Lingua Francas as Second Languages

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This article describes lingua francas and the impact of their use as second languages. After a discussion of societal multilingualism, diglossia, and language shift in societies that use lingua francas, the article addresses borrowing, transfer, and code switching at the level of the individual who uses either a nativized or an interlanguage variety of the lingua franca. The article then focuses on the description of interactions conducted in lingua franca English. It concludes with a look at proposals that have been made with regard to the teaching of lingua francas as second languages.

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Christiane Meierkord is a senior lecturer in English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Erfurt in Germany. She was awarded a Ph.D. in English Linguistics from the University of Düsseldorf in 1996 for a dissertation on non-native/non-native communication in English. Since then, she has extensively published on English as an international lingua franca, addressing the topic both from a descriptive and an applied perspective. Meierkord is co-editor of Lingua Franca Communication and of Rethinking Sequentiality, which she edited together with Anita Fetzer. She has also researched discourse organization from a psycholinguistic point of view. In this context, she is completing a book project that brings together linguistic, social, and cognitive aspects of the negotiation of conventions for recurrent discourse strategies. Meierkord coordinates a research project founded by the VolkswagenStiftung, which investigates the uses of English as a lingua franca in South Africa. The project describes the different forms which the language assumes and links these to issues of identity construction in contemporary South African society.

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