International Conference “English as a Lingua Franca”

It is common knowledge that English is the dominant global language. Less known, however, is the fact that the majority of the world's English speakers use it as a lingua franca, that is, as a means of communication among people with different mother tongues. "In many cases, no native speakers participate in these interactions at all", says Barbara Seidlhofer, Professor at the Department of English.

Whose language is it?
At the Third International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF³), which will take place from May 22 to May 25, 2010, at the University of Vienna's campus, scholars will enquire into the changing English language. Millions of people use it without adhering to Native speaker norms – and yet they communicate successfully. For Barbara Seidlhofer several questions arise, "What kind of 'English' is used here? Who 'owns' the language and who influences its further development?"

At the conference, the researchers will seek to further their understanding of these issues. In four colloquia, they will discuss, for instance, the development of multilingualism in Europe or the implications of English as a lingua franca for language teaching. The conference is designed to have an international perspective (90% of the participants are from abroad) and to support younger scholars (two plenary panels are devoted exclusively to the work of young academics).

University of Vienna as a leading institution internationally
English as a lingua franca is a new and growing field of research which is relevant not only to linguists. It has an impact on all areas of life where people communicate internationally and interculturally: from politics to science or tourism. As Seidlhofer points out, the University of Vienna has played a pioneering role in the field of English as a lingua franca.

Seidlhofer's research team is currently working on two externally funded projects related to English as a Lingua Franca. VOICE (Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English), currently the largest project of the FWF in the humanities, is the first and only publicly accessible data resource for the linguistic description of spoken English as a lingua franca. The EU-project DYLAN (Language Dynamics and Management of Diversity) investigates into English as a lingua franca in the context of European multilingualism. DYLAN seeks to identify the conditions under which Europe's linguistic diversity can be an asset rather than a handicap and embraces 20 research institutions in 12 European countries.


Further information
Programme "Third International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca": http://elfconference.univie.ac.at
FWF-Projekt VOICE: www.univie.ac.at/voice
EU-Projekt DYLAN: http://www.dylan-project.org/Dylan_en/presentation/partners/wien/wien.php

Contact
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Seidlhofer
Department of English
University of Vienna
1090 Wien, Spitalgasse 2-4
T +43-1-4277-424 42
barbara.seidlhofer(at)univie.ac.at

Queries
Mag. Alexander Dworzak
Public Relations
University of Vienna
1010 Wien, Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
T +43-1-4277-175 31
M +43-664-60277-175 31
alexander.dworzak(at)univie.ac.at
http://public.univie.ac.at