “the spatio-​temporal, circumstantial or environmental properties of the interaction” (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 45). In the spatial aspect, the location is broken down into types of places (social and geographical), attitudes, opinions and feelings about places, and structures of places. The end product is a very fragmented model of context wherein both the general and specific features of the context schema have been decided by the “participant-​scholar”, to use Van Dijk’s term (2008, p. 224). Although this complex schematic structure comprises many detailed features, it does not reflect how a particular feature of the situation is made relevant by the language users when they apply context for meaning making, nor can it account for the dynamic interrelationship between the context components – which was, in fact, the researcher’s original aim when developing this model of context. However, it seems that the purpose has been to use the theoretical framework as a research device to be applied to the critical discourse analysis of speech events, for example, Tony Blair’s parliamentary speech on 18 March 2003 (Van Dijk, 2009). In the contextual analysis of the speech, Van Dijk recreates the context of situation by drawing on his knowledge of the social situation and the text produced by the then prime minister. The context thus recreated then reflects the researcher’s schema of the relevant features of the speech event. To take one example, it is the researcher who identifies the relevant features of the main participant, Tony Blair: [W]‌hen speaking in the House, Tony Blair might also display a number of social identities, such as those of gender, class and age, which, however, I shall ignore here. The first relevant political identity on display in this debate is that enacted by Tony Blair as Prime Minister of the UK. (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 214) The close scrutiny of the textual data of the speech is exploited to further elaborate on the relevant features of the participant, that is, on Tony Blair’s political identity in this case. For example, the use of the possessive pronoun in “our right” by the PM when referring to democracy is interpreted by the researcher as signalling Tony Blair’s identity as a member of Parliament and

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also as a member of a democratic society (Van Dijk, 2009, pp.  214–​215). The validity of this analysis is based on the assumption that words are usually carefully chosen by politicians, especially on such important occasions as the debate about the Iraq war and, therefore, the texts produced in such circumstances can serve as the basis for the recovering of the politicians’ contexts by the researcher. As in the theories above, what is unsaid but what is necessarily implicated in meaning making, that is, context, is determined by the researcher in Van Dijk’s scheme as well. Therefore, the question remains: “How do social actors manage to understand the vast complexity of their environment, ongoingly and sometimes within seconds or fractions of second?” (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 58).

Conclusion What the theories outlined above have in common is that they take the analyst’s perspective. This necessarily implies that the researcher’s aims and purposes determine what constitutes the relevant features of situation, that is, what comprises context. When designing the context model, researchers draw on either observation (Hymes and Pennycook) or 1st person introspection in their capacity as participant-​scholars (Austin, Searle and Van Dijk). The context models range from those featuring a limited number of components (Firth, Hymes, Speech Act Theory) to models that attempt to capture the complexity of context by creating subcategories of main features in order to grasp the smaller details of context (Pennycook and Van Dijk). In all the context models above, the purpose is to design a research tool that enables the researcher to identify what makes up context. The resulting componential analysis conducted from an outsider researcher’s point of view then, by definition, cannot account for how participants in an interaction assign relevance and (re)create context online in order to make meaning. The features of the situation that seem to have relevance in most context models to comprise context are the participant, the intention of the speaker or the goal of the interaction and the effects or the outcomes of the interaction. Theories that attach much importance to social constraints in the form of norms governing appropriate behaviour offer less elaborate schemata (Firth, Hymes, Speech Act Theory). The reason for this is that these theories focus on social knowledge rather than the individual and fortuitous features of context that can relativise norms and complicate the investigation. Theories which aim to identify all the features of the situation that may become pertinent (Pennycook and Van Dijk) result in a fragmented contextual construct with an increasing number of distinctions, which makes it difficult for the analyst to account for the possible relationships between the components (Widdowson, 2003). The context models developed by the researchers above

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reveal not only the purposes of the inquiry but also the circumstances of the research. While Hymes had to rely on field notes in his observations, Pennycook was able to video the happenings in a shop in Sydney and have a fuller record of the situation than Hymes. The way the relationship between context and language is seen varies, depending on the particular focus and purpose of the investigation. In context models in which the objective is to provide a template for the analysis and categorisation of context –​for example, Firth, Hymes and Speech Act Theory  –​relevance is directly related to appropriate language behaviour and the adherence to social norms. In these cases, there is a relatively close correspondence between the verbal and non-​verbal features of context in that particular schemata usually require particular linguistic realisations. The starting point in this type of analysis is context, with the investigation revealing how context influences language use. This direction changes in Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis, where language provides the data from which the researcher recovers the context that they assume must have come into play in the meaning-​making process of the analysed speech event. Here, too, the relationship between context and text is considered fairly straightforward as it is assumed that the words of the politician-​ participant have been chosen more carefully than in other, more ordinary circumstances.

Context from the Participant’s Perspective Grice’s Cooperative Principle Grice’s starting point is the question posed by Van Dijk above:  How do interlocutors manage to cope with the complexity of a situation? And how do they make decisions about relevance in split seconds? According to Grice (1975), the process of meaning making has to be simple and straightforward: “We can know perfectly well what an expression means […] without knowing its analysis” (p.  42). By “we” Grice refers to ordinary language users, and his aim is to find out “What everyone knows” (Garfinkel, 1967, p.  56). In order to do that, the researcher has to take an emic perspective and try to make the everyday and largely automatic activity of language use explicit. Grice’s (1975) answer to the question of how people use language in everyday situations is the Cooperative Principle (CP), which comprises the general principles that govern human interaction. In Grice’s theory, the CP is an interpretative procedure that enables participants to assign meaning to utterances in actual instances of communication. As a result, in the CP the focus has been shifted from identifying which features of the situation become relevant in the meaning making process to how these features are made

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pertinent by language users. According to the CP, what everyone knows is that when they interact, they are expected to make their “conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice, 1975, p. 96). In other words, people are aware of the fact that there are norms that guide communication, and that these communicative conventions are shared and to varying degrees adhered to by the participants (Widdowson, 2015). Thus, when the speaker abides by the norms of communication, they do it assuming that the hearer is doing the same (Terkourafi, 2019). The creation of context and meaning making is guided by the four maxims of the CP. The maxim of Quantity ensures that the interlocutor’s contribution is as informative as is required at the particular stage of the interaction. If we take the buying a train ticket example, the maxim of quantity requires that the customer does not go into much detail about the destination and purpose of the rail travel when purchasing the ticket, especially when there is a queue behind them. The maxim of Quality requires that the participants make their contribution one that they believe is true or for which they have adequate evidence. In the case of rail travel this means that if the customer needs two tickets, they should not ask for three. The maxim of Relation is concerned with relevance in the sense that the interlocutors are “to the point”. When buying the train ticket, the assumption, for instance, is that the customer is not going to talk about their workplace problems with the booking clerk but stick to the buying the ticket topic. The maxim of Manner relates to the way contributions are expected to be made and includes submaxims, such as “Be clear” or “Avoid ambiguity” (Grice, 1975, p. 46). The maxims provide general guidelines, and by nature they are constitutive rather than regulative (Searle 1991a). This is underlined by Grice’s use of the term maxim rather than rule. Despite the terminology, and perhaps because of the imperative used with the maxims, the CP is sometimes perceived as a normative principle (Kleinke, 2010), with the maxims seen as rules that must be obeyed. Such a misconception may stem, for example, from the assumption that Grice provides an etic grid of Western cultural norms (Senft, 2014) for ethnographers, who can then use it in their observations of different cultures. To dispel this misconception, it is important to stress that the maxims are not absolute but relative to the situation in which they are exploited. Therefore, how informative, truthful, relevant or clear one has to be depends on the requirements of a particular situation. Widdowson (2004, 2015) demonstrates this by giving the example of a funeral speech where not telling the whole truth is the norm and the maxim of quality is flouted by the speaker if they are truthful. Therefore, as opposed to being economical with the truth, it is the following oration that would be marked as highly inappropriate: “Arthur as we all know was a drunk whose embarrassing company we tried to avoid, especially when

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in his cups he would habitually make indecent suggestions to our wives” (Widdowson, 2015, p. 364). In fact, the social convention of not to speak ill of the dead is so ingrained in some cultures that, for example, in the Hungarian speaking community it has been encoded in the often quoted saying of “Speak good of the dead, or nothing”. Similarly, the term cooperative in the CP has given rise to misinterpretations (Davies, 2000). As the Logic and conversation title of the article in which the CP was published indicates, what Grice had in mind was the rationality of human behaviour (Davies, 2000) and not cooperation in the everyday sense. In addition, it must be noted that the logic applied in human communication is different from the logic of science, as Grice also notes: “[N]‌ot only do the two logics differ, but sometimes they come into conflict; rules that hold for a formal device may not hold for its natural counterpart” (Grice, 1975, p. 43). The CP thus represents the everyday logic, the thinking that language users apply in their everyday life. Rationality and logic are present not only in the interpretation of particular utterances but in the way interactions proceed. As Grice (1975) put it: Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. (p. 45) The purpose and the general direction of the interaction in Grice’s theory seems to loosely correspond to Hymes’s (1967) ends and goals and Firth’s (1957) objects if objects are interpreted as having the meaning of objectives. Another reason why the CP is not a normative principle and why the maxims are not rules is that the CP also accounts for those cases where the maxims are not observed or are deliberately flouted. In the following example, the maxim of relation is flouted: (A) How old are you? (B) The coffee is nice here. It is B who, by wandering off topic, flouts the maxim of relation. In so doing, B creates an implicature, an implied meaning that is worked out by A in reference to the maxim that has been flouted. In the conversation, A will realise that there is a discrepancy between the answer to their question that would be expected and the comment about the quality of the coffee. Assuming that B followed the CP and said something connected to A’s question, A would make additional assumptions to find a connection between B’s reply and the

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question. In so doing, A will have to reassign relevance to interpret B’s reply as it has been intended, and A will probably arrive at the understanding that B does not want to talk about their age. In this exchange, the CP and its maxim of Relation trigger extra reasoning and enable A to make sense of B’s shift in the topic (Kleinke, 2010). The main contribution of Grice’s CP to the understanding of context is the adoption of an emic perspective to capture what is actually happening when people communicate (Davies, 2000). It represents the practical reasoning shared by all interactants (Turner, 1974) and provides the commonsensical guidelines that enable people to activate and adapt their schemata to the circumstances of actual speech events. Therefore, context in Grice’s theory entails the general principles regarding the interpretative procedures that guide language users in how the relevant features of the situation can or should be selected. The ideas presented in Grice’s CP have provided food for thought for researchers who have been amending the theory by, for example, making changes to the number of maxims (Leech, 1983; Sperber & Wilson, 1986). What follows outlines an influential theory that has reduced the number of maxims to one and has claimed to offer a simpler but more effective and universal procedure than that of Grice.

Relevance Theory As Definition 7 in Chapter 2 indicates, context in Relevance Theory (RT) is a psychological construct, a “subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world” (Sperber & Wilson, 1986, p. 15), which represents the internal projection of the outside world and not necessarily what is out there. Apart from shared sociocultural knowledge and information from the co-​text and about the physical environment, this subset of assumptions may also include idiosyncratic features, such as anecdotal memories, for example. The composition of context will depend on the information available to the hearer at the time of a particular interaction (Wilson, 1994). Therefore, the features of a situation that become relevant in a particular act of communication may be influenced by accidental factors, such as hearing something in the news an hour earlier or seeing but not really noticing something on the way to the venue of the speech event. In RT, therefore, the kind of context that comes into play for meaning making at a given moment is necessarily out of the analyst’s control (Sperber & Wilson, 1986), which then necessitates an emic perspective. The other reason why the insider participant’s view needs to be assumed is that context in RT represents a dynamic construct that changes even within the same interaction. As Sperber and Wilson (1986) put it:  “Each new utterance, while drawing on the same grammar and the same inferential abilities, requires a rather different context” (p. 16).

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Since context in RT is a highly individual and constantly changing notion, it cannot be fixed or (pre)determined by the outsider researcher. This, then, makes the definition of what constitutes context impossible, leaving the interpretative procedures as the constant element in the meaning making process. Therefore, in RT, as in Grice’s Cooperative Principle, the identifiable features of context are the procedures that activate schemata. As has been seen in Speech Act Theory, making and understanding meaning is successful when the hearer recognises the speaker’s intended meaning, that is, the illocution of the utterance. In real-​life communication, an utterance can have different interpretations, and it is the hearer who selects from all the possible interpretations the one that they assume has been intended by the speaker. According to RT, the intended interpretation is inferred rather than decoded from the variety of possible interpretations. For inferring the intended interpretation, at the disposal of hearers there is “a single, very general criterion for evaluating interpretations” (Wilson, 1994, p. 44). This constraint is the Principle of Relevance. Sperber and Wilson (1986) argue that this universal and simple generalisation can replace Grice’s CP and all its maxims. The single criterion of relevance is based on the claim that people pay attention to what pertains to them because “Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance”, which comprises the Cognitive Principle of Relevance (Wilson & Sperber, 2004, p. 609). In communication, an utterance raises expectations of relevance regarding the possible interpretations. From among these interpretations, the hearer will pick the interpretation that they judge more relevant than any other interpretation available at the time (Wilson & Sperber, 2004). Proponents of RT stress that the theory is concerned with ostensive, that is, overt type of communication where the speaker actively helps the hearer to recover the intended meaning (Wilson, 1994). By producing an ostensive stimulus, that is, an utterance aiming at optimal relevance, the speaker encourages the hearer to presume that the utterance is relevant enough to be worth processing and that “It is the most relevant one compatible with communicator’s abilities and preferences” (Wilson & Sperber, 2004, p. 612). Given that the speaker makes an effort to formulate their utterance in such a way that the first interpretation selected by the hearer is the intended one, the first interpretation tested and found consistent with the principle of relevance is “the only interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance: all other interpretations are disallowed” (Wilson, 1994, p. 50). Relevance thus functions as an “indexical beeline” (Widdowson, 2004, p. 50), enabling the hearer to quickly and effectively recover the speaker’s intended meaning. The degree of relevance is measured against contextual effects and processing efforts: The greater the contextual effect, the greater the relevance, and the greater the processing effort, the lower the relevance. The following

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example highlights how this works. Mary does not like most meat and is allergic to chicken. Before she goes to a dinner party, she phones the host and enquires about the menu. She receives the following answers: 1. “We are serving meat.” 2. “We are serving chicken.” 3. “Either we are serving chicken or (72–​3) is not 46.” (Wilson & Sperber, 2004, p. 609) According to Wilson and Sperber (2004), of the three utterances No. 2 is the most relevant to Mary. Since No. 2 entails No. 1, it has greater contextual effect than No. 1.  Utterances No. 2 and No. 3 yield the same contextual effect but, because No. 3 requires more processing effort, it is less relevant than No. 2. Relevance Theory claims that it is an exceptionless, universally applicable generalisation (Wilson, 1994). However, this claim seems to contradict the fact that RT inquiry is limited to the investigation of the overt, ostensive type of communication with no hidden intentions. Relevance Theory also states that the single criterion of relevance suffices when identifying the relevant verbal and non-​verbal features of the participants. In his critique, Widdowson (2004) argues that in everyday communication there is always a reason why a speaker would add such seemingly irrelevant information as “(72–​3) is not 46”, quoted above. In fact, the hidden intention of the speaker can be recovered in reference to the CP’s maxim of quantity. The extra information creates an implicature, which forces the hearer to find the contextual assumption that enables them to work out the meaning of the utterance. A  further inconsistency in RT is that even though context is defined as a dynamic, individual and relative concept, its degree can be measured mechanically, in objective terms, in relation to the processing effort made. This inconsistency is, in fact, important because it is here where the emic perspective on context changes to an etic one in that it is the outsider researcher who decides the degree of relevance and deems answer No. 3 less relevant than No. 2 in the above example. Despite the flaws in the argument, RT seems to make one considerable contribution to the development of theories taking an emic perspective, which is the central role assigned to relevance. Grice (1989) has noted that relevance cannot really be flouted fully. This statement is true if relevance is not one of the maxims but is a more general concept, providing the overarching connection between the speaker and the hearer. When people engage in language use, they do it based on the assumption that they share some knowledge about the world and the accepted ways of communication, and that there is a purpose why one participant says something to the other. In other words, when speakers say something, the hearers assume that the message has got something to do with them and is related in

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some way to their reality. In other words, the hearers act on the assumption that the speakers intend to create a link between their own and the hearer’s schematic reality. Human communication, very much like human cognition (Wilson & Sperber, 2014), is relevance-​oriented with relevance meaning relation in communication. Relevance in this sense of reaching out and connecting is therefore always present, which is why it cannot be flouted fully.

Widdowson’s Framework of Context The quotations below indicate two important points regarding Widdowson’s perception of context. One is the emphasis on the emic perspective the researcher takes. The other one is the fact that Widdowson has consistently defined context as a schematic construct: Context is not to be thought of as an undifferentiated mass of amorphous reality but as a set of schemata which define conventionalized patterns of experience. (1984, pp. 151–​152) In other words, context is a schematic construct. It is not “out there” so to speak, but in the mind. So the achievement of pragmatic meaning is a matter of matching up the linguistic elements of the code with the schematic elements of the context. (1996, p. 63) Context is a psychological construct, a conceptual representation of a state of affairs. In communication, what happens is that a first-​ person party (a speaker or writer, P1) produces a text which keys the second-​person party (listener or reader, P2) into a context assumed to be shared. (2007, p. 22, emphasis in the original) Defining context as a set of patterns that convey the sense of normality for interlocutors reflects the aim of providing a definition that is more determinate and tangible than the “undefined mass of factors” (Widdowson, 2004, p.  42) that context in RT represents. While acknowledging that an individual’s schemata contain idiosyncratic features that are not accessible to the outsider researcher, Widdowson argues that individuals’ schemata also comprise social knowledge shared by them as members of a community. This social knowledge creates the common ground that enables interlocutors to make assumptions about the other person’s “schematic world” (Widdowson, 2004, p. 43) and decide where and how to connect to it. Schemata as social constructs are, on the one hand, ideational constructs,

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which are “shared conceptions of a third-​person reality –​the reality out there. As such they represent what a group, large or small, consider to be customary, normal, natural ways of thinking about events” (Widdowson, 2007, p.  33). Ideational schemata also comprise the assumptions about the social order and conventions in reference to which the maxims of the CP are exploited. Interpersonal schemata, on the other hand, constitute knowledge of the customary ways of how people normally participate in acts of communication, of what is acceptable and appropriate in interaction with other members of the community. Interpersonal schemata contain the knowledge of the conditions that define a speech act as a particular kind (Widdowson, 2004). The definition of context as schema thus highlights the fact that, apart from the shared code, there have to be “mutually accepted conventions” (Widdowson, 2015, p. 364) that provide the common ground of shared knowledge between the participants, on the basis of which the communication can proceed. But since schemata are relative and represent culturally and individually different ways of conceiving the world, the question of what constitutes a schema at a particular stage of a particular interaction necessarily falls outside the scope of an emically oriented investigation. Schemata in Widdowson’s scheme are not static. They are dynamic constructs that get modified at each stage of the interaction. Widdowson (1984) describes this as follows: (A) and (B) are talking to each other. The one taking the speaker role has some information to impart for some purpose. In general this purpose is to change the state of affairs that obtains in the mind of the addressee at the moment of speaking. (A) has reason to suppose that he knows something that (B) does not know and which he believes is desirable for (B) to know. So he alters this state of affairs by passing this knowledge on and the situation then shifts into a new state, itself then subject to further change, and so on. (p. 81) The changes in the participants’ schemata continue until the interaction draws to a close. The schemata then reach relative stability until the next interaction necessitates further schematic modifications. This dynamic process, in fact, resembles the PDP model of context, where each new input results in changes, however small, in the connection strength between the units of the network until the network settles “into a locally optimal state in which as many as possible of the constraints are satisfied, with priority given to the strongest constraints” (Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland, & Hinton, 1986, p. 9). In this dynamic process of meaning making, the activation of a schema implies, on the one hand, relating incoming information

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to existing schemata retrospectively. Schematic knowledge also functions prospectively by raising expectations about what might happen next (Widdowson, 1983). As CP and RT have evidenced, it is not enough for language users to possess schemata they can draw on when identifying the relevant features of the situation, for the internalised schemata must be activated and related to actual instances of communication. Language users have to have the ability to put to use both their knowledge of the language as a meaning resource and their schematic knowledge of language use for the creation of meaning in actual instances of communication (Widdowson, 1983). For instance, from the information available, they have to recognise the ticket office at a railway station as an element of the instantiation of the ‘buying a ticket’ schema and proceed accordingly. This ability, or capability as Widdowson (2003) terms it, makes it possible for the language user to exploit their linguistic resources as well as connect, apply and fit their abstract schematic knowledge to the specifics of a particular situation and make meaning by selecting the relevant features of a situation. The adjustment of the abstract knowledge of language and schemata to actual situations is necessary because, even in the case of ritualistic situations, no interaction is repeated in the same way and some changes, however minor, are bound to take place. Another reason why the adjustment to the particular circumstances of a situation is necessary is because schemata are abstractions of reality that must be brought into alignment with the particularities of the actuality of communication. Capability is thus the “procedural ability that realizes schematic knowledge as communicative behaviour” (Widdowson, 1983, p. 41; n.b. the term Widdowson used in 1983 was capacity). Since capability implies a wide range of cognitive processes, including, among others, inference, problem solving or practical reasoning (Widdowson, 2003, p. 41), it is impossible to identify the ones which are being applied in a particular instance of language use. What the analyst can, however, establish is those fundamental and general principles that govern the procedural work capability is set to do. One such principle is Grice’s CP, which, according to Widdowson (1983) provides “the general basis for procedural work” (p. 68). As opposed to Relevance Theory, where the intended meaning is inferred through relevance that puts the focus on the cognitive process rather than on the decoding of an utterance, Widdowson (2004) acknowledges the role decoding plays in communication, as long as it is “in relation to contextual assumptions” (p.  50). In the pragmatic meaning making, language points the hearer in the direction they should look for the schema that the speaker assumes they share and in reference to which their mutual understanding can be established. The bigger the area of this shared schematic knowledge, the less is language necessary to create the connection between the participants (Widdowson, 2015). People who know each other well bear

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testimony to this because, for them, one word is often enough to project the expectation that evokes an experience they have had together. In addition, language as meaning potential encodes “previous conventions of pragmatic use” (Widdowson, 2004). This, of course, applies to grammar, too, which encodes “the most common and recurrent aspects of meaning which would be tedious and inefficient to incorporate into separate lexical units” (Widdowson, 1990, p.  87). The following example from Chapter 2 illustrates this point: “We ordered a taxi. The driver took a long time finding the house” (Cook, 1997, p.  86). As has already been noted, the first sentence activates the ‘taking a taxi’ schema. In the second sentence the use of the definite article carries the meaning that the entity indicated by the noun after it is known. The definite article projects its contextual implication of definiteness, which in this case implies the reduction of the number of drivers to one, to the one who drives the taxi that has been ordered. This interdependence of text and context in the actuality of communication means that context cannot be activated without the indexical function of language. The indexical function of language, on the other hand, also entails that language in use cannot be made sense of without the engagement of context. Widdowson’s main contribution to the theory of context from an emic perspective is the development of a theoretical framework that is comprehensive in that it incorporates but also amends other theories of context. First of all, the RT view of context as an undefined medley of all kinds of social, idiosyncratic and fortuitous features has been replaced with schemata representing patterns of social order, of what is considered customary and conventional in a community. Participants’ schemata representing knowledge of shared conventions provide the reference points for knowing what is mutually accepted and appropriate, and consequently when the maxims of CP are observed or flouted. Secondly, Widdowson has expanded on the notion of context by combining it with capability, thus underlining the importance and interdependency of the two concepts:  “Just as schemata cannot be realized without procedures, so procedures have no point unless they are schematically oriented” (Widdowson, 1983, p.  89). Thirdly, Widdowson (2004) views the relationship between context and language as a bilateral one. So rather than one determining the other one in a unidirectional way, as in Firth’s or Hymes’s case, text and context here interact and create meaning in dynamic combination.

