Abstract
Although it is acknowledged that English is now being appropriated as a lingua franca by users all over the world, and being put to effective communicative use without needing to conform to native speaker norms of ‘correctness’, there remains an entrenched reluctance to grant the same kind of legitimacy to this ‘Expanding Circle’ variation that is now generally accorded to ‘Outer Circle’ varieties (Kachru 1985; Seidlhofer and Jenkins 2003). The non-conformity of English as a lingua franca (ELF) still tends to be stigmatized as an aberration. Our purpose in this paper is to argue, and demonstrate, that the very non-conformity of its formal features is symptomatic of processes that characterize any natural use of language.
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© 2009 Barbara Seidlhofer and Henry Widdowson
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Seidlhofer, B., Widdowson, H. (2009). Accommodation and the Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca. In: Murata, K., Jenkins, J. (eds) Global Englishes in Asian Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239531_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239531_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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