English as an Academic Lingua Franca: An Investigation of Form and Communicative Effectiveness 9783110279542, 9783110279146

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English as an Academic Lingua Franca

Developments in English as a Lingua Franca 3

Editors

Jennifer Jenkins Will Baker

De Gruyter Mouton

English as an Academic Lingua Franca An Investigation of Form and Communicative Effectiveness

By

Beyza Björkman

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-027914-6 e-ISBN 978-3-11-027954-2 ISSN 2192-8177 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ” 2013 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen 앝 Printed on acid-free paper 앪 Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

To Ella and Mikael, my wonderful family

Acknowledgments

This monograph takes as its basis my PhD project that I completed in June 2010. During the production of this manuscript, I have received invaluable help from many colleagues, friends, and family. First of all, I would like to thank De Gruyter Mouton for seeing the importance of the topic and investing in this monograph. Birgit Sievert, Julie Miess and Angelika Hermann patiently answered every question I had. The editors Professor Jennifer Jenkins and Dr. Will Baker have helped me shape this manuscript to the monograph you have before you today. Needless to say, any remaining errors are mine. I am especially grateful to Jennifer Jenkins for being so supportive and helpful from the very early stages of this project, when this book was only an idea. The research project that forms the basis of this book was almost exclusively financed by the language unit at the Technical Institute despite all the financial hardships, and I am eternally grateful for this support. I will not be able to mention any names here for purposes of anonymity, but I am indebted to my colleagues for their hard work that generated the resources for this project as well as their never-ending encouragement. I am also grateful to the English Department at Stockholm University where I was a doctoral student for letting me work on a topic that I knew was very important and for providing financial support for the final stages of the project. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Roskilde University for the feedback and help during my post-doc stay in Denmark. I have benefited greatly from discussions with my PhD supervisor Professor Philip Shaw, who has been extremely generous with truly inspiring discussions and invaluable advice. Special thanks go to Professor NilsLennart Johannesson for creating special characters so I could be true to my Early Modern English source. Thanks also go to Christina Alm-Arvius, Britt Erman, Rebecca Hincks, Nils-Lennart Johannesson, Elizabeth Keller, Andy Kirkpatrick, Maria Kuteeva, Margareta Lewis, Magnus Ljung, Hans Malmström, Gunnel Melchers, Alan McMillion, David Minugh, Jan Pedersen, Erik Smitterberg and Annelie Ädel. I have learned so much from them. There are other colleagues who have helped me with feedback and encouragement. I cannot help but mention John Airey, Anne Kari Bjørge, Gibson Ferguson, Gregory Garretson, Rachel Giora, Hartmut Haberland, Spencer Hazel, Glenn Ole Hellekjær, Jennifer Jenkins, Anna Mauranen, Janus Mortensen, Diane Pecorari, Elina Ranta, John M. Swales and Hedda Söder-

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lundh. I must thank Jennifer Jenkins, Anna Mauranen and Barbara Seidlhofer separately for paving the way for numerous studies on ELF, for being so supportive to us new ELF researchers, and for being so generous with their expertise. And finally my family whom I love tremendously. It is to you that I owe everything. I have produced this monograph while taking care of my baby girl Ella. I am deeply grateful to my husband Mikael for his sunny smile, never-ending patience and encouragement, and for shouldering so much of the household responsibilities. Without his help, I would not have been able to complete this book. And our sunshine Ella… Thanks for coming into my life and showing me what really matters. I dedicate this book to you both.

