Please join us for the next Centre for Global Englishes (CGE) seminar.

When: Wednesday 8th February 2017, 5-6.30pm

Where: Building 65, Lecture Theatre C

Who: Dr Sonia Morán Panero, University of Southampton

Orientations towards English as a lingua franca in the Spanish-speaking world: What is ‘English’ (for)?

In this talk, I explore how university students from the Spanish-speaking world conceptualise and evaluate the notion of English as a global language, and the variability emerging from its unprecedented spread and lingua franca use. Drawing from a qualitative interview study of students’ elicited metalanguage in Chile, Mexico and Spain, I report on a) the functions and social meanings that are assigned to English between global and local spheres of use, b) students’ conceptualisations and evaluations of their own and others’ ways of speaking, and c) participants’ ideas on what the use of English as a lingua franca is/should be like in relation to intelligibility, correctness, variability and identity expression. The investigation reveals the multiple and often conflicted conceptualisations with which participants construct their evaluations, and the diverse possibilities for identification that these ‘non-native’ users of English find in the language. It also illustrates how broader language ideologies (e.g. native-speaker, standard, variation-friendly ideologies) can be reproduced, re-negotiated and/or challenged in metalinguistic practice. I will reflect on the implications that the observed ontological complexity can have for ELT, and consider the pedagogical opportunities that explicit talk about language has to offer for the language classroom.