The objective of this chapter is to chart the changes in orientation to intercultural communication through English as a lingua franca, in the context of changing social and philosophical conditions characterized by a shift from a modernist to postmodern globalization. As English gains in stature as a global language, it is facilitating contact between speakers of diverse cultures, raising questions about the ways in which communicative differences are negotiated. Paralleling the spread of English are the changing social conditions and philosophical assumptions from modernity to postmodernity, which we might characterize as a shift from a hierarchical and centrifugal relationship of communities to a more fluid and polycentric one. The resulting changes in modes of cultural contact have implications for how English is used in contemporary social interactions. I will compare the assumptions motivating the spread of English in modernity with the new imperatives of communication in the context of postmodernity, charting the changes in the status and identity of English, approaches to representing identities and cultures through English, and the dynamics of intercultural communication.

Social and Theoretical Context

Postmodernity might be considered both a social movement and a theoretical paradigm. We can borrow Stuart Hall’s (1997) distinction between a modernist and postmodern globalization to consider the social changes. According to Hall, the modernist globalization that accompanied enlightenment and colonization was motivated by the desire of the dominant western European communities to spread their values everywhere. It was believed that the values of enlightenment progress were relevant for all communities. Mignolo (2000) labels this attitude “a denial of co-evalness” – i.e., the refusal to accept that different cultural formations can all move equally towards attaining human and material progress. Modernist globalization was based on the assumption that progress follows from one set of superior values which all communities had to adopt. This movement set up a social and geopolitical relationship that was centrifugal and hierarchical, involving a unilateral flow of values and codes from the center to the periphery.

In addition to shaping social life, this mode of globalization had implications for relations between languages and cultures. In many cases, the modernist project involved suppressing or obliterating any trace of local culture or language. In some cases, an unequal relationship was set up between the center and the periphery, with the expectation that the local would treat the dominant community as the norm and model itself after it. According to Hall, “the global is the self-presentation of the dominant particular. It is a way in which the dominant particular localizes and naturalizes itself and associates with it a variety of other minorities” (1997: 67). The now infamous Macaulay proposal for English education in India makes the linguistic implications clear. English education was established for creating “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country” (quoted in Brutt-Griffler 2002b: 40). The first part of the statement shows that eradicating all traces of the local culture in the form of tastes, opinions, and intellect was an important objective of English education. As far as language relationships were concerned, the vernacular was not eradicated, but simply given a secondary position and treated as needing refinement by those who had acquired English language and culture.

The shift from modernist to postmodern globalization is attributed to technological, social, and economic changes (Jameson 1998; King 1997). But a more ironic explanation by Hall is that the very success of modernist globalization laid the groundwork for a revision in the globalization project. As all the communities were gradually integrated into a tightly networked system, the local wasn’t suppressed, but received increased visibility. Benefiting from advanced forms of travel, production relations, business enterprises, media communication, and even the relocation of people because of slavery or trade, local cultures traveled beyond their narrow geographical confines. According to Stuart Hall, these changes forced dominant communities to revise the idea of suppressing the local and consider working with periphery communities to carry out their interests. This turn of events created a change in the project of globalization: “it is now a form of capital which recognizes that it can only, to use a metaphor, rule through other local capitals, rule alongside and in partnership with other economic and political elites. It does not attempt to obliterate them; it operates through them” (Hall 1997: 28). As a result, we see a more fluid and egalitarian relationship between languages and discourses in postmodern globalization. In fact, we see a mixing of diverse languages and cultures, each culture becoming more hybrid and plural in the process. However, Hall sees this new integration of local and global, or minority and dominant, cultures as still implicated in power. This is the new arrangement – a subtler and less direct method – by which dominant communities hope to exercise their hegemony.

To understand the implications of this new relationship for language and culture, we can adopt Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) model of “transcultural flows.” Adopting the metaphor of “scapes,” he captures the new reality of multilateral and fluid geopolitical relationships in the place of the unilateral flow from center to periphery. He theorizes these new relationships in relation to the following five domains:

ethnoscapes	flow of persons
mediascapes	flow of information
technoscapes	flow of technology
financescapes	flow of finance
ideoscapes	flow of ideology/ideas

Consider ethnoscapes, for example. With migration and the spread of diaspora communities, languages and cultures are not locked into their traditional national or geographical territories. Tamil culture now inhabits many countries in Western Europe, North America, Oceania, South Africa, and the Middle East with the forced and voluntary settlement of Tamil communities in these regions. We might say Tamil culture has become deterritorialized. It has lost its territorial identity as belonging to regions of South Asia. It has adopted new homes and identities, with concomitant changes in its character, as part of this move. It has been appropriated by other cultures, even as it borrows from them.

What Appadurai leaves out in his “five dimensions of global cultural flows” (Appadurai 1996: 33) is the place of language. To focus on English, it plays a key role in enabling the transnational interactions between communities in media-, techno-, and financescapes. The outsourcing of work by US companies to agencies offshore to take advantage of cheaper labor and overhead costs has important consequences for industrial and marketing relationships. Production and commerce are thus decentered. They take place in diverse locations, with economic advantages to different communities. English enables these transcultural relationships. For example, marketing, technical assistance, and customer service for people in the US is sometimes handled by Indian personnel located in Bangalore or Madras. As a result, clients speaking American English may have to negotiate transactions with personnel who speak Indian English. Sometimes, speakers of English have to negotiate with speakers of other languages. While English enables these functions and facilitates the negotiation of intercultural differences, its character is also changing. Through the type of fluid interactions we see between languages in various domains, English is showing a lot more mixing and hybridity than ever before. English is also attaining a global speech community, which speaks different varieties with different norms, with people having to negotiate these differences across borders. The new geopolitical relationship between languages I call “linguascapes” (keeping to the terminology Appadurai coins for the other transcultural flows) – see Canagarajah 2006.