Conclusion The theories in this part of the chapter attempt to reveal how language use is experienced by the insider participants, how they make meaning online in particular speech events. One of the difficulties this perspective poses is

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that in the actuality of communication participants draw on schemata that necessarily include individual and idiosyncratic features. Another problem is that each contribution in an exchange creates a new contextual configuration that affects the interpretation of the subsequent utterance, thus lending dynamicity to the participants’ contexts. For the outsider researcher this makes it impossible to account for those features of the situation that are made relevant by the participants during an interaction. A possible way to overcome these difficulties is to attempt to uncover how participants assign relevance rather that identify what features of the situation have been or are being made pertinent. In order to do this, by applying 1st person introspection, researchers aim to make explicit those very general principles that are assumed to be universal by nature and are intuitively known as well as applied by speakers in their communication. One such principle is relevance in the broadest sense, that is, relevance as the link created between the speaker and the hearer. The speaker makes an utterance based on the mutual understanding that what they are to say is, in some ways, related to the hearer’s reality on which the speaker wants to exert some effect. The importance of the notion of relevance in human communication has been foregrounded by Relevance Theory. However, RT has exclusively been concerned with the cognitive aspect of meaning making and failed to explain how people negotiate meaning. The theory that highlights how interlocutors negotiate meaning is Grice’s Cooperative Principle, which provides the general principle that all participants are expected to observe in their interactions. The CP entails the practical reasoning or commonsensical logic that interlocutors apply when assigning relevance and creating contexts of situation in particular instances of language use. When communicating, both parties assume that the other person will proceed with the CP in mind and in accordance with its maxims. However, the maxims are not rules that must be obeyed. In the CP, cooperativeness and the degree to which the maxims need to be observed is relative and depends on the particular situation. Unlike in the case of rules, the non-​observance of maxims is not penalised. Flouting maxims gives rise to implicatures that require additional processing on the part of the hearer but are accompanied with extra contextual effect. Grice (1975) has focused on the interpretative procedure the CP entails without mentioning the social norms in reference to which the observance of maxims is evaluated. This gap has been filled by Widdowson (2004), who has defined context as a schema that incorporates, albeit in very general terms, the knowledge of social conventions and the conditions for the delivery of speech acts. Since the CP enables interlocutors to mediate between the abstract context and the concrete situation and, therefore, represents a procedural principle (Widdowson, 1984), it is part of the interlocutor’s capability to exploit the schematic resources in meaning making.

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Note 1 The term used here comes from Flowerdew (2014).

References Archer, D., Aijmer, K., & Wichmann, A. (2012). Pragmatics: An advanced resource book for students. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. London, England:  Oxford University Press. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cook, G. (1997). Schemas. ELT Journal, 51(1), 1. Culpeper, J., Mackey, A., & Taguchi, N. (2018). Second language pragmatics: From theory to research. London, England, and New York, NY: Routledge. Davies, B. (2000). Grice’s Cooperative Principle: Getting the meaning across. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 8,  1–​26. Fetzer, A., & Oishi, E. (2011). Introduction. In E. Oishi & A. Fetzer (Eds.), Context and contexts: Parts meet whole? (pp. 1–​8). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics. 1934–​1951. London, England:  Oxford University Press. Firth, J. R. (1968). Selected Papers of J. R. Firth: Edited by F. R. Palmer. London, England and Harlow, England: Longman. Flowerdew, J. (2014). Introduction:  Discourse in context. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 1–​25). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Garfinkel, R. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice  Hall. Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–​58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University  Press. House, J. (1999). Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in English as a lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility. In C. Gnutzmann (Ed.), Teaching and learning English as a global language: Native and non-​native perspectives (pp. 73–​89). Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg. House, J. (2006). Text and context in translation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(3), 338–​358. Hymes, D. H. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 8–​38. Hymes, D. (1971). Sociolinguistics and the ethnography of speaking. In E. Ardener (Ed.), Social anthropology and language (pp. 47–​93). London, England: Routledge. Hymes, D. H. (1972a). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–​293). London, England: Penguin. Hymes, D. H. (1972b). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35–​71). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Hymes, D. H. (1974). Ways of speaking. In R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (Eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking (pp. 433–​452). Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press. Kleinke, S. (2010). Speaker activity and Grice’s maxims of conversation at the interface of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(12), 3345–​3366.

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Leech, G. (1983). The principles of pragmatics. London, England, and New  York, NY: Longman. Malinowski, B. (1935). Coral gardens and their magic 2. London, England: George Allen & Unwin; New York, NY: American Book. Mauranen, A. (2006). Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, 123–​150. Mauranen, A. (2014). Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts:  Shaped by complexity. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 225–​245). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Mortensen, J. (2013). Notes on English used as a lingua franca as an object of study. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2(1),  25–​46. Peccei, J. S. (1999). Pragmatics. London, England: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2017). Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(3), 269–​282. Pennycook, A. (2018). Ordinary diversities, complex assemblages and other modalities. Keynote presented at the 2nd International Conference on Sociolinguistics, Budapest, 6–​8 September 2018. Pennycook, A. (2019). Weighing up metrolingualism. Paper presented at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference, Hong Kong, 9–​14 June 2019. Pölzl, U., & Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: The “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, 151–​176. Rumelhart, D. E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J. L., & Hinton, G. E. (1986). Schemata and sequential thought processes in PDP models. In J. L. McClelland, D. E. Rumelhart, & PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing Vol.2:  Psychological and biological models (pp. 7–​ 57). Cambridge, MA:  The MIT Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts:  An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1991a). What is a speech act? In S. Davies (Ed.), Pragmatics:  A reader (pp. 254–​264). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Searle, J. (1991b). Indirect speech acts. In S. Davies (Ed.), Pragmatics:  A reader (pp. 265–​277). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Senft, G. (2014). Understanding pragmatics. London, England and New  York, NY: Routledge. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Terkourafi, M. (2019, June). The frame-​based approach to politeness: Rationale and future directions. Paper presented at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference, Hong Kong, 9–14 June 2019. Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London, England and New York, NY: Longman. Turner, R. (1974). Words, utterances and activities. In R. Turner (Ed.), Ethnomethodology (pp. 197–​215). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Society and discourse: How social contexts influence text and talk. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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Van Dijk, T. A. (2014). Discourse and knowledge. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1984). Explorations in applied linguistics 2. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1996). Linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1998). Context, community, and authentic language. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4), 705–​716. Widdowson, H. G. (2003). Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 359–​372. Wilson, D. (1994). Relevance and understanding. In G. Brown, K. Malmkær, A. Pollitt, & J. Williams (Eds.), Language and understanding (pp. 37–​58). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2004). Relevance theory. In L. R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 607–​632). Oxford, England: Blackwell.

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Context as Schema Context is defined as a mental construct, a psychological entity (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) that exists in the language users’ mind, be they ordinary or expert users, for example, linguists, of a language. Context, therefore, is not out there, functioning independently of the human agent, but “in here” as Van Dijk put it (2002, p. 18). Pennycook (2017) claims that things, too, have power to exert effects because of “material schematism” (2017, p. 272). However, this suggestion is highly debatable. In the case of Pennycook’s study, for example, it is obvious that the objects mentioned in reference to an interaction in a shop in Sydney act, or have an effect, only if the observer notices them and makes them relevant for his account of the shopping scene. In addition, the objects in the shop bring about effects in the observed situation when the participants in the transaction make them part of their negotiation of meaning. In sum, the objects in the study would not exist without the researcher’s intervention. Context as a mental construct is not a medley of indeterminate elements (Widdowson, 2004). It is, rather, a schema, the abstract representation of reality. Schemata are generated from repeated experiences and comprise what people consider as customary and conventionally acceptable and appropriate (Widdowson, 2007). Of course, what is normal is relative. In continental Europe, driving on the right-​hand side of the road represents normality, as opposed to in Britain, where it is a hazardous oddity. In other words, people’s ideational schema of driving in the two locations varies; their customary and natural way of thinking about this activity is different. In the driving example, the ideational schema, reflecting 3rd-​person reality,

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encapsulates what driving in general, and in Britain in particular, entails as well as the rules and norms that govern drivers’ behaviour, among others. Interpersonal schemata, on the other hand, comprise people’s knowledge of what is seen as normal behaviour when they communicate with each other (Widdowson, 2007). These schemata include the knowledge of what makes an utterance a felicitous speech act and Hymes’s (1972) rules of use (see Chapter 3). Given the importance of turn-​taking in the dynamicity of context (see below), apart from speech conditions and Hymes’s (1972) rules of use, “[C]‌ontext must encode the rules of conversational turn-​taking” (Roberts, 2004, p. 202). It should be noted that the distinction between ideational and interpersonal schemata is a research aid and does not reflect actual language use where the two types of schemata interact with each other and, therefore, cannot be separated. Schemata containing patterns of thought and behaviour “provide us with a convenient framework for understanding” (Widdowson, 2007, p. 33). Without this frame of reference, it is difficult to make sense of even the simplest of expressions. The photo below (Figure 4.1), with the word IMAGINE was taken in Central Park, New York. People who are not familiar with John Lennon’s famous song and the fact that in 1980 he was shot and killed in the archway of the nearby Dakota building may have some difficulty making sense of what they see.

FIGURE 4.1  

Photo of John Lennon Memorial in Central Park, New York.

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Understanding the meaning of the word IMAGINE in Central Park thus necessitates the activation of knowledge about John Lennon, his song and the fact that he died nearby. As has been established above, the setting does not have meaning on its own here, and it turns into the psychological construct of scene as a result of the active cognitive involvement of the onlooker. The invocation of the John Lennon schema also contributes to the identification of the function of the mosaic as a memorial. Guessing the intention of those who placed the mosaic there is helped by another ideational schema, that of passing and ways of remembering the dead, which is helped by the presence of the flowers and the candle. When capturing the meaning of the word IMAGINE in Central Park, onlookers draw on their ideational schemata on three levels. Understanding death constitutes knowledge that all humans possess. This is the universal level (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010), which includes other commonly shared human experiences such as happiness and suffering, anger and joy or the need to belong. The way these experiences are organised in different patterns and take shape as schemata depends on how various groups of people or cultures conceptualise them. In the above example, onlookers exploit their schemata of how the deceased are customarily remembered in their community. This level entails social knowledge or the cultural level in the scheme of Hofstede et al. (2010). In addition to schemata shared by a group of people, schemata are specific to individuals and may, therefore, include idiosyncratic components. In our example, the interpretation of the John Lennon memorial will be affected by how the individual spectators remember this Beatle, whether they liked him or not, whether they think of John Lennon as a musician or as a person who fought for peace, and so forth. The context of the onlooker may also be influenced by fortuitous features of the situation on the particular occasion when they visit the site. Walking past the Central Park memorial on a cloudy day, for example, may convey a sombre mood, generating an overall sorrowful individual interpretation of the place. Of Hofstede et al.’s (2010) three levels, it is the social level and individual level that are usually distinguished in the applied linguistics literature (see dichotomies in previous chapters). For instance, context as a mental model in Van Dijk’s (2002) scheme is divided into social representations shared by communities and personal representations located in an individual’s episodic memory. On the other hand, Mauranen (2014) differentiates three levels:  “[T]‌he societal or macrosocial, the individual or cognitive, and the inter-​individual microsocial level of face-​to-​face interaction. In the present view, all three are interconnected” (Mauranen, 2014, p.  227). The societal and individual correspond to Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural and individual levels, and Van Dijk’s social and personal representations. Mauranen’s microsocial level seems, however, to roughly match Kövecses’s (2015) local

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context that entails the specific knowledge interlocutors exploit in the immediacy of a particular speech event (as opposed to the global context that represents “the general knowledge concerning the nonimmediate situation that characterizes a community” (Kövecses, 2015, p. 188). The local micro-​ level then constitutes not only the social and individual contexts but also the fortuitous features of the situation –​features that come into play randomly at a particular time of a specific speech event. The question then arises as to what components make up different types and levels of context as schema. Firth (1957) and Hymes (1967, 1972) were concerned with the knowledge of social conventions that render communicative behaviour appropriate in various types of situations. By applying observation and introspection, they have created frameworks consisting of highly general features of context. The frameworks have been designed to enable the researchers to analyse different social situations and identify the configuration of contextual features that mark a situation as a particular context that participants draw on when they create meaning. By focusing on the social level, Firth and Hymes disregard both the face-​to-​face microlevel and the individual level of context as schema, thus reducing the scope of inquiry and, consequently, of the resulting context model. In Speech Act Theory, Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) examine the interpersonal type of schemata, that is, the conditions that are necessary to convey a particular intention in a socially accepted way so that the intention is recognised as a particular speech act by the hearer. Similarly to Firth and Hymes, Austin and Searle are also concerned with what is normal and appropriate in a community and are not interested in infelicities or borderline cases of speech acts. As a result, their study of context is also concerned with the social level of context. Pennycook (2017), on the other hand, has investigated what Kövecses (2015) calls local context and what Mauranen (2014) terms as the microsocial level of context. In his research, Pennycook focuses on the detailed analysis of a particular speech event and recreates the context that he assumes has played a role in the construction of meaning in the observed speech event. Pennycook’s schematic model includes not only the participants and the objects in the traditional, Firthian sense, but also several languages, senses, paralinguistic features of the participants and extended spatial relations, resulting in a multilingual, multimodal and multisensory, highly inclusive mental construct, belonging to the observer researcher. In his investigation of Tony Blair’s speech on the Iraq war, Van Dijk (2008, 2009) also focuses on one particular speech event. In the critical discourse analysis of the speech, Van Dijk attempts to reproduce the speaker’s context in order to reveal what motivated Tony Blair’s speech and what the then prime minister aimed to achieve. For the analysis, Van Dijk draws on his own social schemata, his knowledge of the British political system,

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including those features of prime ministers that possibly become relevant when they make important speeches in Parliament. This enables Van Dijk to construct context from the audience’s perspective. In order to get into Tony Blair’s head and reconstruct his context at the time of the speech, the researcher has subjected the text of the speech to close scrutiny. Given the gravity of the matter and the importance of the speech, it is safe to assume that Tony Blair chose his words very carefully in order to make his intent as clear as possible for his audience, both inside and outside Parliament. This ostensive type of communication (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) and language as a “repository of knowledge” (Kecskés, 2008, p. 385) with its own context have supported Van Dijk in his effort to use language as evidence and a relatively reliable source for the reconstruction of the prime minister’s context. In his critical discourse analysis, Van Dijk assumes an almost one-​to-​ one linear correspondence between the speaker’s language and the speaker’s contexts. However, this direct relationship between language and context is highly questionable for several reasons. First, language and context complement each other, and the information stored in context is taken for granted and, therefore, usually not verbalised. The second reason is what Widdowson (2004) calls the functional fallacy that is the assumption that “the encoded meaning is carried intact into contextual use” (p. 98) and that the semantic meaning of a sentence equates with the pragmatic meaning an utterance obtains in a particular situation (e.g., compare the meaning of imagine in the dictionary and in Central Park). Third, no text has one interpretation, and the researcher’s version is only one of the possible readings of a text among the potentially many. As Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2003) put it:  “No matter how carefully the text may have been constructed to record the discourse intentions of the writer, readers will inevitably place their own construction upon it, changing the emphasis, making their own connections” (p. 116).

Context as Capability As has been indicated in the previous chapters, context as a schematic construct comprises those features of a situation that come into play when participants construct meaning. In the John Lennon example above, only those aspects and elements of the setting that contribute to the interpretation of the message on the pavement in Central Park become relevant and part of the context of situation. For example, unless something unusual happens, for example a storm, the height of the trees in the vicinity of the memorial remains unnoticed and does not affect how the word in the mosaic is understood. In contrast, the fact that the Dakota building is nearby creates another connection with the verbal message and is, therefore, relevant and forms part of the context of situation in normal circumstances.

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The verbal communication in this e­ xample  –​and, in fact, in any other situation or act of communication –​takes place as a result of the interaction between language and context in the interlocutor’s head. The people who laid the mosaic in Central Park with a single word on it did so with some intention in mind. In order to convey their intention, the text producers had to reach out to the other party and establish the schematic common ground, on the basis of which the interaction can proceed. By using a text in the particular physical surroundings, the text producers trigger the search for a schema in the reader’s mind –​a schema the text producers assume to be shared and which will enable the reader to uncover the intention, which in our example is maybe to remember John Lennon and what he stood for. The word IMAGINE then functions as an index, “a pointer to those features of the situation or existing knowledge that need to be engaged to realize meaning” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 82). Language thus indicates the direction in which the hearer/​reader should look to identify the schema that enables them to achieve meaning and mutual understanding. This is the function of language as “a trigger of knowledge”, as Kecskés terms it (2008, p. 385). The selected context then imposes constraints on the interpretation of language. Once the John Lennon schema has been activated by the reader of the one-​word-​text in Central Park, the meaning of the word IMAGINE will be linked to the John Lennon song by the same title, thus obtaining pragmatic meaning specific to the particular situation. With the schematic common ground in place, there is no need to verbalise what is already assumed to be known by the parties. For the speaker this implies that they can say as little as is necessary for the achievement of the perlocutionary effect they intend to convey. In other words, the contextually available information is not duplicated, unless there is an implicature deliberately created by the speaker. Widdowson (1998, 2009) provides an apt illustration of this point. At a dinner party, if the host gets up and heads towards the door, their action is not verbalised by, for example, saying “I am walking to the door” (Widdowson, 1998, p. 707) since this is something the guests can see. If, however, the host’s action is accompanied by the above utterance, the host flouts the maxim of quantity, thus creating an implicature, such as “he means he wants us to stop him” or “he means he is going to call the police” (Widdowson, 1998, p. 707), depending on the circumstances. The hearer in an interaction acts on the assumption that the speaker’s utterance is meant to be related to the hearer’s reality, in other words, that it in some ways pertains to the hearer’s schematic world. This is the assumption of relevance in the broad sense, relevance as a metapresupposition (Roberts, 2004) rather than one of the maxims of the CP (Grice, 1975). Relevance thus is always present because without this “indexical beeline” (Widdowson, 2004, p. 50), the link between the speaker and the hearer cannot be created. Once the connection between the participants has been established, the speaker

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and the hearer proceed on the assumption that both parties know there are conventions that govern communication. In other words, apart from the assumed shared ideational schemata, participants presume they share, to a varying extent, interpersonal schemata that ensure “contextual felicity” (Roberts, 2004, p. 201), that is, the felicitous rendering of speech acts. The new information provided by the linguistic input of the speaker brings about changes in the hearer’s context. The modifications may include strengthening, weakening or rejecting the hypotheses of the schema: “Every piece of information in the discourse is thus seen as influencing the existing level of information and its context by adding new information from which an updated context results” (Wildfeuer & Pollaroli, 2018, p.  192). In the actuality of communication, context is dynamic in the sense that it undergoes modifications at each stage of an interaction, with the new, updated context serving as the schematic resource for the interpretation of the subsequent linguistic contribution. “As a result, no contexts can be identical even within the same interaction” (Illés, 2001, p. 121). In the communication process, the participants’ contexts are modified at each stage to facilitate the convergence of the individual schemata and result in understanding between the speaker and the hearer. In Widdowson’s (1984) words: “[T]‌he conveyance of information brings about a change of state whereby the two worlds of knowledge in varying degrees of correspondence are brought into whatever state of convergence is required of the interlocutors” (p. 131). Because of the need to be able to modify contextual configurations at each stage of the interaction, language users’ contexts have to include interpretative procedures that are exploited to identify the relevant features of a situation –​that is, to select the context that is suitable for recovering the speaker’s intention and conveying their own. As has been noted in the previous chapter, Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1975) serves as the basis for language users’ procedural work. The CP assumes that participants apply practical reasoning that makes it possible for them to carry out online context selection and modification with great efficiency. Like relevance, Grice’s CP and its maxims represent a “metapresupposition  –​governing the flow of information change in discourse” (Roberts, 2004, p. 201). Therefore, the language user’s context contains not only the ideational and interpersonal schemata, but also the language user’s capability to realise “schematic knowledge as communicative behaviour” (Widdowson, 1983, p.  41). Capability, as part of context, enables the participants to activate and adjust existing patterns of knowledge to particular situations in ways that suit the communicative purposes of the interaction. The inclusion of capability in the notion of context thus explains how the participants’ schematic knowledge is exploited in the realisation of the relevant features of a particular situation with reference to social norms and conventions. Capability thus represents the insider language user’s reality, that is, context viewed from an emic

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perspective. Since the interpretative procedures effect changes in the language users’ schemata, it is capability that makes context flexible and lends Parallel Distributed Processing-​like dynamicity to it. It follows from this that the more that procedural activity is required for the participants to arrive at mutual understanding, the more modifications the schemata undergo and the more malleable and complex contexts become.

Researching Context The fact that context is a mental construct poses considerable challenges for researchers. The main problem that context as schema represents is getting into the head of the language user and grasping what the contexts interlocutors employ in language use are like. Since the analysts are language users themselves, they can exploit both their 3rd-​person knowledge as researchers (e.g., use observation) and their 1st-​person knowledge as participant-​scholars (e.g., employ introspection). Research can focus on the features that constitute context. However, such a compositional analysis of context bears the hallmark of an approach, the outcome of which is an idealisation devoid of the messiness of real-​ life conditions (Gleick, 1987). In such an approach, complex systems are analysed into components, whose connection is linear and fairly straightforward (Larsen-​Freeman & Cameron, 2008). In order for the components to be identified, researchers reduce the scope of the object of inquiry. In the case of context, this means delimiting the research to the highly conventional social level (Firth, Hymes and Austin/​Searle) or to the micro level of local context (Pennycook and Van Dijk). When the context model is wider in scope, the analysis loses details of context. If, however, the scope is restricted to the micro-​level local context, it affects the generalisability of the context model, as is the case of Pennycook’s “moment analysis” (Pennycook, 2017, p.  280). In order to include both the general features and the details, the researcher can break up the components of context into subcomponents that then can supply more and more details of the notion (Van Dijk, 2009). However, as Widdowson (2003) points out, this approach presents a new problem:  “But of course the more distinctions you make, the greater the problem of accounting for the possible relationships between them. In fact, this kind of constituent analysis necessarily cuts the components off from relational connections” (p. 169). Focus on parts, therefore, can provide neither the whole picture nor can it reflect the dynamism of the system as a complex whole. It can, nevertheless, offer an analytical tool for the researcher to scrutinise context by exploiting their knowledge as participant-​scholars. In contrast, the notion of capability can account for the inherent dynamism of context and is able to capture how context evolves in the actuality of communication. However, theories taking an emic perspective (Relevance

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Theory, the Cooperative Principle and the notion of capability) reveal only some of the interpretative procedures that are employed by language users when they create and recreate context. In addition, the focus on the process of context construction rather than on context components makes an analysis into constituents difficult to perform. The partial view that researchers obtain of context is therefore, “a methodological necessity” that results in what Widdowson calls “convenient fictions” (2012, p.  9) that are “partial accounts, limited by the perspective taken by the theorist or the researcher, rendering a partial view of reality” (Widdowson, 2009, p.  243). Flowerdew’s observation, “There is no particular model that has been universally accepted” (Flowerdew, 2014, p. 4), will therefore stay with us, with each new study providing a different piece of the puzzle but hardly the whole picture into the nature of context. This book is, of course, no exception. Its contribution lies in the synthesis of the main issues addressed in the literature regarding context. The definition, therefore, shows the bare bones of the notion, including the main components and the dynamicity of context. It, however, cannot account for the fine details of the shape that context takes in the actuality of communication on a particular occasion.

