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Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies

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Chapter 9
Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies

Alastair Pennycook

9.1 Introduction

One supposed truism in the discourses around the global spread of English is that it
is the most widely spoken language in the world as a second language, whereas
Chinese is the most widely spoken first language. English, while maintaining a base
of a few 100 million “native speakers”, is numerically superior because of the huge
number of “non-native speakers” around the world, who now vastly outnumber the
former. Chinese, by contrast, while on the rise as a second language, achieves its
numerical superiority from its colossal base of “native speakers”, the majority of
whom reside in China. On the one hand, the world’s great lingua franca (LF), on the
other hand the world’s great mother tongue. As one such version of this analysis
explains, “Although Modern Standard Chinese has more mother-tongue speakers
(approximately 700 million), English is unquestionably used by more people
as a second or foreign language, putting the total number of English-speakers
worldwide at well over one billion” (English for students 2011).
“In terms of native-speaker rankings”, suggests Graddol (2006, p. 60), English,
which was “clearly in second place” behind Chinese, is falling behind Spanish and
Hindi/Urdu and will soon also be challenged by Arabic “in the world league tables”.
Crystal (2003) explains it thus: “about a quarter of the world’s population is already
fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing – in the early 2000s
that means around 1.5 billion people. No other language can match this growth. Even
Chinese, found in eight different spoken languages, but unified by a common writing
system, is known to ‘only’ some 1.1 billion” (p. 6). This common argument raises
several questions: First, what credibility can be given to such figures? What is the
basis for these calculations of numbers of speakers? One obvious concern is the vari-

A. Pennycook (*)
Language Studies, University of Technology,
Sydney, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

A. Kirkpatrick and R. Sussex (eds.), English as an International Language in Asia: 137

Implications for Language Education, Multilingual Education 1,
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4578-0_9, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
138 A. Pennycook

ability in these figures: rather than Crystal’s 1.5 billion second language speakers of
English, Graddol (2006), citing the Ethnologue website (see Ethnologue, 2011),
which is based on Ostler’s (2005) estimates, gives a figure of 508 million for native
and nonnative speakers combined, while the English for students website suggests
that while an “estimated 354 million people speak English as their first language”,
estimates about second language speakers of English “vary greatly between 150 mil-
lion and 1.5 billion”. This is more than mere variation. Such figures must be based on
profoundly different definitions of native and non-native speakers.
Concerns about the meaningfulness of such figures leads to several broader ques-
tions. On one level, we need to ask how they are derived and with what definitions
of fluency or competence. I shall not dwell on this here, but it is important to con-
sider that such figures are often based on school attendance data, and in fact tell us
very little about use and capacity in English. At another level, we need to ask more
generally what such approaches to language enumerability tell us. As Moore et al.
(2010) observe, the counting of languages and the counting of speakers of those
languages is such a flawed enterprise that there is little to be learned from these
figures, percentages and league tables. From this point of view, attempts to count
languages or speakers of languages, to compare the number of people who speak
English with the number who speak Chinese makes little sense. At another level
again, we need to ask what language ideologies underpin these particular versions
of languages as native tongues or lingua francas.
In talking of language ideologies, I am pointing to the significance of understanding
the “structured and consequential ways in which we think about language” (Seargeant
2009, p. 26). Languages are not pregiven entities that exist outside human under-
standing of what they are and what they do. They are ideological constructs that
serve different purposes. By maintaining a distinction between English as a second
language (and therefore lingua franca) and Chinese as a first language (and therefore
not a lingua franca), we are constructing an idea of languages based on the widely-
questioned divide between native and non-native speakers. There is an irony here that
many who question this divide in relation to English language pedagogy nevertheless
uphold it to make these claims about English and Chinese. The very assumption that
Chinese is a native language to the vast populations of China, furthermore, is a
language ideology of very large proportions. If it in fact makes much more sense to
look at Chinese as a lingua franca (Chew 2010; Li 2006) spoken across a region
comprising almost a quarter of the world’s population, then not only does this dis-
tinction between English as the great lingua franca and Chinese as the great mother
tongue become questionable, but we are also forced to turn a more critical eye on the
language ideologies that underpin these arguments.

9.2 English as a Lingua Franca

The idea of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has engendered considerable debate,
with a focus particularly on whether ELF is the same as English as an international
language (EIL); whether it is a new, monolithic model replacing earlier proposals
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 139

for a global standard; and whether, if it moves from a description of interactions to

a pedagogical model, it may become a new form of deficit English teaching.
Phillipson (2003, p. 176) warns that the use of English across Europe is leading to
“a simplified, pidginised but unstable ‘Euro-English’ that inhibits creativity and
expressiveness, whether English is used as a mother tongue or as a foreign lan-
guage, a language that is spoken with so much imprecision that communication
difficulties and breakdowns multiply”. Others, however, have addressed the ques-
tion of what happens to English when used as a lingua franca on a less deficit-
oriented basis. Taking up many concerns common to the World Englishes (WE)
framework, studies of English as a lingua franca have sought to identify features
common to regional (particularly European and Asian) communication among
diverse users of English. While there is a wide variety of work under this rubric, the
attempts to describe a lexicogrammatical (Seidlhofer 2001) or phonological (Jenkins
2000) core of English as a Lingua Franca have received wide attention. ELF
researchers, explains Jenkins (2006b, p. 161), “seek to identify frequently and sys-
tematically used forms that differ from inner circle forms without causing commu-
nication problems and override first language groupings”. The point, then, is to find
through analyses of corpora of English language use how communication is achieved
across regions. What regular forms that differ from native speaker norms appear not
to impede – indeed may appear to improve – communication?
The ELF approach has been critiqued from the World Englishes perspective on
the grounds that it falls into the camp of those approaches to English that “idealize
a monolithic entity called ‘English’ and neglect the inclusive and plural character of
the world-wide phenomenon” (Kachru and Nelson 2006, p. 2). Such a critique,
however, as Jenkins (2006b) points out, is misguided, since it rests on the mistaken
assumption that English as a lingua franca is the same as English as an International
Language, which in turn may be associated with the notion of World Standard
(Spoken) English proposed by authors such as Crystal (2003). While Crystal’s
notion is of a possibly emergent variety of common spoken English rather than any
prescribed version, it differs from both the pluricentric focus of World Englishes
and from the Lingua Franca focus. Certainly the suggestion that ELF somehow
promotes inner circle norms is mistaken, since “ELF researchers specifically exclude
mother tongue speakers from their data collection. Indeed, in its purest form, ELF
is defined as a contact language used only among non–mother tongue speakers”
(Jenkins 2006b, p. 160).
Challenges to this “purer form” of ELF, however, as only occurring between
non-mother tongue speakers, have led to a softening of this view, so that Jenkins has
more recently asserted that while ELF is “a means of communication in English
between speakers who have different first languages” (Jenkins 2009, p. 41), this
does not necessarily exclude native speakers, but instead shifts their role in English
use from central to peripheral participants. Even if mother-tongue speakers of
English are included as possible participants in ELF discourse, however, this by no
means renders ELF a so-called inner circle variety or a monolithic entity. Rather it
acknowledges that such speakers also participate in global English exchanges, and,
more normatively, urges them to acknowledge equal speaker rights to all partici-
pants. The inclusion of mother tongue speakers of English, on the other hand, does
140 A. Pennycook

