Some 'friendly' confusion: SCOTS and ELF

Abstract

This article offers a critical response to ‘Teaching English as a friendly language: lessons from the SCOTS corpus’ (Anderson and Corbett 2010). We feel that this article has seriously misrepresented English as a lingua franca research, as well as presenting potentially confusing information on how to use corpora in classrooms. While this response has been written by the two authors listed here, we have attempted to present the views of a number of ELF researchers of the Southampton Centre for Global Englishes, including two of the scholars mentioned in the article, Jennifer Jenkins and Alessia Cogo. Anderson and Corbett (ibid.: 415) begin with what, for us, is a very confused definition of ELF. While we agree with them that a ‘descriptive and liberal approach to variety in language use’ is an aim of ELF studies, the question arises as to why they go on to suggest that ELF research is in danger of promoting a ‘a new international standard variety’ (ibid.: 415). This misrepresentation is further compounded by the use of a quotation from Penny Ur as the sole support for their point, although Ur's position cannot be seen as representative of the vast majority of ELF scholars. If scholars more central to ELF research had been drawn on, it would have become apparent that, rather than a focus on attempting to delineate a single variety of language, a broad consensus has emerged in ELF research in which variety and process are seen as key in understanding communication through ELF. As Seidlhofer (2009: 55) underlines, ELF's approach ‘is not a matter of spotting and counting discrete features but of looking for insights into variability and potential change’. This may then result in an interest in forms, but only in relation to function. Cogo (2008: 60) makes this clear in the same article quoted by Anderson and Corbett, ‘ELF is both form and function; besides, by performing certain functions it is appropriated by its speakers and changed in form. In other words, form seems to follow function and start a circular phenomenon of variation and change’.