Summary In this book, context is defined as a schematic construct, the mental representation of the customary ways of thinking about the outside world (ideational schema) and about the way people are expected to interact in a community (interpersonal schema). In this way, context represents social routines (Widdowson, 1984). It is not the objective reality but the perception of that reality by the language user. Context entails people’s knowledge, which has been abstracted from previous experiences on the universal/​human, social and individual levels. Together with language, contexts shared by language users create the common ground that is necessary for interlocutors to negotiate meaning and arrive at mutual understanding. Context comprises those features of a situation that pertain to the construction of meaning. Context is, therefore, a subpart of situation carved out by relevance, and as such corresponds to Firth’s (1957) context of situation. Context as schema is the abstract model of previous uses of language, and it entails what is customarily done and conventionally accepted in a community. Context represents the schematic knowledge that complements the meaning language conveys. As a consequence, context is not duplicated gratuitously, and the information it provides remains normally unsaid. In communication, context is projected onto a concrete situation and serves as a template to identify the situation as an instantiation of a particular

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schema. Context thus activated interacts with language and together they construct new meaning, which brings about changes in the configuration of context, and the updated context then provides the basis for the next stage of meaning making. The exploitation of context as schematic knowledge requires procedures that activate and adapt context to the specifics of a particular situation. Thus, apart from schemata, the language user’s context also includes interpretative procedures that enable users to assign relevance to features of a situation and construct and update context. These procedures are based on the assumption of relation or the link to be established between participants of an interaction through the use of language. In addition, it is assumed that interlocutors share not only part of their knowledge of the world but are also aware of the fact that there are norms and conventions that govern their communication, and they cooperate in this spirit. The practical reasoning that “everyone knows” (Garfinkel, 1967, p. 56) is the Cooperative Principle and its maxims. These provide guidelines that are relative to the situation in which the interaction takes place and can be applied to all instances of communication, including those that deviate from norms. Relevance as a metapresupposition, and the CP comprise the practical reasoning that is assumed to be shared universally (Wen, 2012), and which makes up, among other interpretative procedures, capability. Schemata and capability are, therefore, inseparable in the actuality of language use. They complement each other (Widdowson, 1984) and form context together. Thus, the definition of context represents the combination of language users’ schemata and their capability of realising schemata as linguistic behaviour.

References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. London, England:  Oxford University Press. Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics. 1934–​1951. London, England:  Oxford University Press. Flowerdew, J. (2014). Introduction:  Discourse in context. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 1–​25). London, England and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Garfinkel, R. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. London, England: Sphere Books. Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–​58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind: Intercultural communication and its importance for survival (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-​Hill. Hymes, D. H. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2),  8–​38.

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Hymes, D. H. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35–​71). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Illés, É. (2001). The definition of context and its implications for language teaching. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of London Institute of Education, London, England. Kecskés, I. (2008). Dueling contexts:  A dynamic model of meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(3), 385–​406. Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Larsen-​Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Mauranen, A. (2014). Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts:  Shaped by complexity. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Discourse in context (pp. 225–​245). London, England: Bloomsbury. Pennycook, A. (2017). Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(3), 269–​282. Roberts, C. (2004). Context in dynamic interpretation. In L. R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 197–​220). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts:  An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Seidlhofer, B., & Widdowson, H. G. (2003). House work and student work:  A study in cross-​cultural understanding. In N. Baumgarten, C. Böttger, M. Motz, & J. Probst (Eds.), Übersetzen, interkulturelle kommunikation, spracherwerb und sprachvermittlung  –​das Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Festschrift für Juliane House zum 60. Geburtstag (pp. 115–​127). Bochum, Germany: AKS-​Verlag. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Van Dijk, T. A. (2002). Discourse, ideology and context. Journal of Asian Economics, 35(1–​2),  11–​40. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Society and discourse: How social contexts influence text and talk. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Wen, Q. (2012). English as a lingua franca:  A pedagogical perspective. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1–​2), 371–​376. Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1984). Explorations in applied linguistics 2. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1998). Context, community, and authentic language. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4), 705–​716. Widdowson, H. G. (2003). Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press.

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Widdowson, H. G. (2009). Coming to terms with reality. In R. Bhanot & E. Illes (Eds.), Best of Language Issues (pp. 240–​244). London, England: LLU+, London South Bank University. Widdowson, H. G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1–​2),  5–​26. Wildfeuer, J., & Pollaroli, C. (2018). When context changes: The need for a dynamic notion of context in multimodal argumentation. International Review of Pragmatics, 10(2), 179–​197.

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Introduction The language teaching approach that is concerned with the pragmatics of language use is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). CLT aims to teach learners of a second language to communicate and enable them “to do things with their words” (Cook, 2010, p. 16). CLT is thus directly related to pragmatics: It focuses on the “pragmatics of communication” (Cook, 2010, p. 26) and has the pragmatic function as its defining feature (Widdowson, 2009). The main concern is language use (Harmer, 2007), that is, “language as it is used in a real context” (Larsen-​Freeman, 2000, p. 125), which makes contextualisation in CLT “a basic premise” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 156). The developments in linguistic theory and dissatisfaction with the structural-​oral-​situational approach and the audiolingual method have led to the introduction of CLT in language teaching (Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Widdowson, 2009). The shift of interest from structure and form to language use in linguistics has been transferred into language teaching and changed the basic tenets of how languages should be taught. It has been claimed that the main different between pre-​CLT approaches and methods and CLT is that, whereas the former focuses on the linguistic system of the target language (TL), CLT’s main concerned is meaning (Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Rodgers, 2009). However, Widdowson argues (1998) that, in effect, what distinguishes CLT from previous language teaching movements is not that the pre-​CLT approaches emphasise form rather than meaning, but the fact that while pre-​CLT approaches promote the teaching of semantic meaning, in CLT the aim is to engage learners in the construction of pragmatic meaning,

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which then necessarily implies context. The example of “I am walking to the door” (Widdowson, 1998, p. 707) in the previous chapter illustrates the difference between attending to semantic or pragmatic meaning. In pre-​CLT approaches the utterance is used to demonstrate the meaning of the present progressive tense with the teacher walking to the classroom door, thus replicating what can already be seen. In real-​life communication, however, the purpose is not to display encodings but to get some intention across. If, for example, the host at a dinner party was walking to the door and describing their action at the same time, the guest would think that the speaker wants to convey an implicature, such as, “[H]‌e means he is going to call the police” (p.  707). In the actuality of language use, context is not duplicated but implied unless the speaker wants to convey an implicature as in the sample above. When there is reference to meaning in CLT, it happens in this pragmatic sense where context is invoked and complements language in communication. In Seidlhofer and Widdowson’s (2019) summary: So, with CLT came the shift of focus from meaning as semantically encoded to meaning as pragmatically contextualised and so to a different way of conceiving English as the L2 –​not as a linguistic code but as a mode of communication. (p. 20) The pragmatic theories that have informed CLT include Speech Act Theory and Hymes’s communicative competence (Byram & Mendéz, 2009; Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Widdowson, 2009). As has been outlined in previous chapters, Speech Act Theory (SAT) is concerned with the felicity conditions that render the realisation of a speech act appropriate. Appropriateness is one of the components of Hymes’s (1972) notion of communicative competence and is the one directly linked up with context. Since language users’ contexts include the ideational schemata of the felicity conditions of speech acts, what connects communicative competence and speech acts is the concept of context, that is, the knowledge of how communication is conducted normally, in a socially accepted manner in a community of speakers. In language teaching this translates into the following:  “Teachers seeking to promote communicative competence thus place more emphasis on activities that draw learners’ attention to content rather than form in language, to ‘doing things with words’ as Austin (1962) might say” (Byram & Mendéz, 2009, p. 496). With the introduction of CLT, context has been given a vital role in language teaching. Similarly to the study of language use, in language teaching, too, context is interpreted differently by educationalists as the following examples illustrate. In the ELT dictionary of terms and concepts (Thornbury, 2006), on the one hand, context is defined as a semantic notion,

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as the “accompanying text” (p. 52). It must be noted that this accompanying text that includes the sentences preceding and following a particular language item is also called co-​text (Thornbury, 2006). On the other hand, context is determined in pragmatic terms in the dictionary and comprises the situational context, the physical and temporal setting in which an act of communication takes place. This binary view of context bears a close resemblance to Celce-​Murcia and Olshtain’s types of context (2000). One of the identified types is the situational context that consists of the physical environment, together with the purpose and the participants with their sociocultural backgrounds. Co-​text in Celce-​Murcia and Olshtain’s definition features as the discourse context, highlighting the importance of the knowledge of not only language in language learning but also of how to construct a text. Context in this sense “entails the linguistic and cognitive choices made relevant to the interaction at hand” (Celce-​Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, p. 11), that is, the verbal action as a relevant feature of the participants in Firth’s (1957) terms. In fact, the definition of context as situational and discoursal in Celce-​Murcia and Olshtain’s scheme reflects the two distinct approaches to discourse in applied linguistic research (Celce-​Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; Cook, 1989). On the one hand, discourse is understood, in semantic terms, as a unit larger than a sentence. Discourse analysis in this respect, therefore, comprises text analysis, the investigation of the formal properties of a text and how the text conforms to established norms. On the other hand, the pragmatic conception of discourse conceives the notion in relation to what the participants make of language when they put it to communicative purposes (Widdowson, 2007). In outlining what context is, Celce-​Murcia and Olshtain (2000) also make reference to the knowledge shared by the interactants, claiming that in communication participants rely “quite heavily on context and on the shared knowledge” (p.  11, my emphasis). In this statement the use of and seems to indicate that participants’ prior and shared knowledge are separate from context. A similar separation of context and background knowledge can be observed elsewhere in the language teaching literature. In Omaggio Hadley (1993), for instance, context refers to the situation in which the language learners practise the language forms that have been presented to them, and which they have learnt. On the other hand, background knowledge is regarded as a necessary condition for the comprehension process. The reason, it seems, is pedagogical: “For material to be meaningful, it must be clearly relatable to existing knowledge that the learner already possesses” (p. 131). The knowledge of the world as part of the necessary background knowledge, which also includes knowledge of the target language and the knowledge of the structure of different types of discourse, is presented in reference to schema theory and schemata, including scripts. Throughout

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the argument, however, the importance of schemata is stressed in relation to the “language-​comprehension process” (p.  134) rather than the whole of the communication process. As the definition of context in the previous chapter indicates, context as a schematic construct is essential not only in understanding but also in all other areas of language use. Therefore, the claim made above about the role of background knowledge in understanding and making sense of teaching material needs to be extended and should incorporate the whole of the communication process. Consequently, the analysis of CLT throughout this chapter is carried out in reference to context as the schematic background knowledge necessary for meaning making. The investigation of language teaching and learning presents the additional problem of having two settings: One is the classroom, where language learning takes place, while the other is the world outside the classroom where the TL is used. These two settings are seemingly very different: They serve differing goals (learning the target language versus using language for concrete communicative purposes) and have different participants (teacher  –​ learner versus speaker  –​hearer). As a consequence, the context that may come into play in language teaching belongs either to the language user outside the classroom or the learner inside the classroom, depending on which setting is considered as pertinent. By focusing on communication and, therefore, implicating context, CLT needs to handle and resolve the “dichotomy between ‘classroom thinking’ and ‘real-​life thinking’ ” (Strasheim, 1976, as cited in Omaggio Hadley, 1993, p. 125). It appears that within CLT two distinct approaches offer solutions to the dilemma of the duality of situation and, therefore, of context. Both approaches within CLT aim to prepare learners for the effective use of the target language and intend to exert change in both the linguistic knowledge and contexts of TL learners. Where the two types of CLT vary from each other is whether the participant whose context takes precedence in the classroom is an insider or an outsider, and also the manner in which the learners’ contexts are to be modified in the learning process. In this book one of these CLT approaches is referred to as Teaching Language for Communication (TLfC), while the other one is termed Teaching Language as Communication (TLaC). This distinction is based on the different approaches to context the two types of CLT adopt (Illés, 2001), and it does not necessarily reflect the thinking of the founders and advocates of CLT as a unitary approach. It should also be noted that the terms of TLfC and TLaC have been taken from Widdowson’s studies (1978, 1984) and have been adapted to suit the purposes of the present context-​focused research. In what follows, the discussion will centre on the context foregrounded in the teaching of the target language as well as on the way in which the changes in the learners’ contexts are designed to be made by the two approaches within CLT.

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Teaching Language for Communication This is the kind of mainstream approach commonly referred to as the Communicative Language Teaching. The aim of this type of CLT is successful communication with the native speakers (NS) of the target language in future instances of use. The approach is based on the tenet that in order for learners to become competent users of the TL, they have to be able to convey their intentions in the way customarily done by native speakers. Learners, therefore, need to be made aware of the felicity conditions obtaining for particular speech acts as well as of the conventional linguistic realisations of speech acts in native speaker use. In other words, if learners want to display appropriate language behaviour in the TL, they have to acquire not only the TL but native speaker contexts as well. This then necessarily implies that of the two settings, that is, language use outside the classroom and language learning inside the classroom, the former takes precedence, the native speaker’s context enjoying primacy. Given the focus on realising speech acts, the pragmatic research on which this type of CLT is based takes a “speech act perspective” (Bardovi-​Harlig, 2001, p.  13) and aims to investigate speech acts in NS use. This emphasis on the study of speech acts rather than other pragmatic theory in language teaching has been justified by the fact that speech-​act research can offer a framework for the comparison of language use in different languages, which can then enable researchers to conduct studies into cross-​cultural pragmatics (Bardovi-​Harlig, 2001). The point of departure is the claim that just as there are differences between languages, “there are differences between L1 and L2 pragmatics” (Bardovi-​Harlig, 2001, p.  29) and, consequently, between the production and perception of speech acts by native speakers and non-​native speakers (NNS) (Soler & Martínez-​Flor, 2008). Similarly to the contrastive analysis of learners’ first and target languages, the goal of the research is a kind of pragmatic contrastive analysis whereby NS felicity conditions of use and the typical linguistic realisations of speech acts are juxtaposed and compared with their non-​native speaker counterparts. The research entails the collection of both NS and NNS samples of speech act use in order to identify the similarities and differences between the production of speech acts in the learners’ first language and native speakers’ ways of rendering their intentions in the TL. As in the case of linguistic contrastive analysis, the assumption is that those speech acts need more work and teaching whose conveyance differs in the use of the two languages. Because in CLfC learners use the TL appropriately if they comply with the norms of NS use, the manner in which NSs perform speech acts becomes the yardstick against which learners’ use of the TL is judged. As Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2019) put it: “Communication has to be on NS terms and in NS terms. Any communicative activity that does not conform to the norm does not count,

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no matter how effective it might be” (p. 21). The appropriateness component of Hymes’s (1972) communicative competence in TLfC, therefore, entails that learners abide by the norms of native speaker communication. The findings of pragmatic research, including reference to the relevant pragmatic theories, have been incorporated in the notional-​functional syllabus (Wilkins, 1976) and subsequently in other types of syllabi that include speech acts, called functions in language teaching (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Publications, such as Leo Jones’s (1981) classic on the functions of English, rely on the linguist’s introspection and provide not only a compilation of functions and their corresponding linguistic realisations but also guidelines about when and with whom particular formulisations of functions should be used. For example, the author warns, “[Y]‌ou need to be very polite when disagreeing with someone in English –​even someone you know quite well” (p. 43, emphasis in the original); or suggests, “We sometimes begin talking about our experiences like this” (p. 22). Functions seem to have remained a component of textbooks and may be included both in the contents alongside vocabulary, grammar and the four skills or in a list of expressions frequently associated with a particular function –​for instance, with how to start, maintain and end a conversation (Mitchell & Malkogianni, 2019). Recently, obtaining information about speech acts in different languages has been carried out through the collection of empirical data, often employing 2nd-​person elicitation. Samples are obtained from the recording of real-​life conversations or from role-​plays. In the latter case, learners are presented with a scenario that is devised to elicit the use of a particular speech act. Their response to the stimulus they have been given is then compared to native speakers’ performance of the same speech act. An example to illustrate this is the study of the compliment responses of native English speakers and Chinese L1 speakers (Cheng, 2011). The aim was to identify the areas where Chinese speakers deviate from NS use and whether extensive exposure to English in an NS environment helps learners acquire NS strategies in compliment responses. Of the 45 participants in the study 30 were Chinese speakers, 15 learning English as a foreign language during a shorter stay and 15 as a second language at a state university in the United States. The native speaker participants studied at the same institution. Naturalistic role-​plays and retrospective interviews were used to elicit and analyse data. The findings showed there were differences in the responses of the three groups, and one of the conclusions was that “if the learners’ goal was to become target-​ like in English communication, authentic compliment response examples could be shown to them to raise their L2 awareness” (Cheng, 2011, p. 2211). Suggestions regarding the use of data from actual language use in teaching feature elsewhere, too. Hilles (2005), for example, proposes that teachers should model the rendering of various speech acts on how native speakers perform speech acts, drawing on “actual, empirically verifiable data about

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English and English usage” (p. 7). It is, in fact, this effort to obtain empirical data in order to establish the norms of NS language use that results in the conflation of the appropriateness and attestedness components of Hymes’s (1972) communicative competence, creating a situation whereby both what is appropriate and attested are linked up with what has been performed by native speakers (Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2019). Whether it is the linguist’s as expert user’s introspection or empirical data collected with native speaker and learner participants, one of the questions that arises here is related to the identity of the often-​evoked native speaker, whose knowledge or schemata learners should acquire in order to achieve appropriateness in the use of the TL. Relying on researchers as expert users and involving university students in research indicates that, in fact, it is educated native speakers (Hilles, 2005) whom researchers and educationalists usually have in mind. This educated native speaker represents the authority, the “we” in Jones’s (1981) advice, as opposed to the “you”, the learners who are expected to comply. However, the native speaker as the yardstick of appropriate LT use raises several issues. First of all, in reality, educated native speakers come in all shapes and sizes, and they use their mother tongue in very diverse ways as a result of the many cultural and individual differences in their knowledge of the language and the schemata that constitute their contexts. In contrast, in TLfC, the notion of the native speaker is a broad generalisation which, in fact, is often based on a small number of linguists relying on their intuitions or on a small number of participants in pragmatic research. The generalisation is then based on the assumption that there is a huge homogeneous group of people who use English in compliance with similar norms and who belong to the same English-​speaking culture. In effect, this seems to reflect the simplified view whereby language is equated with culture and with the users who are native speakers of a particular language. Thus, as in the example above, American college students represent educated native speakers, while Chinese learners of English at a US college stand for millions of Chinese speakers. With the native speaker being the representative of a unitary culture, the individual features of the context they apply in monolingual communication with other native speakers are irrelevant, which is why TLfC is concerned with the cultural level of context (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). The native speaker devoid of individual features becomes an idealisation akin to Chomsky’s ideal speaker–​listener (Illés, 2011; Widdowson, 2012). Such a perception of the native speaker then results in what Leung (2005) calls “idealized typifications of what native speakers may say and do in specified contexts” (p.  126). These idealised typifications are, in fact, the schemata that learners need to acquire in order to meet the requirements of appropriateness of TL use.

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In FLfC, learners are provided with native-​speaker schemata as ready-​ made patterns of appropriate language use (Illés, 2011), with the relevant features of the situation predetermined, too, by the educational researcher. Therefore, relevance, and consequently the interpretation of situations and texts, is given rather than worked out by the learners. In the process of learning the TL, learners have to adopt NS contexts unchanged, performing neither assimilation nor accommodation (Piaget, 1954). In other words, learners are supposed to accept NS schemata as chunks to be incorporated into their network of schemata without the need to alter the new information to fit into their existing schemata or adjust their existing schemata of how language is used in their L1 to accommodate the new TL experience. The expected outcome is the creation of two discrete pragmatic worlds, that of L1 and the TL, which seem by and large to be analogous to coordinate bilingualism, where “the two languages are kept apart as separate systems” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 150). In the process of language learning, learners need to actualise idealised native speaker contexts. The activities that are thought to enable students to acquire NS contexts and put the TL to concrete communicative purposes include opinion and information gap activities and particularly role-​play (Byram & Mendéz, 2009) to help learners to replicate communication outside the language class as closely as possible. Widdowson (2003) sums this up as follows: “The belief seems to be that language courses should be a kind of rehearsal that prepares learners for real life performance in native speaker roles” (p. 113). The reference to roles, rehearsal and performance is reminiscent of the analogy between schema and a play with various parts, actors and their lines (Howard, 1987), a play which presents schema as a fairly rigid and stable phenomenon. In such a schema, both the actors’ actions and lines are scripted in advance, very much like in Firth’s (1957) view of conversation as a “roughly prescribed social ritual, in which you generally say what the other fellow expects you, one way or another, to say” (p. 37). The direct relatedness between language and schema, including the typical linguistic manifestations of speech acts then suggests an almost one-​to-​one relationship between form and function in TLfC. As a result, learners do not really need to engage in interpretative procedures as the right contextual connections are given, with little room for individual interpretations or creativity. Capability is thus exploited for making a choice from a selection of suggested expressions  –​like that of Leo Jones, (1981) or textbooks (e.g., Mitchell & Malkogianni, 2019) –​that present preferred linguistic realisations of various speech acts. This view of context and the compliance with the norms of native-​speaker communication determine the conception of the key notion of authenticity in TLfC. Authenticity is usually defined in relation to texts and tasks used

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in the teaching of the TL. A text in TLfC is considered authentic if “it was originally written for a non-​classroom audience” (Thornbury, 2006, p. 21). Authentic texts thus have not been designed for pedagogic purposes but have been “imported from natural contexts” (Clavel-​Arroitía & Fuster-​Márquez, 2014, p. 129). Authentic texts are apparently more motivating for learners because they provide the link with the language outside the language class and the community that speaks it for students (Guariento & Morley, 2001). Similarly, authentic tasks are those that are closely connected to real-​life tasks, such as buying a train ticket (Guariento & Morley, 2001) or writing a letter of complaint. Given the prevalence of the outside world in TLfC, it is argued that the choice of topics in the classroom should also reflect what goes on in the outside world (Siegel, 2014). Textbook themes should, therefore, incorporate topics that “are realistic and practical for L2 English users” and “better prepare students for the ‘world out there’ ” (p. 363). The adoption of NS contexts implies that the authentic response to a text that is expected of the learner must be very similar to the interpretation of the target NS audience. This, however, poses a paradox. As we have seen, in TLfC there exist two sets of context that, by definition, are different: One belonging to the outsider NS and the other one being that of the language learner. When producing a text, the writer always has a particular target audience in mind whom they address, with whom they intend to share some information. In so doing, they “will make assumptions about the shared knowledge of language and the world but also, crucially, will count on readers recognizing the pretext for writing, and adjusting their focus of attention accordingly” (Widdowson, 2004, p.  81). By assuming a certain area of shared knowledge and the recognition of pretext, the writer uses language that is expected to key into the relevant context of the reader. The dialogue between the writer and the reader thus leaves unsaid everything that is thought to be part of their growing schematic common ground, as meaning is being constructed between the two parties in reference to their shared reality. When the textual record of this dialogue is imported into the classroom, learners can make sense of it only if they relate it to their own reality and read it for their own purposes. Since the learners’ reality and pretexts are very different from those of the original target audience’s, if the learners read the text as they would normally do, their interpretation will not match the interpretation of the audience targeted by the writer. Pragmatically, learners remain outsiders who either relate the text to their own contexts and arrive at an understanding that inevitably deviates from that of the target audience, or they treat the text as a sample of the TL and use it for learning the semantic meaning without pragmatically engaging with it. This conundrum also prevails in the case of textbooks written for a wide international audience. Writers of these textbooks have learners of English from all over the world as their target audience. Since the aim is

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communication in the TL, the texts and tasks should be relatable to students’ reality so that they engage with them pragmatically, as they would do outside the classroom in normal circumstances. The textbook writers therefore have to make guesses about what might be of interest to the learners, what would trigger the activation of their schemata to provide the “pragmatic normality” (Widdowson, 2003, p.  120) of real-​life communication. Given the large number and endless diversity of English-​language learners, finding out what interests and concerns these learners can only be done by way of a broad generalisation where the target learners’ contexts are stripped of individual features and comprise only the global cultural level. This then necessarily carries the implication that it becomes difficult for learners to engage on their own individual terms. Without the contextual connection, the words in the textbooks will ring hollow and present samples of language, similarly to a random list of numbers that becomes meaningful only when it is linked up with the lottery context (see Preface). The outcome is a plethora of uniform textbooks that “are written for everybody, but do not address anybody” (Nikolov statement cited in Medgyes, 2011, p. 49, my translation).

