The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca

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ELF in electronically mediated intercultural communication

Chittima Sangiamchit

Introduction

The emergence of the Internet as the backbone of global communication in the twenty-first century has reinforced an interconnectedness between people across the globe with few boundaries. As a result of globalisation, English has become the most dominant language of communication online and an important means for wider communication among English users from different first languages and cultures. It is most often used as a commonly shared lingua franca of communication or ELF in these globalised transnational spaces (Vettorel, 2014). It serves as a linguistic resource to fulfil communication purposes of online users and involves diversified English(es) and cultures due to different linguistic and cultural resources brought into online communication by its multilingual and multicultural users. ELF and cultures through ELF are, therefore, constantly changed, adaptive, fluid and emergent resources that are negotiated and context dependent (Baker, 2009). Within ELF research, English has been investigated from both linguistic and cultural aspects in a range of different research domains, including in particular, higher education (Jenkins, 2014; Mauranen, 2012), and business (Ehrenreich, 2011). In online contexts, however, ELF research is still in its infancy (Jenks, 2013; Ke, 2012; Ke and Cahyani, 2014; Vettorel, 2014). This chapter aims to provide a review of research into electronically mediated communication and its relation to intercultural ELF usage. It introduces the term ‘electronically mediated intercultural communication’ (EMIC) and examines a particular channel of EMIC; social network sites (SNSs). The chapter then focuses on a discussion of how EMIC on SNSs relate to intercultural communication and ELF. An example of ELF use in a specific SNS, Facebook, is provided to illustrate linguistic and cultural variations in online electronic media.

Overview of EMIC and social network sites

Definition and characteristics of EMIC

Put simply, electronically mediated intercultural communication (EMIC) involves online intercultural interactions through mediated digital devices. It is proposed as an alternative term to computer-mediated communication or CMC. Herring (2007: 1) defines CMC as ‘predominantly text-based human to human interaction mediated by networked computers or mobile telephony’. Considering the rapid advancement of communication technologies, Internet users can access wider communication through not only personal computers (PC) or laptops, as previously, but also through mobile/smart phones and tablets anywhere where there is Internet accessibility. Further, Internet users can interact in many different ways and combine many forms of online features in the communication process. The term EMIC, thus, replaces CMC here in order to illustrate more varied ways of current digital communication. It is defined as intercultural interactions through computer mediated networks on electronic devices, such as computer, laptops, mobile/smart phones and tablets.

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EMIC brings distinctive characteristics to the communication process and this results in dynamic and highly flexible online intercultural communication. These characteristics are delineated below across four aspects; multilingualism and multiculturalism, multi-way communication, multimodality and mobility.

It is obviously true that the Internet has become a global communication network in recent years. According to Internet World Stats (2016a), 49.5 per cent of the total world population are now online and nearly half of this amount is from Asia. Other regions are represented in more minor proportions (e.g. Europe 16.9 per cent, Latin America/Caribbean 10.7 per cent and Africa 9.4 per cent). In relation to language on the Internet, the statistics unsurprisingly show that English is the first of the top 10 languages used by approximately a quarter of the total world Internet users, followed by Chinese (20.8 per cent), Spanish (7.7 per cent), Arabic (4.7 per cent), Portuguese (4.3 per cent), Japanese (3.2 per cent), Malay (3.0 per cent), Russian (2.9 per cent), French (2.8 per cent) and German (2.3 per cent) (Internet World Stats, 2016b). Two obvious implications of the statistics are; first, non-native English users (NNESs) exceed native English users (NESs) on the Internet; and second, there are other languages present for communication on the Internet, although English is the most dominant. From these facts, EMIC involves transnational users who come together online with a range of different linguistic and cultural resources. Therefore, it is both multilingual and also multicultural. A detailed discussion of multilingualism and multiculturalism is returned to later in the chapter in the section entitled ‘English as a lingua franca for intercultural communication in EMIC’.