open ELF to some of the critiques that Phillipson (2009, p. 167) aims at it, arguing
that “lingua franca is a pernicious, invidious term if the language in question is a
first language for some people but for others a foreign language, such communica-
tion typically being asymmetrical”. More generally, he goes on to argue that it is a
“misleading term if the language is supposed to be neutral and disconnected from
culture”. He suggests instead that English as a lingua frankensteinia might be a
more appropriate term. While Phillipson’s concerns about an apparently monolithic
ELF may seem misguided, his warning that there may only be a weak engagement
with the cultural politics of English does need to be taken seriously.
A major focus of debate is whether the description of ELF is also used as a basis
for teaching, that is as a prescriptive rather than a descriptive tool. As Rubdy and
Saraceni suggest,
so long as the underlying tacit assumption is that once the Lingua Franca core is systemati-
cally codified, it can then be used as a model for teaching and learning this form of English
in the classroom, the question that arises is whether one form of prescription is not being
(unwittingly or even wittingly) replaced by another. (p. 10)

Certainly, some of the discussions about ELF do seem to suggest more than just
a descriptive project. Expressing concerns with the trend in applied linguistic circles
to adopt a laissez-faire attitude towards heterogenisation, Jenkins (2006a, p. 35)
suggests that “if a policy of pluricentricity is pursued unchecked”, there is a danger
that mutual comprehension may be impeded, that accents will move further and
further apart until a stage is reached where pronunciation presents a serious problem
to lingua franca communication. Yet the ELF protagonists vehemently reject accu-
sations of prescriptivism, arguing that it is precisely “the polymorphous nature of
the English language” (Seidlhofer 2006, p. 42) that is of interest, that they are “try-
ing to understand as far as possible emically, from participants’ perspectives, what
they do when they negotiate meaning in these encounters” (p. 44), or that an ELF
approach “closely approximates […] Kachru’s idea of a ‘polymodel’ approach to
the teaching of English” (Kirkpatrick 2006, p. 81) .
While some ELF researchers therefore claim an interest only in description
rather than prescription (to the extent that such a distinction is workable – see
Harris 1981) – there are other reasons why the prescriptive label does not hold.
While Jenkins (2006a) maintains a goal to “safeguard mutual phonological intelli-
gibility” (p. 36), she does not do so by seeking “to impose a monolithic pronunciation
model on ELF users” (p. 36). Rather, she suggests
that anyone participating in international communication needs to be familiar with, and
have in their linguistic repertoire for use, as and when appropriate, certain forms (phono-
logical, lexicogrammatical, etc.) that are widely used and widely intelligible across groups
of English speakers from different first language backgrounds. This is why accommodation
is so highly valued in ELF research. (Jenkins 2006b, p. 161)

For other ELF researchers, meanwhile, the goal is not in any case to propose a
model, but rather simply to account for the diversity of language uses that are tied
neither to native nor to nativised varieties (Kirkpatrick 2006) in order to capture
how “postcolonial speakers of English creatively negotiate the place of English in
their lives” (Canagarajah 2006, p. 200) .
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 141

As Rubdy and Saraceni (2006, p. 13) put it,

In the end, the validity of the EIL/ELF proposal will probably depend upon whether or not
it chooses to embrace a polymodel approach to the teaching of English or a monolithic one,
whether it leads to the establishing and promoting of a single (or a limited form of) Lingua
Franca Core for common use among speakers in the Outer and Expanding Circles, possibly
stripped of any cultural influences, or whether it will be flexible enough to manifest the
cultural norms of all those who use it along with the rich tapestry of linguistic variation in
which they are embedded.

