Objectives of the ACE project

What is English as a lingua franca (ELF)?

English as a lingua franca (ELF) can be thought of as "any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option." (Seidlhofer 2011: 7)

ELF is currently the most common use of English world-wide. Millions of speakers from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds use ELF on a daily basis, routinely and successfully, in their professional, academic and personal lives.

Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: OUP.

 

Objectives of the ACE project

1) What, if anything, notwithstanding all the diversity, might emerge as common features of Asian ELF use?
2) What seem to be the most relied upon and successfully employed grammatical constructions?
3) What are the factors (pragmatic) that lead to misunderstandings and communication breakdowns on the one hand or communicative success on the other?
4) Is the degree of approximation to an LI variety of English always proportional to communicative success?
5) Are there commonly used constructions, lexical items and sound patterns that are ungrammatical in standard L1 English but generally unproblematic in Asian ELF communication?
6)What strategies do speakers employ when negotiating meaning?
7) What role, if any, might the L1 play in the creation of distinctive features?
8) What similarities and differences can be identified between European and Asian ELF?
9) Do the findings in 8 suggest any universal but distinctive features / grammar of ELF?
10) Can any of the universal but distinctive features be explained by the motivations of syntactic simplification and regularisation that have been shown to be at work in traditional Englishes for centuries?