A matter of reception: ELF and LaRa compared
Abstract This article addresses the conceptual differences and commonalities between two modes of intercultural communication: English as a lingua franca (ELF) and Lingua Receptiva (LaRa). While the former is more frequent and wide- spread but disputed for reasons of monolingual dominance, the latter is lesser known und contextually restricted but praised for preserving linguistic diversity. The article takes such common presumptions as a starting point for a detailed comparative investigation of the concepts ELF and LaRa. The first section is dedicated to the overall language frameworks of the two modes. It thus points to their constellational specificities and the notions of locality and context involved in them. The second part takes a closer look at the speaker/hearer perspectives assumed in ELF and LaRa as well as at the different manifestations of linguistic variability and accommodation emerging from them. The third part is then concerned with the assumedly most prominent dividing points between lingua franca and lingua receptiva, namely issues of range, linguistic diversity and eventually the relative degree of plurilinguality exhibited in the two modes. In a final comparative summary of the points raised, the article ultimately comes to the conclusion that ELF and LaRa are not at all mutually exclusive but overlapping communicative modes. It thus argues that intercultural speakers could profit from using them in a complementary fashion.
On the Conceptual History of the Term Lingua Franca
This paper aims to give an outline of the development of the term “Lingua Franca”. Initially the proper name of an extinct pidgin, to “Lingua Franca”, the term has become a common noun, used with regard to language contact phenomena in general – at first specifically for pidgins and trade languages, but now for all vehicular languages. This broader usage is especially prominent in the field of research known as “English as a lingua franca” (ELF). Using ELF as an example, it is shown that the modern usage is partly inconsistent and can be misleading, as it connects a positive feature of the original Lingua Franca, viz linguistic equality, with a language with native speakers like English, which implies a totally different distribution of power in communicative situations and economic resources in language learning. Against the background of the etymological meaning of “lingua franca” and the competing, less ambiguous term “vehicular language”, a new classification system for interlingual contact is proposed. Within it it is argued that “lingua franca communication” should be confined to contexts where no native speakers of the vehicular language being used are involved – whenever the presence or absence can be stated.
Investigating mutual intelligibility and language coalescence
This study provides, as a working definition, a simplified view of a very 
complex speech communication process, the mutual intelligibility and language coalescence process. This process consists ofelements which interact 
through mutual verbal interaction to produce the ongoing formation of 
a norm aspart ofthe larger culturalprocess. These interacting elements are 
experimentation, mutual modification of speech differences, regularity of 
usage, mutually shared structural similarity of language form and mutual 
intelligibility, and feedback which is pervasive throughout. Passivity is 
precluded by definition. The coordinate relationship between mutually 
shared structural similarity of language form and mutual intelligibility 
constitutes the coalescence of the language norm. This study provides one 
further step toward understanding how the language norm is realized within 
the monolingual Community, and between contact communities when they 
engage in pidginization. While these language situations differ significantly 
both linguistically and socioculturally, the same process is active in both. 
(Mutual intelligibility, norm formation and cultural context, language 
contact, pidginization.)