Defending themselves against some of the challenges to ELF research, Dewey

and Jenkins (2010, p. 89) argue that it “upholds and celebrates linguistic diversity”.
It does not, they insist, “propose a uniform version of the language that might be
termed ‘Global English’”; nor does it prescribe norms of usage. Rather, the goal of
ELF research is “to describe how the language is manipulated in innovative ways to
suit the communicative needs of speakers who interact in complex multilingual
communities of practice, in settings where the language is sufficiently stable to act
as a lingua franca, yet sufficiently variable to fit the infinite purposes it serves”.
Whether an ELF perspective can remain consistent with World Englishes per-
spectives remains an open question. World Englishes, and particularly the rather
static “concentric circle” model, have come in for considerable criticism over the
last few years, with Bruthiaux (2003) amongst others pointing out the model’s many
inconsistencies, descriptive inadequacies, and perhaps above all its inabilities to
deal with current contexts of global language use. Ultimately, concludes Bruthiaux,
“the Three Circles model is a twentieth century construct that has outlived its use-
fulness” (2003, p. 161), or as Ostler (2010) puts it, the three circles “are not an
adequate basis for our attempt to fit the spread of English into some more general
theory that would characterize lingua-francas in general, and not just English as it is
currently spoken around the world” (p. 35).
Although on some levels there seems to be no important difference between the
idea of South Asian English (a WE construct) and English as a lingua franca in South
Asia (an ELF construct), the WE focus is always centrifugally towards local varieties
(at least up to the point of describing national varieties), while the ELF orientation
appears centripetal in that it aims to find out what is common to English across Asia,
Europe, or other regions. The two frameworks also take slightly different approaches
to the relation between their described entities (local or regional varieties of English)
and other languages. While WE adherents have emphasised very strongly that World
Englishes are not interlinguistic varieties caused by first language interference, but
rather sociolinguistically evolved varieties that are learned in their communities of
users, it is nevertheless quite possible to trace the relation between certain forms in a
WE variety and local languages. Thus while there are features in common across
World Englishes (more user-friendly invariable tag questions such as isn’t it or
regularisation of uncountable plurals, such as furnitures and informations), terms
are also adopted from local languages (count words such as lakh “100,000” and crore
“10,000,000” in Indian English, for example) precisely because there may be shared
language knowledge of one or more other languages.
The ELF position, while also distancing itself from any suggestions of inter-
linguistic deficit, posits a greater distance between the use of English and other
142 A. Pennycook

languages, since it is premised on the communicative strategies among those who

do not share a language. Indeed to talk of ELF in South East Asia is to focus on a
region of the world in which it may be unclear why we would expect communica-
tive norms to appear at all if such commonalities emerge from any first language
similarities. ASEAN includes both the Philippines and Indonesia, which have very
large numbers of languages across their many islands. Although English operates as
a class dialect here as elsewhere (and thus speakers of minority languages, who are
often disenfranchised in multiple ways, may be less likely to use ELF as a means of
communication), ELF in ASEAN may nevertheless involve speakers of a very wide
range of languages (Javanese and Cebuano, for example, in addition to Indonesian
and Tagalog). Developing forms of communication in English in the region, there-
fore, are unlikely to be based on linguistic commonalities, or on knowledge of each
others’ language.
One of the things that has been missing in some of these discussions is the
differences between Europe and South East Asia. In Europe, English is often
used by people who may likely know some of each others’ languages or similar
languages (a Romance or Germanic language, for example). They therefore speak
and interpret in the knowledge that certain tenses or terms may have particular
meanings, not as English but as part of some other language. When a Spanish
speaker, for example, suggests that “It is always moving […] to see how the camera’s
gaze captures emotions, habitual body languages, especially when people ignores
they are captured” (my data), someone who knows the Romance language use of
the term ignore – meaning not to know rather than to deliberately overlook – can
interpret this more or less as intended. This speaker does not have to speak one of
those languages as a first language, but needs to to know the use. A French speaker
might not notice the use (or might register it, having been warned about this
faux ami in English). A German speaker who knows English and Italian might
accommodate this differently, drawing on their knowledge of Italian to interpret
the Spanish in the English.
The South East Asian case is a different one, since English has taken on a
particular role in relation to the other languages of the region which are generally
less widely learned (Japanese used to be a partial exception and Chinese is an
emerging one). As Kirkpatrick (2010a) points out, while the European Union has
insisted on a multilingual policy, ASEAN by contrast has adopted English as its
working language. While there are of course some commonalities across these
languages, especially those influenced by Chinese language and scripts – Japanese,
Korean and Vietnamese, for example, share some underlying meanings and terms
from Chinese, and have to different extents and over different periods of time,
shared writing systems – the possibility of a Vietnamese speaker interpreting, say,
Thai terms or tenses in English is at the very least different from the ways parallel
understandings may happen in Europe.
In a comparison of WE and ELF approaches, Pakir (2009) suggests they have
four working axioms in common: an emphasis on the pluricentricity of English;
seeking the recognition of a variety; accepting that language changes and adapts;
and focusing on the discourse strategies of English-knowing bilinguals. Although a
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 143

focus on language change and bilingual discourse strategies are indeed shared
aspects of these approaches, Pakir’s first two points are more contentious. While
WE focuses on a multiplicity of “centres”, and although ELF is also oriented towards
a notion of diversity, it does not posit a plurality of centres. And although some ELF
work may be oriented towards the description, codification and acceptance of ELF
as a variety, most work views ELF as far too flexible and open-ended to be seen as
a variety (Saraceni 2010). On the other hand, Pakir (2009) suggests that WE and
ELF differ in that WE focuses on language users in all three circles, while ELF is
interested only in the expanding circle. This too is questionable, however, since the
major focus of WE has always been the outer circle, with less to say about the
expanding circle and almost nothing about the inner circle.
The lack of attention to the diversity of inner circle contexts – what to do with
Lebanese English in Sydney, for example, or Aboriginal English in other parts of
Australia – has been one of many oversights of the WE model. A plausible case
can in fact be made that the ELF focus is trying to address precisely that gap
left by the holes in the World Englishes model: how to come to grips with a
non-centrist understanding of English as an international language that is depen-
dent neither on hegemonic versions of central English nor on nationally defined
new Englishes, but rather attempts to account for the ever-changing negotiated
spaces of current language use. The ELF model, it is argued, “liberates L2 speak-
ers from the imposition of native speaker norms as well as the cultural baggage of
World Englishes models” (Rubdy and Saraceni 2006, p. 8). That is to say, by
adopting neither inner nor outer circle norms, and by admitting that ELF occurs
in all three contexts – English is used as a lingua franca in Sydney, Singapore,
Stockholm and Shanghai – an ELF focus opens up a more flexible space for think-
ing about global English use.

