Издательство De Gruyter Mouton, 2013, -279 pp.This book is about the widest use of English in the world today: English as a lingua franca (ELF). ELF is defined as any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). English today is a lingua franca which brings millions together in a wide range of communicative situations in numerous settings for a broad spectrum of purposes. As you are reading these lines, a very large number of people with different first languages are communicating through English as a lingua franca in business meetings, in conferences and other academic discussions, or sports activities, to name a few. Businessmen are busy trying to land deals, academics are giving lectures or having research meetings, university students are working out the details in their new institutions, and all of this, they do through English as a lingua franca. English, in this sense, has reached truly global dimensions no other language has come near before. It is used in a very large number of domains, spoken by millions of people for different purposes. This is not to say that there are no other lingua francas. Other languages are used as lingua francas centralized in particular regions in the world, such as Russian and Spanish; however, it is English and English alone that can reasonably claim to have become a global lingua franca (Van Parijs 2011: 11).Introduction
Previous research on ELF
Exploring an academic ELF setting in Sweden: The site
Operating in a Swedish ELF site
Theoretical and practical implications
Looking ahead
