“BEING WHAT ONE OUGHT TO BE”: ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA IN THE ACADEMIC SPOKEN DISCOURSE OF BULGARIAN AND GERMAN STUDENTS

Emilia Slavova

doi:10.5817/DI2014-2-35

“BEING WHAT ONE OUGHT TO BE”: ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA IN THE ACADEMIC SPOKEN DISCOURSE OF BULGARIAN AND GERMAN STUDENTS

Vol.7,No.2(2014)

Emilia Slavova

https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2014-2-35

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Abstract

In an age of globalization and super-diversity, the concept of English as a national, homogeneous entity has been seriously undermined, and non-native speakers have been encouraged to use the language without constant recourse to the native-speaker ideal. Yet different varieties of English have different value attached to them on the linguistic market, in Bourdieu’s terms; and non-native speakers are in possession of different linguistic capital. The paper focuses on the relationships and attitudes to English on behalf of Bulgarian and German university students participating in a joint project in which a corpus of academic spoken English is compiled. Alongside collecting the corpus, the project appears to have a positive educational outcome in that it raises awareness about the specificity of English as a lingua franca.

Keywords:
English as a lingua franca; non-native speakers; academic discourse; computer-mediated discourse; linguistic capital; super-diversity

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