9.3 What Is a Lingua Franca Anyway?

By and large, there is fairly common agreement that the original lingua franca was
a language that developed for trading purposes across the Mediterranean, using
vocabulary from Arabic, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Turkish (to the extent
that these were namable entities). Ostler (2010) describes the original LF as “the
common contact language of the eastern Mediterranean in the first half of the sec-
ond millennium, the pidgin Italian in which Greeks and Turks could talk to
Frenchmen and Italians” (p. 4). While we need to be cautious here when terms such
as pidgin Italian, Greeks, Turks, Frenchmen and Italians are used, since what these
terms referenced 1,000 years ago is very different from their current meanings, this
does give us a sense of the original lingua franca as a widely used language of trade.
Dewey and Jenkins (2010), drawing on Knapp and Meierkord (2002), explain this
original LF as being composed of Italian dialects, and elements of Spanish, French,
Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Greek and Persian, “its hybrid nature being a defining
feature of all the lingua francas that have followed” (p. 72).
144 A. Pennycook

The term lingua franca (Italian for “Frankish tongue”) originated in the
Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages among crusaders and traders of different
language backgrounds. Phillipson (2009) suggests a certain historical irony here
that the language of the medieval crusaders has now become the term affixed to
“English as the language of the crusade of global corporatization, marketed as ‘free-
dom’ and ‘democracy’” (p. 167). The term itself comes from the Italian, and the
Arabic view that all Europeans were “Franks” (Faranji/ farengi). As Ostler (2005)
explains, one long-term effect of the French support for the Crusades and the estab-
lishment of Frankish domains in Palestine was the association for many Arabs of
Franks with Europeans more generally. Hence, the widespread Arabic term for
Europeans, based on the generalisation of Franks as Europeans, was adopted in the
Italian term lingua franca, referring to the European-based means of communica-
tion in the Mediterranean. The original lingua franca, or Sabir, mixed Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic words and used a basic and reduced syntax (Walter
1988, p. 216).
A slightly different version is given in Kirkpatrick’s (2010b) explanation that
“The origin of the term ‘lingua franca’ stems from when Germanic Franks moved
into Gaul in the fifth century and adopted the local language, which became known
as the language of the Franks, or lingua franca” (p. 2). For Kirkpatrick, a “lingua
franca can thus be defined as a common language between people who do not share
a mother tongue” (p. 3). From this point of view, a lingua franca, both historically
and in the present, means a language adopted and used by speakers of other lan-
guages, which differs from the definitions above (where it is a language that emerges
for trading purposes), but fits more with current definitions of English as a lingua
franca. It is interesting to note, too, that his claim that “lingua francas tend to con-
tain a large number of non-standard forms” (p. 2) depends on the idea that there is a
standardised version of the language from which non-standard versions differ. In
this view, then, a lingua franca may be a language variety that emerges from a more
standardised version that has been adopted for wider communication.
It has also of course become common to adopt a broader definition of a lingua
franca than the original meaning of an emergent trading language. Thus the Longman
dictionary of applied linguistics (Richards et al. 1985) explains that a lingua franca
is any language that is used for communication between different groups of people
who speak a different language. A lingua franca, from this point of view, could be
an internationally used language of communication, such as English, French or
Spanish, which is the view taken by many current writers on ELF. Ostler (2010)
provides a very broad understanding of a lingua franca as any language learned
outside the home: on the one hand there is the “mother tongue” (or vernacular), a
language learned as a first language, at home, at one’s mother’s knee; and on the
other a lingua franca, any language learned outside that environment: “all language
deliberately acquired outside the home environment is a kind of contact language,
consciously learned for social or pragmatic reasons” (pp. 36–37).
If Ostler’s position suggests that any language can therefore serve as a lingua
franca (French is a lingua franca to someone who learns Arabic at home in Paris;
Arabic is a lingua franca to someone who learns Berber or Tamazight at home in
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 145

Rabat, and so on), it also suggests that a lingua franca may be spoken between those
who speak it as a mother tongue and those for whom it is a language learned outside
the home. As seen in the discussion above, this remains a contentious position in the
ELF debates, since for some, ELF occurs only between nonnative speakers (NNSs)
of a language and does not include native speakers (NSs). As Jenkins (2006b, p. 160)
suggested above, those who speak English as a mother tongue may be excluded
from the notion of ELF, which is seen by some as a “contact language used only
among non–mother tongue speakers”, even if she herself does not adhere to this
position (Dewey and Jenkins 2010, p. 72).
Braj Kachru (2005) objects to the notion of English as a lingua franca largely on
the grounds that the term is inaccurately used. While these objections to the idea of
ELF stem in part from the struggle for ascendancy between the World Englishes and
ELF paradigms, his critique is primarily that the term lingua franca is used loosely
and with a variety of meanings, and that this does not accord with the historical use
of the term, which referred to a contact language used by Arabs, Turks and other
traders around the Mediterranean. It was not therefore a pre-existing language
adopted for communication, but a language of trade developed for pragmatic com-
mercial purposes. The term lingua franca, Kachru explains, derives from the Arabic
lisan –al-farang, which originally referred to Italian. Both this claim that the term
referred to Italian (whatever was meant by that), and his odd claim that there is not
much variation in lingua francas (an unlikely possibility that contradicts many of
the other discussions of the original lingua franca), are themselves highly question-
able. Is there nevertheless more than just a minor quibble here over changes to the
current use of the term in his critique?
While it is clear that for a contemporary understanding of lingua francas not
much is to be gained by an insistence on consistent use across very different con-
texts (whether the language of the Franks, Italian, or a mixture of Arabic, Italian
Spanish and Turkish), there is nonetheless an important point worth further discus-
sion here. On the one hand, a lingua franca is understood as an emergent mix of
languages, where, as Walter suggests, one can believe on both sides that one is
speaking the other’s language. “This language served its purpose perfectly in com-
mercial exchanges because of its particular quality that each user thought that it was
the other’s language” (p. 216, my translation). On the other hand, it is seen as a com-
mon language used as a second language. It is only in this second sense that a claim
that lingua francas contain a large number of non-standard forms can be understood,
since in the first case there is no standard by which they should be judged. Only
when there is a standardised version of a language can we suggest that there are
non-standard varieties.
Whereas with the first lingua franca, a language emerged for trading purposes, in
the case of ELF an existing language has been adopted for such purposes. The
extent to which this distinction works, however, takes us back to language ideologi-
cal debates: it depends on how we understand language. If ELF does not include
speakers of English as a first language, or even if it does include them as peripheral
participants, the question becomes whether ELF really is a language adopted for
international communication, or whether it may indeed be an emergent form of
146 A. Pennycook

communication more akin to the original lingua franca. Perhaps neither Kachru’s
view of World Englishes as a preexisting system of communication with regional
variations, nor the view of ELF as a means of communication in English between
speakers of different languages, captures the more dynamic view of English as a
lingua franca more like the original than would at first appear. In order to pursue this
discussion further, I want to look first at the problems of whether Chinese should be
considered a lingua franca.