Teaching Language as Communication Even though TLaC  –​developed by Widdowson (1978, 1979, 1983)  –​has been around for almost as long as teaching language for communication, it has been overshadowed by TLfC, which has always represented the mainstream approach to the teaching of TL communication. As in TLfC, the ultimate aim of TLaC is to prepare learners to perform effectively in target-​ language communication. However, where the two approaches differ is the path they take to reach this destination. As has been seen, TLfC focuses on those future speech events and speech acts for which learners will presumably be using the TL with native speakers. Teaching communication in this approach, therefore, entails the adoption of NS contexts and emulating “the idealized monolingual native speaker” (Kramsch, 1997, p. 360). In contrast, TLaC is concerned with the learners’ contexts in the way they exist and function in real-​life language use outside the classroom. This then requires that learners should act as language users, activating both their schemata and capability for the creation of pragmatic meaning. Furthermore, in order to achieve genuine communication, the classroom has to provide conditions that compel the learners to focus on the “here and now” of interaction, where the relevant features of the situation are not given but have to be worked out by the participants. As in the actuality of communication, in this educational approach the schemata to be triggered contain not only features that are shared by interlocutors as humans and members of a community but also comprises idiosyncratic and fortuitous elements that give rise to an individual’s distinct

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interpretation of a situation and the emergence of a new context that, again, will be modified by the subsequent contributions of the speaker/​hearer. This continually changing context represents a dynamic phenomenon similar to the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) model of schema. And since the participation in interaction always results in some schematic modification, using language for communicative purposes is continuous learning in this respect, too, even if on a very small scale. By engaging learners on their own terms, TLaC conflates language use with language learning, as opposed to TLfC where learning and rehearsing appropriate NS language behaviour precede actual language use in the future. According to Larsen-​ Freeman (2007), the separation of use and learning runs counter to how people learn: “It is not that you learn something and then you use it; neither is it that you use something and then you learn it. Instead, it is in the using that you learn –​they are inseparable” (p. 783). In contrast to TLfC, TLaC promotes the fusion of learning and using, and rather than teaching language as a rehearsal for future use, it makes language use the present reality of the classroom. In fact, the terms describing the two Communicative Language Teaching approaches are meant to indicate this difference with the distinct use of the prepositions, where “for” stresses the focus on the preparation of learners for future communication and, “as” in Teaching Language as Communication, indicates how language is being used in the classroom. As in language use, learners are expected to be active agents who, instead of accepting other speakers’ relevance and ready-​made contexts, work out what features of a situation pertain to them on a particular occasion. Appropriate language behaviour in this regard is not compliance with prescribed rules of use but the ability to adjust to the appropriateness conditions of particular speech events. In TLaC, therefore, learners are required to continuously adapt their existing schemata through the strategic use of capability. As a consequence, in TLaC the TL contexts are accommodated and assimilated into learners’ existing schemata (Piaget, 1954), rather than being acquired as an add-​on, separate from L1 contexts as in TLfC. The learning process is thus seen “as a matter of continual conceptual adaptation” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 141) and not the accumulation of discrete items of knowledge. Although she refers to learning language, Larsen-​Freeman’s (1997) point applies to the adaptive process of schematic change in the learner’s context as well: Learning linguistic items is not a linear process  –​learners do not master one item and then move on to another. In fact, the learning curve for a single item is not linear either. The curve is filled with peaks and valleys, progress and backsliding. (p. 151)

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The primacy given to learner contexts then necessarily alters the way authenticity is perceived. Widdowson (1998) argues that what is considered authentic in TLfC, that is, language used for non-​educational purposes, cannot be authentic in the classroom. The participants of an interaction share not only the language but also the local knowledge to which they refer and which constitutes the common ground in their communication. Outsiders, such as language learners in classrooms in different parts of the world, do not possess the same local knowledge and, therefore, are not party to the out-​of-​ class interaction. As Widdowson (1998) befittingly put it, “Reality does not travel with the text” (p. 711), which then makes it impossible for learners to authenticate a text in the same manner as it was done by the original target audience. As a consequence, in order for materials that have been “imported from natural contexts” (Clavel-​Arroitía & Fuster-​Márquez, 2014, p. 129) to become authentic in the classroom, they have to be made local not in reference to real-​life users but for a particular group of learners who authenticate TL use by linking it up to their own contexts, with what they already know and what is familiar to them. The same way as a text does not carry meaning, a text by itself is not authentic; it obtains authenticity when the participants of an interaction activate their schemata and make the necessary contextual connections in order to create pragmatic meaning. To use the example in the Preface, a list of numbers is pointless unless it is connected to the reader’s schema of lottery. Widdowson (2003) provides an example of how a text written for educational purposes can be made authentic for learners. The first passage accompanying a picture is a typical textbook sample that requires no schematic engagement on the part of the reader. The text is “a display of encodings, a device for demonstration” (p. 120): This is a man. He is John Brown; he is Mr. Brown. He is sitting in a chair. This is a woman. She is Mary Brown; she is Mrs Brown. She is standing by a table. Mr Brown has a book. The book is in his hand; he has a book in his hand. Mrs Brown has a bag… (p. 120) The second passage presents the reworked version with very minor changes made to the original text: This is a man. He is John Brown; he is Mr Brown. He is sitting in a chair. This is a woman. She is not Mrs Brown. She is standing by a table. She has a look in her eye. Mr Brown has an idea in his head. He has a book in his hand… (p. 120)

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The second passage is much more captivating because the text does not duplicate the picture and leaves things unsaid, which arouses the audience’s interest. Who is the woman if not Mrs Brown? What idea has Mr Brown got in his head? What’s going on between these two people? These questions and the suspense they create open up a relatable reality and engage the reader who, when making sense of the text, may activate the schema of two people having, or about to have, a secret affair. The passage thus creates what Widdowson (2003) calls “pragmatic normality” (p. 120) inherent in real-​life communication in the language class. Interestingly, in the audiolingual era of language teaching there were textbooks that contained stories and texts that were equally gripping, providing opportunities for learners’ pragmatic engagement. In a coursebook published in 1971, amongst the drills and substitution tables one can find texts like the one here: The radio is on in an expensive pub in Soho, in the centre of London. Most of the people there are not very interested in the news programme, but one man is. His name is Eric Masters. He is about 45 and is wearing very expensive clothes. He is looking very afraid of something. There is another man standing next to him at the bar. Masters is asking him a question. (O’Neill, Kingbury, & Yeadon, 1971, p. 11) Similarly to Widdowson’s second passage, the scene above raises a series of questions, which makes the learner want to read on and find out what Masters’s question might be. In addition to that, the reader needs to work out how this scene fits in with the story of a prison escape that makes up the textual part of the book (Illés, 2009). In order to make sense of the scene and the story, the learners activate the thriller schema, which enables them to connect new information to what is already known and familiar to them. With the contextual connection thus created, pragmatic normality is established. Real-​life language use in the classroom requires the creation of conditions that enable learners to act as language users. This necessarily implies devising activities that are purposeful and relevant to the learners and establish the connection with and key into the students’ reality. The emphasis here is not on what schemata to adopt but to how to engage with the TL in a way that effects changes in the learner’s context. In TLaC, therefore, the emphasis is on the kind of methodology that develops capability and triggers linguistic and schematic modifications in the learner. For TLaC methodology, Widdowson’s (1978) suggestion was teaching language through other subjects. He argued that when teaching a school subject in a foreign language, the language serves as a means and not an end, in the same way as in

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real-​life communication. In addition, learners’ linguistic and cognitive/​schematic knowledge develop in tandem, through the continual exploitation of capability. Teaching language through school subjects makes the class very similar to other lessons in the sense that in both cases it is only the insider learners’ contexts that come into play, with no outsider schemata imposed on the students. Widdowson (1978) claims that such an approach provides for the presentation of the foreign language as a relevant and significant communicative activity comparable to the learner’s own language. It allows for devising exercises which involve the solving of communicative problems, problems which require reference to knowledge other than that which is simply linguistic, which make demands on the linguistic skills only to the extent that they are an intrinsic feature of communicative abilities. (pp. 158–​159) Widdowson’s proposal has been taken up in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL has been interpreted, applied and assessed differently, depending on local circumstances. In fact, the implementation of CLIL shows one of the important features of TLaC, namely, that since learners have to be engaged on an individual level of context and on their own terms, the methodology of a programme (including its syllabus) adopting this approach has to be devised in a way that suits the pedagogic demands and specific circumstances of the local educational environment. This then means more responsibility and decision making for educationalists at the local level. Rather than accepting proposals from outsider authorities and ready-​made solutions in the form of textbook syllabi and activities, teachers favouring the TLaC approach have to take an active role and subject what has been offered to them to critical appraisal in order to design a methodology that suits their particular group of learners (Widdowson, 1978, 1990). Another suggestion for the implementation of TLaC methodology is the exploitation of the classroom as a venue of genuine communication (Illés, 2001; Illés & Akcan, 2017). Arguments for the classroom representing a type of real-​life setting are not new. Breen (2001) argues that the classroom should be considered as a genuine culture that has features such as being collective, jointly constructed and highly normative with distinct conventions and expectations. The classroom is also interactive where communication ranges from ritualised and predictable to dynamic and “diversely interpreted” (p. 129). In line with Breen (2001), Widdowson (2003) also claims that the classroom should be recognised “as a social construct and as such, like any other, has its contexts and purposes, its own legitimate reality” (p.  113). In sum, the classroom does not differ fundamentally from other types of

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settings and, therefore, has the potential to function as the venue for the pragmatic use of language –​an argument that then requires the classroom versus real-​life opposition to be reconsidered. The classroom can be employed for raising learners’ awareness of how to adjust their schemata and language to the varying conditions of appropriateness. Dissatisfied with the simplistic view of form and function relationship in mainstream CLT, Murray (2010) argues for the application of broader principles, such as Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle in classroom teaching to examine how these principles govern the linguistic choices of language users. Murray (2010) offers a deductive approach and designs activities that stimulate discussion about issues in relation to Grice’s maxims. The questions initiating classroom talk include, for example, “During conversation, what do you think are some of the things that influence what we say and how we say it?” (p. 297). The ensuing discussion develops not only learners’ metalanguage but makes adjustments in their interpersonal schemata as well. Classroom observations in Hungary and Turkey (Illés & Akcan, 2017) have shown that learners’ off-​ topic conversations, asides and cheeky remarks, which are usually disapproved by their teachers, give rise to genuine interactions between students and teachers and, at times, to highly creative individual language use that reflects the learners’ particular reality, as in the dialogue between a teacher and a student below: T:  Is he ill? [inquiring about a student who is absent] S:  Yes, he’s got test fever. (Illés & Akcan, 2017, p. 7) In this excerpt, the student replies with a novel expression made up of “test” functioning as an adjective with the noun “fever”. In this short answer to the teacher’s question, the everyday life of Hungarian schoolchildren is encapsulated where, as part of continuous assessment, learners can be tested either orally or in writing in the lessons. The humorous response carries the implication that the student who is absent probably wanted to avoid doing the test. The learner’s answer evidences an effective use of TL linguistic resources and shows that an utterance can be formally possible and appropriate without having been attested in native speaker communication. Learners’ unplanned language use also bears witness to their increased metalinguistic awareness and the interplay of L1 and the TL. The examples from classroom discourse in Hungary and Turkey (Illés & Akcan, 2017) seem to confirm that “off-​task interaction may be closer to learners’ real-​life interactional needs than on-​task interaction” (Markee, 2005, p.  212), which is why unplanned classroom communication should be exploited by teachers rather than rejected.

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Summary Among the language teaching approaches, it is Communicative Language Teaching that is concerned with the pragmatic use of the target language and, therefore, implies context. In relation to the conception of context, two approaches can be distinguished within CLT, Teaching Language for Communication and Teaching Language as Communication. In terms of context, the overall aim of both types of CLT is to bring about changes in learners’ schemata to enable them to communicate effectively in the target language. Where the two approaches differ is whether they focus on classroom or out-​of-​class language use and the way in which they exert modifications in learners’ schemata. In Teaching Language for Communication, native speakers’ language use in out-​of-​class situations is given primacy. As a consequence, appropriateness is defined in terms of native speakers’ knowledge of felicitous rendering of speech acts. Thus, the focus in TLfC is on the product of learning, and the aim for learners is to emulate the linguistic behaviour of the idealised monolingual native speaker whose schemata represent idealised typifications of what constitutes appropriateness in NS communities. The NS schemata to be acquired by learners are necessarily devoid of individual and fortuitous features, and represent a relatively stable notion of context at the cultural level, similar to the concept of schema in schema theory. In TLfC, learners are expected to adopt NS schemata, preferably unchanged, as an add-​on to their existing schemata of L1 language use. The syllabus in this type of CLT contains not only the interpersonal schemata of the conditions of felicitous speech act use but also the linguistic realisations conventionally associated with particular speech acts, which assumes a close correspondence between form and function. The conception of authenticity reflects the dominance of NS understanding of the TL in that learners are expected to authenticate a text written for an NS audience in the way it was originally intended for the insider NS participants of a speech event. One of the activities often employed in TLfC is role-​play, which helps learners to step into an outsider language user’s shoes and attempt to make pragmatic meaning through the filter of NS contexts. The monolingual communication of native speakers is transferred into TLfC, giving rise to a preference for a teaching practice exclusively in the TL. As opposed to TLfC, teaching language as communication is concerned with classroom TL use and the process of context modification. The focus is on the activation of learners’ own schemata in their entirety. Therefore, the schemata that come into play in the classroom necessarily contain learners’ existing knowledge of how to use language as a member of a community, together with features that stem from individual experiences. Since TLaC teaches the TL through its use, the relevant features of learners’ contexts

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include those fortuitous components on which learners draw when making meaning in the “here and now” of classroom communication. In other words, context in TLaC entails both of what Kövecses (2015) terms as global and local context. By conflating language use with learning and creating conditions for language use in the classroom, in TLaC learners are required not only to draw on their individual schemata but also to continually exploit their capability in order to create pragmatic meaning. The aim is to develop learners’ capability so that they will be able to cope with undefined future eventualities. Rather than imposing outsider language users’ contexts on the learner, in TLaC learners adapt their existing schemata to the constantly changing conditions of appropriateness through the application of their capability. Context in this approach is, therefore, a dynamic phenomenon, similar to the concept of PDP schema. The fact that learners need to be engaged on their own terms carries the implication that decisions about what triggers the meaning making process have to be made on a local level by teachers and other educationalists.

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O’Neill, R., Kingsbury, R., & Yeadon, T. (1971). Kernel lessons Intermediate. London, England: Longman. Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Rodgers, T. S. (2009). The methodology of foreign language teaching:  Methods, approaches, principles. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer, & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 341–​372). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Seidlhofer, B., & Widdowson, H. G. (2019). ELF for EFL: A change of subject? In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 17–​31). Bristol, England and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Siegel, A. (2014). What should we talk about? The authenticity of textbook topics. ELT Journal, 68(4), 363–​375. Soler, E. A., & Martínez-​Flor, A. (2008). Pragmatics in foreign language contexts. In E. A. Soler & A. Martínez-​Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 3–​21). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. Thornbury, S. (2006). An A-​Z of ELT: A dictionary of terms and concepts. London, England: Macmillan. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1979). Explorations in applied linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H.  G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1984). Explorations in applied linguistics 2. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1998). Context, community, and authentic language. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4), 705–​716. Widdowson, H. G. (2003). Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2009). The linguistic perspective. In K. Knapp, B. Seidlhofer, & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 193–​218). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Widdowson, H. G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1),  5–​26. Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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ELF Communication As has been indicated in Chapter 1, ELF is conceptualised in functional terms (Seidlhofer, 2011) as the use of English between speakers whose first language is not English and who use English as their common means of communication. ELF entails “continuously negotiated, hybrid ways of speaking” (Seidhofer, 2011, p. 4), where communication is fluid (Cogo, 2012; Jenkins, 2015) and where speakers “adapt and blend English innovatively and creatively in order to co-​construct meaning and ensure understanding” (Cogo, 2012, p.  99). ELF communication is described as emergent and situated (Baker, 2012) with users employing various strategies (Jenkins, 2009) to facilitate the communication process. It must be noted that in these respects, ELF use is an “entirely ‘ordinary’ and unsurprising sociolinguistic phenomenon” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. x), because, as Sewell (2013) points out, all language use is “situated, variable, and subject to hybridizing influences” (p.  6). The question that then arises is whether ELF communication has features that are specific to it and are absent in other kinds of encounters (Firth, 2009). Firth (2009) claims that there is indeed such a thing as a lingua franca factor. This being the case, ELF use seems to combine both general and specific qualities. While it represents common use of natural language, it also has elements that are unique to it (Mauranen, 2009). In fact, among the distinguishing characteristics of ELF communication are the participants themselves. As a result of the worldwide spread of ELF as one of the vehicles of globalisation (Seidlhofer, 2017), ELF users represent a wide variety of linguacultural backgrounds. They are, by definition, bilingual or multilingual speakers who bring their often very different

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ELF speaker – ELF speaker communication:

FIGURE 6.1  

Area of Shared Knowledge (based on Widdowson, 2007, p. 54).

languages, worldviews, norms of communication, and experiences and expectations to the common pool in ELF interactions. In ELF interactions, therefore, the area of shared linguistic and schematic knowledge between interlocutors is necessarily smaller than that between those who are speakers of the same language variety and have been socialised into a certain community. Figure 6.1 illustrates this difference in shared knowledge. One of the consequences of the diversity of ELF users’ backgrounds and the subsequent contraction of the linguistic and schematic common ground is that there are fewer cultural assumptions (Hülmbauer, 2009) and conventions of language use that ELF speakers can take for granted. Not being able to rely on schematic knowledge to the extent it is possible in their community requires that mutual understanding “has to be carefully, sometimes laboriously, negotiated” (Pölzl & Seidlhofer, 2006, p. 154). Enhanced negotiation of meaning also necessitates heightened awareness of the conditions of language use (Canagarajah, 2007), of how to exploit effectively the linguistic and other resources interlocutors have at their disposal. As part of it, participants in ELF communication have to be careful about the cultural conceptualisations they assume to share with their interlocutors. In other words, they “would need to constantly remind themselves that other interlocutors may not share the same schema, category or metaphor that I am drawing on as a frame of reference in my production and comprehension” (Sharifian, 2009, p. 247). Despite the heightened demands of ELF communication, research findings indicate that misunderstandings are infrequent in ELF interactions (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011; Pölzl & Seidlhofer, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2004). According to Mustajoki (2017), this can be partly explained by the fact that when ELF users engage in communication, they are aware of the circumstances which, due to the meeting of different languages and cultures, involve more risk of failure than interaction within the same speech community. ELF speakers, therefore, have a strong

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motivation to achieve mutual understanding. They are attentive to the other participants’ needs and focus on recipient design (Mustajoki, 2017). This means that ELF users attempt to take the audience’s perspective and adapt their contribution in such a way that it is tuned to the other party and is accessible for the addressee (Blokpoel et al., 2012). Recipient design in this sense subsumes accommodation, a process that frequently features in ELF communication (Dewey, 2011). When accommodating to their interlocutors, “speakers may organize their outputs to take into account the requirements of their listeners; listeners may select from this discourse and organize it according to the cognitive structures most easily available for comprehension” (Giles & Coupland, 1991, p.  85). Accommodative behaviour includes speakers’ adaptation of speech patterns and the reduction of the complexity of speech (Mustajoki, 2017)  –​for instance, by way of morphological regularisation (e.g., by dropping the 3rd person present simple – s; see Mauranen, 2018). ELF speakers also make use of a wide range of other strategies in order to cope with the challenges the smaller linguistic and schematic common ground presents for them. Repetition, clarification and self-​repair have been identified as frequently used strategies in ELF research (Jenkins, et al., 2011) in addition to paraphrasing, the avoidance of NS idiomatic language and code-​switching (Jenkins, 2009). However, it must be noted that, as has been pointed out above, speakers exploit strategies in all language use, with ELF being no different in this respect (Kohn, 2019). Moreover, all language use shares recipient design, albeit to varying degrees:  “[A]‌ll texts, whether deemed to be specialist or not, are designed with preconceived ideas about what can be counted on as common insider knowledge in the particular groups of recipients they are produced for” (Widdowson, 2007, pp. 24–​25). In fact, it is recipient design that is part of the problem for learners when they are expected to interpret texts written for a different, usually native speaker target audience in the same or similar way the target readers would, or have done it. The reason for this is that the learners are outsiders to the discourse between the reader and the writer and cannot, therefore, interpret the text as it was originally intended. Furthermore, in all language use, and again to varying degrees, speakers accommodate to their interlocutors’ needs whenever they engage in communication. For example, people speak differently when talking to children or to somebody they do not know well. Similarly, language users adjust not only the linguistic output to the needs of the other speaker but accommodate pragmatically as well. When making choices and identifying the relevant features of a situation, language users necessarily adjust their selection to the knowledge and purpose they assume to be shared with their interlocutors.

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However, it seems there are two factors that make ELF communication stand apart. One is the degree to which recipient design, accommodation and strategies are applied. Given the demand for increased negotiation of meaning, ELF speakers exploit these resources more frequently and intensively than they would do in interaction with people with whom the knowledge base they can rely on is significantly larger. Accommodation in ELF use, for instance, includes speakers monitoring each other’s language proficiency (Canagarajah, 2007; Firth 2009) more carefully than in other circumstances. Among other things, monitoring helps ELF users to make decisions about the complexity of grammatical structures, range of vocabulary or speed of speech to facilitate “locally adequate intelligibility” (Firth, 2009, p. 162). In a similar vein, the fluidity, hybridity and context dependence (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018) attributed to ELF communication characterise all kinds of language use, but the difference, again, lies in the measure to which they are present in ELF communication. It is, in fact, the diversity ELF users represent, coupled with global mobility and the wide range of real and virtual sites where ELF communication takes place that makes ELF communication more unpredictable and variable than communication in a more clearly definable speech event. The other factor that makes ELF use distinct is the fact that it is inherently multilingual (Jenkins, 2015; Mauranen, 2018; Seidlhofer, 2017). With the multilingual resources at their disposal, ELF interactants draw on their “multi-​faceted multilingual repertoires in a fashion motivated by the communicative purpose and the interpersonal dynamics of the interaction” (Seidlhofer, 2009, p. 242). One of the strategies used in ELF in this regard is code-​switching (Jenkins, 2009). Recently, however, researchers have taken a different perspective and refer to multilinguals’ translanguaging practice (García, 2009, 2019; Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018), which includes code-​ switching but also goes beyond it in the sense that it focuses not on discrete languages and L2 as an add-​on to L1, but on the dynamic interplay of multilingual resources and how they are used in negotiation practices to “maximize communicative potential” (García, 2009, p. 140).

