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Lingua franca communication in multiethnic contexts 205

With regard to the first aspect, a large number of studies have documented
that bilingual speech is characterized by transfer from one language into the
other, by borrowing of lexical material, and by code-switching between the dif-
ferent languages. At the societal level, bilingualism frequently results in diglos-
sia, i.e. the use of two or more different languages or language varieties
throughout a single speech community, where each of them performs distinct
social functions. The following chapter will discuss a number of natural lan-
guages used as lingua francas.

3. Lingua francas in multiethnic settings

The need for a lingua franca for communication across language boundaries is
most easily visible in settings at the international level. International communi-
cation involves too many different languages as to always be conducted in the
speakers’ mother tongues. For practical reasons, participants in international in-
teractions therefore usually choose to communicate in one of the more wide-
spread languages. However, an increasing number of nations comprise speakers
of different mother tongues, and as a result a lingua franca is used to enable in-
teraction across speech community boundaries within these countries.

3.1. International and intranational lingua francas

Most ethnic languages which have come to be used as lingua francas do so
either at a regional or at an international level, or for both purposes. Languages
frequently used as international lingua francas are Arabic, Chinese, English,
French, Russian and Spanish (Meierkord 2006). Their use well beyond their
original speech communities is characterized by certain changes to the lan-
guage: speakers seem to use fewer culture-bound vocabulary items, idioms and
speech acts. A number of scholars have taken this to be an indicator of a newly
emerging form of English. For example, Crystal (1997) talks about World Stan-
dard Spoken English, and earlier Quirk (1985) discussed Nuclear English. Both
are conceived as “neutral” forms of English, not associated with a particular
culture or region. However, recent findings in lingua franca communication re-
search indicate that interactions conducted in a lingua franca at an international
level are rather characterized by strategies to adapt the English language to the
needs emerging in a particular context. For example, Pölzl and Seidlhofer
(2006) reveal that speakers insert mainly formulaic phrases of their mother
tongues or of the language dominating in their immediate environment, or
“habitat” as the authors call it. Thus, Jordanian speakers incorporate the Arabic
c
listener response and discourse marker ya ni into their English utterances.
Besides the “habitat”, or situational context, groups using English as a lingua