9.4 Chinese as a Lingua Franca

Comparing English and Chinese, Wang (2008) suggests that “One can hardly find
situations where Chinese serves as a lingua franca among non-native speakers of
Chinese, as does English” (Wang 2008, 32.4). This may be true to the extent that
Chinese does not serve similar purposes globally to those that English now serves.
But if, as Crystal (2003) asserts, Chinese is found in eight different spoken lan-
guages, it is less clear Chinese is not also a lingua franca for those speakers.
Kirkpatrick, for example, argues that
Bahasa Indonesia and Putonghua are the two most widely spoken Asian-based lingua
francas in East and Southeast Asia. Indeed, with over one billion speakers in China alone,
Putonghua is far and away the most widely spoken language on earth, and its influence and
reach is growing. For the moment, however, English remains the region’s (and world’s)
primary lingua franca in that English is the language most commonly used by people who
do not share a mother tongue. (Kirkpatrick 2010b, p. 3)

Here, then, we confront an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, Chinese is

claimed to rarely serve as a lingua franca among non-native speakers of Chinese; on
the other hand, Chinese, or at least Putonghua, is claimed as one of the most widely
spoken lingua francas in the region. Putonghua is claimed to be spoken by over a
billion speakers in China, and if a lingua franca is used by speakers of other lan-
guages, then presumably native speakers of Chinese are not native speakers of the
lingua franca Putonghua. This will take a bit of unravelling.
We might look at Chinese as a lingua franca in the general sense of a widely used
language and focus on its use across “Greater China” (China, Hong Kong, Macao
and Taiwan) (Li 2006). Assuming a general understanding of a lingua franca as a
language used as a language of wider communication by speakers of other lan-
guages, there are several different ways in which this can be understood. The first
possibility is that Chinese as a lingua franca (CLF) refers to the use of Chinese
among minority groups within China. Although China may be more heterogeneous
than is often acknowledged, with 54 officially recognised national minority groups
speaking over 200 languages, this is only a small percentage (around 8%) of the
overall population. The second possibility is that CLF refers to the use of standard
Chinese (Putonghua) across the different language/dialect groups in China: if we
assume that Chinese refers to the Mandarin (Guan) variety, then this lingua franca
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 147

function might apply to some 20% of the population who speak the other major
varieties. This, however, would only account for a few 100 million users of Chinese/
Putonghua as a lingua franca.
Among linguists (e.g. Li 2006) there is reasonable agreement that, aside from the
many minority languages spoken in China (some related to Chinese, others not),
there are somewhere between half a dozen to a dozen (though most commonly
seven) main regional groupings of Chinese languages or dialects (as we know, the
language/dialect distinction is not a clear one and not generally a linguistic one),
including Mandarin (Guan), Wu (including Shanghainese), Cantonese (Yue), Min
(including Hokkien and Taiwanese), Xiang (Hunanese), Hakka (or Kejia, spoken in
regions of Guangdong and other southern provinces), and Gan (Jiangxi province).
These varieties are largely mutually unintelligible in the spoken form of the lan-
guage, and also contain considerable internal variation. Within these large-scale
varieties, however, there are also some two thousand “distinct dialects and subdia-
lects” spoken across different parts of China (Li 2006, p. 150). If we take a province
such as Hunan, for example, which alongside various minority languages is also
where the Xiang variety of Chinese is spoken, there are also many mutually incom-
prehensible varieties of Xiangyu (Hunanese) such that speakers from one area of the
province may have great difficulty in understanding speakers from another region
(Zhou 2001).
These major varieties, then, are in themselves regional lingua francas, with
Min, for example, operating across a wider range of varieties in Fujian Province
(Chew 2010); or Chinese in Hong Kong referring to both the spoken “dominant
vernacular and regional lingua franca Cantonese” and to Modern Written Chinese,
which is closer to Mandarin Chinese (Li 2006, p. 150). On top of this Putonghua,
standard (or common) Chinese, which is based on the Chinese spoken around
Beijing, is used as a lingua franca across varieties. Ostler (2010, p. 227) lists
Cantonese (56 million mother tongue speakers) and Shanghainese (77 million)
among the world’s 25 languages with the largest number of native speakers. Both
are far behind Mandarin Chinese with 873 million native speakers. The difference
between this figure of speakers of Mandarin Chinese and the total population
(or the total of non-Mandarin Chinese and other languages) gives us the figure,
according to Ostler (2010), of 178 million speakers of Chinese as a lingua franca.
This position would therefore support the view that Chinese (Mandarin / Putonghua)
is a major lingua franca across China, but nevertheless only one for less than 20%
of the Chinese population.
Chinese versions of this picture tend to differ somewhat, however, with varieties
of Chinese generally described as fangyan (regional speech, usually translated as
“dialects”). From this point of view, most people in China speak “Chinese” though
with regional dialectal variation. As Dong explains,
The language versus dialects debate lies in the fundamentally different definitions of ‘dialect’
between the Chinese tradition and the western tradition: ‘mutual intelligibility’ serves as the
central criterion in the Western tradition, whereas common orthography, shared literature,
historical roots, cultural heritage, and political unity, play a decisive role in labelling a variety
as a ‘dialect’ or a ‘language’ in the Chinese tradition. (Dong 2009, p. 29).
148 A. Pennycook