Moving on to multi-way communication, asynchronous and synchronous communication are traditionally well-known types of EMIC. Asynchronous communication provides users’ with an opportunity to interact with communication messages, such as send, post, read, reply or even edit these messages at different times (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Herring, 2010; Morse, 2003). Email, blogs, discussion boards, SNSs are examples of asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication, in contrast, is understood as communication between two or more online users in real time, such as chat in either text messages or voice/video calls. Technological development over time has transformed many EMIC platforms into communication centres that combine both asynchronous and synchronous modes together and users can engage in a variety of interactions, such as one to one and/or group chats, posts activities on blogs and take part in discussion boards. In this sense, EMIC is essentially multi-way communication.

EMIC is also multimodal in which a range of different modal features can be used to represent communicative meanings, such as text, audio, video, images and file sharing. Jewitt (2009) explains that multimodality involves the full range of communication forms for understanding communication and representation. It includes not only language, but also images, photos, videos and so on. As seen from current EMIC, many platforms converge channels or modes for user-to user communication, including text, audio, video and images. Herring (2015) refers to this phenomenon as ‘interactive multimodal platforms’ (IMPs), which allow users to comment and interact on a single social media site through multiple (synchronous or asynchronous) modes. She states that IMP involves text and at least one other mode (audio, video and graphics). According to multimodality available on many sites of EMIC, communicative meanings are conveyed, distributed, received, interpreted and remade through many representational and communicative modes. Thus, communicative meanings are constructed not just through language; instead the meanings in any one mode are often intertwined with the meanings made with those of all other modes co-present and ‘co-operating’ in the communicative event (Jewitt, 2009: 15). Language is, therefore, only ever one mode surrounded by a multimodal cluster of modes. The interaction between modes produces communicative meanings (Herring, 2015; Jewitt, 2009), Images, for instance, are thought to be in a supportive relation to writing. Therefore, multimodal features provide an extended repertoire of meaning-making resources that people use to construct meanings. In so doing, it also offers a new perspective for understanding communication.

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The last important characteristic of EMIC is mobility. EMIC has become increasingly mobilized as an effect of communication technology development. Users can access EMIC on the move wherever they can connect to the Internet. It is worth considering that ‘mobility’ does not refer only to the movement in communication of just users, but also objects (communication devices), symbols (for examples, information, images and videos), contexts and spaces of EMIC (Kakihara and Sørensen, 2001). These things are intertwined in that most current mobile digital communication devices are designed for movement that expands the space of EMIC away from just personal computers (PC) and further facilitates social activities between people without geographical proximity. EMIC is then a new way where people from different languages, communities and cultures can interact with others in diverse contexts almost anywhere and anytime via PC or various mobile digital communication technologies such as laptops, mobiles, and tablets. In this sense, it could be argued that the fluid mobility of EMIC results in new complex patterns of human interactions and communication.

Before analysing the relevance of EMIC to intercultural communication through ELF, the next section provides an explanation of social network sites as a recent popular EMIC platform.

Social network sites (SNSs)

One of the most significant developments of EMIC is social network sites (in short SNSs). There were 1.96 billion SNSs users around the world in 2015 (Statista, 2016). The top five leading SNSs currently are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Youtube (Moreau, 2016).

Ellison and Boyd (2013: 158) define SNSs as a networked communication platform in which participants 1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-provided data; 2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site. SNSs are a genre of social media (Ellison and Boyd, 2013). In this chapter, it is accepted as a particular category of social media that contains different features and supports users to engage in EMIC in various ways. SNSs can be contextualised under the context of Web 2.0 as discussed below.

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O’Reilly (2005) initially provides the term ‘Web 2.0’ to encapsulate websites that are built to facilitate interactivity and co-creation of content by website visitors in addition to original authors (Walther et al., 2011: 26). With technological development, Herring (2013: 4) redefines Web 2.0 as ‘web-based platforms that emerged as popular in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and that incorporate user-generated content and social interaction, often alongside or in response to structures and/or (multimedia) content provided by the sites themselves’. It is an environment with active participation and sharing practices (O’Reilly, 2005). It focuses on ‘interaction’ rather than ‘receptive-only processes’. Through Web 2.0 tools, users are supported to actively create content at different levels: by editing and uploading texts, either in their original form or modifying creations of other users, by commenting on them, and/or by linking different kinds of texts. Examples of Web 2.0 platforms are Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Youtube (Herring, 2013).

