Malgorzata Jedynak, Ph.D.: Topic: English as Lingua Franca or Lingua Frankensteinia?

In the 21st century, English occupies a similar position to Greek and Latin. It is the language most frequently spoken by people representing different mother tongues. Therefore, English is nowadays referred to as Lingua Franca. In view of this fact, the management of language education in the European Union system seems to be quite problematical. There are some voices against a dominant role of English and its non-native users are described as victims of a linguistic Frankenstein in the sense that other languages’ role is reduced. This negative role of English was already noticed by Mahatma Gandhi who claimed that giving the knowledge of this language to millions is a kind of slavery.
A two-module set of lectures seeks to contribute to the general understanding of the English as Lingua Franca (ELF) phenomenon in Europe. The guest speaker will start the theoretical deliberations from a brief conceptual perspective to shed light on salient aspects related to ELF in the European context. Such issues as ELF emergence, its lexicogrammar and pronunciation will be discussed. A special emphasis will be put on the status of ELF in the European language education. The second part of the lecture gives some insights into practical investigation of the ELF phenomenon based on digitalised VOICE (Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English) data and the ELFA corpus at University of Helsinki. Finally, the students will be provided with ELF interactions data recorded by the guest speaker in various European and Asian countries to analyse them in terms of ELF core features.
Some recent positions by the guest speaker recommended as readings before the lectures:
 Jedynak, M. 2014
ELF interactions among Chinese, Greek and Swiss speakers of English. Sino -US English Teaching. Co-author Józefowicz, E. Vol. 11, No 1. January 2014. El Monte, CA. : David Publishing Company. ISSN 1539-8072 (paper). ISSN 1935-9675 (online). pp. 40-58.
http://www.davidpublishing.org/journals_info.asp?jId=1793
 Jedynak, M. 2013
Investigating the phenomenon of ELFE in the language education context. Anglica Wratislaviensia LI. Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis No 3501. E. Kębłowska-Ławniczak (ed.). 2013. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. pp. 133-145