Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 26, Issue 2, 2016

The global phenomenon of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has gained a great deal of attention among applied linguists in recent years. With English serving an increasingly important role as a lingua franca in the Asian context, this special issue aims to explore ELF in Asia through the lens of identity. It critically explores issues and concerns surrounding ELF and identity formation from an Asian perspective by investigating ELF communication involving Asian speakers of English and examining their voices and experiences which have been under-represented in the ELF literature. Building upon a small but growing body of literature on ELF and identity, this special issue brings together articles that examine different aspects of identity formation in ELF communication in several Asian contexts, addressing an array of issues including how identities are constructed and negotiated in lingua franca settings and how different aspects of identities are shaped by linguistic and socio-cultural norms of various ELF contexts and by complex interactions of power relations, language attitudes and ideologies.

This study investigates the dynamic identities of an Asian university student engaged in English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions from a membership categorization analysis (MCA) approach (Sacks, 1972a, 1989). Studies adopting MCA have demonstrated that identity and intercultural membership are co-constructed in ongoing interactions (e.g., Nishizaka, 1999; E. Zimmerman, 2007). Nevertheless, MCA studies have yet to document the multicultural identity of an individual and the ways in which members co-construct their multifaceted identities in naturally occurring non-institutional ELF interactions. The study analyzes interactions between two participants from different Asian countries, Japan and Korea. Approximately three hours of video recorded conversations were collected across four months. In and through the interaction, one of the participants was found utilizing multiple cultural identities to accomplish interactive goals. In addition, “language-form related category-bound activity” was used in constructing these identities. This study challenges the use of predetermined social categories and suggests an organic and interactional approach to identity construction.

Based on the data drawn from an intensive ethnographic study on young adults in Bangladesh conducted in the virtual space, specifically Facebook (FB) and analysis of those data through a transglossic framework, the paper shows that the meaning-making processes in lingua franca (LF) encounters can be appropriately deciphered when their language is considered in terms of translocalisation, transculturation, transmodality, and transtextualisation. The data also demonstrate that the young adults deliberately flout the linguistic features of English with their Bangladeshi counterparts, while they prefer to approximate a native form of English with other native and non-native speakers of English. Even though their English is variable and emergent in the potential LF context of the virtual space, their conscious choice of approximating a near-native form indicates that they are keenly aware of the ideologies related to ELF and associated with ELF identity attributes. The paper confirms the necessity of reconceptualisation of ELF, considering the idiosyncrasies of young adults’ language practices; and identifies the paradoxes of sociolinguistic profiling of South Asian speakers, based on dichotomous and binary phenomena, such as ELF and non-ELF speakers, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) vs. ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers, or members of the Inner Circle vs. Outer Circle.

Building on research on identity (e.g., Norton, 2013), intercultural communicative competence (e.g., Byram, 2008) and English as a lingua franca (e.g., Dewey, 2012), this article examines how the notion of a global citizen was constructed in a school-based ethnographic study involving students from Asia who were recipients of a Singapore government scholarship. Identity construction in this English-medium school was traced across four levels — national, school, classroom, and group interactions — in order to analyze the ways in which global citizenship was realized. Findings from the multiple data sets revealed that while a skewed interpretation of the global citizen was conceived at the school and classroom level, group interactions among students yielded promising indicators of how intercultural communication as mediated through English as a lingua franca could help produce students who are open minded and work actively to build relationships with others. The article closes with a discussion of possibilities for designing pedagogy to develop global citizenship education.

This longitudinal case study explored how four Chinese university students constructed their global and national identities while learning English and using it as a lingua franca in the course of four undergraduate years. Qualitative research methods were adopted. Primary data were obtained through open interviews, and supplementary data sources included student journals, classroom observations, and Internet postings. Analysis showed that the students constructed multiple kinds of global identities and a prominent Chinese national identity in their engagement with ELF. The national and the global were often dialogically related. The ELF-associated identities, particularly the global, were often embedded in their membership in selected communities of practice and imagined communities. The students were also found to exercise their agencies in choosing their target communities. The study showed both the pervasiveness and variation of identity work with ELF.

This study investigated how the experience of a multilingual and multimodal English as a lingua franca (ELF) online intercultural exchange (OIE) influenced Taiwanese university students’ linguistic identities. Data was drawn from 26 Taiwanese students who had 10 weekly one-hour video live-chats with 18 Japanese students in 2 semesters. Taiwanese participants were interviewed on their language use and issues related to identities before, during, and after the exchange. Students’ language use patterns in the OIE and reflections on the OIE were also analyzed. Interviews revealed that the multilingual ELF experience had a liberating and empowering effect for students’ English use. In multimodal communication, they felt more comfortable using English together with other languages, evidenced by increasing productions of code-mixing utterances in later weeks. However, the anxiety of using Japanese with a native Japanese speaker still persisted. In particular, the native-speaker (NS)–nonnative-speaker (NNS) interactions constrained them to pay more attention to form and accuracy, which positioned both Taiwanese and Japanese students as either native speakers or deficient nonnative language learners.

This paper examines a group of Hong Kong university students’ experiences and identities in English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication. As part of a larger research study, this paper analyzes narratives written by eighteen English majors at a Hong Kong university on their experiences of communicating through ELF. The findings show that these students had generally positive experiences and reported achieving mutual understanding through ELF by employing various communicative strategies. The analysis also points to the complexity of the students’ identity formation in ELF communication. As a result of their perceptions of the unequal power relations between native and non-native speakers of English, these students were found to perceive themselves in an inferior position when interacting with native speakers of English in ELF communication. Moreover, the students were found to reveal ambivalence in the perceptions of their identities in ELF communication, owing to their struggle over the competing desires of appropriating a native-speaker accent commonly associated with prestige and retaining some traces of their own accent in an attempt to maintain their lingua-cultural identity.

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study that explored the experiences of a group of student-teachers (STs) in Indonesia as they undertook a microteaching course as part of their undergraduate teacher training program. Grounded in the notions of ‘teacher identity as the process of becoming’ (Britzman, 2003) and ‘identity in practice’ (Varghese et al., 2005), the present paper examines how participation in a microteaching course that oriented STs to ELF pedagogy affected the formation of teacher identities amongst one group of STs in Indonesia. Data were gathered from three post-mini lesson interviews with individual STs and STs’ mini lessons. The findings show a positive relationship between ELF pedagogy, STs’ perception of their teacher role and their identity construction. Many STs’ identity construction appears to be informed by their concerns of the hegemonic presence of English in the local community and their role primarily as a revival of Indonesian cultures. Although the majority of STs showed a general agreement towards the need to construct a teacher identity independent of native-speaker norms, a few STs continued to believe the importance of teachers to speak Standard English due to its marketability potential.