Laughing at English
The lingua franca at the interface between local-interactional resistance and cultural-societal pressure
This contribution explores the stances of speakers of Romance languages towards the use of English as a lingua
franca in a business context. Grounding on an audio-visual corpus collected in a wine fair in France, the analysis focuses on
three extracts where participants comment in a playful way (i.e. through laughing, joking and humorous enactments) upon the fact
that they are not speaking English. Through a sequential and multimodal analysis, the study will highlight the
participants’ ambivalent stance: on the one hand, through these playful practices they display a local resistance towards the
mainstream language choice; on the other hand, these same practices reveal their vulnerability to the social pressure concerning
the speaking of English.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): Practices and stances
- 2.1ELF
- 2.2Stance, laughter, and playfulness
- 3.Data and analysis
- 4.Final remarks
- Notes
-
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