SNSs contain a variety of technical features and vary across different SNSs. I have categorised their features into four primary aspects that appear to be distinctive and salient. These include profiles, connection lists, stream of updates and multiple modes of communication.

Profiles are central to SNSs where one can show who they are (for example, names, photo, birthday, education, workplace and interests). Profiles are a page in which users represent themselves and gather for sharing and communication. They are normally updated when users feel they need to do it; although, this automatically happens when users and/or their friends update their activities on their profile pages. For example, users can find out other users have just graduated from photos they or their friends posted.

Streams of ‘updates’ have become more salient today when users are encouraged to create contents and share with others in the same online communities. This is a very important feature that represents individual expressions of activities, ideas and beliefs on any topics related to their interests. Other users can also construct their ideas about at least individual users who update their activities and any issues posted on the platforms, such as news, activities, advertisements and movies. Examples of SNSs ‘updates’ features are Facebook’s ‘News Feed’, Twitter’s ‘tweets’ and Line’s ‘Timeline’.

‘Connection lists’ allows users to create their personal list of contacts by requesting and confirming friend requests. While adding friends options, users can delete the requests if they do not want to have a connection. They can also minimise the number of their friends by ‘unfriending’ those who are in their current friend list. ‘Connection lists’ serves multiple purposes on SNSs. Users can keep in touch through following ‘updates’ and browsing and commenting on these ‘updates’. In this way, the users get involved in different updates of each other and keep in touch, resulting in stronger ties in their relationships and building a sense of community. Further, the ‘connection lists’ can be a tool to control who can access what content and also discover friends in common.

Multiple modes of communication is another important feature of SNSs. On most SNSs, these can be one-to-one (e.g. private chat between two users), one to many (e.g. group chat and posts on public online page), synchronous and asynchronous. Ellison and Boyd (2013) claim that SNSs have been evolving into being more media centric and less profile centric. Users can share various media whether text, photos, video and these interactions can encourage productive exchanges since there is an engagement of extended networks, such as ‘Friends’ and ‘Friends of Friends’. As such, SNSs (and EMIC) is no longer primarily involved in textual exchanges or written-based forms (Herring, 2007), rather multimodal features also play a crucial role. It is common that users can interact with SNSs in a variety of optional ways, for example, they can post photos and explain what happens in that photo through written explanation. Therefore, the technical affordances of SNSs have become increasingly fluid. Accompanying this, people’s practices, expectations and social norms have also co-evolved alongside the technical features and social interaction opportunities.

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Electronically mediated intercultural communication on SNSs through ELF

EMIC on SNSs

SNSs offer great opportunities for contact with other cultures, regardless of the time and space distance. They have increasingly become the area of diversified cultural engagement and a medium of intercultural exchanges because users of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds can interact, share opinions and construct knowledge about various cultural values. In this section, how SNSs relate to EMIC is discussed through the lens of cultural representation and cultural construction, applying the concept of self-presentation and multimodal features of the mediums.

Sperber (1996) explains cultural representation as a fuzzy subset of mental and public representations inhabiting a given social group. According to his notion, mental representations may exist inside its user, such as a memory, a belief, an intention and a preference while a public representation may also exist in the environment of its users, which involve several users and include signals, utterances, texts and pictures, for example. Interpretation is an important tool to understand meanings of mental and public representations. Hall (1997) highlights that ‘cultural representation’ involves the use of language, signs and images that stand for or represent things. By looking at cultural construction, it is about the way in which people shape their ideas and understand different things in the world. Burr (1995: 2–3) discusses relevant ideas through social constructionism in that people ‘take a critical stance towards our taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world (including ourselves)’. People can exchange knowledge between them through the daily interactions and negotiate the meanings as well as construct their knowledge according to their understandings. As such, there are different possible social constructions and these bring with it different kinds of behaviours and actions.