Such geopolitical changes have tremendous implications for how languages and cultures come into contact with each other, shape each other, and get nego­tiated in transnational relationships. These changes are accompanied by philosophical changes in the way we perceive language and culture. The en­lightenment orientation of modernity not only assumed a hierarchy of cultures, it also pursued the possibility of describing cultures objectively. Furthermore, it treated cultures as distinct, self-explaining, homogeneous, complete, and autonomous. Structuralism, for example, initiated the project of explaining cultures by going deeper and more abstractly into a culture to capture fundamental internal patterns or laws that explained the behavior, practices, and beliefs of a community.

Postmodernity is informed by a suspicion of the core enlightenment values. It questions the possibility of objective description, autonomy of domains, and independence of phenomena. From this point of view, cultural descriptions are partial and partisan. Tamil culture will be described differently by people within the Tamil community itself to suit their interests. While progressive Tamil youth will emphasize critical and socially progressive values in Tamil culture, older members might emphasize more conservative values. We can imagine how the representations of Tamil culture by those outside the community will be even more different. They will describe Tamil culture in relation to their own frames of reference, presumably influenced by their own cultural backgrounds. This inevitably leads to “othering” – treating others as a foil in relation to one’s own culture. Furthermore, there are different strands and tendencies in culture that can’t be easily reconciled. Sivatamby (1990) analyzes the Hindu Saiva strand and the liberal Western Christian strand that are in tension in Tamil culture. The Tamil community’s contact with colonial and Christian missionary movements has left an indelible mark on the culture. From this point of view, culture is always becoming; it is never complete. Since cultures are always in contact with other cultures, they are always mixing, borrowing, and changing in the process. This recognition raises questions also about the separateness and homogeneity of cultures. We are becoming comfortable with the notion that cultures are always hybrid. There is no uncontaminated or pure culture. Such realizations prevent us from essentializing cultures to define some core values and practices as biologically innate to some communities and capturing their identity transcending space and time.

However, the diverse strands of a culture are not equal and neutral. Certain strands serve to define those who enjoy more status, while other strands struggle for greater acceptance or representation. In the context of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, the values and practices of the Hindu Saiva tradition enjoy power after decolonization. Other strands, such as the oppositional values and practices of those of lower castes or those of the liberal English-educated circles are not as valued. There are therefore power struggles within a culture. Furthermore, the traditions that enjoy prestige change over time, with changing social and political conditions in history. From this perspective, cultures are ideological. When cultures and the strands of cultures within a community are perceived in relation to power, they take ideological connotations and effects. Therefore, recent scholarly perspectives perceive culture as shaping and shaped by other social domains such as society, politics, and even language. We will turn to the connection with language below.

Language/Culture Connection

Does culture shape language, or does language construct culture? Does every language come loaded with a distinct culture? How do culture and language shape thought and perception? These are questions that have been debated widely according to different philosophical paradigms. I will focus here on how these questions have been debated in the field of English studies.

We can see from the statement by Macaulay above that he envisioned the teaching of English language in India to shape the local people’s thought and perception with English cultural values. He sees a direct connection between the acquisition of language and the internalization of a culture. While he promotes English because it will inculcate English culture, local thinkers have resisted English because of this connection. For example, the Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o opposes the use of English because he assumes that contact with English will inevitably result in the internalization of British values and destroy the local culture. Consistent with his view, he has announced in his Decolonizing the Mind (1986) that he would abandon English for written expression and use his native Kikuyu instead. What motivates his decision are assumptions such as the following, many of which he has explicitly discussed in his 1986 book:

We might label these assumptions as constituting a linguistic and cultural determinism. These assumptions are not new. That kind of direct connection between language and culture has dominated diverse scholarly fields for some time. The well-known Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (at least in its strong version) has been interpreted by some (though there are ongoing debates on this issue – see Silverstein 2000) as postulating that language determines thinking and culture. If the norms and features of a language don’t have certain vocabulary or grammatical elements to express a notion, it prevents speakers from expressing or even perceiving those realities. Another underlying assumption in this perspective, what we might call the “1 language = 1 culture” perspective (i.e., that each language comes loaded with its own culture, and vice versa), has also been the staple of much of anthropology and sociolinguistics. Dell Hymes is among the earliest to critique this assumption. He argues: “The relations between the units classified by linguists as languages, and the communicative units of ethnology, are problematic” (Hymes 1968: 30).

Other postcolonial writers and thinkers have adopted a more utilitarian and perhaps universalist position on English. For them, English, like any other language, is capable of representing any cultural reality. The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (1975) has adopted this position and he has used English creatively to represent African lifestyle, worldview, and even opposition to British colonization. However, he goes on to argue that English will undergo certain subtle changes in structure and identity as it gets employed to talk about African cultures. He argues that this process of language change will happen by itself over time. Furthermore, as his own writing illustrates, the changes don’t affect the fundamental syntactic and grammatical structure of English. The changes are largely in vocabulary and idiomatic usage.