ELF Context By providing an overview of ELF language use, the purpose of the previous section was to give insight into the way ELF speakers communicate and to use the findings to shed light on the nature and specifics of ELF users’ context  –​which is the aim of this section of the chapter. In the analysis of ELF context, the definition provided in Chapter 4 is applied here. This views context as a schematic construct consisting of schemata representing configurations of knowledge and capability that activates schemata in particular instances of use. As the example in the Preface of this book

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demonstrates, a random list of six numbers makes sense only if it is related to something the recipient already knows, that is, the schema of lottery in this case. Without the interference of the human agent and the activation of the lottery or, in fact, any other schemata, the numbers remain meaningless. Of course, the same applies to all texts that in themselves are inert, and meaning is read into them by the communicator (Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2003; Widdowson, 2007). It must be noted again that context as a cognitive construct is different from situation in that context comprises those features of the situation that pertain to meaning making on a particular occasion. In the case of the utterance with the lottery numbers above, only the features related to the lottery come into play and are pertinent, rendering other parts of the situation –​for instance, the fact that the speaker is hungry –​irrelevant and not included in the interlocutors’ context. In line with the above conception of context, ELF context also resides in the user’s mind and represents a socially constructed psychological entity. On the one hand, it comprises the ELF user’s ideational schemata about the customary ways of thinking about 3rd-​person reality, about the world, people, events, and so forth. As is the case with all language users, the ELF speaker’s context also entails interpersonal schemata, which contain knowledge about the conventions of how people engage with second persons in communication (Widdowson, 2007). Interpersonal schemata include, among others, the conditions of the felicitous rendering of speech acts. Given the wide variety of ELF users’ linguacultural backgrounds and the subsequent differences in their schemata of what is considered normal practice, the question arises as to what comprises interlocutors’ shared knowledge, the assumption of which enables the speaker and the hearer to make contextual connections through the use of language. In their study about the significance of context and the physical setting of ELF communication in particular, Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) point out that “for achieving discourse in lingua franca interactions, speakers cannot rely on shared knowledge, either of the code or of cultural schemata” (p.  154). In agreement, Widdowson (2015) makes a similar observation:  “In ELF interaction, the interlocutors cannot depend on shared linguacultural conventions and so they have to find common ground by developing their own local conventions in flight as it were, as appropriate to their own contexts and purposes” (p. 366). Whereas ELF interactions indeed necessitate an increased load of negotiation and the constant formation and re-​formation of norms, the claim that in ELF communication interlocutors cannot rely on shared conventions needs some clarification. As the lottery example also demonstrates, understanding in communication cannot take place without the engagement of the interlocutors’ schemata. Without shared contexts, there are no “sociocultural conventions from which the online pragmatic processing of language takes its bearings” (Widdowson, 2004, p. 54), in other words, there

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is no basis for the contextual linking up between the interlocutors. It, therefore, stands to reason to argue that there is a shared language and, indeed, some schemata on which users rely in ELF interactions, even if this shared knowledge provides a smaller cognitive base for successful communication than interaction within a smaller and less diverse community. The question remains as to what constitutes the context on which ELF interlocutors can draw when identifying the relevant features of a situation in the meaning-​making process. In other words, what kind of knowledge can they assume to be shared with their interlocutors in ELF communication? As has been pointed out in the chapters on context (Chapters 2, 3 and 4), humans possess some basic but essential knowledge about the world around them, including, among others, emotions such as pain or happiness. Even though this knowledge is conceptualised differently in different times and cultures, human existence provides an initial basis for mutual understanding. However, due to the unprecedented variety of ELF speakers and their linguacultural backgrounds, context at the cultural and individual levels (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010) presents diversity on a scale that makes it difficult to identify the common ground ELF interlocutors can rely on in interaction with other ELF users. What comes to the rescue is the fact that, apart from the many dissimilarities, globalisation has also given rise to some commonalities in ELF speakers’ schemata. In a study about the influence of globalisation on adolescents, Arnett (2002) claims that, as a result of mobility, television and the Internet, alongside and in interaction with their local identity, young people develop a global identity as well, a sense of belonging to a global culture. The proliferation of social media since Arnett’s article was published in 2002 has made global culture even more readily accessible and more widely accessed by English speakers all over the world. A study conducted with 12-​year-​old students in Greece, where the researcher found that the learners used English extensively outside the classroom while surfing the Internet or playing online games, for example, evidences the above claim (Kordia, 2019). It stands to reason, therefore, to assume that knowledge of at least segments of global culture can provide bearings in reference to which ELF interlocutors can create those contextual connections that make mutual understanding in ELF communication possible. In the following example, the shared knowledge of a particular segment of global culture enabled the speaker to convey a seemingly complex message in an ELF interaction. A Hungarian tourist with very limited English had to tell an Egyptian doctor that his friend had kidney stones. He first told the doctor the name of Mick Jagger and then that of the Rolling Stones. When the doctor nodded, indicating understanding, the tourist pointed to his kidneys. With very few words and the relevant context activated, he managed to communicate his intention successfully (Illés, 2012). However, given the vastness of what global culture entails, the Hungarian tourist had to choose from

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several assumptions with regard to the possible schematic common ground whereby the doctor’s age –​and their assumed knowledge of pop music –​may have come into play as a relevant feature of the situation. There is knowledge shared by those ELF speakers who belong to particular communities of practice (CoP) that often function in English and on the Internet. Examples of CoPs are varied and include communities from a group of people working on a project to sharing lunchtime discussions (Wenger, n.d.). Rather than representing a geographically bound community, such as a speech community, CoPs centre around what their members do together, their shared practice and joint enterprises that are continuously negotiated by the members. CoPs also have “shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artifacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time” (Wenger, n.d.). This shared repertoire contains the norms of engagement and shared ideational schemata that comprise members’ contexts and serve as the continuously co-​constructed common ground in their communication. Other sites of ELF communication are much less bound and correspond more to what Mauranen (2018) describes as “ELF as a whole”: [A]‌diffuse language community […], one where multiple sources of input prevail, which consists of many kinds of speakers with varying language identities and social ties and comparatively little agreement on what is shared in the language or the community. (p. 11) In this sense, ELF speakers function in a contact zone (Pratt, 1991) where different languages, cultures and individuals meet. Interestingly, therefore, what ELF interlocutors can take for granted is the multifariousness they encounter whenever they engage in ELF communication. In this respect, in ELF language use, diversity represents the norm (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018) and, in fact, this is what all ELF users know or come to know. ELF users’ interpersonal schemata thus incorporate customary ways of conducting ELF interaction, which include readiness for diversity, tolerance of ambiguity, “the sensitivity to contextual expectations and the ability to deploy appropriate resources that constitute competences needed for mobile users of English in contact zones today” (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018). In addition to readiness for diversity and the unexpected, the knowledge that ELF speakers share with ELF and, in fact, with all other users is that utterances are made with intentions in mind and that the hearer’s task is to uncover the illocutionary force of utterances. What is specific to ELF speakers, however, is the awareness of the fact that, due to the cultural and individual diversity of ELF users’ linguistic and schematic backgrounds, the customary and accepted ways of realising speech acts represent a wide

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variety. The varying cultural and individual backgrounds can thus affect, among others, the choice and the content as well as the linguistic realisation of speech acts (Bardovi-​Harlig, 2001). As ELF research has found, the variability of participant constellations and the diversity of ELF communication (Hülmbauer, 2009) require a more extensive use of meaning negotiation than situations where the interlocutors share local linguistic and schematic knowledge. The example of the Hungarian tourist in Egypt is a point in case. What would have taken one sentence had the Hungarian been on home ground included at least three exchanges, the constant checking of understanding and the use of paralinguistic features in the ELF situation in Egypt, evidencing what Firth (2009) calls “the resourcefulness of ELF interactants” (p. 155). Because of the smaller linguistic and schematic common ground between the Hungarian tourist and the doctor, the tourist had to search for a schema in the global cultural knowledge that they assumed to be shared and relevant to both them and the doctor. In so doing, the tourist acted on the metapresupposition of relevance (Roberts, 2014) that all language users apply when creating the pragmatic link with their interlocutors. Given the smaller selection of potentially pertinent schemata between ELF speakers, relevance often has to be negotiated and, therefore, be more intensively exploited. The example highlights further issues. The first is that ELF interlocutors concentrate on the process of communication and the successful completion of the interaction rather than on the way they speak (Mustajoki, 2017). They pay attention to “the ‘task-​on-​target’, rather than ‘(standard) linguistic-​ form-​as-​target’” (Firth, 2009, p. 155) as the title of Hülmbauer’s (2009) article also indicates: “We don’t take the right way. We just take the way that we think you will understand” (p. 323). The second is that the few linguistic and schematic reference points interlocutors share and the unpredictability of how the ELF interaction will evolve as well as the subsequent focus on the process of meaning making necessitate the increased exploitation of ELF interlocutors’ capability so that they can “respond strategically to unexpected norms and to collaboratively generate meanings out of diverse resources” (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018, p. 296). ELF use with its focus on the process of meaning making thus brings capability within context to the fore. The enhanced exploitation of capability then gives interpretative procedures such as Grice’s Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) a more substantial role in ELF meaning making than in other types of communicative situations. But since ELF users are bilingual or multilingual, it can be assumed that they are more experienced than their monolingual counterparts in how to exploit their schemata and capability in various and often unpredictable speech events. This experience of frequent and intensive procedural work then keeps the system in motion which, in turn, makes multilinguals’ schemata more versatile, elaborate and interconnected than those of monolinguals.

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To summarise, the context of situation (Firth, 1957) in ELF comprises the ELF speaker’s schema, which has been deemed relevant to the hearer and assumed to be constituting shared knowledge at a particular stage of the interaction. Because the common ground of shared knowledge between the interlocutors is smaller, finding the schema that can provide the suitable contextual connection is often laborious. As a result, there is an increased need for the exploitation of capability and recipient design, including accommodation strategies, in ELF communication. Context in ELF use consists of a series of one-​off local contexts  –​that is, particular configurations at particular stages of the interaction  –​which are modified by the contribution of the hearer. Consequently, context in ELF is an emergent and highly fluid notion that undergoes constant change within an interaction. It must be noted that, as has been indicated earlier (Chapters 3 and 4), context from the emic perspective taken in this analysis is a dynamic phenomenon, regardless of the type of language use. What makes ELF context different is the higher degree of dynamism. Emphasising the fleetingness of communal knowledge, Kimura and Canagarajah (2018) refer to “sedimentation of certain resources and formations of CoP” (p. 301, my emphasis). As has been outlined above, the resources in CoP include the constantly evolving linguistic and schematic norms and conventions of CoPs. Because sedimentation in the case of CoPs implies the temporary stability of schemata, it seems to roughly correspond to what is called “goodness-​ of-​ fit” (Rumelhart, Smolensky, Clelland, & Hinton, 1986, p. 15) in PDP (connectionist) models (see Chapter 2). As a consequence, the notion of sedimentation can be applied to description of the temporary state into which schemata settle over time. Interestingly, the use of the word sedimentation rekindles the association with Heraclitus’s notion of phanta rei (everything flows) describing the state of flux as Heraclitus’s adage of ‘No-​one ever steps in the same river twice’ aptly describes the fluidity and variability of both ELF communication and context. The diversity of ELF speakers’ contexts which –​apart from shared cultural schemata, incorporate individual and idiosyncratic components as well as the fortuitous features arising from the extensive negotiation of meaning –​ result in the complex and dynamic nature of the notion, which does not allow for a componential analysis. It, rather, requires a complexity approach, as has already been suggested in relation to ELF mainly as a linguistic system (Baird, Baker, & Kitazawa, 2014). The reason for this is that context, and ELF context in particular, displays features of a complex adaptive system (CAS) in the same way as language (Larsen-​Freeman, 2012). When checked against Larsen-​Freeman’s (2012) list of general principles of CAS, context and especially ELF context, conforms to many of these principles. For example, context represents an open and dynamic system, constituting many elements that interact both with each other and their environment, the latter

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also being a complex system. Similarly to CAS, change is inherent in context, with “the strength of interactions chang[ing] over time” (p. 205). CAS and context adapt themselves to changing and novel environments, which makes complexity creative (Larsen-​Freeman, 2012). It must be noted, however, that complexity theory is a metatheory with a need to be combined with “more specialized theories” (Larsen-​Freeman, 2018, p. 51). An example of the integration of complexity theory with other theories in a particular field is the theory of Directed Motivational Currents (Dörnyei & Muir, 2013), which is a motivational construct that integrates theoretical strands, including (among others and alongside dynamic systems theory) goal-​setting, flow and self-​determination theories. In the case of context, it seems that theories that take an emic perspective and emphasise the dynamicity and adaptiveness of context could be considered as components for a CAS theory of context. In this book, such theories have been Relevance Theory, Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Widdowson’s view of context (see Chapter 3). The question of how the above-​mentioned three combine with complexity and whether there are other theories that pertain, can be the subject of future research. Right now, however, our attention shifts back to language pedagogy, more precisely, to the development of a context-​related and ELF-​informed language pedagogy.

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Ferguson, G. (2012). The practice of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 177–​180. Firth, A. (2009). The lingua franca factor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 147–​170. Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics. 1934–​ 1951. London, England:  Oxford University Press. García, O. (2009). Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century. In A. Mohanty, M. Panda, R. Phillipson, & T. Skutnabb-​Kangas (Eds.), Multilingual education for social justice: Globalising the local (pp. 128–​145). New Delhi, India: Orient Blackswan. García, O. (2019) Translanguaging:  A coda to the code? Classroom Discourse, 10(3–4), 369–373. Giles, H., & Coupland, N. (1991). Language:  Contexts and consequences. Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–​58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind: Intercultural communication and its importance for survival (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-​Hill. Hülmbauer, C. (2009). “We don’t take the right way. We just take the way that we think you will understand” –​The shifting relationship between correctness and effectiveness in ELF. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings (pp. 323–​347). Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars. Illés, É. (2012). Learner autonomy revisited. ELT Journal, 66(4), 505–​513. Jenkins, J. (2009). English as a lingua franca:  Interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes, 28(2), 200–​207. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a lingua franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3),  49–​85. Jenkins, J., Cogo, A., & Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), 281–​315. Kimura, D., & Canagarajah, S. (2018). Translingual practice and ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 295–​305). London, England, and New York, NY: Routledge. Kohn, K. (2019). Towards the reconciliation of ELF and EFL: Theoretical issues and pedagogical challenges, In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 32–​49). Bristol, England, and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Kordia, S. (2019). ELF-​aware teaching in practice: A teacher’s perspective. In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 53–​ 71). Bristol, England, and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Larsen-​Freeman, D. (2012). Complex, dynamic systems:  A new transdisciplinary theme for applied linguistics? Language Teaching, 45(2), 202–​214. Larsen-​Freeman, D. (2018). Complexity and ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 51–​59). London, England, and New York, NY: Routledge. Mauranen, A. (2009). Chunking ELF:  Expressions for managing interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(2), 217–​233. Mauranen, A. (2018). Conceptualising ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 7–​24). London, England, and New York, NY: Routledge.

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Mustajoki, A. (2017). Why is miscommunication more common in everyday life than in lingua franca conversation? In I. Kecskés & S. Assimakopoulos (Eds.), Current issues in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 55–​74). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Pölzl, U., & Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: The “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177, 151–​176. Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 33–​40. Retrieved from http://​l-​adam-​mekler.com/​pratt_​contact_​zone.pdf Roberts, C. (2004). Context in dynamic interpretation. In L. R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 197–​220). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Rumelhart, D. E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J. L., & Hinton, G. E. (1986). Schemata and sequential thought processes in PDP models. In J. L. McClelland, D. E. Rumelhart, & PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing vol. 2: Psychological and biological models (pp. 7–​57). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24(1), 209–​239. Seidlhofer, B. (2009). Common ground and different realities: World Englishes and English as a lingua franca. World Englishes, 28, 236–​245. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2017). English as a lingua franca and multilingualism. In J. Cenoz, D. Gorter, & S. May (Eds.), Language awareness and multilingualism (3rd edn.) (pp. 193–​404). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Seidlhofer, B., & Widdowson, H. G. (2003). House work and student work: A study in cross-​cultural understanding. In N. Baumgarten, C. Böttger, M. Motz, & J. Probst (Eds.), Übersetzen, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Spracherwerb und Sprachvermittlung  –​das Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Festschrift für Juliane House zum 60. Geburtstag (pp. 115–​127). Bochum, Germany: AKS-​Verlag. Sewell, A. (2013). English as a lingua franca: Ontology and ideology. ELT Journal, 67(1),  3–​10. Sharifian, F. (2009). Cultural conceptualisations in English as an international language. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues (pp. 242–​253). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. Wenger, E. (n.d.). Communities of practice:  Learning as a social system. Retrieved from https://​thesystemsthinker.com/​communities-​of-​practice-​learning-​as-​a-​ social-​system/​. Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a lingua franca, 4(2), 359–​372.

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7 TOWARDS AN ELF-​INFORMED APPROACH TO ELT

ELF Context and Its Implications for ELT As in other types of language use, when ELF users engage in communication, they do it in and on their own terms. They activate their schemata containing knowledge of the world at all levels –​that is, apart from shared universal and cultural cognitive components, their schemata also comprise individual and idiosyncratic features. What distinguishes ELF users from other communicators is that ELF speakers are bilingual or multilingual and have the experience of applying their schematic knowledge by utilising interpretative procedures in order to make meaning in the use of at least two languages. Another distinctive feature of ELF speakers is that they make more extensive use of their strategic ability, that is, their capability of “realizing the potential for meaning making that is inherent in the language” (Seidlhofer, 2012, p.  81). In terms of context, it is capability that enables the user to identify, select and adjust schemata deemed to pertain to a particular situation and to realise linguistic behaviour. The need for the increased application of capability stems from the relative unpredictability that ELF interactions present as a consequence of the varied linguacultural backgrounds of ELF speakers and the subsequent smaller area of the knowledge they share with other ELF interlocutors. The smaller linguistic and schematic common ground between ELF interlocutors requires recipient design in that special attention needs to be paid to the identification of the hearer’s relevant schemata, which often requires increased negotiation of meaning and, with it, as has been pointed out above, the extensive engagement of capability. Thus, in ELF communication, interpretative procedures, including the metapresupposition of relevance (Roberts, 2004),

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the link created between the interlocutors’ schemata and Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP), play an important role in achieving mutual understanding. Given the diversity of ELF speakers, what they consider as accepted behaviour may often vary considerably and, therefore, the norms of an interaction are negotiated and evolve as the interlocutors bring their norms into alignment with those of the other party. During the negotiation of meaning, they “are developing their own discourse strategies, speech act modifications, genres and communicative styles in their use of ELF” (House, 2010, p. 365) as and how the particular interaction requires. The dynamic process of adapting and adjusting schemata in ELF interaction necessitates as well as creates flexible schemata that enable ELF speakers to cope with other undefined eventualities of ELF communication. To ensure felicitous ELF communication, EFL speakers also have to possess certain characteristics, attitudes and skills: Successful interaction between speakers of different linguacultural backgrounds depends on their drive and ability to negotiate an intercultural common ground for coping with cognitive, emotional and behavioural divergences. Empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, and behavioural flexibility are of key importance as well as linguistic-​communicative strategies of various kinds from avoiding and handling misunderstandings to mutual accommodation, meaning negotiation and letting it pass. (Kohn, 2019, p. 42) The task of language pedagogy is to create conditions in the classroom that make learners use the target language (TL) in the way they do when they act as ELF users outside the school walls. Learners of English also have to be made aware of the fact that diversity is the norm in ELF communication (Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018), and that the variety and variability of ELF communication presents continuous problem-​solving in the meaning-​ making process. ELF-​informed language pedagogy, therefore, needs to take a problem-​oriented approach and design tasks that make learners engage in interpretative procedures in a principled manner (Widdowson, 1984). To summarise, in terms of context, an ELF-​informed pedagogical design has to engage learners on their individual terms and make extensive use of their capability by involving them in interactional and interpretative problem-​ solving to ensure that their schemata remain flexible in readiness for the next ELF interactions. In what follows, a selection of pedagogical proposals presented by ELF researchers will be discussed to establish what and how these proposals contribute to the development of an English teaching approach that makes it possible to better meet the challenges the use and teaching of English as a

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lingua franca nowadays present. In order to explore their pedagogic relevance, the following section includes not only an overview of the proposals but their appraisal in relation to their conceptions of context and ELF.

Proposals for ELF-​Informed Language Pedagogy There are contributions in the ELF literature which, despite references to the classroom and teaching in their titles (e.g., English as a lingua franca from classroom to classroom; Current perspectives on teaching World Englishes and English as a lingua franca), have issues relating to ELF and its research and add little regarding the pedagogical implementation of ELF (Jenkins, 2006, 2012). Since ELF research has received its main impetus from the recognition of the paradox that while non-​native speakers (NNS) constitute the majority of English users, in ELT it is still native speaker (NS) use that functions as the model and benchmark of what is correct and appropriate (Seidlhofer, 2001). The discrepancy between the kind of communication that is pursued in the ELT classroom and the reality of ELF use is highlighted in Figure 7.1 below. The native-​ speaker oriented representation of communication and the dominance of NS norms and targets in ELT have become untenable partly due to the sociocultural reality of the dominant ELF use. One of the reasons for this is that such a stance privileges the language and culture of

Native Speaker Oriented Communication in ELT Non-native speakers

+

Idealised native speaker

target language; target culture

Variety of languages and cultures

ELF-Oriented Communication Non-native speakers Variety of languages and cultures FIGURE  7.1  

+

Native and non-native speakers Variety of languages and cultures

The Difference Between ELF Communication and Native Speaker Oriented Communication in ELT (based on Illés, 2011).

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a small –​and, in fact, idealised –​minority of English speakers. In addition, an NS-​dominated ELT presents English as a singular and monolithic language with a culture belonging to a particular nation. However, if the goal is to prepare learners for successful communication in ELF speech events and for “making themselves comprehensible in as many different situations and with as many different types of NNSs as possible” (Sifakis, 2006, p. 157), the idea of the idealised native speaker as the target and model has to be abandoned in ELT (Kirkpatrick, 2014). In ELF use, the norms are negotiated rather than provided by native speakers in the Inner Circle, which makes complying with native speaker norms irrelevant in ELF communication and in the teaching of English with an ELF orientation (Azuaga & Cavalheiro, 2015; Illés, 2011; Widdowson, 2012). Honna (2012) argues the case fairly forcefully: “Actually, there is an increasing degree of awareness among some ELT specialists now in Japan that the traditional American English Speaker model is an unrealistic, unattainable, and undesirable program” (pp. 192–​193). Breaking away from NS norms has become the cornerstone of Dewey’s (2012) post-​normative approach, which intends to empower teachers by promoting the critical appraisal of the “singularity of language models and norms” (p. 161) and the development of pluralistic alternative models and “a flexible view of linguistic norms” (Galloway, 2018, p. 476). Consequently, teachers should spend less time on NS English and instead expose students to the variety of ways in which English is used all over the world (Dewey, 2012). So rather than having NSs in teaching materials, teachers should use resources that feature non-​native ELF speakers (Galloway, 2018; Kordia, 2019) in order to reflect the reality of the current use of English, and to counteract the ethnocentred and linguacentred approach of textbooks (Guerra & Cavalheiro, 2019). The criteria for ELF-​awareness in textbooks therefore include, among others, the presence of ELF situations and speakers, different varieties of English in listening tasks and activities promoting communication strategies (Vettorel, 2018). It has also been suggested that teachers should supplement textbooks with materials from the Internet, for example, movies, interviews with famous non-​native English speakers, online archives such as the Vienna-​Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and Web 2.0 tools (Guerra, & Cavalheiro, 2019). Galloway argues that presenting “real-​life ELF exchanges” (Galloway, 2018, p. 476) provides authentic input (Kordia, 2019), which motivates learners and raises their awareness of the characteristics and distinctiveness of ELF communication (Galloway, 2018). Materials containing ELF exchanges can thus be used for raising awareness of accommodation and mediation strategies as well as for practising them (Lopriore, 2018). Consulting and using corpora has been suggested for the teaching of writing in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) module (Flowerdew, 2015), for example. In the ESP module, samples from academic