Earlier versions of some of the text in this monograph, and some of my thoughts and arguments, have appeared in the following papers that I have produced. I am grateful to the publishers and editors below for permitting me to include them in this book: 2012 2012

2012 2011

2011

2010 2010

2009

Questions in academic ELF interaction. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1 (1): 93–119. Investigating English as a lingua franca in applied science education: Aims, methods and norms. In (Re-)Conceptualising LSP Research: Methods and Aims, Linguistic Insights, Studies in Language and Communication, Margrethe Petersen and Jan Engberg (eds.), 163– 187. Bern: Peter Lang. The grammar of English as a lingua franca. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, (ed.). Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell. English as a lingua franca in higher education: Implications for EAP. Ibérica 22: 79–100. Special Issue on EAP in Parallel language and ELF Settings. Pragmatic strategies in English as an academic lingua franca: Ways of achieving communicative effectiveness? Journal of Pragmatics 43(4): 950–964. So you think you can ELF: English as a lingua franca as the medium of Instruction. Hermes 45: 77–99. Spoken lingua franca English at a Swedish technical university: An investigation of form and communicative effectiveness. Unpublished PhD thesis. Stockholm University, Department of English. From code to discourse in spoken ELF. In English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings, Anna Mauranen, and Elina Ranta (eds.), 225–254. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Acknowledgments 2009

2008

2008

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English as a lingua franca at a Swedish technical university: An effective medium? In Proceedings of the Annual BALEAP Conference: 'EAP in a Globalising World: English as an Academic Lingua Franca‘. Whong, Melinda (Ed.), 11–19. Reading: Garnet Education. English as the lingua franca of engineering: The morphosyntax of academic speech events. Nordic Journal of English Studies 7(3): 103–122. 'So where we are': Spoken lingua franca English at a Swedish technical university”. English Today 24 (2): 11–17. Reprinted with permission from Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Journals Online.

Contents Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................1! Introduction ...............................................................................................1! 1.1. English today ..................................................................................3! 1.2. English as the language of science and technology .......................6! 1.3. Globalization and English in higher education ............................13! 1.3.1. Ideological responses to globalization ..................................17! 1.3.2. Globalization and multilingualism in continental Europe ....18! 1.3.3. Globalization and multilingualism in Sweden ......................23! 1.3.4. The answer: English as a lingua franca .................................28! Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................31! Previous research on ELF .......................................................................31! 2.1. The relevance of normative elements in ELF research ................32! 2.2. Work without normative elements: Pragmatics ...........................33! 2.3. Work including normative elements: Form .................................43! 2.4. When form and pragmatics meet .................................................52! 2.5. Attitude and irritation studies .......................................................54! Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................59! Exploring an academic ELF setting in Sweden: The site .....................59! 3.1. An international university: Student and teacher body ................60! 3.2. Research questions and some important terms ............................62! 3.3. Research methodology and design ...............................................65! Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................82! Operating in a Swedish ELF site .............................................................82! 4.1. Dimension 1: Form ......................................................................82! 4.1.1. Commonalities of usage ........................................................82! 4.1.2. Non-standard usage vs. standard usage .................................94! 4.2. Dimension 2: Communicativeness ...............................................98! 4.2.1. Investigating overt disturbance .............................................98! 4.2.2. Analyses at discourse level: Pragmatic strategies ...............123! 4.3. Perceived communicativeness and attitudes: A survey of student attitudes .............................................................................................138! 4.4. Summary of results ....................................................................141! Chapter 5 ..................................................................................................147! Theoretical and practical implications ..................................................147! 5.1. Discussion of the findings ..........................................................147! 5.2. Theoretical implications .............................................................160! 5.2.1. The status of ELF ................................................................160! 5.2.2. Norms and standards for speech .........................................173!

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5.2.3. Good English .......................................................................176! 5.3. Practical implications .................................................................178! 5.3.1. Comprehension-facilitating lecturing behavior ...................179! 5.3.2. Support for lecturers and students who need to operate in ELF settings ..................................................................................185! 5.3.3. Pedagogical applications: Issues for the language classroom .......................................................................................................189! Chapter 6 ..................................................................................................197! Looking ahead .......................................................................................197! 6.1. Summary ....................................................................................197! 6.2. Notes for native speakers ...........................................................201! 6.3. The internationalization of higher education and language policy practices .............................................................................................205! 6.4. ELF: Final remarks ....................................................................210! Appendices ............................................................................................212! Appendix 1: Sample lecture transcription .........................................212! Appendix 2: Sample group-work transcription .................................219! Appendix 3: Sentences used in the questionnaire .............................232! Appendix 4: The observation protocol ..............................................234! References ................................................................................................235! Index .........................................................................................................261!