Other postcolonial scholars see the need for more far-reaching changes. While they agree that English can be made to talk about local cultures, it will have to become a different language to do that. The Nigerian author Gabriel Okara (1990) explains this process of linguistic reconstruction as

a continuing quest, through experimentation, for a mode of employing the English language, which we have appropriated, to give full expression to our culture and our point of view, to our message, without our seeing ourselves, or others seeing us, as through a distorting mirror. … If, therefore, an African wishes to use English as an effective medium of literary expression, he has to emulsify it with the patterns, modes and idioms of African speech until it becomes so attenuated that it bears little resemblance to the original.

(Okara 1990: 16, 17)

Okara is moving towards the construction of English as a hybrid language. We might consider this position as not having the determinism of Ngugi nor the innocence of Achebe. While acknowledging the cultural politics of English, Okara also acknowledges the agency of subjects to reconstruct a language according to their interests and values. Note, ironically, that Macaulay also acknowledges the agency of speakers to reconstruct a language. He assumes that the English educated can refine their vernacular along the lines of their newly learnt values. What Macaulay forgets is that if people can transform their vernacular according to their preferred values and interests, they can do this for English too. This subversive connection between a dominant language and local culture has been illustrated in different settings and theorized as language appropriation by many scholars (Pennycook 2003; Canagarajah 1999).

Though Okara gives the impression that such change can happen through the activities and desires of individuals, other scholars adopt a practice-based view of language and culture that helps them theorize this appropriation with greater complexity. From this perspective, it is not culture or language that is primary. Both are shaped by the practices of the community in their social life. From the perspective of communities of practice, for example, people of different cultures and languages may come together to achieve mutual goals through shared practices (Wenger 1998). Out of this engagement arise symbols, motifs, and words that inform the practices of that community. They get reified in meaning and values as members engage in their activities. Though this model was intended to explain organizational life, it is being applied to explain the linguistic constructions of community or national life as well. Janina Brutt-Griffler (2002a) has argued for such a perspective on world Englishes (though she didn’t explicitly invoke the communities of practice model). She critiques scholars like Canagarajah (1999) and Pennycook (1994) on their appropriation perspective. She considers such a perspective reactive. Rather than considering local varieties of English as formed only in response to the imposition of colonial agencies, she would like to perceive the construction of these varieties in a more independent way as arising from the needs and interests of the local communities to represent their values in relation to their own languages and cultures.

A limitation of this approach is that it treats languages as shaped anew without their prior historical associations and roles. It also simplifies the linguistic construction as occurring in a context free of power and inequality. Mary Louise Pratt’s (1991) view of contact zones accommodates issues of power and history in a consideration of language and culture change. Furthermore, she considers the nature of contact between different languages or communities. While acknowledging that such contact is asymmetrical, she considers it still possible for the colonizing or dominant language to be changed in the hands of the local community. Out of such intercultural contact, languages and cultures are always born anew. Unlike Okara’s view of this hybridization as an individual activity, Pratt’s view accommodates a social and historical perspective. We might consider Braj Kachru’s model of World Englishes as an example of such process whereby new varieties of English are born as local communities indigenize English in the contact zones where colonizing and colonized cultures meet. We’ll discuss the World Englishes model in more detail below.

With such practice-based models, we reach a critical difference between primordialist or social constructionist views on language and culture. The views of Macaulay and Ngugi assume a primordialist position, which assumes biological, innatist, and nativist orientations to language and culture. It is characterized by assumptions such as the following: that certain communities own a specific language and culture through history; that certain languages and cultures are always characterized by certain values; that the connection between a community and its language and culture are inextricable; that individuals and communities are characterized innately by the languages and cultures that traditionally belong to them. The social constructionist perspective, on the other hand, considers such connections as arising through the activity of people in social context. From this perspective, the connections between language, culture, and community are immensely variable. The perspective enables us to understand how English can accommodate values and identities not associated with its history in Britain; how English can become deterritorialized to lose its exclusive identity as a language belonging to Britain and take on new identities as a language spoken “natively” by people in India, Nigeria, and Singapore; and how some diaspora communities, such as Sri Lankan Tamils in Britain, Canada, and the USA treat English as their sole language for community and identity.

More recent models of performativity perceive culture and identity as linguistically constructed (see Rampton 1999). This construction is not perceived in the abstract sense of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, but in terms of the moment-to-moment negotiation of talk in interpersonal interactions. This perspective is also different from the social constructionist models presented above. While the communities of practice and contact zones models value the historically developed local varieties and genres of English around the world, performativity is open to language and cultural identity constructed situationally in talk-in-interaction. In this sense, even those who don’t have full competence in English can use a token of the language for purposes of identity, community affiliation, or cultural representation. As Anna de Fina argues:

Sociolinguistic studies of the management of ethnic categories in discourse and interaction … have shown that ethnic loyalties are not given but negotiated, that they are indexed in subtle ways rather than openly declared, and that they often contradict expectations and stereotypes about received ethnic boundaries. In the social constructionist perspective that these studies support, ethnicity should not be regarded as an abstract attribute of the individual, but rather as an interactional achievement grounded in concrete social contexts and evolving with them.