Then, how do cultural representation and cultural construction relate to intercultural communication on SNSs (EMIC)? Baker (2015) indicates that intercultural communication involves communication where cultural and linguistic differences are perceived in the interactions. In SNSs, cultural representation and construction generate intercultural communication in the sense that users share their interests, perspectives, knowledge, etc., using a variety of modal features available on the mediums (e.g. texts, photos and videos) and in turn they learn these from their communication and interactions with other users of different linguacultures. Pauwels (2012) supports that different multi-features facilitate cultural representation of the users while at the same time an interplay of these different features help them understand the communicative meanings and construct their understandings of the communication.

The concept of self-representation with the support of multimodal features is helpful to explain how SNSs users represent and construct their cultures. Leary (1996: 2) explains that self-presentation is ‘the process of controlling how one is perceived by other people’. It is used to construct desirable images and/or present their identities to audiences. A number of studies on SNSs have found that the creation and uploading of personal profiles are the main activities of a particular SNS, Facebook (Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Eisenlauer, 2014; Gross and Acquisti, 2005). Self-presentation, therefore, can be claimed as a key activity on SNSs. It is supported by multimodal features in which the users can present their interests, ideas and beliefs through a range of available modes on SNSs, such as posting messages, photos, videos and external links, for example, on either their or others personal SNSs pages (e.g. News Feed on Facebook, Timeline on Line). Other users (i.e. friends in the list, friends of friends, those who are tagged or even strangers), who see these interactions from their ‘News Feed’ and ‘Notifications’ can understand what peoples’ knowledge about, experiences of, beliefs, values or attitudes to a particular issue are. They can construct their ideas about others from individual representation about various issues. Cultural representation and construction are seen as an inseparable part of this process as our cultural histories influence how we present ourselves and how we interpret others’ presentations. The users employ the communicative medium and its multiple modes to share their ideas and point of views to others in their online community. In this way, different cultures are manifested and the users experience multiple cultural practices and meanings.

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As such, cultures in EMIC are naturally heterogeneous, regarding individual different ideas, attitudes, experiences and so on. As Hannerz (1992) states, individuals are unique according to his or her education, experiences and social influences. Further, the world is in motion and there is a flow of different objects, including ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques (Appadurai, 2001). Cultures, therefore, cannot be oversimplified based on culture–language–nationality correlations (Baker, 2009). Rather, the movement of cultural forms across the globe should be understood under heterogeneous perspectives in that languages and cultures are likely to be complex, dynamic and emergent (Baker, 2015). Pennycook’s notion of ‘transcultural flow’ (2007) can elucidate multilingual English practices in online spheres. According to this notion, English is a translocal language that is fluid and moves across contexts. It is bound up with transcultural flows, so it, similarly to cultures, moves, changes and is reused to fashion new identities in diverse contexts (Pennycook, 2007). Therefore, global flows of languages and cultures do not merely spread particular forms, but rather involve the process of borrowing, blending, remarking and returning to the processes alternative cultural production (Pennycook, 2007: 6).

English as a lingua franca for intercultural communication in EMIC

English is most often used as a lingua franca of online communication among users from a multitude of linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Seidlhofer, 2011; Vettorel, 2014). Seargeant et al. (2012) support English as an online lingua franca used as a means of online communication between people who do not share the same mother tongues. What makes ELF the main communicative language of online intercultural communication? There are two key reasons explaining why ELF is considered an important means of online intercultural communication. These are the nature of online settings and the multifarious uses of English(es).

Regarding the nature of online settings, both modes and English languages have changed as a consequence of communicative technologies (Seargeant and Tagg, 2011; Seidlhofer, 2011). The advancement of technological communication heightens the opportunity of transnational and mobile English communication through ELF. The distinctive characteristics of digital media or SNSs in particular make global communication possible within a second through a variety of forms of either languages (e.g. texts) or visual features (e.g. photos and videos) without geographical boundaries. Continual development of online communication leads to an important shift in current communication of people around the world. Seidlhofer (2011) claims that electronic communication has accelerated changes in communication that are not limited to geographical community boundaries. Rather, the online sphere has become a popular mode of current communication where a large number of global users can get involved and contact each other. They can access the Internet anywhere it is available and perform online communication on the move through, for example, laptops, tablets and smart phones, with others who are or are not in the local geographical area. This makes distinctions, such as international and domestic, local and global blurred in EMIC (Vettorel, 2014: 2). And in all this, Seidlhofer (2011: 86) claims English is in a pivotal position as wider networking needs a lingua franca.

