“How do we write in English as a Lingua Franca?” by Prof Anna Mauranen, Vice-Rector and Professor of English, University of Helsinki, Feb 24th, 2016
As ELF research has shown, communicating in English as a Lingua Franca is highly successful despite manifesting certain non-standard features, much along the lines of dialects and other non-standard varieties. However, it has repeatedly been claimed that while spoken language may tolerate a certain amount of non-standard variability, the same is not true of written text. Writing requires standards and precision to get its message across. A moment’s thought suffices to question this traditional train of thought. Surely, if something is inscribed permanently on a surface, it should be easier to decipher than the fleeting combinations of sounds that speech consists of. To see how writing fares in relation to speech, this talk looks into ELF in high-stakes international writing, academic texts. The data is drawn from the newly completed corpus of written academic ELF at Helsinki, the WrELFA corpus.
