Using English as a Lingua Franca in Education in Europe English in Europe: Volume 4, De Gryuter Mouton, Series:Language and Social Life 7, Ed. by Tatsioka, Zoi / Seidlhofer, Barbara / Sifakis, Nicos / Ferguson, Gibson, 2018
In an age of globalization, linguistic and cultural diversity and changing paradigms in the study... more In an age of globalization, linguistic and cultural diversity and changing paradigms in the study of language, issues of identity and the notion of English as a lingua franca (ELF) need to become incorporated into the teaching of English at the university level. The article discusses the way English has changed in recent decades and has turned into a global means of communication predominantly used between non-native speakers; the shift in linguistic paradigms from the study of a monolingual, monolithic, static model of language to the study of a fluid, heterogeneous, hybrid entity; and the way the above two reflect on the teaching of English. These theoretical aspects are set as a background to an empirical study of the applicability of the concept of ELF in a Bulgarian academic context and Bulgarian students’ attitudes to their own and others’ native and non-native English accents. The analysed data consists of a questionnaire and a reflective academic essay in which the students discuss their attitudes to English. The view of ELF taken in this article sees it not as a new variety in need of description and standardization, but as a concept inviting a shift in attitudes, greater tolerance to differences and a heightened awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity.
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Keywords
English as a lingua franca, non-native speakers, academic discourse, computer-mediated discourse, linguistic capital, super-diversity
This volume, which was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics (2011), acknowledges the importance of the topic and sheds light on a wide range of historical periods: six of the articles focus on different periods in the English language, from Old English to nineteenth-century English; three articles treat other cultures, i.e., Turkish versus Chinese, French, and American; and one article goes back to the roots of human civilization and the appearance of homo erectus. In sum, the volume comprises an introductory article and ten articles on politeness in a historical perspective, which will be briefly summarized below.
Ключови думи: Джендър; пол; род; джендърфобия; превод
Keywords
English as a lingua franca, non-native speakers, academic discourse, computer-mediated discourse, linguistic capital, super-diversity
This volume, which was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics (2011), acknowledges the importance of the topic and sheds light on a wide range of historical periods: six of the articles focus on different periods in the English language, from Old English to nineteenth-century English; three articles treat other cultures, i.e., Turkish versus Chinese, French, and American; and one article goes back to the roots of human civilization and the appearance of homo erectus. In sum, the volume comprises an introductory article and ten articles on politeness in a historical perspective, which will be briefly summarized below.
Ключови думи: Джендър; пол; род; джендърфобия; превод
The conference brought together more than eighty academics from different generations, countries, and theoretical backgrounds. It offered a rich spectrum of topics and invited stimulating interdisciplinary and intergenerational exchanges. A year later, these two volumes present some of the most interesting and thought-provoking papers delivered in 2018.
Preserving traditions and honouring the past, but also looking into the future and embracing transition and change, the forty papers in the two volumes offer a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. They have been organised into four parts. While strict boundaries between disciplines and themes are not easy to draw, multiple internal connections and shared themes are evident within each category.
Part I and Part II of the current Volume One follow the exact title of the conference: Traditions and Transitions. Part I is called TRADITIONS, HISTORY AND CHANGE and traces the historical development of the two major branches of the English department – Literature and Linguistics, a more recent one – Culture Studies, as well as the fruitful exchange programme with Leeds University amidst the Cold War era. The last two papers look at current issues from the field of Applied Linguistics and Semiotics. All papers in this part come from distinguished professors emeriti who have worked at the English Department at Sofia University, or have had a long-term connection with it.
Part II, TRANSITIONS, TRANSGRESSIONS AND PERFORMANCE, transgresses the often rigid disciplinary boundaries and explores trans-national, trans-lingual, trans-cultural, trans-human, and other aspects, well beyond the traditional scope of English Studies. Combining various interdisciplinary approaches and drawing on translation studies, culture studies, film and theatre studies, this part offers something of a counterpoint to the first part, focused on specific disciplines and historical development. It also serves as a kind of transition to the second volume, where Language and Literature are the two organising categories, although the boundaries between them are often fluid and permeable.
Тhe conference brought together more than eighty academics from different generations, countries, and theoretical backgrounds. It offered a rich spectrum of topics and invited stimulating interdisciplinary and intergenerational exchanges. A year later, these two volumes present some of the most interesting and thought-provoking papers delivered in 2018.
Preserving traditions and honouring the past, but also looking into the future and embracing transition and change, the forty papers in the two volumes offer a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. They have been organised into four parts. While strict boundaries between disciplines and themes are not easy to draw, multiple internal connections and shared themes are evident within each category.
The two parts in the current Volume Two follow the traditional, and often arbitrary, divisions between Language and Literature. LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE AND TRANSLATION comprises papers from the fields of historical linguistics, phonology, prosody, lexicology, political discourse, interlanguage pragmatics, and translation theory. The findings are applied to literary translation, interpreting, and language teaching.
The ENGLISH, AMERICAN AND WORLD LITERATURE part explores a rich array of themes: memory, history, contradiction, counterfactuality in historical fiction, national stereotypes, survivance and resistance, traditional and new gender roles as well as dystopian environmentalism. The last paper offers a fitting sense of an ending to the two volumes, with its exploration of Aristotle’s Poetics and their application to postmodernist fiction. The past and the present blend together, and we are back to the beginning: Traditions and Transitions.
The title of the book, New Paradigms in English Studies, makes reference to the now classic work by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn borrowed the notion of paradigm from linguistics to explain the cyclical changes, or “revolutions”, in the field of science and their replacement with new theories and paradigms. These paradigm shifts, uncomfortable as they may be, are what drives research forward and opens new horizons. And just as the invention of Guttenberg’s printing press in the 15th century brought about the Scientific Revolution and led to the general democratisation of knowledge, so the new digital technologies of the late 20th and early 21st century have ushered in the Digital Revolution, transforming our relationship to society, culture, knowledge, literacy, literature, and language. “New paradigms” proved to be a broad and inspiring topic and attracted a wide range of papers from various disciplines within the equally broad academic area of English Studies. This is reflected in the present volume: the topics cover renegotiating discipline boundaries and transdiciplinarity; tradition and innovation in teaching the English language; English as an academic lingua franca; teaching language, culture and literature in the age of digital communication technologies; developing translation skills and raising (trans)cultural awareness, among others.