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ABSTRACT
The growth in streams of online intercultural communication goes hand in hand with the use of English as a lingua franca. In this article, I argue that there are synergies between the theory and analytical notions developed in the frameworks of ELF and Intercultural Studies (specifically the notion of ‘interculturality’). The study of communicative practices in which linguistic and communicative common ground is created in situ can be combined with theoretical reflections on culturality and interculturality coupled with structural and processual understandings of ‘culture.’ The argument is substantiated by the empirical analysis of an interactional sequence in ELF that took place in the context of an online intercultural game.
O crescimento nas correntes de comunicação intercultural on-line acontece de mãos dadas com o uso do inglês como língua franca (ILF). Neste artigo, defendo que existam sinergias entre a teoria e as ferramentas de análise desenvolvidas nos campos do ILF e dos Estudos Interculturais (especificamente a noção de ‘interculturalidade’). O estudo de práticas comunicativas nas quais uma base linguística e comunicativa comum é criada in situ pode ser combinado com reflexões teóricas sobre culturalidade e interculturalidade. O argumento é fundamentado com a análise empírica de uma sequência interativa em ILF no contexto de um jogo intercultural on-line.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the blind reviewers for their insights and lively interaction with a previous version of this article.
Between the submission of the first and the revised versions of this manuscript, the Intercultural Studies scholar Jürgen Bolten, on whose work this article is based, passed away in Jena, Germany, leaving his theories and ideas as sources of inspiration and dialogue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 In the case of the excerpt, the medium – text chat – might be an additional factor leading to such categorisations, since it is limited to written and thus mostly monomodal communication.
2 Bolten’s theory of interculturality was chosen because of its ability to account for different (and even conflicting) understandings of interculturality reported in the intercultural communication literature, as shown below with the structure- and process-oriented perspectives. Moreover, Bolten’s work is highly influential in Germany but not so widespread in the international community; with this article I hope to make his work and ideas visible in other scientific communities (see also Bolten, Citationforthcoming).
3 Cross-cultural studies are the ones featuring comparisons of two (often national) cultures; intercultural studies is a label used for studies that investigate how two or more cultures ‘interact;’ the transcultural paradigm is used to refer to situations in which the imagined boundaries of culture are transgressed (Welsch, Citation2012; Baker & Ishikawa, Citation2021).
4 Bolten (Citation2020) also engaged with the notion of transculturality – which has been taken on by several scholars of Intercultural Communication – as a paradigm that disregards ideas of ‘structure’ and ‘difference’ thereby rendering invisible the notions of heterogeneity and diversity.
6 This game has been played by different groups in several kinds of settings which can be easily adapted to match the context. The description provided in this article reflects the settings adopted in 3 games that took place in 2021 for the purposes of the study.
7 For the description of interactional practices of a team who succeeded in creating a team spirit in the game, see Mendes de Oliveira and Tuccillo (Citationforthcoming) and Mendes de Oliveira, Räisänen & Oittinen (Citationunder review).
8 Even though teams have developed differently, the groups in general do seem to orient mostly to consensus in their interactions and negotiations in the game (see ELF’s consensus orientation in the section ‘English as a lingua franca and interculturality’ above), as they often focus on getting the job done (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, Citation2018) over expressing their opinions and points of view. However, the game shows that asymmetric power relations can arise even in groups that orient to getting the task done; often in ways that can only be unveiled through fine-grained interactional analyses.
9 This is line with the literature on negative other-assessments, which has shown that such actions are often preceded and followed by delays or delaying devices (Pomerantz, Citation1984; Liddicoat, Citation2007, p. 122).
10 Due to space constraints, this sequence is not reproduced here.
11 Thus, ‘transience’ calls for investigations that account for the development of shared linguistic and communicative practices in these temporary communities.
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Milene Mendes de Oliveira
Milene Mendes de Oliveira is a researcher based at the University of Potsdam and currently involved, as Principal Investigator, in the ReDICo project, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research from 2020 until 2024. ReDICo stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively. Milene’s current study revolves around the development of intercultural competence through online intercultural simulation games. She is also interested in English as a lingua franca and workplace communication. Milene has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Potsdam and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais.