Language Regulation in English as a Lingua Franca : Exploring language-regulatory practices in academic spoken discourse
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study investigates language regulation, or the negotiation of acceptability and correctness in language. It takes a bottom-up perspective on regulation, with focus on the ways that speakers manage and monitor language in lingua franca interaction, and the ways that they talk about language. I approach language regulation as a process through which speakers both reproduce codified language norms and construct alternative ones. Language regulation, then, sheds light on the construction of norms relevant for the speakers, that is, on living norms, as opposed to prescriptive, codified norms that arise as a consequence of linguistic description and codification. I explore two complementary dimensions of language regulation: interactional and ideological dimensions. The dimensions I bring together in a comparative analysis, where I consider the findings in relation to the macro-level ideologies of language maintenance and native speaker ownership of English. To explore the two dimensions, I draw on two main types of data, collected from English-medium university courses where English was used as the lingua franca: interrelated recordings of study event interactions from three different groups and research interviews with students, teachers (i.e. subject experts) and English instructors who attended the interactions. The findings show that the scope of acceptability was wider than the scope of correctness when regulating language in interaction. Second language users of English took on and were assigned the role of language experts, and while speakers mainly drew on (their notions of) English native language norms for correctness, for instance, scientific contexts emerged as an alternative source for norm construction. Further, differences emerged between student, teacher and English instructor views, and generally, the informants talk about language was found out to be more purist than their use of the regulatory mechanisms. In all, the study shows that the construction of living norms is a complex process. On the one hand, speakers reproduce prescriptive, codified norms and thus turn them into living ones. On the other hand, the regulatory practices in the study event interaction and interview findings illustrate that speakers also construct irrelevance of prescriptive norms, and importantly draw on alternative sources, such as their academic field, for norm construction.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Niina Hynninen
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1597763074