Language Change: The Impact of English as a Lingua Franca

Description

English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become ubiquitous in today's globalised, mobile and fast-changing world. It is clear that it will have an unprecedented impact not only on how we communicate but also on our understanding of language use and change. What exactly ELF brings to our life and to language theory is a question which requires an interdisciplinary take. This book gathers together leading scholars from world Englishes, typology, language history, cognitive linguistics, translation studies, multilingualism, sociolinguistics and ELF research itself to seek state-of-the-art answers. Chapters present original insights on language change, based on theoretical approaches and empirical studies, and provide clear examples of social, interactional and cognitive changes that ELF instigates. The picture which unfolds on the pages of this book is complex, dynamic and makes a convincing case for the importance of English as a lingua franca on language change at a global scale.

Anna Mauranen is Professor and Research Director at the University of Helsinki, and President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Her research includes ELF, academic discourses, corpus linguistics, translation, and modelling speech. She is co-editor of Applied Linguistics, and Changing English (2017), and author of Exploring ELF (2012) and Linear Unit Grammar (2006). Svetlana Vetchinnikova is University Lecturer in the Department of Languages, University of Helsinki. Her current interests include chunking at different levels of language organization, individual variation and modelling language as a complex system. She is author of Phraseology and the Advanced Language Learner (2019) and co-editor of Changing English (2017).

'What can studies of English as a lingua franca (ELF) contribute to world Englishes research, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language evolution? This collection - comprising both theoretical position papers and empirical case studies - marks an impressive starting point for the necessary dialogue across sub-disciplines.' Christian Mair, University of Freiburg