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corpora provide a selection of linguistic realisations of moves within a particular genre to make learners recognise what contributed to the rhetorical effectiveness of ELF features in the sample texts. Corpora such as VOICE, English as a Lingua Franca in Academic settings (ELFA) and the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) have been put forward as sources for materials writers who wish to make use of corpus data (Galloway, 2018). The shift of focus from the NS on to the NNS has formed the basic tenet of attempts to develop ELT approaches that are more in line with the current use of English. Kirkpatrick (2014) formulated six general principles of “the Lingua Franca Approach” (p. 25) for the teaching of English in East and Southeast Asia, four of which entail replacing NSs with NNSs as the linguistic and cultural target, and NNS teachers representing good role and linguistic models for their students. Kirkpatrick’s fourth principle, which claims that ELF environments are excellent venues for learning English, contradicts the widespread but somewhat misguided belief that in order to learn English, one has to spend time in an Inner Circle country where English is spoken as a native language. This idea features elsewhere, too, albeit in slightly different form. Hino and Oda (2015) emphasise the importance of participating in English as an international language (EIL) communities that serve as venues of authentic EIL communication. Similarly to Kirkpatrick’s (2014) principles, a move from NSs to NNSs and ELF users characterises Galloway and Rose’s (2015) Global Englishes language teaching scheme, where NNSs appear alongside NSs as target interlocutors and owners of English. However, as role models and teachers, NSs are replaced with NNSs and ELF speakers, and native English norms give way to diversity and flexibility (Galloway, 2018; Galloway & Rose, 2015). Other suggestions regarding the incorporation of an ELF perspective into ELT include Sifakis and Bayyurt’s (2018) notion of ELF-​aware teaching, which is defined as follows: We define ELF-​aware teaching as the process of engaging with ELF research and developing one’s own understanding of the ways in which it can be integrated in one’s classroom context, through a continuous process of critical reflection, design, implementation and evaluation of instructional activities that reflect and localize one’s interpretation of the ELF construct. (p. 459) ELF-​aware teaching, which has been part of a transformative ELF-​aware teacher-​education programme in Greece and Turkey, sets out to “understand and change the individual” (Sifakis, 2014, p.  326) by transforming their deep-​rooted beliefs about language, teaching and communication through critical self-​reflection (Bayyurt & Sifakis, 2015, 2017; Sifakis, 2014; Sifakis &

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Bayyurt, 2015). The teacher education programme is implemented at three levels, the first of which is familiarising teachers with the theoretical aspects of ELF. This is followed by the application of ELF theory and research in the preparation of lesson plans and activities, with the last stage including the teachers’ critical reflection and evaluation of their ELF-​aware lessons and activities (Bayyurt & Sifakis, 2015). The programme intends to enable and empower teachers who, having completed the programme, can then act under their own steam when implementing ELF in their particular teaching contexts. The findings of the evaluation of the programme have revealed that participants have indeed changed their attitude towards errors and error correction (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015). But, as has been noted (Illés, 2016), a more accepting approach to errors has been advocated by Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as well:  “Errors are tolerated and seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills” (Larsen-​ Freeman, 2000, p. 127). There does not seem to be much novelty in terms of the suggested components of ELF-​aware lessons either (Sifakis, 2014), as the suggested primacy of speaking and fluency and the use of role-​play feature in CLT as well (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). This direct route from the research of ELF use to classroom practice, where the onus is on the teachers who are expected to develop both the theory and practice of ELF-​aware teaching, features in Dewey’s (2012) embryonic post-​normative approach, whose ultimate aim is to enable practitioners “to construct classroom-​oriented theories of language and communication” and “generate location-​specific, classroom-​oriented innovative language models” (p. 166). In addition, teachers get directly involved in the empirical research serving the development of the approach. A  common feature of Dewey’s (2012) and Bayyurt and Sifakis’s (e.g., 2018) ELF-​aware teaching is that the applied linguists do not really mediate between research and its application in teaching practice. Without the assistance of applied linguists, it is the teachers who need to work out which insights of ELF research are relevant and can provide the basis for the formation of pedagogic principles that can enable them to make informed decisions in their classroom practice. In the absence of such connection between research and pedagogy, it is no surprise that teachers resort to what they are already familiar with –​that is, the CLT arsenal –​when they seek practical solutions for their classrooms in the transformative ELF-​aware teacher-​education programme. However, in the ELF literature there have been attempts to bridge the gap between the theory of ELF and the adoption of an ELF-​informed English language teaching practice. A case in point is Kiczkowiak and Lowe’s book (2018), which sets out to guide teachers on a journey from EFL to ELF. The journey begins with a description of ELF and is followed by the development of an ELF mindset for teachers, and it ends with activities whose aim is to raise students’ awareness about English and ELF in particular. In a

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similar vein, the activities for learners use present ELF-​related issues as content, and the book offers tasks that explicitly focus on developing communication strategies and intercultural competence. In fact, raising awareness of the particular features of ELF communication, such as accommodation strategies or encouraging learning about issues related to the global and ELF use of English in the language classroom is prevalent in the ELF literature. As Jenkins (2006) put it: “Teachers and their learners, it is widely agreed, need to learn not (a variety of) English, but about Englishes, their similarities and differences, issues involved in intelligibility, the strong link between language and identity, and so on” (p.  173). For raising teachers’ and learners’ awareness of the global use and diversity of English, Dewey (2012), for instance, suggests “critical classroom discussions” together with the “sociocultural context in which English(es) will be used” (p. 163). In a concrete example of teaching 12-​year-​old students, class discussion about ELF communication and its features comprised the pre-​listening stage of a listening activity that was based on a video interview with two ELF speakers. In the discussion, the learners drew on their own experiences as users of English with native as well as non-​native speakers (Kordia, 2019). Given the important role accommodation and other strategies play in the negotiation of meaning in ELF interactions, it has been argued that there should be more emphasis on communicative strategies (Dewey, 2012) or even explicit focus on ELF and intercultural communication strategies (Lopriore & Vettorel, 2015). Arguing along similar lines, Kirkpatrick (2007) advocates that students should be taught communicative strategies to enable them to successfully participate in intercultural communication. Another proposal for an ELF-​informed approach to ELT has been put forward by Wen (2012). This pedagogical framework is highly comprehensive in scope in that it incorporates the linguistic, cultural and pragmatic aspects of the English language and its use, outlining at each level what learners should be taught and what they are expected to achieve. The linguistic component includes NS and NNS varieties as well as localised features of English. By accepting NS varieties as part of the linguistic content, the aim has been to take a balanced view of ELF and consider both NS and NNS varieties as relevant to ELF pedagogy. This, in fact, reflects the reality of EFL use and the view taken by ELF researchers, too, who do not exclude NSs (Jenkins, 2007). Similarly, the cultural element contains the target language cultures, NNS cultures and the learners’ own culture. The third, pragmatics component, comprises NS and NNS communication rules, and universal rules such as Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP). This is, of course, a brief and rough draft of a planned approach that needs much fine-​tuning and clarification regarding, for instance, how and why the cultural component is separate from the pragmatic one. Apart from the inclusion of both NS and NNS elements in all three components of what Wen (2012) calls the “view about

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language” (p. 373) in the suggested comprehensive framework, the learners’ own culture and the localised variety of English also feature. The need to consider and relate to learners’ contexts, including their learning environment and native language, has been highlighted in relation to classroom practice and textbook production in other proposals for an ELF-​informed approach (Galloway, 2018; Lopriore & Vettorel, 2015). An example of a pedagogic programme specially designed with a particular group of students in mind is the Production-​Oriented Approach (POA) to teaching English to university students in China (Wen, 2018). The approach has been tailored to meet the students’ learning needs and to provide whole-​person education by promoting personal growth through the development of intercultural and critical thinking skills, and learner autonomy. The initial phase of the course aims to motivate students by presenting cognitively challenging “scenarios of to-​be-​finished tasks and how they plausibly might happen in the students’ future lives” (Wen, 2018, p. 533). An example of such a predicted event is when a Chinese student and a foreign teacher talk about art, and the Mona Lisa and Chinese paintings in particular. The scenario and the subsequent task make the students recognise gaps in their linguistic and schematic knowledge, and this spurs them to improve on the areas that have been identified when working with the scenario (Wen, 2018). While acknowledging the effectiveness of the POA in its particular context, it has been pointed out that the POA and mainstream Communicative Language Teaching share commonalities (Illés, 2018). The common features include the preparation of students for future language use and the textbook writers’ prediction of what future eventualities might prove problematic both linguistically and schematically for Chinese students. In addition, the scenarios and characters in the textbooks represent generalised hypotheses about what a foreign teacher and a Chinese student might know about European or Chinese art. In agreement with other researchers, Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2019) also argue against conformity to NS norms advocated by CLT. They offer an alternative approach that is closer to learners’ reality in that it views learners as people who already speak a language and also know how to engage pragmatically because of their experiences of the use of L1. What learners do not know is how different this engagement and meaning construction is when they speak another language. Therefore, the suggestion is to create conditions of language use in the classroom where learners can exploit their previous experiences of how communication works (Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2019). Conflating language use and learning in this suggested approach is based on the tenet, also expounded by Larsen-​Freeman (2007) and Grundy (2007), that “learning and using are not consecutive but simultaneous processes” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 189). Engaged in use, learners create meaning “on and in their own terms and that in using it they develop the

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capability for further learning” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p.  189). Both Seidlhofer and Widdowson have been arguing for placing the emphasis on the primacy of the exploitation of capability in “use-​in-​order-​to-​learn” (Grundy, 2007, p.  11) and its development in the language classroom instead of the concern with identifying specific goals and preparing learners to cope with pre-​ defined tasks (Seidlhofer, 2012; Widdowson, 2003). With capability taking precedence, the focus shifts on to interpretative procedures, including Grice’s (1975) CP. Murray (2012), who also rejects conformity to NS norms and simplistic correspondences between form and function in CLT, argues for assisting learners in how to make choices during the negotiation of meaning in ELF interactions. Grice’s CP is proposed as a framework for employing deductive strategies that can raise learners’ awareness of what factors affect the way people express themselves in particular situations. In the classroom practice, questions based on the CP are discussed to sensitise learners to the problems they might encounter in ELF communication and also to raise awareness of the features that may become relevant in meaning making. The discussion questions include: What and how influences what people say and how they say it? Why the amount of what people say is important? Why people are indirect in their way of expression? Such questions highlight issues that may come up in communication as well as implicitly referring to the CP’s maxim of quantity (Murray, 2012). Grice’s CP has also suggested in broader terms and being put forward as one of the theories that can underlie an ELF-​informed pedagogy (Illés, 2011). The argument is that since the CP provides the guidelines for selecting the relevant features of a situation and make linguistic choices accordingly at various stages of the interaction, the CP presents communication as constant problem-​solving. Given the diversity and fluidity of ELF communication, it is this constant problem-​solving that ELF speakers do in ELF communication and, therefore, it is problem-​solving that an ELF-​informed pedagogy needs to promote in the classroom. The emphasis on capability and the CP necessarily implies that in the use-​in-​order-​to-​learn approach learners engage pragmatically, that is, by engaging their individual contexts in the meaning-​making process. This being the case, Seidlhofer (2011) argues as follows: What really matters is that the language should engage learners’ reality and activate the learning process. Any kind of language that is taught in order to achieve this effect is appropriate, and this will always be a matter of local decision. So what is crucial is not so much what language is presented as input but what learners make of it, and how they make use of it to develop the capability for languaging. (p. 198, my emphasis)

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Seidlhofer’s (2001) point above highlights the importance attached to the process of language learning through use that is realised by the contextual engagement of learners on a particular occasion in a particular educational setting. The focus on the learning process rather than the product of learning also carries the implication that in this approach the syllabus cannot be defined in terms of the specifics of the TL and its use that learners will have acquired by the end of the course. The development of the capability for languaging further accentuates the process-​orientedness in that “languaging emphasises language as activity rather than structure, and language use as situated practice” (Ritzau & Madsen, 2016, p. 308). For the practice of teaching English this, among others, entails that as long as the learners are involved in actual language use in the classroom, the choice of variety is, by and large, irrelevant. In line with this observation, Kohn (2016, 2018, 2019) contends that standard native speaker English (SNSE), the variety taught in ELT and questioned by ELF researchers, can serve as the linguistic input for preparing learners for ELF communication. Kohn (2018) argues that the cause of the conflict between the ELF and ELT camps is that both perceive SNSE in terms of normativity rather than as a means of expression. The difference is that ELF attaches a negative and ELT a positive value to SNSE. To reconcile the controversy, Kohn (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019) suggests the distinction of a strict and open orientation to SNSE in ELT. The strict orientation requires that learners adhere to SNSE norms as closely as possible, and any deviation from it is regarded as unsuccessful learning. This is a highly prescriptive approach, akin to “quasi-​behaviouristic position” (Kohn, 2019, p. 39). On the other hand, in the open orientation SNSE is seen as a means of expression and a flexible target language that allows learners to develop their own idiolect, which Kohn (2018) calls “MY English”. In creating MY English through language use, learners engage both individually and collaboratively with other users. While taking a social constructivist approach and encouraging learners to internalise and make English their own, Kohn (2019) also acknowledges the fact that “learners cannot but create their own NNS version of this model” (p. 39). In fact, ELF corpora and the extensive investigation of ELF speakers’ use of English provide strong evidence for this claim. In ELF pedagogy MY English also carries the implication that the output expectation should not be SNSE speakers but, as in the case of Japan, it should be “Japanese English speakers” (Honna & Takeshita, 2014, p. 70). The appropriation and learning of English and, in fact, the learning of anything (Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2019; Widdowson, 2003) necessarily entails relating the new language to something the learners already know, which is their L1. As a result, the teaching of English “cannot effectively be done without reference to the other languages, that guiding the development of bilinguals has to be attuned to the bilingualization process, and not by

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the imposition of an exclusively monolingual pedagogy” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 162). A bilingual or multilingual approach to the teaching of English is all the more relevant and necessary when preparing learners for the multilingual language use of ELF communication.

A Proposed ELF-​Informed Approach to ELT A closer look at the proposals outlined above reveals the contours of two different conceptions of context and, consequently, the shapes of two types of approaches to the teaching of English. There is agreement regarding the starting point, which is the irrelevance of NS linguistic and pragmatic norms for an ELF-​informed pedagogy and, therefore, the abandonment of NS competence as the objective of learning English. However, the path taken from here splits into two separate directions. There are proposals for ELF-​informed pedagogy that dispose of the idealised native speaker as the model, target and norm provider, and put the focus on ELF users and learners instead. In other words, they replace NSs with NNSs as the linguistic and cultural target (Galloway & Rose, 2015; Kirkpatrick, 2014). One of the consequences of NNSs taking precedence over NSs is that rather than exposing learners to NS interactions as examples of authentic and appropriate target language communication, researchers encourage teachers to expose learners to ELF use and utilise resources that feature ELF speakers using English or interacting with each other (e.g., Dewey, 2012). Materials presenting ELF communication include, among others, Internet sources and corpora, which showcase the specific features of ELF communication and can be used for modelling or awareness raising. In the Production-​Oriented Approach in China (Wen, 2018) or the framework suggested by Wen (2012), on the other hand, the NS has been supplanted with the learner whose particular linguistic and cultural background and needs define the approach taken to the teaching of English. In these proposals, replacing the NS with the ELF user has indeed stripped ELT of normativity but, in terms of context, the conceptualisation is not very different from that of native-​speaker oriented teaching of English. The main reason for this is that in these proposals learners do not engage their own context for making sense of the discourse process. When, for example, observing ELF interactions and discussing the strategies other ELF users employ in their negotiation of meaning on a particular occasion, the observer learners are outsiders to the interaction they are watching, and it is not their context that is related to, and made pertinent by the insider participants. In addition, the purpose of the observation of ELF interaction is very different from that of the insiders, which necessarily affects the interpretation of the speech event. In fact, the learners’ position here is very similar to that of the analysts who, from their 3rd-​person perspective, determine the relevant

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features of situation and thus identify context in reference to their specific objectives (see Chapter 3). As in the case of the analysts, the meaning that the learners construct cannot be equated with the meaning the insider users make in their interaction. Even though the proposals discussed above do not promote normativity and with it the adoption of an alien context by the learner, they still bear a resemblance to the teaching of language for communication (TLfC) approach to which NS-​oriented language pedagogy also belongs (for details see Chapter 5). As has been discussed above, the most pertinent similarity the particular group of suggestions for ELF-​informed pedagogy shares with NS-​oriented CLT is the primacy given to outsider contexts, which is why learners do not engage as users with their own individual contexts and on their own terms. Another feature some of the proposals in this group share with TLfC is the preparation of learners for future use, which is one of the aims of POA, where the scenarios help students to cope with predicted future challenges (Wen, 2018). In order to do that, students have to adopt an imagined context rather than act on what constitutes their schemata and capability at the time of the completion of the task. The use of corpus data, on the other hand, presents the linguistic forms that were produced in the past by ELF speakers, but “not why they produced them and to what pragmatic ends and purposes” (Widdowson, 2012, p. 14). With the outsider ELF speakers taking primacy, authenticity is related to the outsider language user as in the case of NSs. In the proposals, language use and language produced by ELF speakers are considered authentic, as the following example demonstrates: “[A]uthenticity, referring, in my view, to the extent to which spontaneous ELF discourse was displayed in the videos, demonstrating the significance of intelligibility and the use of a wide range of negotiation strategies (e.g., repetition)” (Kordia, 2019, p.  63). As a result, authentic materials are those that feature ELF users in actual instances of communication (Lopriore, 2018). With learners positioned outside the authentic, in this ELF-​informed approach, the exposure to recordings of ELF communication and raising learners’ awareness of the peculiarities of ELF interaction focuses on the development of interpersonal schemata, that is, the knowledge of how ELF users interact with each other, with little attention paid to engaging learners’ capability. In addition, there have been questions regarding the effectiveness of awareness raising in teacher education (Illés, 2016; Widdowson, 2015), which will need to be addressed by ELF research in reference to the practice of teaching as well. Although in the Production-​Oriented Approach it is not the ELF user in relation to whom authenticity is defined, the context intended to be engaged is the projected and generalised reality of a very large group of students as predicted by the group of experts who design the scenarios and the teaching materials. As a result, the students are to use language not on their but on the

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experts’ terms. In fact, this is a criticism that Schaller-​Schwaner (2018) levels against POA, where she misses the students’ individual voice and asks: “If English is to be used for real messages, shouldn’t these be the learners’ own?” (p.  250). It comes as no surprise then that researchers, teacher educators and teachers resort to TLfC methodology when they take an approach that replaces NSs with ELF users or learners. One such traditional CLT method is the use of role-​play (Sifakis, 2014; Wen, 2018), which requires that the learners take on features and intentions that are not the learners’ own, as Ur’s (1996) definition of role-play highlights it:  “[A]‌ll sorts of activities where learners imagine themselves in a situation outside the classroom [...], sometimes playing the role of someone other than themselves, and using language appropriate to this new context” (p. 131). However, in the proposals for ELF-​informed pedagogy there are those that take the insider participants’ perspective on context (see Chapter 3)  and aim to engage learners’ context by activating their individual schemata and capability, thus allowing learners to function as language users, acting in and on their own terms when learning the language (Seidlhofer, 2011; Seidlhofer, 2012; Seidlhofer & Widdowson, 2019; Widdowson, 2003). Language learning is thus conflated with language use, and teaching the language is about presenting learners with interpretative problems that they encounter in language use. In this use-​ in-​ order-​ to-​ learn (Grundy, 2007) approach, learners draw on their existing linguistic knowledge of at least one language and their interpersonal schemata of how the known language is customarily used in a community. Learning English is, therefore, a process of bilingualisation where learners are encouraged to make English their own (Kohn, 2015). In this respect, the kind of approach to ELF-​informed pedagogy which has been suggested mainly by Seidlhofer and Widdowson, corresponds to what has been referred to as the teaching language as communication (TLaC) (see Chapter 5). The term TLaC highlights the fact that this approach is concerned with the here and now of communication in the classroom rather than focusing on predicted future interactions in the target language. TLaC does not impose pre-​determined outsider user context on learners. Instead, learners are encouraged to work out relevance and identify pertinent features of a situation under their own steam. In so doing, they are required to continuously adapt and modify their existing schemata through the strategic use of capability. The focus is, therefore, on the meaning-​making process, on how learners work out the norms of correctness and appropriateness online in cooperation with other speakers in order to achieve mutual understanding. This then requires making intensive use of capability and, with it, the employment of interpretative procedures, including Grice’s (1975) CP. Given the primacy of learner context, authenticity in TLaC is related to the learner as language user’s context and is a matter of “presenting language that learners can authenticate for themselves” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 115).

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When considering the particular characteristics of context in ELF communication, such as the extensive exploitation of capability and the flexibility and dynamism of schemata that enable ELF users to respond to the constantly changing requirements of ELF interactions, of the two approaches offered in ELF research, it is TLaC that appears to fit the bill better. In other words, ELF-​informed pedagogy takes the shape of TLaC, and the two overlap. The reason for this is the emphasis on the extensive utilisation of capability and the view of communication as a constant problem-​ solving exercise where the learners’ schemata undergo continuous change. This keeps their schemata malleable and ready to cope with the unpredictability and diversity of ELF communication. In fact, the suitability of the TLaC approach for ELF-​informed language pedagogy is no coincidence in that it is Widdowson (1978) who has developed TLaC and has always understood CLT in TLaC terms. Interestingly, the connection between ELF and TLaC has been made by Schaller-​Schwaner (2018), albeit less explicitly, in her reflections on POA: While classrooms are absolutely part of the real world and learning is an authentic context of language use, language learning can be motivated by moving beyond rehearsal for the future and bringing encounters with people who do not share the same L1 into the present. This seems to be the threshold that learners need to cross to become users of an additional language and make it their own for their own authentic purposes. English as a lingua franca encounters can pave the way for this. (p. 251) In order for ELF-​informed TLaC to create conditions of language use, the tasks and activities employed have to be such that they activate learners’ context by presenting constant problem-​solving and in this way challenge learners’ schemata so that they undergo adjustment and modification at each stage of the interaction. The question then is:  How such conditions for learning can be set up in classrooms where the teacher and the learners share the same linguistic and cultural background. In other words: How can the experience of coping with diversity and otherness be gained in a classroom that lacks the degree of variety that ELF communication represents. Since TLaC entails the process of learners’ contextual involvement in online meaning making in the classroom, TLaC cannot be defined in reference to the product, that is, in terms of the kind of TL and language use that complies with NS or other prescribed norms, as is the case in TLfC. An ELF-​informed TLaC approach therefore necessarily puts the focus on how language should be taught rather than on what language and language use should be achieved as a result of instruction. The task of the applied linguist

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is then to propose methodology and areas within methodology that make the teaching of language as language use possible in the classroom. Widdowson (1978), who introduced TLaC, suggested the teaching of language through other subjects where the TL serves not as an end but as a means for cognitive development in the same way as it is done in the teaching of subjects in the learners’ L1. In addition, teaching the TL through other subjects creates conditions of genuine language use where the learners act as users, occupying a position very similar to learners becoming users in ELF situations outside the language classroom. Widdowson’s (1978) proposal has been implemented in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which increasingly features in ELF research as well (e.g., Dalton-​ Puffer & Smit, 2016; Kohn, 2015; Lopriore, 2018). Another proposal for TLaC methodology has been the exploitation of the classroom as the location for authentic communication between students, and students and teachers (Illés, 2001; Illés & Akcan, 2017; also see Schaller-​Schwaner, 2018 above and Chapter 5). The claim is that there is no reason why classroom communication with its norms and continuous negotiation of meaning should not be considered as a type of what is often called “real-​life” language use. Practical suggestions have also been put forward with regard to how to make use of off-​task conversations and allow learners to unleash their creativity regardless of their level of proficiency (Illés & Akcan, 2017; for details, see Chapter 5). Two further areas have been put forward, specifically with regard to ELF: the teaching of literature and translation (Illés, 2011, Seidlhofer, 2011; Widdowson, 2003). Both, when applied with the purpose of inducing learners’ individual contextual involvement, can provide suitable conditions for learners to engage on their own terms and enter and attempt to understand the alien world of other English speakers. In the ELF literature, there has been mention of activities and projects that can also form part of an ELF-​informed TLaC methodology. The next chapter will discuss them in detail, together with CLIL and the teaching of literature and translation.