From a Chinese point of view, then, Chinese is not a lingua franca because it is
the first language of Chinese people, at least as defined according to shared culture,
script and traditions. “The Chinese are also averse to discussing variety in the
country and prefer the use of the term fanyan1 (dialects) to refer to Chinese multi-
lingualism, despite the existence of mutual unintelligibility” (Chew 2010, p. 60).
Putonghua (common language) itself presents us with a number of further
difficulties. Putonghua has been disseminated as the linguistic norm, the acceptable
variety of schooling and communication across China. “In the twentieth century”,
Chew (2010) explains, “the Chinese nationalists, influenced by the European
concept of nationhood, attempted to promote a national language as a means of
communication both within and between provinces of China” (p. 64). Putonghua
has become standardized as the national model for pronunciation (and to a lesser extent, for
literacy), a form of semiotic capital, associated with linguistic ‘correctness’, and socially
recognized as indexical of speaker attributes such as social status and advanced education
backgrounds. (Dong 2010, p. 265)

And yet, as Dong (2010) notes, within mainland China

it is reported that 53% of the Chinese people are able to communicate in Putonguhua or
near-Putonghua (China Daily 26/12/2004). Although this figure is not confirmed by socio-
linguistic research, and it is not clear what are the speech practices of the other 47% (most
probably vernaculars, dialects that are unintelligible to Putonghua speakers, and minority
languages), it does sketch out the scale of Putonghua and its quasi-equivalent paralects
within China and beyond. (pp. 265–6).

If the idea of Chinese as a lingua franca (CLF) refers to Putonghua (the alterna-
tive is that it refers to a more generic and symbolic notion of Chinese), then these
figures would suggest that if the China Daily (not noted for rocking the boat) is
reporting as a success that over 50% of the population of China now speak Putonghua
(or “near-Putonghua”), then the level of diversity is far greater than is accounted for
in the figures for the seven major varieties plus minority languages.
Indeed, if this figure is to be taken seriously, then, on the one hand the idea of
Chinese as the most widely spoken first language in the world becomes less clear
(or at least it is not as far ahead of the pack as supposed in common figures), and a
broader idea of Chinese as a lingua franca starts to gain ground. This might give us
figures of about 600 million native speakers of Chinese/Putonghua and 600 million
CLF speakers of Chinese/Putonghua. There are further complications, however,
since Putonghua is predominantly a language learned at school: “People acquire
Putonghua through formal education, as it is institutionally supported as the lan-
guage of instruction in schools, as well as the official language in the state’s other
institutions” (Dong 2009, p. 16). Putonghua, spoken by just over 50% of the popula-
tion, has been learned in school, and is not, therefore, easily considered the first
language of a large part of the population. Putonghua may in fact be a lingua franca
(and therefore a second language) for a large proportion of the population.

1
Chew refers to fanyan rather than the Putonghua fangyan, testimony in its own small way to the
variety in Chinese.
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 149

Two further points complicate this picture. Despite the linguistic capital that
accrues to Putonghua, as it is used across different regions of China, it also takes on
local characteristics: “Like English, putonghua itself is spoken in many different
accents and dialects, some more prestigious than others. What began as a limited
dialect has now become a conglomerate of mushrooming regional varieties, united
only by the grammar and core vocabulary of the written script” (Chew 2010, pp.
65–66). Thus, following a World Englishes-type orientation, we might argue that
Putonghua should now be viewed as a conglomeration of varieties. Not only do we
therefore need to consider Chinese as a cluster of languages, both united and dis-
united by the written script (while the Chinese script can unify, it also allows for
diversity), and not only do we need to consider Putonghua as a lingua franca used
across these mutually incomprehensible languages, but we also need to understand
that as Putonghua has become localised and taken up in different regions of China,
it has also become a lingua franca with considerable variety.
We also need to take on board the point that what unites Putonghua is the gram-
mar and core vocabulary of the written script. While this view that Chinese refers to
a variety of languages or dialects unified by a script is commonly enough reiterated,
the implications need further consideration. Although this ideographic script may
on the one hand be unifying – it provides both the ideological grounds for the main-
tenance of a notion of Chinese and indeed the material conditions for shared forms
of communication – it is also a divisive system in that the use of a non-phonetic
script allows for the co-existence of much greater spoken variety. This view of a
homogenous written script, furthermore, does not acknowledge the use of alterna-
tive characters to write other Chinese languages, such as Cantonese (Snow 2004).
But most importantly, if it is written Chinese that is the lingua franca, since people
speak different Chinese languages, then we have to explore the possibility not just
that a lingua franca is a language spoken by people who do not share a first lan-
guage, but rather that it may in this case be a written language used by people who
speak different languages.
A similar case might be made for English: Written English as a lingua franca, or
rather certain registers of written English (this does not include emails, SMS and so on),
exists as a fairly standardised and recognizable entity. As Gupta (2010) argues, “in
many respects Standard English really is essentially monolithic. In any given text of
Standard English (such as a newspaper article) more than 99.5% of words will be
words spelled, inflected and used in the same way by Standard English everywhere.
Standard English is so much a given that it is almost invisible” (p. 86). Standard
written English is not static, nor is it centred on the traditional norm-providing
centres in the UK and USA. Rather it is a product of the totality of regulated writing
across many regions of the world. In this sense it is an emergent yet regulated entity.
It is a very different thing from the spoken and negotiated lingua franca English that
emerges from daily interactions and bears many more traces of the languages that
surround the interaction. And in this sense, a case could be made that it is written
English that is the lingua franca, while spoken English is a diversity of different
languages, or that English, like Chinese, has different spoken versions unified by a
written version.
150 A. Pennycook

