Using English as a lingua franca for (mis-)managing conflict in an international university context: An example from a course in engineering

Abstract

This paper focuses on problems of learning and teaching via English as a lingua franca at a German university. An analysis of audio data from a course in engineering will give evidence of how university courses may be severely affected by intercultural and linguistic problems. It will be argued that – although participants from a variety of cultural backgrounds may be reasonably effective in communicating about subject matter in English – problems will arise when a larger variety of communicative functions is involved in instructional discourse, for example negotiating forms of cooperation and resolving conflicts. It is hypothesized that this situation may be detrimental for the implementation of innovative and learner-centered types of teaching arrangements in the international university. Against this background, suggestions will be made for reducing such problems by utilizing adequate training materials for university teachers and students who need to operate in ELF settings. These materials include activities for raising awareness of culture-related differences in the perception of teachers’ and learners’ roles in a university context, as well as a dictionary of phrases, which is organized in pragmatic categories and offers support for realizing relevant communicative functions in university teaching contexts. The paper also addresses some methodological issues, such as the need for interrelated sets of empirical data and problems of identifying ELF characteristics and specifics of intercultural communication in the pragmatic domain.