Page 236 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

214 Christiane Meierkord

he’s also leaving with her. (..) So they/ so (she) (.)
the mother/ his mother like (.) er (..) taught her more
about their culture.

As Ndoleriire (2000) points out, this lack of knowledge does not only involve
customs and practices, but it also includes awareness of communicative conven-
tions. Ndoleriire discusses the use of English as a lingua franca as one possible
approach to avoiding intercultural miscommunication, albeit emphasizing the
problems associated with the promotion of an intranational lingua franca in Af-
rican countries. He concludes that in these nations “the majority of the people,
however, experience difficulty communicating in the ‘official’ language, or are
totally incapable of doing so” (2000: 283). However, Kasanga (1995) indicates
that using English as a lingua franca would not necessarily help avoid misunder-
standing in intercultural communication. He reports that speakers tend to
transfer their mother tongue conventions into their second language English
when performing requests. “In standard native forms of English (especially
British English), indirectness is paramount in achieving politeness […],
whereas in Sepedi (and, by the same token, in BSAfE [black South African Eng-
lish, cm], indirectness is not a determining factor” (1995: 223). And Cuvelier
(2002: 78) finds that greeting routines in Xhosa are usually longer than those in
English: “If the person you are greeting has children and a partner (wife/hus-
band), you are supposed to ask about their health. And then to continue to create
some common ground”, a convention which speakers may transfer into their
way of using English as a second language. Whether users of English as a lingua
franca in South Africa in fact use culturally flavored language in their interac-
tions has, however, not yet been adequately researched.

5. Conclusion

As is the case in South Africa, the use of a particular language as lingua franca
in a multiethnic setting or nation often implies a diglossic situation. That is, the
language chosen as a lingua franca is often given the special status of an official
language, used in administration, government and education. Such situations
frequently involve problems such as the exclusion of sometimes significant
parts of the population from political, social and economic participation, when
the lingua franca is not mastered by population at large.
At the same time, a lingua franca is often regarded as a welcome addition to
an individual’s communicative repertoire in that it sometimes allows for the use
of conversational strategies that are not appropriate in the speakers’ mother
tongues (see also Spencer – Oatey and Xing in this volume). In sum, the negative
aspects may be compensated by implementing a multilingual language policy as