(De Fina 2007: 374)

From this point of view, language is used for a range of intercultural purposes: to negotiate cultural differences; for speech accommodation; to appropriate another’s linguistic and cultural tokens for one’s own purposes; and to reconstruct one’s community affinity and identity in ways that transcend cultural boundaries. For example, less educated Sri Lankan Tamil men who are largely monolingual in Tamil sometimes use swear words from English to present (or perform) a macho, man of the world, and urbane identity. Performativity connotes the fact that one doesn’t have to have full competence in a language to negotiate identities associated with a language. The term also separates such practices from biological and essentialist considerations. Performativity holds out the possibility that one can adopt diverse cultures fluidly in different contexts. Such a perspective takes us closer to understanding culture as situationally constructed through talk in interaction. This notion also enables us to perceive culture as interactionally negotiated through language, not something predefined and associated inextricably with a single language or excluded from others. Thus this orientation is closer to postmodern perspectives. The term accommodates surface-level displays of cultural and social identities; it is consistent with the antifoundationalist perspective of postmodernity in treating tentative and constructed displays as meaningful; and it treats issues of representation as significant, separating them from questions of core linguistic or cultural values. We’ll consider more examples of the ways in which language is used for acts of intercultural negotiation and performance below.

Models of World Englishes and Assumptions of Culture

While the sections above consider English in relation to other languages, we focus in this section on the cultural and communicative issues facing speakers of diverse varieties of English. As English spreads worldwide, it poses several challenges for intercultural communication between speakers from diverse communities who use English as a lingua franca. Let us examine the models and solutions offered by different scholars to facilitate intercultural communication through English.

Braj Kachru (1986) is credited with helping pluralize our conception of the English language by showing the rule-governed nature of the new varieties that have emerged in postcolonial communities. He also showed how these communities shaped the language to suit their own cultures and values. Kachru’s well-known “three circles” model charts the historical spread and functional differences of the language by developing a sensitivity to the expanding circle (where English was beginning to be used as a foreign language [EFL] – e.g., Brazil, Japan, Vietnam), outer circle (where English was introduced during colonial times, and now functions as a second language [ESL] with its own well-established varieties – e.g., India, Nigeria, Singapore), and the inner circle (where ownership of English was traditionally claimed and norms were considered to originate – e.g., Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia). Kachru described these communities as norm-dependent, norm-developing, and norm-providing, respectively, to indicate their relative status. He posited that the outer circle communities could use their English varieties according to their own cultural norms, as they have developed English varieties that feature well-formulated rules and conventions. In conversations between inner-circle and outer-circle speakers, therefore, both groups should take note of the cultural assumptions informing their respective conversational norms in English. Inner-circle speakers can’t treat the new styles of using English or the new idioms informing the speech of outer-circle varieties as incorrect. However, Kachru didn’t grant the expanding circle speakers the same privilege. Assuming that these communities don’t have an active history of using English in their own communities, and that they use English only for contact purposes with those outside their community, Kachru theorized that they didn’t have well-developed norms of their own. He posited that they would use English according to the linguistic and cultural norms of the inner-circle communities.

However, geopolitical changes related to postmodern globalization have reconfigured the relationship between English varieties and speech communities, sending us in search of new models of intercultural communication. Notable among the changes are the following:

As the worldwide speakers of English are compelled to negotiate English on equal terms, we have new challenges for intercultural communication. We also face the need to model the relationship between English varieties in more appropriate ways. In light of the recent demographic and geopolitical changes, many scholars have started working with Crystal’s (2004: 49) notion of English as “a family of languages,” sympathetic to the heteroglossic models of such as McArthur (1987) and Modiano (1999), which envision a more egalitarian relationship among the national varieties. They are moving towards an understanding of American English and Sri Lankan English as local varieties for intra-national purposes, with a possible neutral variety evolving to facilitate contact between communities. Crystal prophesies, “It may not be many years before an international standard will be the starting-point, with British, American, and other varieties all seen as optional localizations” (Crystal 2004: 40). This neutral core variety has been labeled differently by different scholars. McArthur (1987) calls it “World Standard Auxiliary English,” Crystal (1997) “World Standard Spoken English,” and Modiano (1999) “English as an International Language.” The assumption is that while communities will use their own varieties of English influenced by their own cultural assumptions in intracommunity interactions, they will shift to the neutral variety when they engage in intercultural communication. This approach provides a convenient way out of the challenges in negotiating cultural diversity. Speakers don’t have to master some other community’s linguistic and cultural norms to communicate. They’ll be using a common variety that is “native” to all of them.

However, the cultural identity and status of the core variety has to be further explored. Though Crystal concedes that the international standard will be heavily influenced by the dominant American English (see Phillipson 2003 and Modiano 2004 for a stronger expression of this position), other scholars assume that English as a lingua franca (or ELF, the preferred acronym for most scholars) is culture-free and neutral. House (2003) holds that ELF is a “language for communication” rather than a “language for identification.” In other words, multilingual speakers will use English for utilitarian purposes with a pragmatic attitude; they won’t develop a cultural affinity with the language or attempt to represent their identities through English. Therefore, she argues that concerns of culture or power are irrelevant in ELF. Yet, there are indications in her own study that ELF raises cultural concerns among Germans. House shows how the revival of German folk music could be a reaction against the international spread of English pop music. She goes on to argue: “Paradoxical as this may seem, the very spread of ELF may stimulate members of minority languages to insist on their own local language for emotional bonding to their own culture, history and tradition” (House 2003: 561). Such examples show that it is difficult to separate communication and identification in ELF. Any language, whatever the status of the speaker or objectives of usage, can raise issues of identification and representation in relative degrees.

