In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions

Abstract

English as a lingua franca (ELF) typically involves the reconciliation of two factors: the intercultural intelligibility among its users and the cultural identity of its individual speakers. It is argued in this paper that the local context, referred to as the “habitat factor,” is of particular relevance with regard to the self-regulation of ELF. Investigating the habitat-specific realizations of pragmatic fluency, and drawing on the work of House (1999), we seek to show how ELF users integrate their mother tongue (L1) communicative norms efficiently into their second language English conversation. We consider the particular case of the use by L1 Arabic speakers of multifunctional discourse markers and strategies to achieve a culturally appropriate ethos of musayara in their interaction, and more generally how the high-involvement style characterized by cooperative overlaps displays a strong tendency toward an L1 discourse style. What our study illustrates is how the global phenomenon of ELF varies in its local realizations.