Towards an acceptance of the ideology of English as a lingua franca in Hong Kong?

Abstract

English as a lingua franca (ELF) is now the most extensive sociolinguistic use of English around the world (Jenkins, 2015). As a widespread language phenomenon, ELF serves as ‘a “contact language” between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication’ (Firth, 1996: 240). More specifically, ELF refers to communication in English between speakers from different first language (L1) backgrounds (Mauranen, 2012; Seidlhofer, 2011). Instead of being a single variety of English, ELF is also conceptualized as a set of practices involving translingual uses of English (Jenkins, 2015; Seidlhofer, 2017).