Questão de Inglês — Interpretação de Textos (Understanding) — VUNESP 2023

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

The reality of Global or World English(es) has caused some people to become very interested in what actually happens when it is used as a lingua franca – that is between two people who do not share the same language and for whom English is not their mother tongue. A number of researchers have studied such conversations. In particular Barbara Seidlhofer at the University of Vienna has noted a number of somewhat surprising characteristics, including:

• Non-use of third person present simple tense – s (She look very sad).
• Interchangeable use of relative pronouns who and which (A book who, a person which).
• Omission of definite and indefinite articles where they are obligatory in native speaker English, and insertion where they do not occur in native English.
• Use of an all-purpose tag-question, such as “isn’t it? Or no?”
• Heavy reliance on some verbs of high semantic generality, such as “do, have, make, put, take”.
• Pluralisation of nouns which are considered uncountable in native speaker English (informations, staffs, advices).

Something interesting is happening here. Whereas, as Jennifer Jenkins (2006, p.171) points out ‘… the belief in native-speaker ownership persists among both native and non-native speakers’, the evidence suggests that non-native speakers are not conforming to a native English standard. Indeed, they seem to get along perfectly well despite the fact that they miss things out and put things in which they ‘should not do’. Not only this, but they are better at ‘accommodating’ – that is negotiating shared meaning through helping each other in a more cooperative way (…)

(Harmer, Jeremy. The changing world of English. In. Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of English language teaching. 4th edition. 2007)