Abstract
Abstract To build up the empirical description of elf’s morphosyntactic system, this study examines Thai elf users’ characteristics of relative clauses and analyses the causes underlying their use of the construction. Data were taken from the writing of 116 advanced and upper-intermediate English majors at a university in Bangkok. The results indicated that Thai elf users’ relative clauses exhibit preferences for unmarked and explicit structures. Both linguistic and functional causes are responsible for their production of the construction: they form relative clauses full of basic and transparent structures in order to ensure simple and successful communication. The overall results reveal the nature of elf communication. Although Thai elf users’ relative clauses are associated with some specific patterns, their use of this grammatical construction is governed by general linguistic processes which have been found to operate in the interactions of many groups of elf speakers, especially at the phonological and pragmatic levels.
Highlights
Globalisation has brought about worldwide interconnection, which has two enormous effects on the role of English as a common language for international communication
The theoretical approach to English study known as English as a Lingua Franca emerged in the second half of the 1990s. elf scholars recognise the spread of English across many regions in terms of its new functions and changes in its linguistic forms, so they have different attitudes towards English study
It is hypothesised that Thai elf users’ relative clauses are associated with some specific patterns owing to linguistic and functional causes, yet their production of this grammatical construction is governed by general linguistic processes which have been found to operate in the interactions of many groups of elf speakers, especially at the phonological and pragmatic levels
Summary
Globalisation has brought about worldwide interconnection, which has two enormous effects on the role of English as a common language for international communication. To capture the nature of lingua franca English, they view elf speakers as language users in their own right; like native speakers, elf speakers are not just “recipients” of English, but are “agents” who contribute to the form, spread, and modification of the language (Brutt-Griffler 1998; Seidlhofer 2001) They can exploit the potential of English by drawing on their multilingual resources and cultural backgrounds, combining and adapting them in a collaborative process of expressing and interpreting meaning, with the focus on the purpose of the talk and successful communication over the linguistic code (Dewey 2014; Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011; Seidlhofer 2009).
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