eprintid: 10018300
rev_number: 20
eprint_status: archive
userid: 587
source: pure
dir: disk0/00/01/83/00
datestamp: 2014-11-28 14:24:00
lastmod: 2017-12-07 21:32:06
status_changed: 2014-02-14 10:26:01
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: O'Regan, John
creators_id: J.ORegan@ioe.ac.uk
title: English as a lingua franca: an immanent critique
ispublished: pub
divisions: B14
abstract: Over the past 15 years or so there has developed a school of thought within English language education and applied linguistics globally which refers to the phenomenon and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The thinking of ELF movement researchers has placed their work at the centre of current debates about the form, function and legitimacy of the English that is used by speakers from diverse linguacultural backgrounds when they are in interaction with one another. In this article, I intervene in the arguments of the ELF movement from the perspectives of Marxism, globalization theory and poststructuralism by means of an immanent critique. This shows that in the articulation of its discourse the ELF movement reifies and hypostatizes ‘ELF’ as a seemingly stable form, that in its ideology it exhibits an idealist rationalism which blinkers it to the political economy and class stratification of English in a globalized world, and that in its theory it combines a rationalist, positivist and objectivist epistemology with a transformationalist, postmodern and poststructuralist sensibility which is both incommensurable and undertheorized.
date: 2014
date_type: published
official_url: http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/amt045? ijkey=OD0zRhmk2zUw6OZ&keytype=ref
oa_status: green
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
doi: doi:10.1093/applin/amt045
full_text_status: public
publication: Applied Linguistics
pagerange: 1-25
refereed: TRUE
issn: 0142-6001
citation:        O'Regan, John;      (2014)    English as a lingua franca: an immanent critique.                   Applied Linguistics     pp. 1-25.    10.1093/applin/amt045 <https://doi.org/10.1093/applin%2Famt045>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10018300/1/ELF_An_Immanent_Critique_REVISION_FINAL_print_version.docx