9.5 Emergent Lingua Francas

What can we conclude from all this? Common truisms about English as the most
widely spoken lingua franca, and Chinese as the most widely spoken mother tongue,
stand on very thin ground indeed. The vast disparity between figures of speakers
suggests not only that such figures are hard to produce accurately but also, more
importantly, that they rest on highly questionable definitions of languages, second
languages, native speakers, lingua francas and so forth. This arithmetical approach
to languages is deeply flawed. As Moore et al. (2010) put it, “‘speakerhood’ and
‘language-hood’ are matters whose complexity poorly suits them for numerical rep-
resentations” and “the use of such numbers, which continues unabated, privileges a
conception of ‘languages’ as neatly-bounded, abstract, autonomous grammatical
systems (each of which corresponds to a neatly-bounded ‘worldview’)” (p. 1).
When we claim that English is the great lingua franca of the world and Chinese
the great mother tongue, or when we equally concede that Chinese is the great lin-
gua franca and English only comes second, we are dealing not only with incom-
mensurable objects but also staking out very particular ideological ground. What
counts as a language, a mother tongue, or a lingua franca, is an ideological position.
If we argue that Chinese exists only as an ideological construct (it is a unifying
language only by the will for it to be so, not by actual practice), we need to reflect
on the fact that this also applies to English: ELF is not so much a linguistic system
as an ideological construct. Language ideologies are not necessarily false, but they
are interested ways of viewing the world. They represent very particular, and as
Phillipson (2009) reminds us, at times insidious claims about language, communi-
cation and the world.
If the supposed truism that English is the great lingua franca and Chinese the
great mother tongue stands on shaky ground, where might we want to head with a
notion of English as a lingua franca? The problem, I have been trying to suggest,
lies with the many unsubstantiated claims as to what constitutes language. Saraceni’s
(2010) conclusion about ELF is that
we do not need to know the what, but the how and the why. We need to understand how
people position themselves towards it, how they locate it within their linguistic repertoire,
how it contributes to shaping their identities and how they use it to participate in, or resist,
aspects of globalization. If World Englishes constitute an attitude, so should ELF, and, in a
final analysis, the two can be seen as two terms denoting our laborious attempts to under-
stand the unprecedented phenomenon of English in the world. (p. 99)

One thing that emerged from the discussion of CLF is that the very differing
attitudes to this from a Chinese and non-Chinese point of view are not in the end
answerable as linguistic questions, but are in fact deeply ideological concerns. The
problem has been, however, that this understanding has been all too often one way:
Western linguists know what a language is, and it is Chinese ideology that denies
that its dialects are really languages. The next step is to turn this perspective round
and to show that Western insistence on particular definitions of language and dialect
need to be equally accountable to the ideologies in which they are grounded.
9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies 151

If the Chinese view that most Chinese in China speak Chinese with certain
regional variations (fangyan) is evidently a cultural and ideological position on
language and nationhood, so too we have to recognize a similar position with
respect to English. Where the Chinese position is a fundamentally nationalist one,
the English one is a fundamentally internationalist one. The ELF project “main-
tains the ambition of a universal language, but does so in a fragmentary form”
(Seargeant 2009, p. 12). The insistence that Chinese is the great mother tongue and
English the great lingua franca are deeply held ideological convictions. At the heart
of the problem is the predefinition of languages as entities, the a priori assumption
that communication has to be premised on an idea of knowing the same language.
As Harris (2009) remarks, the idea of “knowing a language” is one that is best
discarded: “There is no longer any need to postulate, as in the Classical model, that
A and B must both know the same language in order to engage in verbal commu-
nication” (p. 74). The idea of knowing the same language obscures the point that
for communication to occur, participants need to “integrate their own semiological
activities with those of their interlocutor (e.g. in such matters as paying attention,
making eye contact, answering questions, complying with requests, responding to
greetings both verbal and non-verbal, laughing at jokes, etc.). This is both much
more than and much less than is involved in ‘knowing a language’ as traditionally
interpreted” (p. 75).
For the Japanese dive instructor in the Philippines, for example, describing the
afternoon dive sites, assisted by her Danish co-instructor and Philippine dive mas-
ter, to a group of divers from different parts of the world, we do not have to postulate
the existence of English as a lingua franca to achieve communication. The register
comes from the diving community (“at 100 bar give me a sign, OK?”); the nonver-
bal communication (the sign for “low on air”), the use of other props (a chart of the
dive site), all contribute to the contextual use and understanding of these communi-
cative resources. This is in part why Canagarajah (2007b) opts for the idea of Lingua
Franca English (LFE) rather than ELF, since from this position LFE is emergent
from its contexts of use: speakers “activate a mutually recognized set of attitudes,
forms, and conventions that ensure successful communication in LFE when they
find themselves interacting with each other” (p. 925). LFE is “intersubjectively con-
structed in each specific context of interaction. The form of this English is negoti-
ated by each set of speakers for their purposes” and thus “it is difficult to describe
this language a priori” (Canagarajah 2007b, p. 925).
Individual language knowledge should be defined “not in terms of abstract
system components but as communicative repertoires – conventionalized constella-
tions of semiotic resources for taking action – that are shaped by the particular
practices in which individuals engage” (Hall et al. 2006, p. 232). From this point of
view, language knowledge is “grounded in and emergent from language use in con-
crete social activity for specific purposes that are tied to specific communities of
practice” (p. 235). Likewise Blommaert (2010) insists on the need for “sociolinguis-
tics of speech and of resources, of the real bits and chunks of language that make up
a repertoire, and of real ways of using this repertoire in communication” (p. 173).
Sociolinguistic life is best understood as “mobile speech, not as static language, and
152 A. Pennycook

lives can consequently be better investigated on the basis of repertoires set against
a real historical and spatial background” (p. 173). As Canagarajah (2007a)
reminds us, lingua franca English does not exist outside the realm of practice: it is
not a product but a social process that is constantly being remade from the semiotic
resources available to speakers, who are always embedded in contexts and who
are always interacting with other speakers. LFE is not so much about variations
to an assumed linguistic system but rather about local language practices
(Pennycook 2010).
Tan, Ooi and Chiang suggest that “it would not be a bad thing to make English,
in some respects, more like the original Lingua Franca, where variation existed and
where speakers were less concerned about standards” (2006, p. 92). We need to
push this proposal further, however, beyond the idea that lingua franca communica-
tion is less concerned with standards, and beyond the narrow ELF or WE focus on
whether count nouns get pluralised, local language terminology enters English, tag
questions become fixed, certain phonological distinctions do not seem important
for communication, or verb tense and aspect are realised differently. It is not merely
that the original lingua franca allowed for variation, but that it emerged from con-
texts of communication. It allowed people to believe, as Walter (1988) put it, that
they were speaking each others’ languages. Lingua franca communication is emer-
gent and multilingual: we speak both our own and each others’ languages. It is built
from the bottom up: it as en emergent collection of local language practices.

