across languages. He distinguishes between the surface manifestation of the two lan-guages in bilingual contexts and the common underlying proficiency (Figure 19) in-volved in cognitively demanding task, and which can be developed through experience with either language.
Figure 19 The dual-iceberg representation of bilingual proficiency (Cummins, 1981 p.83)
1.10.4 Implications for the present study
It follows from the above that in the measurement of language proficiency in the present study more factors have to be considered: cognitive involvement, context-reduced or embedded aspects, the input outside the school. A further consideration to keep in mind is that the language performance of interactional style and academic achievement is likely to be less direct than in cognitively demanding learning contexts.
which is not English. In the school English functions as a second language but outside the school it is a foreign language. For most pupils it is a second language outside the school, too, being the language in which they are proficient enough to be able to com-municate through it compared to their level of proficiency in the native language of the wider community. They find more and more people from the wider community with whom they can have contact because of the common language, English.
To find the place for this type of English among the varieties, it has to be seen what the literature has to say.
1.11.2 Varieties of Englishes
Following Oxford’s (1990) and others’ (Ellis, 1994, Kachru, 1982) distinction between foreign and second languages, the former is not a native language but learnt for different reasons and does not play a major social role, does not have an immediate so-cial and communicative function within the community, whereas the latter does and is institutionalised in one way or another.
English as an international language defined by Smith (1976) as a language
“which is used by people of different nations to communicate with one another” (p.
38) serves a variety of purposes and as such has become nationalised by many coun-tries, and culturally neutralised, and it is not the property of the original mother tongue speakers.
Figure 20 Some distinctive features of ESOL vs.EIIL (Smith, 1983, p. 15)
Smith as seen in Figure 20 gives a detailed description of English as a foreign, second and international language describing the scope of language treatment, the func-tion, the purpose of learning, the learner populafunc-tion, the language model, the perform-ance target, the language interactors and the cultural emphasis of the contexts of each.
He makes distinction between English as an intranational language and English as an international language, the former being the common language between non-native speakers in an English speaking environment, serving as a lingua franca, and the latter used in international interactions. The difference between an intranational and a second language is that the latter involves native and non-native speakers in the English speaking context. Smith does not attribute educational function to English as an interna-tional language.
As a consequence of the globalisation of the labour market, in many non-English speaking countries English is used as a common language for educational or work
pur-poses. Where English plays such a social and institutionalised role, the development of the language takes place both in and outside the classroom, acquired and learnt both in instructional and non-instructional circumstances and ways following Schumann’s (1978) and Gardner’s (1985) definitions.
1.11.3 English as a lingua franca
There has always been a desire among people of different languages to find a common language. The attempts to develop artificial languages are numerous: Volapük (1880), Esperanto (1887), Interlingua (1903), Ido (1907), Novial (1928) to mention some of them. These artificial languages not being fed by and from a living culture could not serve as a vehicle of communication between people of different languages.
We live in an age when apart from our national identity there is a new supra-national identity emerging due to the tendencies of intersupra-nationalisation, globalisation as a consequence of joint markets, global communication, mass tourism and mass mi-gration. The need to mediate between languages and cultures increases with multilin-gual classrooms, with TV programmes from abroad, with the exchange of commerce and the increasing international contacts at workplaces.
The need for a lingua franca is returning to restore the international function of language through which our national identity can find expression, and makes it possible to become members of a multicultural community. This is a unique opportunity for the development of a lingua franca, which can facilitate communication at all levels. The idea of developing multilingualism, a competence in at least one language other than the native language promotes intercultural communication.
Swales (1993) quotes Burchfield who wrote the following in 1986: “English has also become a lingua franca to the point that any literate, educated person on the face of the globe is in a very real sense deprived if he does not know English” (p.283).
Brutt-Giffler (2002) claims that there are two main processes by which English has become a “world language: language spread and language change” (p.ix). The framework she operates in is presented in Figure 21.
Figure 21 A model of English language spread and change (Brutt-Giffler, 2002 p.
120)
She introduces the new construct of macroacquisition, social second language acquisition with its two types (presented in Figure 22). “Type A takes place in multilin-gual settings in which the acquired language serves a unifying linguistic re-source,….(t)ype B takes place , in general, in a formerly predominantly monolingual setting – one - in which one mother tongue dominates” (pp.138-9). Type A macroacqui-sition roots in community formation. In the context of world language theory, this speech community is a world speech community and one of the processes leading to its formation is transculturation. “Transculturation is the process of transcending
monocul-turalism in language both within the world econocultural system and also within the va-rieties of World Englishes” (p. 178).
Figure 22 Language convergence with World English (Brutt-Giffler, 2002 p. 178)
1.11.4 Implications for the present study
When English is taught and used as the language of studies by non-native speakers in non-native environment in international educational settings, it is a com-bination of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL). I call this variety English as a working language (EWL) – a subtype of Eng-lish as an international language (EIL) - defining it as the non-native language of the users for whom it is the means of communication with the members of the larger and smaller groups for social purposes and at the same time it is the official language of the smaller community in which they conduct their studies. In the light of the above definitions EWL is different from English as an international language, which serves a variety of purposes. I interpret EIL as an umbrella term for non-native varieties used as a common language and which can be divided into categories according to the function, role it serves and the time span it is used for. I define EWL as one of
There is a factor that has to be taken into consideration when investigating the process of interculturation: it is the language of the host community. In the acculturation process the target language is the same as the language of the host culture. In our case they are different: the target language which is being learnt while being used as the means of communication and the medium of instruction is English. The language of the host community is different, and different from the native languages of the learners, too.
It does not play any role in the intragroup communication by which I mean the commu-nication between the members of the smaller group. But it does in the intergroup com-munication by which I mean the comcom-munication between the members of the smaller and the members of the larger group. The question is whether the knowledge of the lan-guage of the host community, the lanlan-guage of survival (LS) promotes or hinders the process of interculturation. In other words, if the individuals posses the language of the wider community, too, they can choose which group to join.