While the model of Crystal, McArthur, and Modiano is a projection for the future, an empirical enterprise to define the new norms of ELF is the attempt to describe the lingua franca core (LFC). This constitutes the phonological and grammatical options that multilingual speakers adopt to facilitate intelligibility, though they may differ from the norms of inner-circle communities and local varieties (see the description of features in Seidlhofer 2004: 215–23). However, there is similar confusion about LFC’s cultural status. Some have interpreted LFC as an independent variety of equal status with national varieties, but common to all nations, based on statements like the following:

The option of distinguishing ELF from ENL [i.e., English as National Language] is likely to be beneficial in that it leaves varieties of native English intact for all the functions that only a first language can perform and as a target for learning in circumstances where ENL is deemed appropriate, as well as providing the option of code-switching between ENL and ELF.

(Seidlhofer 2004: 229)

In other places LFC researchers have clarified that they are focusing more on the negotiation strategies of multilingual speakers and that they are not constructing another culture-free variety of English (see Jenkins 2006).

We now see an evolving tradition of research that raises questions about the possibility of a core variety that is shared by all communities. Meierkord (2004) adopts the explicit position that ELF has nothing of the stability, homogeneity, or system projected by McArthur’s World Standard Auxiliary English, Crystal’s World Standard Spoken English, or Jenkins and Seidlhofer’s Lingua Franca Core. She characterizes ELF as “a variety in constant flux, involving different constellations of speakers of diverse individual Englishes in every single interaction” (Meierkord 2004: 115). In her syntactic description, she defines ELF as a heterogeneous form of English characterized by:

overwhelming correspondence to the rules of L1 Englishes

transfer phenomena, developmental patterns and nativised forms

simplification, regularisation and levelling processes.

(Meierkord 2004: 128)

Using data from international students in Germany, she goes on to demonstrate the expression of speaker identities and cultures in ELF through this heterogeneous or hybrid English. Sampson and Zhao (2003) treat ELF in somewhat similar ways as a pidgin variety based on data from multilingual sailors. They find the existence of Singaporean, Indian, and Filipino Englishes in the ELF of the sailors. They consider the way in which sailors borrow from the peculiar usages of each other; both transfer items from other L1s as well as versions of local Englishes. Arguing that ELF is a non-system then, Meierkord, and Sampson and Zhao, propose that English in contact situations accommodates local forms of English and, by extension, local cultures and identities. We will consider below how it is possible for multilingual speakers to communicate without a shared variety of English.

Other scholars question the possibility of a language ever being neutral and egalitarian. Kayman (2004) traces attempts throughout history to define English as a culture-free language. He argues that if ELF doesn’t belong to a specific national culture it doesn’t mean that it has no culture. We simply have to define new ways of talking about culture at a time of transnational relations. Culture may find expression in transnational domains and agencies. Kayman raises the possibility that digital media and technologies of communication might infuse English with “cultures” of their own: “To the extent that English is promoted as a global language of communication it is likely to serve as the privileged vehicle for such cultures of communication” (2004: 17). As in the past, when lands such as America were defined as terra nullius where settlers can impose their culture at will, he finds that Global English is defined as “a utopia of communication in which ‘English’ becomes the very image of a desire for global networks where informational and symbolic messages flow without resistance across frontiers” (Kayman 2004: 18).

Tibor Frank (2004) also raises the possibility of a culture-neutral English actually serving the interests of dominant institutions and agencies. Labeling LFE as “airport English,” he observes that “its complexities have been eliminated and its substance undermined. … with the aim of delivering (often commercial) messages in the shortest, most economical way” (Frank 2004: 81). Considering its claim as a “culture-deprived, neutral English,” he goes on to express his concerns: “This. . . Supranational English pervades national languages and inundates them with its expressions and distinct style of communication” (2004: 82). Yet, he considers ELF “an American genre” (82), presumably influenced by values of pragmatism, economy, and commercialism.

In the same vein, Deborah Cameron (2000) notes that in the name of a common language for globalization certain discourse patterns associated with English are entering service exchanges in many countries. Namely, American service exchange routines are becoming popular in countries like France or Italy, suppressing local forms of greeting, requesting, and closing exchanges behind the counter. The notion of a common or neutral global English seems to inure people to the cultural assumptions and values motivating different genres of discourse and registers associated with a language.

I am inclined to viewing lingua franca communication, whether through English varieties or through other languages, as accommodating the codes and conventions speakers bring with them – along the lines of Meierkord. They don’t resort to using a common language with a common culture but negotiate their differences through effective pragmatic strategies. This orientation to postmodern communication implies that the search for common cores is a linguistic utopia (as Mary Louise Pratt [1987] has argued). We should search for the ways people make a space for their languages and cultures in intercultural communication. I turn now to research that sheds light on this paradoxical possibility.

Negotiation Strategies in Intercultural Communication

Face-to-face speech interaction in ELF communication has recently been receiving a lot of attention. A promising area of research for our purposes is the focus on pragmatic strategies that facilitate the use of local varieties each interlocutor may bring to the communication. Paradoxically, these strategies enable speakers to maintain their own varieties and values, and still communicate without hindrance. This finding goes against the dominant linguistic assumption that it is homogeneity that facilitates communication. Seidlhofer (2004: 218) summarizes the pragmatic strategies that have been identified in ELF research:

Misunderstandings are not frequent in ELF interactions; when they do occur, they tend to be resolved either by topic change, or, less often, by overt negotiation using communication strategies such as rephrasing and repetition.

