Second Language Acquisition 2007-08 Lecture Series
Doing Not Being a Foreign Language Learner: Working in English as a ‘Lingua Franca’
Alan Firth
Newcastle University, UK
4:00 pm, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 (note change of time)
254 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Abstract:
Firth & Wagner (1997) called for a ‘reconceptualized’ SLA, and sought changes in SLA in three specific areas: “(a) a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use, (b) an increased emic (i.e., participant-relevant) sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and (c) the broadening of the traditional SLA data base” (op. cit: 286). While the Firth and Wagner paper has been influential in moving SLA beyond its cognitivistic view of F/SL learning and use, and as such has led to the ontological enlargement of the field, as well as much debate, the third recommendation for changes in SLA scholarship has received the least amount of attention from SLA scholars. As a result, the traditional SLA data base – FL classrooms – remains the predominant setting where F/SL learning is studied. My aim in this presentation is to redress this state of affairs by considering how the study of F/SL learning can be advanced by attending to notions of F/SL use in non-educational settings; that is, in naturalistic settings outside classrooms. In order to do so, I examine instances where participants are using English as a ‘lingua franca’ (ELF) in an international workplace setting. A lingua franca is a mediating language used by those who do not share a mother tongue and for whom the language used is a second, ‘other’ or foreign language. I show that although parties to the ‘lingua franca’ encounters produce non-standard linguistic (lexical, morpho-syntactic, etc.) forms that may mark their speech as ‘foreign’ or ‘non-native’, they go to great lengths, interactionally, to disavow any intimations of ‘learner’ status, and artfully deflect attention from and circumvent potential or actual language-encoding difficulties. However, as we shall discover, various kinds of ‘local’ learning is ineluctably taking place within the micro-moments of interaction; for example, the interactants are compelled to assess, in situ, the English language competence of their co-participants, and implicitly calibrate their own linguistic and interactional behaviour accordingly. Such calibrations, I argue, entail learning. I conclude the paper by considering the implications of the findings for SLA, most particularly for the ‘CA for SLA’ endeavour.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Language Institute and the Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), with funding from the University Lectures Committee and the Department of English.
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