Page 222 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

200 Christiane Meierkord

Haitian Creole). In all of the above countries, as Mesthrie et al. (2000: 38) point
out, “a speech community comprises people who are in habitual contact with
each other by means of speech which involves either a shared language variety
or shared ways of interpreting the different language varieties commonly used
in the area.” Thus, lingua franca communication within a particular country
seems to differ from international lingua franca communication. Intranational
lingua franca communication may take place within one speech community
sharing linguistic codes and interactional conventions. However, if the use of an
intranational lingua franca merely implies an instrumental use of the language,
participants in intranational lingua franca communication may not be fully
aware of the communicative conventions holding in their interlocutors’ cultures
either. The second part of this chapter will discuss the different strategies which
countries choose to deal with their multilingual and multicultural society, and
how the use of a lingua franca is related to these strategies.
The third part of the article will present South Africa as a specific case of a
1
multilingual nation. The country has eleven national languages, although the
2
1991 census reported that more than 23 different languages were spoken in the
country. Although English and Afrikaans serve as the major lingua francas in
3
the country, cultural differences are reflected in different discourse conventions
such as the construction of narratives or argumentative texts, or in different pol-
iteness conventions (Ndoleriire 2000, Chick 1995). This seems to be due to the
apartheid system’s policy of keeping individual ethnicities apart, both in edu-
cation as well as in residential areas. Contact between the different languages
and cultures was therefore restricted. The chapter will eventually focus on the
lingua franca English. It will report on research that has been conducted on in-
tercultural communication in English as a lingua franca in South Africa and re-
late those findings to the status which is attributed to English by its second lan-
guage users.

2. The nature of lingua franca communication

In 1953, the UNESCO defined a lingua franca as “a language which is used ha-
bitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate com-
munication between them” (UNESCO 1953). This definition embraces two dif-
ferent contexts: the use of a language which is the mother tongue to neither of
the speakers involved, or a language which is the mother tongue to some of the
participants but not to others. The definition furthermore comprises an infinite
number of communicative purposes or contexts in which the lingua franca acts
as a facilitator. As such, the definition is in contrast to earlier ones, which were
often based on the original meaning of the term lingua franca. This initially re-
ferred to the pidgin Lingua Franca, which emerged as a language of trade and