Abstract
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a common language for communication between interlocutors with different first languages (Seidlhofer, 2011). Interestingly, in this book, Kecskes sees ELF as a language use mode other than a variety of English, which is viewed as a way to ‘put a variety, or several varieties of English to use in interactions between speakers whose L1 is other than English’ (p. 2). Most importantly, this is the first monograph that analyzes the language behavior of ELF speakers from the pragmatic perspective based on the Gricean paradigm. Therefore, it is a valuable addition to the burgeoning area of ELF research.
Besides the introduction and epilogue, the book is composed of nine chapters. The introductory chapter articulates its special contributions to current pragmatic theories, applied linguistics and second language acquisition, and proposes the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) as a theoretical guide for this book. Chapter 1 illustrates the difference between intracultural and intercultural communication and characterizes them as a continuum. In Chapter 2, Kecskes brings in the notions of ‘linguistic economy’, ‘salience’ and ‘formulaic expressions’ to explain linguistic creativity in ELF. Chapter 3 divides interactional competence into basic interactional competence and adapted interactional competence. The author argues that unlike L1 or L2 speakers, ELF speakers rely on basic interactional competence to communicate, since it is the base for communication consisting of knowledge in a principled way across languages.
Furthermore, Chapter 4 details the relationship and interplay of linguistic knowledge, conceptual knowledge and encyclopedia knowledge. In author’s opinion, semantic analyzability in ELF communication is often the result of users’ limited access to sociocultural background knowledge comprising of conceptual and encyclopedia knowledge and primarily relying on linguistic knowledge. Semantic analyzability here refers to interlocutors’ production and interpretation of the utterances mainly depending on their semantic meanings. In Chapter 5, the author advocates for adopting the SCA to integrate both prior intention and emergent intention with attention to examine the communicative process. Chapter 6 provides a discussion on the semantic-pragmatic interface and stresses that pragmatics is always there in ELF, as semantics is the result of diachronic pragmatics associating with prior context, and actual situational context is tied to synchronic pragmatics. Implicature in ELF, in Chapter 7, is discussed through reviewing numerous studies on implicature comprehension of L2 and multilingual subjects. Although ELF users produce or comprehend implicature mainly through its literal meanings, the author holds that they create their own temporary norms with implicature to meet their online interactive needs. Chapter 8 targets modality, which is grouped into two categories: epistemic and root modality. After the review of research on modality in ELF, the author points out that more research is needed to understand the global traits in the use of modals in ELF. Chapter 9 introduces a study conducted by Kecskes and Kirner-Ludwig (2019) to describe and analyze a newly established language category in ELF that the author calls ‘odd structures’. In the study, speakers’ strategies in overcoming oddness are identified according to corpus-based data by employing a dialogic approach (using a dialogue as a sequence of utterances to examine conversational exchanges (p. 208).
Two issues, however, may be expected to be treated in more detail. First, some analysis is not sufficiently persuasive. For instance, in Chapter 1, ‘intercultures’, such as ‘Polish woman rents a house with her husband’ and ‘they live close to work’, are described as co-constructed common ground elements. However, the way in which these elements are identified is not clear. Second, although Kecskes (2014) proposes the SCA and explains how it works to supplement and support the Gricean theory in his previous book entitled Intercultural Pragmatics, it would still be necessary for the author to provide an explicit and in-depth analysis of some key theoretical issues (e.g. ‘intention’, ‘egocentrism’ and ‘salience’) in the introductory chapter so as to make readers understand how the following nine topics come up in this book.
The book has many assets. First, it is uniquely framed under the Gricean paradigm, adopting the SCA to explain the language use in ELF. Indeed, the scope illuminates the nature of ELF, contributing refreshing insights into the ELF research field, and opening up new perspectives for a wider range of future research. Second, instead of following the Gricean theory rigidly, Kecskes adds new values to pragmatic theories through discussing various aspects of ELF, for instance, the interplay of cooperation and egocentrism, emergent intention and prior intention, and salience and recipient design. Most of the pair terms are presented as a continuum rather than a dichotomy, which is more scientific and reasonable. Moreover, numerous concepts concerning pragmatics are introduced in this book, specified with working definitions and corpus-based examples, which makes readers easy to follow up. Undeniably, this book could be offered as an enlightening reading material for postgraduate or PhD students in pragmatics. Finally, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers could benefit from this book for its demonstration of the ELF interactive process from a new angle. In fact, intercultural communicative strategies rather than pragmatic norms of English native speakers should be stressed in EFL or ESL teaching concerning the nature of ELF communication.
On the whole, this book significantly contributes to the field of ELF, pragmatic theories and second language acquisition. It is undoubtably an important work for reference not only for students of pragmatics and applied linguistics, but also for language teachers and researchers interested in ELF or intercultural pragmatics.