References Azuaga, L., & Cavalheiro, L. (2015). Bringing new ELT policies and ELF to teacher training courses. In Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (Eds.), Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca (pp. 103–​120). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Bayyurt, Y., & Sifakis, N. (2015). ELF-​aware in-​service teacher education: A transformative perspective. In H. Bowles & A. Cogo (Eds.), International perspectives on English as a lingua franca:  Pedagogical insights (pp. 117–​135). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Bayyurt, Y., & Sifakis, N. (2017). Foundations of an EIL-​aware teacher education. In A. Matsuda (Ed.), Preparing teachers to teach English as an international language (pp. 3–​18). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

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Dalton-​Puffer, C., & Smit, U. (2016). Content and language integrated learning and ELF. In M-​ L. Pitzl & R. Osimk-​ Teasdale (Eds.), English as a lingua franca: Perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer (pp. 235–​244). Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. Dewey, M. (2012). Towards a post-​normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 141–​170. Flowerdew, L. J. (2015). Adjusting pedagogically to the ELF world: An ESP perspective. In Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (Eds.), Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca (pp. 13–​34). Berlin and Munich, Germany and Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton. Galloway, N. (2018). ELF and ELT teaching materials. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 468–​480). London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Galloway, N., & Rose, H. (2015). Introducing Global Englishes. Abingdon, England: Routledge. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–​58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Grundy, P. (2007). Language evolution, pragmatic inference, and the use of English as a lingua franca. In I. Kecskés & L. R. Horn (Eds). Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and intercultural aspects (pp. 219–​256). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. Guerra, L., & Cavalheiro, L. (2019). When the textbook is not enough:  How to shape an ELF classroom? In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 117–​131). Bristol, England and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Hino, N., & Oda, S. (2015). Integrated practice in teaching English as an international language (IPTEIL):  A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan. In Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (Eds.), Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca (pp. 35–​50). Berlin and Munich, Germany and Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton. Honna, N. (2012). The pedagogical implications of English as a multicultural lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 191–​197. Honna, N., & Takeshita, Y. (2014). English as an international language and three challenging issues in English language teaching in Japan. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (Eds.), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers, and students (pp. 65–​77). Cham, Germany: Springer. House, J. (2010). The pragmatics of English as a lingua franca. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 363–​387). Berlin, Germany and New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter. Illés, É. (2001). The definition of context and its implications for language teaching. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of London Institute of Education, London, England. Illés, É. (2011). Communicative language teaching and English as a lingua franca. Vienna English Working Papers, 20(1),  3–​16. Illés, É. (2016). Issues in ELF-​aware teacher education. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5(1), 135–​145. Illés, É. (2018). Language use and language learning in POA. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 41(2), 241–​243. Illés, É., & Akcan, S. (2017). Bringing real-​life language use into the EFL classroom. ELT Journal, 71(1),  3–​12.

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Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching World Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–​181. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2012). English as a lingua franca from classroom to classroom. ELT Journal, 66(4), 486–​494. Kiczkowiak, M., & Lowe, R. J. (2018). Teaching English as a lingua franca:  The journey from EFL to ELF. Peaslake, England: Delta. Kimura, D., & Canagarajah, S. (2018). Translingual practice and ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 295–​305). London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). Teaching English in Asia in non-​Anglo cultural contexts: Principles of the Lingua Franca Approach. In R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (Eds.), The pedagogy of English as an international language: Perspectives from scholars, teachers, and students (pp. 23–​34). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Kohn, K. (2015). A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom. In Y. Bayyurt & S. Akcan (Eds.), Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca (pp. 51–​67). Berlin and Munich, Germany and Boston, MA:  De Gruyter Mouton. Kohn, K. (2016). From ELF communication to lingua franca pedagogy. In M-​L. Pitzl & R. Osimk-​Teasdale (Eds.), English as a lingua franca:  Perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer (pp. 87–​95). Boston, MA and Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. Kohn, K. (2018). MY English: A social constructivist perspective on ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 7(1),  1–​24. Kohn, K. (2019). Towards the reconciliation of ELF and EFL: Theoretical issues and pedagogical challenges. In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 32–​49). Bristol, England and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Kordia, S. (2019). ELF-​aware teaching in practice: A teacher’s perspective. In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 53–​ 71). Bristol, England and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Larsen-​Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles in language teaching (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Larsen-​Freeman, D. (2007). Reflecting on the cognitive-​social debate in second language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, Focus Issue, 773–​787. Lopriore, L. (2018). ELF in ELT education: New perspectives in language awareness. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 7(1), 160–​166. Lopriore, L., & Vettorel, P. (2015). Promoting awareness of Englishes and ELF in the English language classroom. In H. Bowles & A. Cogo (Eds.), International perspectives on English as a lingua franca:  Pedagogical insights (pp. 13–​ 34). Basingstoke, England and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Murray, N. (2012). English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence. ELT Journal, 66(3), 318–​326. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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Ritzau, U., & Madsen, L. M. (2016). Language learning, polylanguaging and speaker perspectives. Applied Linguistics Review, 7(3), 305–​326. Roberts, C. (2004). Context in dynamic interpretation. In L. R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 197–​220). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Schaller-​ Schwaner, I. (2018). Reflections on the Production-​ Oriented Approach (POA) in China:  A new name and a new acronym. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 41(2), 249–​252. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap:  The case for the description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 133–​158. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, B. (2012). The challenge of English as a lingua franca. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 23(1),  73–​86. Seidlhofer, B., & Widdowson, H. G. (2019). ELF for EFL: A change of subject? In N. C. Sifakis & N. Tsantila (Eds.), English as a lingua franca for EFL contexts (pp. 17–​31). Bristol, England and Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters. Sifakis, N. (2006). Teaching EIL –​Teaching international or intercultural English? In R. Rubdy & M. Saraceni (Eds.), English in the world: Global rules, global roles (pp. 151–​168). London, England: Continuum. Sifakis, N. (2014). Towards a transformative ELF-​aware education:  Challenges and opportunities for teaching, learning and teacher education. Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, The American College of Greece, 4–​6 September 2014. Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Educating the ELF-​aware teacher: Insight from a teacher training project. World Englishes, 34(3), 471–​484. Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2018). ELF-​aware teaching, learning and teacher development. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 456–​467). London, England and New  York, NY: Routledge. Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press. Vettorel, P. (2018). Can ELF-​aware ELT practices start from textbooks? Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 7(1), 179–​184. Wen, Q. (2012). English as a lingua franca:  A pedagogical perspective. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(2), 171–​176. Wen, Q. F. (2018). The production-​oriented approach to teaching university students English in China. Language Teaching, 51(4), 526–​540. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson H. G. (1984). Explorations in applied linguistics 2. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2003). Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (2012). ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1),  5–​26. Widdowson, H. G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 359–​372.

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8 IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ELF-​INFORMED APPROACH TO ELT

Introduction The review of context, ELF and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has revealed that the less known and less applied contemporary of mainstream CLT, that is, Teaching Language as Communication (TLaC), can provide the basis for an ELF-​informed approach to ELT. In TLaC, learners act as language users who engage their individual contexts and work out what is relevant for them in a situation by activating and adapting their schemata through the exploitation of capability. Capability serves as the pragmatic device comprising interpretative procedures, such as the metapresupposition of relevance (Roberts, 2004) and Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle, which enable language users to link up with the schematic reality of the other user in the process of meaning making. It is this feature of TLaC, that is, the conflation of learning and use that makes it particularly suitable for preparing learners for EFL communication. The reason for this is that learners, apart from being users of their L1 already, function as ELF users as soon as they leave the school environment (Seidlhofer, 2011). In order for the classroom to create conditions for language use, the following requirements need to be fulfilled: [W]‌e need to appeal to the learners’ own experience, and get them engaged on their own terms. They need to be induced to invest the language with their own personalities and purposes, to interact with each other on problem-​solving tasks which will give point to their learning. The emphasis here is not on the language that will be appropriate in contexts of use, but on language that can be appropriated in contexts of learning. (Widdowson, 1986, p. 67, emphasis in the original)

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In contextual terms this implies that rather than adopting native speaker (NS) schemata of what constitutes appropriate language use, learners, through engaging their own schemata and exploiting their capability for the construction of meaning, should make the target language (TL) their own. In what follows, examples of how such an approach can be implemented are outlined. Since in TLaC the focus is on the process of the learners’ pragmatic involvement, the approach cannot be defined in terms of the product, that is, the kind of language use deemed to be appropriate and to be achieved by the learner. Therefore, suggestions about possible realisations of the approach can only be made in reference to the methodology which, based on a dynamic and emic conception of context, gives insights into how to make the classroom the venue of authentic language use; the examples in this chapter, therefore, highlight how the general principles of TLaC can be realised in the teaching of English. The proposals demonstrate a possible way of creating conditions for language use in the classroom. They cannot and do not provide the way that is supposed to work in all classrooms. The details of how a TLaC approach can be implemented in a particular teaching environment have to be worked out by the teachers who, by knowing their students and the local circumstances, should make informed decisions about what works best for their students. The examples, therefore, serve illustrative purposes and are, by no means, meant to be prescriptive in nature.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Widdowson’s (1978) suggestion for the teaching of the target language (TL) through other school or academic subjects as one of the possible ways of implementing TLaC was at the time unheeded, and CLIL was presented as an innovation in Europe later, in the 1990s (Dalton-​Puffer & Smit, 2016). CLIL was introduced as a consequence of the dissatisfaction with CLT, as CLT did not prove as efficient as was expected in comparison with previous language teaching approaches (Wolff, 2009). Although CLIL refers to differing teaching practices at various educational levels in different countries and educational institutions, what they have in common as CLIL can be defined as follows: “[A]‌dual-​focused, learning and teaching approach in which a non-​language subject is taught through a foreign language, with the dual focus being on acquiring subject knowledge and competences as well as skills and competences in the foreign language” (Ioannou Georgiou, 2012, p. 495). The status of English as a global lingua franca and the perceived benefits of being able to speak it increased the demand for teaching content in English, thus changing CLIL into Content and English Integrated Learning (CEIL) in some countries, such as Austria (Dalton-​Puffer & Smit, 2016). Apart from English being the dominant language in the practice of CLIL, CLIL also fits into the ELF pedagogical framework because of its

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multilingual nature (Lopriore, 2018) and the international perspective it can provide (Wolff, 2009). What particular features make CLIL suitable for an ELF-​informed TLaC approach? CLIL is “content-​and process-​oriented” (Wolff, 2009, p. 545) both in terms of language and content learning and the use of the TL in the classroom. CLIL creates the conditions for authentic classroom language use, where learners are “positioned as language users, a position central to ELF communication” (Dalton-​Puffer & Smit, 2016, p. 240). As a result, learning and using the TL take place simultaneously, with the learners engaging both their schemata and capability to create meaning and understand the content of the subject taught in the target language. The CLIL classroom thus represents genuine language use where language, in this case the TL, serves not as an end but as a means of communication. Similarly, the learning process in CLIL bears a close resemblance to how learning is carried out in the students’ L1, “where the child acquires the linguistic signs and the underlying concepts at the same time” (Wolff, 2009, p.  555). As in the case of L1, CLIL learners do not read a text for language learning purposes but to obtain knowledge about a particular subject. In the same way, learning the TL takes place only when the learners are involved contextually with the content they study in the TL (Wolff, 2009). This, however, does not mean that language development is neglected, because the learners’ cognitive growth has to be accompanied by an increasingly complex use of language, and also because language comes into the fore as and when it is required in the learning and meaning making process. In CLIL discourse, speech acts such as defining, classifying, explaining, concluding or evaluating, and so forth, play an important functional role. Because of this, the processes underlying their appropriate use are more clearly visible than in a traditional language teaching environment where the link between form and function is often given without relying on resorting to the learners’ contextual engagement. This increased discernibility of the use of various speech acts can further facilitate the pragmatic awareness and language development of learners. Wolff (2009) argues that learning school or academic subjects in the TL in CLIL should not necessarily lead to the impoverishment of the learners’ L1 skills. For this CLIL methodology has to be bilingual and include language awareness of L1: “[W]‌hile dealing with a content subject topic structures and lexemes are worked out contrastively which leads to the promotion of the learner’s first language as well” (Wolff, 2009, p. 560). The development of L1 is also ensured in bilingual programmes where only some of the subjects are taught in the TL and students use at least two languages in the school context. CLIL in Hungary, for example, has entailed bilingual education since it was introduced in the 1980s (Várkuti, 2010), which is why institutions providing such education are referred to as dual-​language, or more recently, as bilingual schools.

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Despite the obvious advantages of CLIL, its success, like the success of any pedagogical notion, depends on the local conditions of implementation. Problems related to the implementation of CLIL include the lack of suitable textbooks and teaching materials; the shortage of teachers qualified in both the language of instruction and the content subjects, as well as certification (Várkuti, 2010; Wolff, 2009). This puts the responsibility on the shoulders of policymakers, educationalists and teachers who need to align the principles of CLIL with the specific features, demands and affordances of the local circumstances and work out how CLIL can best serve the needs of their students’.

Teaching Literature Literature has been banished from ELT, mainly because of the shift of attention to “more functional models of learning, with transactional requirements of communication” (Carter, 2007, p. 6). In this respect, mainstream CLT, that is, the Teaching Language for Communication approach, has been no exception. One of the reasons for this is the utilitarian approach that TLfC takes to the identification of learning objectives. In TLfC, the learning objectives are defined in reference to learners’ communicative needs in predicted future use with native speakers of the language. The specification of the relevant situations is followed by the identification of the pertinent functions and their typical NS realisations (for details see Chapter 5), which provide the backbone of a TLfC syllabus. The other reason why literature has been marginalised is that in TLfC correctness and appropriateness are judged against NS norms to which learners need to conform. As a result, TLfC promotes conformity rather than the creativity that literature entails. As Carter (2007) observes: Creative language use and literature texts in general do not form part of the current, fashionable emphasis in English language teaching upon a reduced repertoire of functions, encouraging the use of English for uncritical obedience, bland politeness, and false consensus. (p. 604) When literature appears in TLfC teaching materials, it usually takes the form of heavily edited and adapted extracts of original works that often serve the purpose of checking reading comprehension. For example, the part of the Robinson Crusoe story where Crusoe was shipwrecked is retold in a passage in Portal to English 2 (Mitchell & Malkogianni, 2018), which is followed by comprehension questions, such as “What happened to Robinson Crusoe’s friends?” (p. 51) or, on a more personal level, “If you were Robinson Crusoe, would you go back to the ship?” (p.  51). The literary text here provides

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samples of encodings in the target language with the underlying assumption that meaning is inherent in the text, and experts, such as the teacher or the material writers know what makes up this meaning (Illés, 2011). As Kramsch and Kramsch (2000) observe, literature in language teaching serves “mostly as an authentic window on a foreign culture and society, not as the unique expression of an artist’s vision of the world” (p. 568). In other words, rather than engaging learners on their individual terms with the idiosyncratic world art represents, the purpose in language teaching has been to broaden learners’ cultural knowledge, which involves mainly the cultural level of learners’ context and to a lesser extent necessitates the engagement of capability. While the use of literature does not meet the objectives of TLfC, it is particularly suitable for TLaC and the preparation of learners for ELF communication where interlocutors need to expect diversity and otherness, and for the subsequent extensive exploitation of capability in order to meet the demands of increased negotiation of meaning. Similarly to ELF communication, literature also represents a new and unexpected reality (Widdowson, 1983) for the interpretation of which the application of existing schemata that facilitate functioning within the constraints of familiar situations does not suffice. Widdowson (1983) demonstrates the difference between everyday reading and reading literature as follows: [I]‌n conventional discourse you can anticipate, you can take short cuts; when reading a passage, let’s say, you often know something about the topic the passage deals with and you can use that knowledge while reading naturally in order to find out what’s going on in the passage. This is a natural reading procedure: we all do it. The amount of information we normally take out of something we read is minimal, actually, because we simply take from the passage what fits the frame of reference we have already established before reading. Now you can’t do that with literature […] because you’ve got to find the evidence, as it were, which is representative of some new reality. So with literary discourse the actual procedures for making sense are much more in evidence. (p. 31) The alternative reality of literary works presents a situation that is more challenging than everyday communication where effectiveness is largely a matter of conformity and conventions. When engaging with literature, readers are forced to act as active agents who exploit their capability more intensively in order to make sense. Christopher Logue’s London Airport poem (www.poemhunter.com/​poem/​london-​airport/​), for instance, turns an ordinary scene –​the poet walking past a bin at the airport –​into an out-​ of-​the-​ordinary one in that the bin is not for rubbish but for “unwanted

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literature”. The poet’s response is also unusual: Wrote a poem and threw it in the bin. The poem thus turns the reader’s schemata of what poetry and rubbish entail upside down. The combination of rubbish and literature, and presenting literature as something that can produce a reject, pushes literature off its pedestal and takes it into the realm of the ordinary, thus making poetry accessible for all. It should be noted here that this interpretation of the poem pertains to the purpose of the current analysis, and other readers may come up with very different but just as valid understandings. By challenging learners’ existing schemata (e.g., using a bin for discarding poetry), the teaching of literature thus creates conditions for participation in the kind of problem solving that ELF interaction also presents: “The writer of literature is really in the problem-​setting business, and the reader of literature is in the problem-​solving business par excellence. And because there is no right solution, such activities provide plenty of scope for discussion” (Widdowson, 1983, p. 32). Literature ensures engagement on an individual level, on the learners’ own terms and conditions. This is partly due to a quality that is considered central to art, called speciality in aesthetics. The notion refers to a category that falls between individuality and universality and mediates between them. Speciality thus comprises an area that is a qualitatively new combination of both individuality and universality: “[I]‌t contains both, but it is neither” (Királyfalvi, 1975, p.  74). It is speciality that makes it possible to interpret literature written at a distance in time and/​or place. And it is because of speciality that, for example, Shakespeare’s dramas are enjoyable even today –​albeit with interpretations different, in varying ways, from those of Elizabethan audiences. Widdowson (2004) argues for this attribute of literature in similar terms: What is distinctive about literary texts […] is that they provoke diversity by their very generic design in that they do not directly refer to social and institutionalized versions of reality but represent an alternative order that can only be individually apprehended. They focus […] not on the social contours but on personal meanings. (p. 135) With the individual and universal world presented by the author and the individual world engaged on the part of the reader, the culture-​specific level of interpretation becomes irrelevant in the meaning-​making process in literature. When selecting texts for teaching, therefore, it does not matter whether the author is a native or non-​native speaker of the language or what culture they would normally represent. The choice of literary texts should be guided by the specific needs and interests of a particular group of students. In addition, when reading and responding to literature, it is important that learners

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are allowed to engage on their own terms and, by drawing on their own schemata, create their individual interpretations of a text. In other words, it should be the learners who authenticate the text by linking it up to their own reality. Apart from an alternative reality, literature often presents unconventional language use with repetitions or grammar that would be considered incorrect if produced by learners (Widdowson, 2012). The focus on form, which is necessary for the understanding of the text and for deriving meaning from it, is another feature of literature that makes it particularly suitable for teaching language. A poem written in Cockney rhyming slang is a case in point (www. tes.com/​teaching-​resource/​history-​of-​language-​cockney-​rhyming-​slang-​ 6182218; also in Higgins, 1989, p.  12). For those who are unfamiliar with this variety of English, the poem poses an encoding problem and, regardless of whether they are native or non-​native speakers, they have to reach for a dictionary or go on the Internet. In a lesson, the poem can also be used as a word puzzle where learners can be asked to apply inductive strategies and work out the pattern or, alternatively, can be given the formula and make sense of the poem equipped with it. Literary works specially selected for particular students can be accompanied with a variety of tasks, including pieces written by students. Learners could, for instance, be asked to write poems in texting mode in compliance with SMS conventions and in defiance of traditional ways of writing. Such tasks foster creativity and languaging, as the examples in Crystal’s (2008) book on texting evidence it. The one below was an entrant for a competition between schools in Tasmania in 2003: quik hurry up & txt me tell me u luv me tell me how much u want me tell me im da 1 oops wrong prsn i sent it 2 my mum (Crystal, 2008, p. 75) However, it would also be beneficial if there were teaching materials comprising well-​written and motivating texts that bear a close resemblance to works of art, and which can stimulate the learners’ active linguistic and schematic involvement on an individual level. Among the few examples with engaging stories and texts (see O’Neill, Kingsbury, & Yeadon, 1971, Kernel Lessons Intermediate in Chapter  5), there is a textbook series that was published in the 1970s, and which was used in some secondary schools in Hungary even at the beginning of the 2000s (Illés, 2009). The popularity of the series, Access to English (Coles & Basil, 1974, 1975), is mainly due

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to the quality of texts it contains. The books, in fact, represent fiction, the episodes of a soap opera whose main character is a young Englishman, called Arthur. The antics and everyday adventures of this “amiable if somewhat incompetent junior librarian” (blurb of Coles & Lord, 1974) provide the storyline for the various chapters of the books. Arthur’s self-​contained and idiosyncratic reality is not limited to a particular time and place, which makes the cultural knowledge of Arthur’s outside world, by and large, irrelevant. Learners engage with the character and the story on an individual level and interpret them in their own ways. Learners can also relate to Arthur because of his struggles and transformation from a hapless young man into a full-​blown character partly because Arthur represents a type that is familiar to those who read literature or watch movies or TV series (Illés, 2009). The long-​standing success of Access to English thus undermines the assumption that “topics which are real and immediate must command more interest and response from learners then [sic] imaginary, made-​up content” (Cunningsworth, 1995, p. 86). Access to English has also proven that it is possible to produce coursebook texts that are not only relatable and engaging on an individual level, but also employ devices and techniques prevalent in literary works (Illés, 2009). One such technique is suspense, which is often used at the end of the c­ hapters –​a device that makes the learner and, in fact, the teacher, to read on when they use the coursebooks for the first time. There are also sudden twists in the episodes, when things do not turn out as expected, and the existing schema of the reader is challenged. A good example of this is when Arthur and his love, Mary, decide to tell Mary’s parents, Mr and Mrs Stephens, that they are planning to get married, and the authors make a sentimental scene into a funny one: mrs stephens: Is

that you Mary? Oh how nice! You’ve Arthur with you. Hello, Arthur. mary: Dad, Mother, we’ve got something to –​ mr stephens: Look, love, could it wait for a bit? This match is nearly over. I’ve been looking forward to it all week. mrs stephens: Oh, George, really! You and your football. I don’t know what you see in it. Anyway, Arthur’s here. mr stephens:  Oh hello, Arthur. Sit down. Oh you idiot! Not you, Arthur, ha-​ha. Noble, I mean. He gave it away. arthur:  Oh, it’s the European Cup Winners’ Cup, isn’t it? The semi-​final. What’s the score? Are we winning? (Coles & Lord, 1975, p. 132) Another device used in the coursebook series is Chekhov’s gun, which means that there are no incidental appearances on the stage, and everybody and

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everything is there for a purpose (Illés, 2009). If there is a rifle on the wall, it will go off at some point of the play. Chekhov’s gun is employed in one of the early scenes of the first book of the series (Coles & Lord, 1974), in which Arthur’s landlady puts a cup of coffee on the arm of the chair where a daydreaming and miserable Arthur is sitting. This is followed by Arthur’s dream in which he is a hero who saves a little girl on the beach. When the landlady wakes him up, he knocks the cup over and spills the coffee. What is interesting about this scene is that the spilling of the coffee is captured in a drawing (Coles & Lord, 1974, p. 34), making the illustration an integral part of the story. The Access to English series was written at the time of the dominance of the Audiolingual Method, which is reflected in the drills and tasks that complement the texts. However, for teachers, grammar and vocabulary activities are easier to find than well-​written and captivating texts of literary quality. This is why Access to English has stood the test of time (Illés, 2009), and could serve as an example for the materials development of an ELF-​informed approach to ELT. The dream team of materials writers could be authors who know how to tell a good story together with ELT educationalists who would be able to contribute with their pedagogic expertise (Illés, 2009). As has been pointed out above, apart from a careful choice of texts, teachers and material writers should allow and encourage learners to engage on their own terms when working with a text. Therefore, meaning should be negotiated between the participants as in the extract below, where eight-​year-​ old Hungarian learners of English read a story together with their teacher. Teacher telling story, showing picture book –​commenting. T:  This is the story of the three little goats. Here you can see them, the three little goats. One is –​ S1:  The white one is the girl. T:  These are all boys, there is no girl in this book. These are three billy goats. Three boys, like Bálint, Tamás and Feri. S2:  But it has no horns. T:  That’s right, because the white goat is a baby goat. Okay? This white billy goat is a little goat, a baby. (gesture) S3:  Still small, but a pity it is a boy. T:  I’m sorry, in this story there are three billy goats. Is that a problem? Ss:   No. (Nikolov, 2014, slide 26) This sample conversation demonstrates that the classroom does, indeed, have the potential to serve as the venue for genuine interaction, where the participants are involved contextually, that is, they employ their schemata

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and capability to make meaning. In this classroom scene, not only does the teacher let the young learners come up with their own interpretations of the story but also allows them to argue their case throughout, with an interest in what they are saying. The discussion centres around relevance that has been assigned differently by the young learners and seems to be driven by their preference for a girl goat. The children authenticate the text in reference to what they would like to see in that text. This is then negotiated with the teacher, at the end of which the learners and the teacher arrive at an agreement, although from the sample it is not clear how happy the children are with the consensual interpretation and whether the teacher goes back to this issue later to provide evidence for the decision of allowing her interpretation to take precedence. Apart from the teachers’ having to find a delicate balance in their interaction with the learners, this example also highlights issues the two different sets of context in classroom and other observation-​ based research present. The extent to which the learners’ acceptance of the teacher’s interpretation is sincere is accessible to the outsider analyst to a limited degree since the schemata the analyst engages, and the purpose of their activity is different from those of the insider participants of the conversation.