Abbreviations ARS BASE BNC CANCODE CL CLIL ELF ELFA ELT ENL ERASMUS IELTS IA/P L1, L2 LFC LLC MICASE NNS NonS NP NS PL QLs QRLs QSs SOV SVA SVO TESOL TOEFL TSE VOICE VSO VP WO WrELFA

Audience Response System British Academic Spoken English British National Corpus Cambridge-Nottingham Corpus of English Clause Level Content and Language Integrated Learning English as a Lingua Franca Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic settings English Language Teaching English as a Native Language European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students International English Language Testing System Interrogative Adverb/Pronoun First language, Second language Lingua Franca Core London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English Non-native Speaker Non-standard Noun Phrase Native Speaker Phrase Level Questions asked by Lecturers Rhetorical Questions asked by Lecturers Questions asked by Students Subject-Object-Verb Subject-Verb Agreement Subject-Verb-Object Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Test of English as a Foreign Language Test of Spoken English Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English Verb-Subject-Object Verb Phrase Word Order Written academic ELF

Chapter 1 Introduction

This book is about the widest use of English in the world today: English as a lingua franca (ELF). ELF is defined 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: 7). English today is a lingua franca which brings millions together in a wide range of communicative situations in numerous settings for a broad spectrum of purposes. As you are reading these lines, a very large number of people with different first languages are communicating through English as a lingua franca in business meetings, in conferences and other academic discussions, or sports activities, to name a few. Businessmen are busy trying to land deals, academics are giving lectures or having research meetings, university students are working out the details in their new institutions, and all of this, they do through English as a lingua franca. English, in this sense, has reached truly global dimensions no other language has come near before. It is used in a very large number of domains, spoken by millions of people for different purposes. This is not to say that there are no other lingua francas. Other languages are used as lingua francas centralized in particular regions in the world, such as Russian and Spanish; however, “it is English and English alone that can reasonably claim to have become a global lingua franca” (Van Parijs 2011: 11). In the present context, ‘lingua franca’ is used in a different sense from the original meaning of the term. The original term ‘lingua franca’ refers to the oldest pidgin for which there is a reasonable amount of data for investigation (Parkvall 2005). It has been suggested that the meaning of the term comes from Arabic and Greek. Before the Crusades and during the Middle Ages, Western Europeans were referred to as ‘Franks’ in Arabic and ‘Phrankoi’ in Greek during the times of the late Eastern Roman Empire. So lingua franca was the language of the Franks, and it was a mixed trade language used by the language communities around the Mediterranean to communicate with others, as these comunities did not share a common language. It consisted mainly of Italian mixed with Turkish, French, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. It had limited vocabulary and grammar, and it lacked verb tenses and case– it did however develop a past and a future tense around the seventeenth century during its golden age (Corré

2 Introduction 2005). Pidginists have maintained that the earliest text in lingua franca goes back to 1353, and there are traces of its use from the twentieth century. This long period of time suggests that it may well be “the most long-lived pidgin language we know of” (Parkvall 2005). The original lingua franca had the same purpose with today’s lingua franca English: It was used by speakers from different first language backgrounds as a vehicular language. Those involved in trade had to sell and buy goods through a common language, and with the Mediterranean lingua franca, they were able to do so. There are important differences, however, between the original lingua franca and today’s lingua franca English. Today’s lingua franca is obviously not a mix of languages, nor does it have limited vocabulary or syntax the way the original lingua franca did. The original lingua franca was mostly spoken, and not so often written, as it was a contact language. When it was written, it was generally in early opera libretti and ballads, and this was done generally to include exotic elements in these works (Corré 2005). Otherwise, the original lingua franca was merely a practical language and not a literary medium. This is unlike today’s lingua franca English, which is used in several domains, both in spoken and written form (see e.g. the WrELFA corpus project). Perhaps most importantly, the original lingua franca was not expanded or nativized anywhere (Parkvall 2005) unlike English, which is the native language of a number of countries. English is the only language in history to have countries where it is the native language and to have become a truly global lingua franca. This is surely a fascinating linguistic phenomenon. It is, however, not only a linguistic phenomenon. English gained the lingua franca status as a result of a series of political events and other significant historical developments, becoming the language of several domains, such as higher education. In this introductory chapter, I will consider these developments, alongside the reactions and ideological responses raised to one language gaining such a powerful status. We will start by a brief review of some historical developments and then move on to how English has become the language of science and technology. Turning to reactions and ideological responses, we will go through some of the arguments raised by concerned academics who have been arguing for over a decade that ELF is simply about hegemony, Anglification and the spreading of market economics, and that minor languages are losing one domain after another against English. The chapter will end with a brief introduction of English as a lingua franca, which is

