Статья из журнала: Sociolinguistica. — 2000. — Vol. 14 . — P. 83-89.Many articles and several volumes of Sociolinguistica have been devoted to issues related to communication in an multilingual Europe. Some of them are in the area of language policy and sociology of language. In addition to the celebration of diversity, there is a widespread underlying fear that practical problems in managing communication in the international public domain could detract from linguistic diversity and result in a single lingua franca. This is often discussed in the context of the large number of national languages in an ever-expanding European Union and the almost infinite number of pairs of languages to be translated and interpreted.
In this paper, an attempt will be made to bring two partly overlapping phenomena, Lingua Franca in inter-cultural communication and ethnolects, into a sociolinguistic/language contract framework, considering the need, use and potential of lingua franca and ethnolects.
Although inter-cultural communication has been taking place throughout human history, the need for it is likely to intensify in the 21st century. The study of lingua francas and ethnolects as an expression of linguistic convergence and divergence are worthwhile topics for international collaborative research.