Interference from L1 interactional norms is very rare – a kind of suspension of expectations regarding norms seems to be in operation.

As long as a certain threshold of understanding is obtained, interlocutors seem to adopt what Firth (1996) has termed the “let it pass” principle, which gives the impression of ELF talk being overtly consensus-oriented, cooperative and mutually supportive, and thus fairly robust.

The third finding explains why miscommunication is rare in lingua franca discourse. The speakers ignore cases of misunderstanding or renegotiate them. Since they are focused on making the conversation work in order to accomplish their mutual interests, they don’t let cases of misunderstanding defeat them. Even attitudinal resources, such as patience, tolerance, and humility to negotiate differences can help speakers decode the unique features of the interlocutor and sustain a conversation. Such are the resources that Higgins (2003) finds multilingual students employing to decode vocabulary from World Englishes. Native speakers (e.g., Anglo-American students) have difficulties in such tasks, as they don’t bring a tolerant attitude.

In a paradoxical case, House (2003) demonstrates how in Germany students of English from different countries bring pragmatic strategies valued in their own communities to facilitate communication with outsiders. In other words, these are culture-specific pragmatics that complement intercultural communication. For example, House finds that “Asian participants employ topic management strategies in a striking way, recycling a specific topic regardless of where and how the discourse had developed at any particular point” (2003: 567). This discourse of “parallel monologues” actually facilitates nonproficient English speakers as it helps them focus on each move as if it were a fresh topic. The second trait is an echoing of the previous speaker’s statement, which House calls “represents,” done with the purpose of affirming contributions according to the politeness convention of Asian cultures. This strategy too serves to bring to mind the threads of discourse and facilitate ELF communication. The third feature is a “strong demonstration of solidarity and consensus-orientation” (569), which is also influenced by Asian cultural patterns of group orientation. In all these cases, while the local cultural ways of interacting are alive in English, paradoxically they serve to negotiate difference and ensure intelligibility.

Such findings lend credence to Khubchandani’s (1997) claim that multilinguals bring with them intuitive strategies that facilitate healthy negotiation. “With a view to grasp the essence of Indian plurality” (1997: 87), he lists values such as learning to hold language boundaries and identities in fluid terms, balancing distinctive features of identity with collaborative needs of com­munication, and managing intra-group solidarity with inter-group harmony. Independently of the applied linguistic research tradition reviewed here, Khubchandani presents pragmatic strategies similar to the ones presented above as enabling communication between multilingual speakers in India from precolonial times. He argues that without looking for a common code to make communication possible, speakers negotiate their different languages through effective pragmatic strategies, such as speech accommodation, codeswitching, and borrowing. His book suggests that multilingual people are socialized into developing such strategies in their own plural environments that they bring similar strategies to the communication of English in lingua franca situations of postmodern globalization.

In addition to pragmatic strategies, ELF speakers use discourse strategies (at the textual or syntactic level) to accommodate local variants. Focusing on syntactic variation, Meierkord (2004) finds that individuals retain the chara­c­teristics of their own English varieties, facilitating communication through syntactic strategies such as segmentation and regularization. Though she finds mostly less competent expanding-circle speakers producing localized forms, they manage to communicate effectively thanks to skillful discourse strategies. Of the two strategies she illustrates, the first is simplification strategies such as segmentation. Utterances are shortened into clausal or phrasal segments which form the basic informational units. The second, regularization, involves selection of forms that are explicit. Topicalization is one such strategy of regularization. This involves the movement of focused information to the front of the utterance.

Such research needs to be conducted in more diverse domains of ELF use. Sampson and Zhao (2003) show how sailors from different countries working in merchant vessels negotiate Maritime discourse through a pidgin-like use, where words and phrases from specific local Englishes are borrowed and used by others. To facilitate comprehension even when they maintain their idiosyncratic linguistic features, they develop certain discourse strategies – such as topic fronting. Though Maritime English has been developed in the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) tradition to train sailors, the authors find from their ethnography that “communication does not depend on a technical grasp of language but also relies on an ability to penetrate accents and indeed to understand new and particular forms of English” (Sampson and Zhao 2003: 40). In other words, it is not grammatical competence but pragmatic competence to deal with language difference that seems to help these sailors.

Louhiala-Salminen, Charles, and Kankaanranta (2005) analyze the emerging genre of business English lingua franca (BELF). They study the way English is negotiated when two companies with Swedish and Finnish workers merge and adopt English as their medium of communication. What Swedes and Finns self-and other-identify as the cultural tendencies of each group do manifest themselves in their communication. Swedes tend to be discursive, wordy, and dialogic while Finns tend to be few-worded, factual, and direct. In general, Finns tend to be more issue-oriented and display less interpersonal orientation than the Swedes. Furthermore, Finns tend to rely more on shared information than the Swedes. Yet, the more surprising finding is that both groups negotiate their differences smoothly:

In spite of differences possibly attributable to national culture, there was no evidence of conflict or misunderstandings. Quite the contrary, meeting discourse demonstrated conversational cooperation and understanding of the discourse even when it relied heavily on what the speaker assumed to be a shared value although this as not necessarily explicitly stated as such.

(Louhiala-Salminen, Charles, and Kankaanranta 2005: 418)

Though the phonological and syntactic levels of English were nonnative, the smoothness in ELF communication resulted from the pragmatic skills speakers employed to negotiate their differences.