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Another consideration of ELF as a means of EMIC concerns the multifarious users of Englishes. The Internet and EMIC platforms such as SNSs have evolved into multilingual and multicultural spheres of communication where there is an engagement of users from across the globe as mentioned above. Online English users may be bilingual and multilingual. The use of English for EMIC among people from different linguacultural backgrounds thus involves contact with a myriad of local languages and cultures. It drives away from monolingual and monocultural orientations towards more multilingual and multicultural orientations. At this point, English is the ‘lingua franca’ of the Internet (Jenks, 2013; Marcoccia, 2012) and is used to make mutual intelligibility possible among people who do not share the same mother tongue in their intercultural communication (Jenkins et al., 2011; Seidlhofer, 2011).

Due to the multilingualism and multiculturalism of EMIC, it is worth noting that although English is in a pivotal position, there are also other languages used for online communication, i.e. first languages of ELF users. The users have choices to use either English or other languages as well as mixing languages as a support for not only their multilingual competency but also through technological aids, such as ‘google translation’. Mauranen (2012) points out that English involves pluralised and hybrid uses of linguistic resources. Pluralisation in ELF communication comes from the hybrid repertoires of ELF users which are brought into communication. Cogo (2012: 291) supports pluralisation of English use in multilingual environments and considers these pluralised linguistic resources as a part of language users’ sociolinguistic repertoires. She claims that users shape, mould and construct their repertoires in the social collaborative activities, carried out within the multilingual ELF community. All this inevitably entails a consideration of the way English is used for communication, particularly in online experiences, in which people across the globe contact interculturally and bring their languages and cultures into such communications, resulting in not only orientation to others, but also in adaptation and changes to their communicative interactions.

The next section presents an example from an ongoing study of ELF use for online intercultural communication and illustrates some of the key themes discussed above including linguistic and cultural complexity. The participants of this study were Thai international students from different disciplines at a UK university and they were active English users of a current popular SNS; Facebook.

Discussion of EMIC on SNSs

This section presents an extract of EMIC among one of the main participants of my study (Ken) and his international friends on Facebook. ‘Ken’ posted a cartoon from ‘Rationalist’ on his Facebook page or a public. ‘Rationalist’ is a Facebook page that contains information about various issues, such as science, philosophy, articles and debates. The cartoon¹ is shown below, followed by the online conversation in response to his post. The format of the conversation from Facebook with cartoon and text is kept unchanged in order to present the original pattern of the conversation.

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Figure 28.1 A wolf in sheep’s clothing

Example: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

Like · · Share · 18 hours ago ·
10 people like this.
1.   Diego sometimes …
18 hours ago · Like
2.   Ken always .
18 hours ago · Like
3.   Diego jajajaja, unfortunately you may be right
18 hours ago · Like
4.   Nikhil Yayyy.. Look the speaker on the stage is a goat, just like us..
16 hours ago via mobile · Like
5.   Ken No ... We are more cute ha ha
16 hours ago via mobile · Like

Figure 28.1 above presents the idea of democracy. In this picture, a wolf is seen as a representative of politicians while a group of sheep substitutes a population. The wolf uses a sheep as his puppet to canvass and obtain the support from other sheep. In doing this, he pretends to be a part of a flock of sheep and convinces them that he understands what they want. This can be seen from his laughing at the back of the stage that shows the wolf does not take the sheep’s interests into his serious concern. According to a follow-up interview, the participant Ken expressed his personal beliefs that wolves are deceptive animals, so he believed that this cartoon illustrated a very true fact of democracy in general.