1.1 English today

3

another perspective one could adopt with regard to the widespread use of English in Europe today.

1.1. English today “…although the global spread of English as a lingua franca belongs very much to the present, it needs to be put in perspective by reference to the past”. (Seidlhofer 2011: xi)

To be able to understand the phenomenon of English as a lingua franca, we need to refer to the past and see the events that have led to English gaining such a global status. To many, the nineteenth century was the time when English first reached a strong global position. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain, with its many communities of English speakers settling around the world along with trade, enabled English to become the world’s lingua franca. Consequently, French declined outside its borders, and different varieties of English around the world emerged and were “partially standardized” (Graddol 1997: 7). It was, however, the rise of the US as a superpower in the world that bolstered the dominance of English. The US quickly became the most powerful industrialized country because of its natural and human resources, and the fact that it was not destroyed by war unlike the countries in mainland Europe that had been war zones. As the world’s third largest country with reference to population, it is the country that has the largest group of native speakers of English in the world (Graddol 1997: 8). While the expansion of English to so many domains in the world is generally regarded as a result of the expansion of Great Britain with its colonies and the dominance of the US after World War II, there are other factors to consider. It is true that there are political developments that contributed to the growth of English; however, the need to communicate knowledge was a bigger factor. The growing needs of sharing and disseminating knowledge in the twentieth century required a language for all communication to take place in. This was true for scientific and technical knowledge dissemination as well as for other areas, such as for commerce and consumer culture (Graddol 1997: 14). English in the twenty-first century is used predominantly by three main groups of speakers: Those who speak it as their native language, those who speak it as a second (or additional) language and those who have learned it as a foreign language. A classical view of these groups was expressed by

4 Introduction Kachru as “inner circle”, “outer circle” and “expanding circles”, well known to linguists (Kachru 1985). In the inner circle are countries where English is the native language, i.e. the USA, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The outer circle countries are those where English has some historical significance and is spoken as the language of some or all of the country’s institutions, e.g. Singapore, India, Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines. These two circles, however, do not represent the major groups of speakers of English in the twenty-first century. The largest group is the expanding circle countries, where English is a foreign language, e.g. China, Japan, Poland etc. These countries do not have a history of being colonized by any of the inner-circle countries, and English does not have much intra-national function.

Inner circle, 320–380 Outer circle, 150–300 Expanding circle, 100–1000

Figure 1.1. Approximate numbers of speakers in millions in inner, outer and expanding circle countries (Kachru 1985; numbers from Graddol 1997).

Kachru uses the term “norm-providing” for inner-circle countries, “normdeveloping” for outer-circle countries and “norm-dependent” for the expanding-circle countries. When the outer and expanding circles are merged, we have before us the largest group of users of the English language in the world. In a way, the numerical balance has shifted tremendously from the inner circle countries to these two groups of countries. Today, English is used predominantly by its non-native speakers as a lingua franca. Much happened demographically in what is now almost three decades as a result of globalization. Kachru’s description of the speakers in each circle no longer reflects the reality of the linguistic situation in the world. The Three Circles Model has undoubtedly been helpful in addressing the different groups of speakers of English who use English for a variety of