In a research on sales negotiation, Planken (2005) compares the discourse of professionals and learners in intercultural communication through English. She finds that professionals engage in “safe talk” to develop rapport and thus facilitate ELF communication with multilingual speakers. In many cases, the topic of the safe talk relates to “interculturalness” (2005: 397). These are reflexive comments on their own cultures, peculiarities, and differences. Planken states, “It would seem that by pointing out and acknowledging cultural differences, participants try to create a temporary in-group of (fellow) non-natives, whose common ground is the fact that they differ culturally” (2005: 397). Comments about their nonnativeness enabled them to build a solidarity that probably facilitated non-conflictual communication when gaps or mistakes occurred. Thus the interlocutors distanced themselves from their own cultures as they created a third space – “a no-man’s-land” (Planken 2005: 397) – activating flexible norms and practices that facilitate communication.

A fascinating finding is the way members of migrant communities shuttle between varieties in order to represent new identities. They display immense creativity as they borrow from neighboring communities for their purposes even if they don’t have good proficiency in the other English varieties. These are forms of crossing (see Rampton 1995). This is largely an act of performance – limited to surface-level deployment of linguistic codes to convey temporary identities and messages. One might consider this a convergence strategy of adopting the language variety of another group to express solidarity and facilitate intelligibility. Harris, Leung, and Rampton (2000) show how a Bengali student in London picks up Rastafarian English from the Jamaican communities in his neighborhood. Bengalis in London probably find that Rasta English facilitates friendship and other social transactions with the Jamaican community. Similarly, Ibrahim (1999) finds that Somali students in Toronto adopt Hip-Hop English. They would find Afro-Canadian identity and cultural features important to develop a more urban and local identity. These situational constructions of cultures and identities are the forms of performativity I described earlier as moving scholars away from primordial orientations of culture to social constructionist perspectives.

We need more studies on the new contexts of communication spawned by globalization – i.e., in the domains of diaspora, outsourcing, and business and production networks. Intercultural communication in the many new “scapes” of postmodern globalization has to be studied with greater urgency. Such interactions must be observed closely to develop a taxonomy of the strategies multilinguals employ to negotiate cultures and represent identities in ELF. Such a body of knowledge will enable us to teach students or advise professionals on the strategies they have to adopt in the many new intercultural contexts of communication today.

Theoretical and Pedagogical Implications

To address the new challenges for intercultural communication in English as a global contact language, we have to move to a new orientation to language and communication. We might say that we have to move the modernist assumptions characterizing language to a postmodern orientation. The shifts can be outlined as follows:

Table 7.1. Shifting orientations from modernity to postmodernity

Modernist	Postmodern
systematized language	mixed languages
autonomous language	ecology of communication
formal competence	everyday performance
reason	intuition and practice
predefined grammar	emergent grammar
homogeneous speech community	heterogeneous community
grammar	pragmatics
rules of correctness	strategies of negotiation

Enlightenment has taken us in the direction of treating languages and cultures as autonomous, and independent from other social domains, in an effort to make description and understanding manageable. Modernist scholarship treats language as a thing in itself, an objective, identifiable product. To make this possible, the field also gives importance to form, treating language as a tightly knit structure, neglecting other processes and practices that always accompany communication. Scholars have traced this development to Saussurean linguistics and the structuralist movement (Lantolf and Thorne 2006: 4). Other predispositions follow from this assumption. Khubchandani has argued that there is a preference for considering the temporal life of language, charting the linear stages by which imperfect forms develop to a stasis, at which point they become full-fledged forms. Inadequate attention is paid to the way in which various language forms and varieties are embedded in diverse environments, perfect in their own way for the functions at hand. Therefore, Kubchandani calls for an ecological orientation to language. We have to understand how language is meshed with other symbol systems and embedded in specific environments, both shaping and shaped by these. We also fail to give importance to attitudinal, psychological, and perceptual factors that shape the intersubjective processes of communication. This is partly due to the primacy of cognition and reason in communication. There is also a resultant lack of appreciation of the complexity of human communication, marked by indeterminacy, multimodality, and heterogeneity. Modern linguistics prioritizes the homogeneity of community, competence, and language structure, treating it as the basic requirement that facilitates communication. Even when diversity is addressed, it is treated as a variation deriving from a common form or norm. All this has meant that language and culture are separated from their ecological contexts and resources. This move artificially separates language and culture from other areas of social practice and environmental resources. Furthermore, to characterize the ability of subjects to work competently in a specific language or culture, modernity took us inside the mental black box of the “native” speaker. Schools like structuralism aimed to explain the finite rules of the deep structure that helped explain one’s linguistic or cultural competence.

What we find in the context of postmodernity is that we have to treat languages and cultures as always in contact and therefore mixed or hybrid. We have to consider how language and culture work with environmental and contextual resources. Rather than moving only inwards to describe the deep structure of language or culture, we have to also move outwards to situate them in social and environmental context. From this perspective, we have to treat culture or language as not already fully constituted and complete, but as emergent (along the lines of Hopper 1987). The structure of a culture or language is always becoming in relation to the social practices of the communities in question. To explain the meaningfulness of a linguistic or cultural act, we have to consider how subjects may shuttle in and out of diverse codes and values in context-specific ways to appropriate, borrow, resist, and transform tokens belonging to diverse communities. The notion of everyday performance takes the focus away from formal and full competence. We now focus on communication as situationally and linguistically accomplished to achieve one’s changing and tentative interests and goals.

