Identity and face in institutional English as Lingua Franca discourse

Abstract

In this paper I examine interactions in institutional and intercultural pedagogic discourse in English as a lingua franca (ELF) between international students of various L1s, faculty members and assistants in both German and Danish university contexts. Of particular interest in institutional ELF interactions are potentially face-threatening acts such as requests for information or action (Edmondson 1981; Blum-Kulka et al 1989) addressed by students to status superiors in the context of advising and examining sessions. Issues related to face and identity construction in the realization of requests arise from the ELF inherent phenomenon that there is often a remarkable imbalance in interactants' demonstrated oral competence in EL. And this imbalance may be responsible for creating precarious situations of potential embarrassment, face loss and necessary negotiations of professional identity. On the basis of three 30-minute ELF interactions complemented by post-hoc collaborative reflections on rich points in the interactions, the paper investigates emergent issues of face threat and face maintenance as well as strategies of saving and re-enacting institutionally sanctioned identity both from a micro interactional and a macro-contextual perspective. Based on the findings of the analyses, I will also make several suggestions as to how interactants' pragmatic fluency might be improved.1 IntroductionIn this paper I will examine institutional pedagogic interactions in English as a lingua franca between international students of various Lis and German professors and assistants in a German university context. Of particular interest in institutional English as a lingua franca discourse are identity- and face related issues. The small case-study presented in this paper will look at issues of identity and face-threat and face-maintenance that emerge from interactions in academic advising sessions as one type of institutional pedagogic discourse.In the first part of the paper I briefly define English as a lingua franca and describe some important strands in the field of English as a lingua franca; secondly I describe the present study, and thirdly I draw some conclusions.1.1 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)English as a lingua franca (ELF) is a relatively new field of inquiry but it is of great importance given the continuing spread of English over many geographical and cultural areas and its enormous functional and formal flexibility. A major characteristic of ELF is its multiplicity of voices. ELF is a language for communication, and a medium that can be given substance with different national, regional, local, and individual cultural identities. ELF speakers can be said to use ELF primarily as a language of communication, not as a language for identification (Hullen 1992; House 2003). Native LI pragmatic norms are therefore often maintained in the medium of the English language. When ELF is used in interactions between, say, German, Spanish and French speakers, the differences in interactional norms, in standards of politeness, directness, values, and feelings of cultural and historical tradition will often remain unchanged underneath, as it were, the English surface. So we can say that ELF speakers are developing their very own discourse strategies, speech act modifications, and communicative styles in their use of the English language.As long as a threshold of understanding is achieved, ELF speakers appear to adopt the so-called let-it-pass principle, an interpretive procedure that makes the interactional style robust, normal and consensual (Firth 1990) One might think that the adoption of such a strategy would endanger effective communication, since the sort of superficial consensus achieved may well mask deeper sources of trouble arising, for instance, from great differences in linguaculturally-based knowledge frames. However, ELF talk was found to be basically meaningful and ordinary (Firth 1996; House 2002). …