1.1 English today

5

functions. It provided a description of different types of users, thereby making an important contribution to showing the changing balance of speakers in the world by its inclusion of outer and expanding circles. However, the model is now dated, and it falls short of accurately accounting for the true heterogeneity of English today. It is very much a debated issue whether the inner circle speakers should be norm-providing for the speakers in the other two circles. The model, therefore, has been criticized for failing to show the true dynamics of the usage of English today (Jenkins 2009). World Englishes and ELF researchers together point to a need for pluricentralism (Bruthiaux 2003; Seidlhofer 2003). The applicability of the model has even been contested on the grounds that the model “perpetuates the very inequalities it otherwise aims to combat, such as the distinction between native and non-native speakers” (Park and Wee 2009: 390). Kachru however, never claimed these circles would stand against time and against changes that take place as speakers move around the world for a number of reasons and use English as a vehicular language. He himself acknowledged this, that the Three Circles Model may be somewhat simplistic and that it shows less awareness of the grey areas (Kachru 1985; Rajadurai 2003: 113). On the scale we are witnessing today, English is being used as the working language of many international domains. The twelve major international domains Graddol listed in 1997 have continued to use English increasingly as their working language (Graddol 1997: 8): 1. Working language of international organizations and conferences 2. Scientific publication 3. International banking, economic affairs and trade 4. Advertising for global brands 5. Audio-visual cultural products, e.g. TV, popular music 6. International tourism 7. Tertiary education 8. International safety 9. International law 10. In interpretation and translation as a relay language 11. Technology transfer 12. Internet communication

6 Introduction A significance of Graddol’s list above is its inclusion of at least eight domains that are so-called élite domains (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). As the number of people using English in the above domains keeps expanding, English is likely to maintain its position as the most dominant foreign language among the world’s languages. The spread of English as the working language to so many of the world’s élite domains has evoked a variety of reactions. These reactions range from fascination to combative rejection. English as the most dominant language has been investigated and debated widely (sections 1.3.1, 1.3.2 and 1.3.3); however, these investigations and debates have had political issues rather than linguistic ones as their foci. The linguistic community has been relatively slow in dealing with the unprecedented growth of English (Mauranen 2003: 513). Although much work has been done in the last decade or so, detailed linguistic investigations are scarce. The extremely dynamic nature of the speakers of English today, i.e. that they travel and use English for a variety of purposes, makes it complicated to carry out investigations. With the situation today, where English has no boundaries, we need to explore the use and usage of English, we need more information on how it is used in the domains where it serves as the working language, but perhaps most importantly, we need to be able to cater for the needs of all those from different language backgrounds who use it as a vehicular language, as a lingua franca (ELF), so that we can help them compete on equal terms. The vast number of its users and the domains in which it is used bring a legitimate need for knowledge of the use of English as a lingua franca. The study used as the basis of the present monograph is an attempt to contribute to the existing knowledge on the use of English today in one of the aforementioned domains: Tertiary education. It investigates English in an academic engineering setting as spoken by lecturers and students, by those who use it as an academic lingua franca.

1.2. English as the language of science and technology The presence of English in Europe today can be observed in many domains. Scientific and technical domains are two such domains where English dominates over other languages (James 2000), and it is English only that is now the dominant lingua franca of science and technology in the world. Science is and has always been a global enterprise, and academic

1.2 English in science and technology

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communities are international by nature. A useful preliminary here is a historical perspective. This inherently international nature of science and technology is reflected in the number of languages that have been the lingua francas of science and technology in history. The development has been somewhat different for instruction and publication. When we look at the academy, we see that different languages have been used in instruction and publication. With regard to the language of instruction, up to the sixteenth century, Latin was used. As commonly known, Latin was the first international language of the ‘learned’ and retained its position until the seventeenth century (Lindberg 1984). The attitude to Latin in the eighteenth century is clear from the quote that follows (Johnson 1706). Latin was the language of the learned, and replacing it with another language was seen as extremely unlikely, if at all possible:

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