To move toward this ideal, we have to conceive of a community that is not based on commonalties. For a long time speech communities have been formed around shared features. The first obvious candidate for this commonalty was a shared language or at least a shared grammar system. Needless to say, these communities have been linguistic utopias (Pratt 1991), positing a commonality that is non-existent. Linguistic utopias are oblivious to differences and may even suppress differences. But the formation of postmodern multilingual communities has inspired new ways of conceiving community. As people from diverse locations now share the same geographical space, scholars are asking themselves:

Can there be communities without the guarantees of stability? Is the essence of a common language and shared history the only guarantee for a collective identity? … Communities overlap, abut and adjoin to each other. What holds them together can rarely be identified by unique values or an exclusive set of characteristics.

(Papastergiadis 2000: 196–7)

This question is significant when we think of postmodern “lifestyle” com­munities. Rampton (1999: 425) observes: “Western societies are actually in a new era, where among other things, aestheticized multi-modal texts recruit people into ‘life-style’ communities, into ‘neo-tribes without socialization’ where centres of authority are hard to find and where entry is a matter of the consumer’s desire, personal taste, shopping skills and purchasing power.” This is not a new development. As Khubchandani points out, different language and cultural groups constructed communities of this nature in South Asia in precolonial times. They enjoyed overlapping communities, often constructed temporarily for pragmatic immediate purposes. So, for example, there are “communities” in markets, schools, and worship places where speakers of different languages would gather to get common objectives accomplished. We have to now imagine how speakers of different varieties of English may form such temporary, fluid, communities in the postmodern world. Different domains of activity may bring speakers of different varieties of English together to accomplish their purposes.

There are some theoretical models that envision the possibility of communities without centers or cores. For example, the notions of communities of practice and contact zones, discussed earlier, enable us to posit people from different backgrounds coming together to accomplish their purposes without sharing common languages or cultures. From this perspective, what speakers need are ways of negotiating difference rather than codes that are shared with others. In the interest of space, I provide an outline of the way in which such notions of intercultural communication would work:

From this perspective, we can return to the debates on lingua franca English and the search for a core variety that enables communication. Scholars are now seriously considering a model of World Englishes without a core variety (see Roberts and Canagarajah forthcoming). Speakers come with their own varieties and negotiate communication on equal terms. What we have in the center is an open space – a contact zone, if you will – a space where speakers have to negotiate their differences in order for communication to work. What enables them to communicate is not a shared grammatical system or cultural norm, but effective strategies to negotiate their differences.

If this is the evolving shape of communities and communication in postmodern intercultural communication, how do we proceed with language teaching? How do we develop competence in new languages or varieties of English? As is evident in the previous paragraph, we have to develop negotiation strategies among our students. We have to train them to assume difference in communication and orientate them to sociolinguistic and psychological resources that will enable them to negotiate difference. This means that we have to move away from an obsession with correctness and norms. Correctness usually assumes the existence of a common/legitimate core of grammar or cultural norms. This means that rather than focusing on rules and conventions, we have to focus on strategies of communication. This shift will enable our students to be prepared for engagement in communities of practice and collaboratively achieve communication through the use of pragmatic strategies. Our pedagogical objective is not to develop mastery of a “target language,” but to develop the ability to work with a repertoire of codes among our students. We have to develop the sensitivity to decode differences in dialects as students engage with a range of speakers and communities. What would help in this venture is the focus on developing a metalinguistic awareness. For this purpose, we have to shift our attention from mastery of grammar rules or cultural norms, which is the traditional focus of language classrooms. Developing a sensitivity to an intuitive understanding of the way linguistic communication works would help students better in the postmodern world to work through/with the fluidity in codes that they see around them. Through all this, we are helping students shuttle between communities and cultures, and not to think of only joining a community or becoming acculturated into a single cultural tradition (typically the native speaker language and cultural norms). The latter was the focus in all language teaching. We created the expectation that by learning another language the students would ideally become insiders to a community. We now know that communities don’t work that way. There are no permanent insiders or outsiders anymore. All of us engage with each other for specific objectives and then move on to form new communities for other needs.

Conclusion

It is by adopting the above lines of theoretical shifts and pedagogical practice that we can address the challenge Modiano poses for scholars of English and intercultural communication: “Retaining our indigenous cultures and language(s) while reaping the benefits of large-scale integration via a language of wider communication is the challenge many of us will no doubt have to come to terms with in the years to come” (2004: 225). Such paradoxical objectives require thinking outside the box. ELF research challenges the dominant disciplinary constructs based on homogeneity – i.e., homogeneous grammatical system, homogeneous speech community, homogeneous competence. What we find is a heterogeneous global English speech community, with a heterogeneous English, and different modes of competence. Despite this heterogeneity, the speakers across national borders achieve effective communication. What helps them are sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and discourse strategies of negotiation. We have to consider, therefore, how effective communication may be based not on a uniform grammar or formal competence, but pragmatics and performance. Such an orientation will help us reconcile ourselves to the reality of English as a heterogeneous language with a plural grammatical system and cultural norms, accommodating the expression of diverse local values and identities. My argument above is that in order to facilitate the types of communication possible in postmodern globalization we have to move away from the biases of modernity in language and cultural studies. The shifts needed are from homogeneity to heterogeneity, purity to mixture, autonomy to embeddedness, stability to fluidity, and mono to multi!

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