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English as an International Language in Asia:
Implications for Language Education
 MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION

VOLUME 1

Series Editors:

Andy Kirkpatrick
Director, Research Centre into Language Education and Acquisition
in Multilingual Societies
Hong Kong Institute of Education

Bob Adamson
Head, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Hong Kong Institute of Education

David C.S. Lee

Department of English
Hong Kong Institute of Education

Editorial Board:

Jan Blommaert, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands

Feng Anwei, University of Wales at Bangor, UK
Ofelia Garcia, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, USA
Saran Kaur Gill, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Gu Yueguo, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Hartmut Haberland, University of Roskilde, Denmark
Li Chor Shing David, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
Low Ee-Ling, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Tony Liddicoat, University of South Australia
Ricardo Nolasco, University of the Phillipines at Diliman, Manila, The Philippines
Merrill Swain, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto,
Canada
Virginia Yip Choy Yin, Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Andy Kirkpatrick • Roland Sussex
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English as an International
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Implications for Language
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Editors
Andy Kirkpatrick Roland Sussex
School of Languages and Linguistics School of Languages and Comparative
Griffith University Cultural Studies, and Centre for
Nathan, Qld, Australia Educational Innovation and Technology
The University of Queensland
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Foreword

The First Macao International Forum

This volume presents the papers from the First Macao International Forum, an
initiative of the Macao Polytechnic Institute.
The Macao International Forum arose out of a proposal put by one of the editors
(RS) to Prof. Lei Heong-Iok, President of the Macao Polytechnic Institute, and
Prof. Mao Sihui, Director of the Bell School of English and Chair of the Bell School
of Languages at the Macao Polytechnic Institute. The goal was to find a format
where a select group of international scholars could meet to tackle topics of strategic
interest to Asia in an intensive round-table forum over a period of about 3 days.
Conferences allow this privilege only in special interest sections and theme sessions,
and it is not often that scholars of like mind can concentrate consecutively on a common
theme for an extended period. This was the idea behind the Macao International
Forum. The concept and the format were enthusiastically welcomed by Prof. Lei,
who kindly made available both the necessary funding and the facilities and services
of the Macao Polytechnic Institute. Professor Mao Sihui was appointed Executive
Chairman of the MIF Organising Committee, which was responsible for the key
planning, coordination and background work to make the MIF possible.
“English as an International Language in Asia” was chosen as the first theme,
partly because of the long association of the MPI with the Bell School and English
language teaching and learning. But it is also timely in many other ways. The English
of Empire and the post-war years of the twentieth century is being overtaken by three
new directions: English as an International Language (EIL), especially involving
local Englishes like Chinglish for Chinese English; World Englishes; and also by
a burgeoning variety of English in interpersonal contacts of tremendous variety,
dynamism and richness, especially involving people who are not native speakers of
English at all, and which is commonly but not universally known as English as
a Lingua Franca (“ELF”). These tendencies are particularly pronounced in Asia.
EIL and World Englishes, and to a lesser extent ELF, in Asia are the focus of the
papers in this volume.

v
vi Foreword

In order to plan and realize the first MIF, two key appointments were made:
Prof. Andy Kirkpatrick, Hong Kong Institute of Education (and now of Griffith
University, Australia) as Chair; and Emeritus Professor Roland Sussex, The University
of Queensland, Australia as Secretary. The international team of 12 experts was
designed to provide both geographical, thematic, theoretical and empirical coverage
of key areas of English in the Asian context:
Professor Kingsley Bolton, City University of Hong Kong
Professor Dương Thị Hoàng Oanh, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Professor Saran Kaur Gill, Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia
Professor Fuad Abdul Hamied, Indonesia University of Education at Bandung,
Indonesia
Professor Nobuyuki Hino, Osaka University, Japan
Professor Andy Kirkpatrick (Chair), The Hong Kong Institute of Education (now
Griffith University, Australia)
Professor Andrew Moody, University of Macau
Professor Joybrato Mukherjee, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
Professor Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Professor Zoya Proshina, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Federation
Professor Roland Sussex (Secretary), The University of Queensland, Australia
Professor Wen Qiufang, National Research Center for Foreign Language Education,
Beijing Foreign Studies University, People’s Republic of China
The First Macao International Forum was held at the Macao Polytechnic Institute
from December 3–5, 2010.
Contents

1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
Andy Kirkpatrick and Roland Sussex
2 World Englishes and Asian Englishes: A Survey of the Field............. 13
Kingsley Bolton

Part I Education

3 English as an International Language in Asia:

Implications for Language Education ................................................... 29
Andy Kirkpatrick
4 The Complexities of Re-reversal of Language-in-Education
Policy in Malaysia ................................................................................... 45
Saran Kaur Gill
5 English in Multicultural and Multilingual
Indonesian Education ............................................................................. 63
Fuad Abdul Hamied
6 Teaching English as an International Language
in Mainland China .................................................................................. 79
Wen Qiufang

Part II Communication and Lingua Francas

7 English as a Medium for Russians to Communicate in Asia .............. 97

Zoya G. Proshina
8 Global vs. Glocal English: Attitudes and Conceptions
among Educators, Administrators and Teachers
in Eight Asian Countries ........................................................................ 107
Dương Thị Hoàng Oanh

vii
 viii Contents

9 Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies ............................................... 137

Alastair Pennycook

Part III Languages and Cultures in Contact

10 Negotiating Indigenous Values with Anglo-American

Cultures in ELT in Japan: A Case of EIL Philosophy
in the Expanding Circle .......................................................................... 157
Nobuyuki Hino
11 Switching in International English ........................................................ 175
Roland Sussex

Part IV Norms

12 English in South Asia – Ambinormative Orientations and the Role

of Corpora: The State of the Debate in Sri Lanka ............................... 191
Joybrato Mukherjee
13 Authenticity of English in Asian Popular Music .................................. 209
Andrew Moody
14 A Postscript and a Prolegomenon.......................................................... 223
Roland Sussex and Andy Kirkpatrick

About the Contributors .................................................................................. 233

Index ................................................................................................................. 237

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