Teaching Translation Translation has been banished from language teaching (Cook, 2010) for longer than literature and for different reasons. While the Direct and Audiolingual Methods wanted to avoid negative transfer from L1, TLfC has discouraged the use of L1 because it has aimed to prepare learners for communication with native speakers in their speech communities. However, monolingual language teaching –​a contradiction in terms –​has been called into question with researchers, especially those in ELF, arguing for the reinstatement of translation in ELT (Cook, 2010; House, 2003; Seidlhofer, 1999; Widdowson, 2003). Even though translation has no place in monolingual TLfC, it is, like literature, highly suitable for TLaC because, by being a bilingual activity, it reflects the reality of ELF use and that of language learning. The reason for the latter is that “new knowledge (e.g., of L2) is only acquired, and recognized as new at all, by reference to what is familiar (e.g., in L1)” (Widdowson, 2003, p.  154). In addition, translation entails pragmatic involvement in that the translator works with a text written with some specific purpose and intention in mind and in a way that enables the audience of the source text to recognise this intention and, in so doing, for the text to produce the intended perlocutionary effect. When translating this text, the translator also has to be aware of the linguistic and schematic needs of the audience of the target

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text. The degree of how important it is to adapt to the context of the audience of the translated text may vary. In the case of overt translation, which is “similar to a quotation” (House, 2006, p.  347), the aim is to evoke the conditions in which the source text was conceived. Texts that lend themselves to overt translation are those that are closely tied to the community of the source text, and may include political speeches and sermons (House, 2006). A covert translation, on the other hand, is oriented towards the audience of the target text: Briefly, a covert translation is a translation which enjoys the status of an original text in the receiving lingua-​culture, and is not marked pragmatically as a translation at all. In order to meet the special needs of the new addressees, the translator must take different cultural presuppositions into account and create an equivalent speech event in the target culture. In order to achieve this, a cultural filter will be applied. (House, 2016, p. 188) Covert translation is, therefore, recipient-​ oriented and as such requires careful consideration of the target audience’s schematic background. On the basis of this assumed knowledge, the translator makes decisions about what constitutes relevance for the target audience, how much and what kind of information and in what manner should be given in the target text in order to serve the purpose and exert the effect of the source text. In other words, when producing a covert translation, the translator has to exploit their capability and interpretative procedures, including Grice’s (1975) CP. Because of features such as recipient orientation and the demand for an extensive engagement of capability, covert translation seems to be an apt pedagogic tool for the practice of TLaC. Genres such as brochures are particularly suitable for replicating the cognitive and interactional requirements of ELF communication. The reason for this is that when translating into English a brochure advertising a particular event, for example, the translator has to take into account not only NSs but all those ELF users who speak English but represent different first languages and cultures, and who together constitute the target audience. The diversity of the target ELF audience then requires more extensive engagement of the translator’s capability than a translation for a more definable target audience would be. The following is the English translation of a brochure originally written in Hungarian. Its analysis aims to demonstrate what interpretative procedures need to be applied to make the translation “a second original” (House, 2006, p. 347), which takes the audience of the target text and their pragmatic needs into consideration when rendering the text in the target language.

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Dear Visitor! Relaxation, entertainment, recreation. We all can sense and enjoy these vibes during the summer in Budapest, even if we don’t have infinite freedom or are through our careless youth. During three months the Óbuda Summer series of events traditionally offers a variety of high  –​standard cultural programs, including playful and humorous performances as well. Óbuda Summer fits very well into the greater cultural picture of Budapest, at the same times it keeps it’s (sic) own unmistakably unique atmosphere. The locations of the events –​Main Square, the garden of Óbudai Társaskör and Kobuci Garden  –​are creating a typical ambiance that we love so much. We are convinced that the summer months are the most ideal to spend time with family and friends, to be together with our loved ones. By offering accessive programs our aim is to create opportunities for visitors to spend a great weekend in Óbuda and to strengthen the touristic attraction of Óbuda-​Békásmegyer as well. There is nothing more refreshing during hot summer evenings than cool cultural programs, so we are looking forward to welcome you in Óbuda from mid-​June. We hope that you will visit us! Yours sincerely, XY Polgármester (mayor –​my translation of the word) (Óbudai nyár, 2019) The text is an almost word-​for-​word rendering of the Hungarian original. The translator was most probably commissioned by the local authority, and the translation was to serve the purpose of attracting tourists to the local festival. The product is an overt translation retaining references to the local knowledge the writer of the Hungarian text assumes to be shared with the target audience of the source text. This specific audience comprises Hungarians who live in Budapest and are well acquainted with Budapest’s oldest district, Óbuda-​Békásmegyer. The Hungarian text, therefore, can leave out information that is assumed to be part of this shared knowledge from the source text. In addition, the Hungarian audience is also familiar with the wordiness of texts written in Hungarian and with the rhetorical conventions of the brochure genre in their L1. The source text, therefore, is likely to evoke the intended perlocutionary effect and attracts attention and arouses the Hungarian readers’ interest in the summer festival. If, however, the target text aims to produce a similar effect, the schematic knowledge of the diverse ELF audience has to be taken into consideration. In order to do this, the translator has to step into the shoes of a tourist who is in Budapest for the first time, and project the kind of communicative needs

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this person may have in order to understand the brochure and for the brochure to achieve the intended effect. In the classroom, such a task sensitises learners to the requirements of ELF communication as well as draws their attention to the fact that their customary ways of assigning relevance may not work in ELF interactions. As suggested by Murray (2010, 2012) in relation to other tasks in TLaC, the process of covert translation, too, can be facilitated by reference to Grice’s (1975) CP, whose maxims “have considerable explanatory power regarding the choices we make about what we say and how we say it” (Murray, 2010, p. 297). Questions about the ELF target audience and how their particular features may affect the way the target text needs to be translated can raise learners’ awareness of the peculiarities of ELF communication. Since the translator of the brochure cannot assume as much shared knowledge with the English-​speaking audience as they can with the local audience, the information that is missing in the original text needs to be supplied by the translator. In terms of CP’s maxims, the target text has to be more informative than the source text if it aims to retain the purpose of attracting not only local but international audiences as well. In this respect, the translation may have to include information about the district and also clarify in two different ways why the location is mentioned (Óbuda and Óbuda-​Békásmegyer). The target text will also have to be more informative with respect to the particular events and programmes of the festival. In other words, the translator has to take into account the maxim of quality and provide evidence for the claim that what the festival offers is, indeed, of high quality and there is a wide variety of programmes. Throughout, the question of what is relevant for an ELF audience has to be raised and should underlie all the other decisions to be made. In the sample translation above, there seems to be a fair amount of irrelevant content for the international reader who probably would require short and pointed information, and for whom the fact that the mayor is a friendly person who cares about the people who live in that particular part of Budapest does not pertain either. The source text, therefore, needs to be edited and made less chatty and more to the point so that the target text becomes as perspicuous as is required by the overall purpose of the brochure. In other words, questions about the necessary clarity, brevity and unambiguity of the target text need to be posed in reference to the maxim of manner of Grice’s (1975) CP. In order to cater for an ELF target audience’s needs, the translator has to do what could be called schematic accommodation, that is, adjusting the content of the brochure and the way it is written to the assumed common knowledge of its potential readers. In an educational setting, the bilingual task necessitates a bilingual teacher who speaks the learners’ first language. In fact, translation complies with three of Kirkpatrick’s (2014) “principles

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of the Lingua Franca Approach” (p. 25). First, the goal of the translation task is mutual intelligibility rather than compliance with the native speaker of English as the linguistic target. Second, when identifying the target readers’ assumed shared knowledge, it is not the native speaker’s culture that is considered relevant but what ELF speakers may have in common. Third, because the translation task involves the use of two languages, including the learners’ first language, it is a properly qualified, local bilingual or multilingual person who can “provide the most appropriate English language teachers” (p.  29). Advocating a bilingual approach to language teaching, and with it the primacy of the non-​native teacher, has, in fact, been the stance taken by the promoters of what is termed ELF-​informed TLaC in this book. Widdowson (2003) has argued that, while a monolingual approach is in conflict with the learners’ experience, a bilingual one reflects the bilingualisation process students go through when they learn an L2. Similarly, whereas being a bilingual non-​native English speaker teacher is considered as a disadvantage in the NS-​dominated TLfC approach, in TLaC, it is teachers who are familiar with their learners’ first language and culture that have the upper hand. The advantages NNS teachers have include the vantage point of being able to view from a distance the language they teach because they possess an abstract knowledge of the language obtained through learning rather than acquiring it contextually in instances of language use. As a result, NNS teachers have walked the same path their students follow: Most importantly perhaps, the non-​native teacher has been through the process of learning the same language, often through the same L1 “filter”, and she knows what it is like to have made the foreign language, in some sense, her own, to have appropriated it for particular purposes. (Seidlhofer, 1999, p. 238)

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) With English being “the main lingua franca in web communication” (Vettorel, 2014, p. xxiv), it is safe to assume that much of ELF interaction takes place in CMC. Research shows that learners as young as 12  years-​ old use English outside the school when they browse the Internet or play online games (Kordia, 2019), and the benefits of out-​of-​school contact with English have also been documented (Verspoor, De Bot, & Van Rein, 2011). The use of CMC in the classroom can provide opportunities for accommodating “the modes of communication and acquisition seen outside the classroom” (Canagarajah, 2007, p.  936), that is, for learning in use where

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the learner and user roles and realities are connected (Grazzi, 2015; Vettorel 2014). Apart from serving as a location for ELF interaction, digital technology also enables students to work on collaborative projects and create and share learner-​generated content. The Internet and CMC thus provide conditions for ELF use that can be utilised in the English classroom. An example of making the reality of ELF communication a classroom experience is the TILA telecollaboration project funded by the European Union (EU) for learners in secondary education (Kohn, 2016, 2018, 2019). The project involves setting up interaction with peers from other countries via Internet facilities. Apart from doing tasks together, learners also discuss topics of common interest, such as fashion or social media, using English as a lingua franca as the means of communication (Kohn, 2019). The demands and potential pitfalls of interactions with other ELF users highlight the challenges ELF communication presents for the learners, who need to engage their capability and employ strategies more extensively than in their L1 for the success of ELF communication. The claim that telecollaboration “exchanges offer rich opportunities for natural and authentic lingua franca communication between pupils of different languages and cultural backgrounds” (Kohn, 2016. p. 91) has been corroborated by the fact that some students contacted their ELF peers outside the school environment. This development evidences the success of the project and the fact that students indeed get involved in telecollaboration exchanges with their individual contexts and use English for their particular communicative purposes. CMC has been used with smaller-​scale projects within one classroom or within the same country. Creating personal blogs, where the short posts are generated as a result of the performance of various tasks with comments from the teacher and peers at a Chilean university, has not only improved students’ English-​ language skills but has also enabled them to appropriate English by allowing them “to find their own voice and writing style” (Trajtemberg & Yiakoumetti, 2011, p.  443). In another project in Italy (Grazzi, 2015), network-​ based creative writing activities were designed which fitted into high-​school syllabi containing the history of English literature. Groups of students in different locations in Italy chose a piece from a reading list. Their task was to make modifications, such as writing a different ending to a story or a new preface, or to change the original narrator of the story (Grazzi, 2015). The students worked together as communities of practice and created, revised and improved their own and other groups’ drafts, using the Internet as the virtual space of communication and ELF as a “mediational tool” (Grazzi, 2015, p. 67). The pieces created by the students evidenced the students’ creative use of metaphors and idioms, which often reflected their Italian linguacultural background.

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Conclusion and Endnote The examples in this chapter served to suggest possible ways of implementing an ELF-​ informed TLaC approach. The particular cases aimed at highlighting how conditions for language use where learners engage contextually on their individual terms can be created in the practice of teaching. The shift of the focus from the goal of emulating native-​ speaker use to the process of learning and using the language in TLaC results in authenticity being defined in reference to the language learners who authenticate the language by relating it to their own schematic reality. The position of learners as users in ELF-​informed TLaC then resolves the conundrum Widdowson (1986) posed in the heyday of mainstream communicative language teaching (i.e., TLfC) regarding the conception of authenticity and learner autonomy. In TLfC, authenticity is defined in relation to how native speakers assign relevance and put language to communicative purposes. Autonomy, on the other hand, is concerned with the learner and their reality, thus making the two notions incompatible with each other (Widdowson, 1986). By conflating learning and use and positioning learners as users in TLaC, both authenticity and autonomy are conceived in reference to the learner and, in fact, language use, thus resolving the controversy pinpointed by Widdowson (1986). The primacy given to language use then necessarily puts the focus on language use in the conception of learner autonomy too and results in the definition of the autonomous learner as an independent language user who is “able to exploit the linguistic and other resources at their disposal effectively and creatively” and who is “capable of online problem solving and decisions making” (Illés, 2012, p. 509). This view of learner autonomy is in line with the requirements of ELF communication, the preparation for which should be the goal of English language teaching currently. Finally, there is an important conclusion that emerges from the suggestions of the possible ways of implementing TLaC, which is that the adoption of a particular mode of application, such as the teaching of literature or translation, does not by itself guarantee teaching language as communication, the turning of the classroom into the venue of authentic language use. In fact, all the methods suggested in this chapter can be implemented in a way that does not make it possible for learners to engage contextually on their individual terms. If the teacher imposes one authoritative interpretation of a literary piece on the students, the diversity of possible readings literature implies is not exploited. Learners do not (have to) link up the text with their own schematic reality and, as a result, no authentic language use takes place. Similarly, if learners’ off-​topic talk and often innovative use of the TL is penalised, an opportunity for languaging and developing metalinguistic awareness is missed.

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In order to put the principles of the TLaC approach into practice, therefore, teachers need to explore alternative ways of thinking about teaching English and about the pragmatics of language use, an issue that has been foregrounded by the investigation of ELF communication. An ELF-​informed TLaC approach thus sets demands on the teacher that are, in fact, similar to the ones highlighted in ELF communication. The relevant features of teachers in a TLaC approach also include recipient orientation and design where the recipients are the learners, the accommodation of learners’ needs as well as the teacher’s knowledge of their learners’ reality, experiences, interests, and so forth. Teachers also have to be open to diversity, be tolerant of otherness and be ready for the unpredictability of classroom communication. However, teachers cannot apply a proposed alternative approach to their particular teaching practice unless they understand the theory and principles that underlie the propositions. In terms of context, this means that teachers need to have their own schemata of what constitutes an ELF-​informed TLaC approach. When teachers make decisions and solve problems that particular teaching and teaching-​related situations present in their particular practice, their schemata are activated, adapted and modified by capability. As with the English language, teachers need to appropriate theory and pedagogic principles offered by applied linguists rather than accept them as the appropriate theory and principles. This book has aimed to provide opportunities for such thinking and appraisal in the hope that, in a very small way, it can contribute to “representing teaching as a challenging intellectual enterprise” (Widdowson, 1984, p. 88) and, with it, to the development of teacher autonomy.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate tables on the corresponding pages. Abelson, R. P. 31 Access to English 135–137 analyst’s perspective on context 38–54; conclusions on 53–54; Firth’s definition of context 38–40; Hymes’s SPEAKING mnemonic 40–43, 48; Pennycook’s SEMIOSIS mnemonics 43, 43–45; Speech Act Theory (SAT) 45–50; Van Dijk’s model of context 50–53; see also context Arnett, J. J. 104 Asian Corpus of English (ACE) 115 Austin, J. L. 45, 46, 47–48, 50, 53, 71, 75, 77, 81 background knowledge context 21 Bayyurt, Y. 115, 116 Blair, T. 52–53, 71–72 Breen, M. P. 93 Canagarajah, S. 107 capability, context as 72–75, 76, 119–120 Carter, R. 132 Celce-Murcia, M. 82 Chomsky, N. 41, 86 communicative competence (CC) 40–41 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 10, 129; introduction to 80–83; summary of 95–96; Teaching Language as Communication (TLaC)

83, 89–94, 95–96; Teaching Language for Communication (TLfC) 83, 84–89, 95–96 Communities of Practice (CoP) 105 Complex Adaptive System (CAS) 107–108 Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) 142–143 Connectionism 32 Content and English Integrated Learning (CEIL) 130 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 93, 125, 130–132 context: background knowledge 21; as capability 72–75, 76, 119–120; co-textual 21; definitions of 20–26; in ELF-related language pedagogy 9–13; encompassing external factors and internal cognitive factors 21; English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and 4–9, 102–108, 111–113; introduction to 19–20; issues arising with 26–29; in language teaching (see Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)); local and global 23; as mental construct 68–69; as mental model 23, 50–53, 70–71; overview of approaches to 37–38; as psychological construct 21–22; researching 75–76; as schema 22–23, 26, 27, 29–33, 68–72, 76–77;

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Index  149

as set of background assumptions 23; situational 21, 26–27, 39; summary of 33–34; see also analyst’s perspective on context; participant’s perspective of context context of situation 21, 26–27, 39 Cook, G. 29, 30 Cooperative Principle (CP) 11–12, 54–57, 74, 76–77, 94; context in ELF and 106, 108; ELF-informed approach to ELT and 112, 119, 129, 141 co-textual context 21, 24 co-text 82 Crystal, D. 135 Developments in English as a Lingua Franca 4 Dewey, M. 114, 116 dichotomies 26, 27–28 Directed Motivational Currents 108

Firth, J. R. 23–26, 37–40, 45, 50, 53, 54, 56, 63, 71, 75, 76, 82, 87, 107 Flowerdew, J. 37 global context 23 Graddol, D. 3 Grice, H. P. 11–12, 54–57, 74, 94, 139, 141; ELF and 106, 108, 112, 117, 119, 123, 129 Grundy, P. 118 Hilles, S. 85–86 Hino, N. 115 Hinton, G. E. 32 Hofstede, G. 70, 86, 104 Honna, N. 114 House, J. 37, 47, 139 Hülmbauer, C. 106 Hymes, D. H. 40–43, 48, 56, 69, 71, 81, 85

Emic perspective 7, 9, 14, 28, 38, 50, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 74–75, 107, 108 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 1–2, 13–14; approach to ELT informed by 121–125; communication in 99–102, 100; computer mediated communication (CMC) and 142–143; context and 4–9, 102–108, 111–113; context in language pedagogy related to 9–13; defining 5–6; implications for ELT 111–113; introduction to 2–4; proposals for language pedagogy informed by 113, 113–121; teaching literature and 132–138; teaching translation and 135–142 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)aware teaching 115–116 English as a Lingua Franca in Academic settings (ELFA) 115 English as foreign language (EFL) 2 English as native language (ENL) 2 English for Specific Purposes (ESP) 114–115 English-language teaching (ELT) 1–2, 10–13; ELF context and its implications for 111–113; proposed ELF-informed approach to 121–125 ethnography of speaking 41 Euro-English 5

illocution 46 indexical realization 29 Indian English 5 Inner Circle 2, 114, 115 interpersonal schemata 69, 74, 94, 95, 103, 105, 122, 123

Ferguson, G. 9 Firth, A. 2–5, 7–8, 99, 102, 106

Malinowski, B. 39 Mauranen, A. 71, 105

Jagger, M. 104 Jenkins, J. 7, 117 Jones, L. 85, 86 Kachru, B. B. 2 Kecskés, I. 72, 73 Kiczkowiak, M. 116 Kimura, D. 107 Kirkpatrick, A. 115, 117, 141–142 Kohn, K. 112, 120 Kövecses, Z. 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 70–71, 96 Kramsch, C. 133 language pedagogy, context in ELFrelated 9–13, 113, 113–121 Larsen-Freeman, D. 90, 107, 118 Lennon, J. 69–70, 72–73 literature teaching 132–138 local context 23 locution 46 Logue, C. 133 Lowe, R. J. 116

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McClelland, J. L. 30, 32 mental model, context as 23, 50–53 Mortensen, J. 40, 43 Murray, N. 94, 119, 141 Mustajoki, A. 100 native speakers of English (NS) 3–4, 84– 88, 95, 130; oriented communication in ELT 113, 113–114 Nature 4 non-native speakers (NNS) 3–4 Oda, S. 115 Olshtain, E. 82 Omaggio Hadley, A. 82 Outer Circle 2, 4 Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) 32–33, 38, 75, 90 participant’s perspective of context: conclusions on 63–64; Grice’s Cooperative Principle 11, 12, 54–57; Relevance Theory 57–60; Widdowson’s framework of context 60–63; see also context Pennycook, A. 43, 43–45, 68, 71 perlocution 46; perlocutionary effect 46, 73, 138, 140 perspectives on context: analyst’s 38–54; introduction to 37–38; participant’s 54–64 Pitzl, M.-L. 8 Pölzl, U. 7–8, 103 Portal to English 2, 132 Production-Oriented Approach (POA) 118, 122–123 psychological construct, context as 21–22 relevance 26, 27, 74 Relevance Theory (RT) 57–60, 75–76, 108 Rentsch, J. R. 31 research on context 75–76 Richards, J. C. 10, 80, 81, 85, 116 Rodgers, T. S. 9–10, 80, 81, 85, 116 Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca 4 Rumelhart, D. E. 32, 33, 61, 107 Schaller-Schwaner, I. 123, 124 Schank, R. C. 31 schema 26, 27, 68–72, 76–77 schemata 29–33; ideational 30, 60, 61, 68, 69, 70, 74, 76, 81, 103, 105;

interpersonal 61, 69, 71, 74, 94, 95, 103, 105, 122, 123 schematic construct, context as 22–23 Searle, J. 47–50, 71 Seidlhofer, B. 7–8, 11–12, 72, 81, 84, 103, 118–120 SEMIOSIS mnemonics 43, 43–45 Shakespeare, W. 134 Sifakis, N. 115, 116 Singaporean English 5 situational context 21, 26–27, 39 Smolensky, P. 32 SPEAKING mnemonic 40–43, 48 Speech Act Theory (SAT) 45–50, 81 Sperber, D. 22, 24, 57–60 standard native speaker English (SNSE) 120 Teaching Language as Communication (TLaC) 83, 89–94, 95–96, 123–125, 129–130, 144–145; literature used in 133; teaching literature with 132–138; teaching translation with 138–142 Teaching Language for Communication (TLfC) 83, 84–89, 95–96, 122, 124; teaching literature with 132–138; teaching translation with 138–142 Thomas, J. 42 translation, teaching of 138–142 Ur, P. 123 Van Dijk, T. A. 44, 50–53, 68, 70, 71–72 Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) 4, 114, 115 virtual spaces, teaching in 143 Wen, Q. 11, 117–118, 121 Widdowson, H. G. 3, 5, 7, 9, 33, 73–74, 83, 144; on bilingualisation 142; on CLT 80–81, 118–119; on difference between everyday reading and reading literature 133; on ELF interaction 103; on encoded meaning 72; on engagement with literature 134; framework of context of 60–63, 108; on indexical realization 29; on native speakers 84, 87; on pragmatic normality 89, 92; on researching context 75; Teaching Language as Communication (TLaC) and 89–93, 125; Wilson, D. 24, 57–60 Wolff, D. 131

150