Contextualising English as a Lingua Franca

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research has become central in current debates in linguistics and is commonly referred to in conferences dealing with other sub-fields of sociolinguistics. This volume collects ten papers that testify to the great scope of ELF research currently being carried out through the analysis of different kinds of data in a variety of contexts and domains. The three chapters in the first part of the volume tackle computer-mediated communication, a medium that currently accounts for a great proportion of human communication. The four contributions in the second section differ with regards to the domains under investigation, and all touch upon social issues that have an impact on how language is used: from Vietnamese university students negotiating their identities in the UK to a Pakistani migrant making efforts to be understood by Italian officials. Finally, the three papers in the final part are an example of the many ELF-oriented pedagogical initiatives that have emerged in recent years across educational levels and all over the world.

The introduction to the volume also situates ELF research in its current transition to a third phase in which more attention will be paid to the multilingual nature of ELF users. The proposal put forward in the introductory chapter holds that ELF has two well established fronts where more quality work will surely be carried out, and that ELF could benefit from establishing connections to other approaches to multilingualism and languaging, but without forgetting what the E in the acronym stands for.

This collection of papers will be of interest to teachers and language practitioners who are curious about the ELF paradigm; researchers in ELF and in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics in general; internet linguists and computer-medaited communication experts; educational policymakers; and undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in areas such as applied linguistics, English studies, multilingualism and plurilingualism, and intercultural communication, amongst other fields.