ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA AMONG ADOLESCENTS : transcultural pragmatics in a german-tanzanian... school setting

This volume is not only the first book-length investigation into adolescents’ use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), it also explores ELF in an African-European context, which has received little attention in ELF research so far. The book examines the interplay between language, culture and identity in adolescents’ ELF interactions. It combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore strategies secondary school students employ in a German-Tanzanian student exchange in order to reach their communicative goals. Introducing and drawing on the TeenELF corpus, the book investigates the speaker- and situation-specific potential of repetition and repair, complimenting, laughter and humour as well as various practices of translanguaging. The study reveals ELF as a transcultural space, in which different linguacultural influences meet and merge, while meaning, rapport and identity are interactionally negotiated. In the face of an increasing interest in ELF-informed pedagogy, the present approach investigates the communicative needs and competences of school students and derives both theoretical as well as classroom implications from its linguistic findings. Contents Acknowledgements List of figures, maps and tables List of abbreviations Part I: Theoretical, empirical and methodological foundations 1 Introduction 2 Language and culture in English as a Lingua Franca 3 ELF pragmatics and interactional linguistics 4 Methods and data Part II: Communicative aims and interactional strategies 5 Communicative aims in TeenELF 6 The use of repetitions in TeenELF 7 Repair strategies in TeenELF 8 The speech act of complimenting in TeenELF 9 Laughter and humour in TeenELF 10 Translanguaging in TeenELF Part III: Discussion 11 Summary and critical reflection 12 Implications of linguistic findings for language teaching 13 Outlook Appendices Appendix A Transcription key and sample transcript Appendix B Fieldwork material Appendix C Cross-corpus comparisons References Index