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This example reveals three interesting points of intercultural communication. First obviously, the communication consists of multilingual and multicultural participants, including Thai (Ken), Indian (Nikhil), and Columbia (Diego), using ELF to exchange ideas. Although English was used primarily in this communication, another language, in this case Spanish, was also used alongside English. This can be seen in line 3 when the Spanish interlocutor used ‘jajajaja’ to express his amusement. It is worth noting that the language mixing between English and Spanish did not interrupt the conversation. Rather, other interlocutors can still carry on the conversation. Ken explained this online conversation during the interview in that he knew ‘jajajaja’ in Spanish means ‘hahaha’ in English due to his experience of online communication with Spanish as the first language (L1) users. And the way L1Spanish users use ‘jajajaja’ online is similar to Thais use of ‘555’ for expressing their laughter. Therefore, it can be seen here that the mixed use between English and other languages often happens online as users make choices to suit their communicative purposes and/or preferences. Given the fact that online English users have at least bilingual or multilingual ability, they can adapt, adjust and mix other languages with English in their online communication with users of different first language. Therefore, this example clearly shows multilingual practices of online intercultural communication.

Moving on to another interesting point in terms of multicultural communication, the participant and his interlocutors shared their perspectives on a globally relevant communication topic, democracy. This topic transcends both the culture of the target language; English, and his and/or his interlocutors’ ‘home’ cultures. It can, thus, be claimed here that English language and culture are not necessarily linked to English speaking culture(s) and/or any particular culture. The topic of conversation can be anything of the users’ interest, ranging from local to global. The example also reveals a global flow of cultures as the participant and one of his interlocutors took nationally conceived cultures and blended or mixed it with other cultures for alternative cultural constructions. As seen in lines 4 and 5, the Indian interlocutor interpreted ‘goat’ instead of ‘sheep’ and the participant also understood what his interlocutor meant. This may be because goats are common in India and Thailand but not sheep. However, considering the close relevance between sheep and goat such as in terms of physical similarities, domestication and social behaviour, they mix these two animals in their discussion of democracy. In sum, both the cartoon and the concept of democracy can be observed in a transcultural flow (Pennycook, 2007) as this example demonstrates cultural movement and change.

The last interesting point is about multimodality in cultural representation and cultural construction in online intercultural communication. As seen, the participant and his interlocutors exchanged their ideas based on the cartoon. In this sense, multimodal features of online mediums, in this case a cartoon, is a symbolic toolkit to represent multiple communicative meanings and interpretations together with and/ or in additional to language. This example highlights the significance of multimodal features online in representing and constructing cultures among online ELF users in online intercultural communication and the coordination of these features with (English) language in producing communicative meanings. In other word, language is not the sole tool of communication in this online technological age. Rather, as Jewitt (2009) and Herring (2015) claim, language is only ever one mode surrounded by a multimodal cluster of modes. The interaction between modes produces communicative meanings. Therefore, language and multimodal features as semiotic resources coordinate with each other to create cultures in online intercultural communication.

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Summary and conclusions

EMIC provides a new medium of communication in the age of digital globalisation. Rather than communication based on geographical locations, EMIC offers ways for Internet users to access computer-based network communication through electronic devices, such as mobile/smart phones and tablets with few geographical limitations. There are four distinctive characteristics of EMIC: multilingualism and multiculturalism, multi-way communication, multimodality and mobility. SNSs are EMIC platforms where online users can communicate and interact with other online users. As EMIC platforms, these sites continually develop and introduce various features for easier and wider social communication. ‘Profiles’, ‘updates’, ‘connection lists’ and ‘multiple modes’ are their key features. These characteristics emphasise the hybrid and flexible nature of communication. Given the fact that the Internet has brought people across the globe into closer connection, ELF has an important role as a part of EMIC on platforms, such as SNSs to enable users to contact others who have different first languages and cultures. It can thus be claimed that EMIC involves rich intercultural communication in which online ELF users are able to represent and develop their ideas about others, using multimodal features of the technologies. In doing this, we see that the relationships between language and culture through ELF for online intercultural communication are complex, dynamic, emergent and fluid. As ELF is used by online users of different first languages and cultures, they do not only bring their own communicative resources and cultures into communication, but also negotiate and adapt these resources to be appropriate to each instance of online intercultural communication.

Note

1 This is an adaptation of the cartoon by the author that keeps the meaning but is not the original.