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Lingua franca communication in multiethnic contexts 199

10. Lingua franca communication in multiethnic
contexts

Christiane Meierkord

1. Introduction

Lingua francas are languages used for communication between speakers who do
not share either of their mother tongues. It is characteristic of lingua franca com-
munication that the constellations of speakers interacting in the lingua franca
are ever changing. For example, English may be used for communication be-
tween a German and a Japanese, but also between a Xhosa and a white speaker
of Afrikaans in South Africa. The community of lingua franca users is, thus,
always a heterogeneous one, comprised of individuals from a vast number of
different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Against this definition, lingua franca communication has been established as
one of three types of intercultural communication by Knapp (1991), alongside
‘foreign language communication’ – interactions between native and non-
native speakers, and “mediated communication” – interactions conducted with
the help of an interpreter (see Spencer-Oatey and Xing in this volume). Knapp
discusses lingua franca communication as involving an increased number of
communicative conventions and linguistic signs, and as, thus, resulting in the
participants’ heightened insecurity as to what constitutes appropriate behavior
in the interaction. Other scholars have chosen not to approach lingua franca
communication as inherently problematic. Instead, they assume that these inter-
actions result in the construction of a new, in-between, third culture (e.g. Koole
and ten Thije 1994). The first part of this article relates lingua franca communi-
cation to intercultural communication, language contact, and multilingualism,
pointing out the differences from, and similarities with, other forms of intercul-
tural communication. This discussion will be combined with an account of some
of the languages used as lingua francas.
Many languages serve as lingua francas for international communication,
either on a global scale (e.g. English) or in a somewhat delineated area (e.g.
Russian in Eastern Europe). But several languages also act as intranational lin-
gua francas in countries which have a large number of indigenous languages.
Often these nations were founded during the era of colonization, and the lan-
guage used as a lingua franca is commonly the language of the former coloniz-
ing power (e.g. English in Nigeria or India). In other countries, such as Papua
New Guinea or Haiti, pidgins and creoles developed, following the continuing
contact with the European languages (English-based Tok Pisin or French-based