Michael Clyne

Lingua Franca and Ethnolects in Europe and Beyond

1. Opening remarks

Many articles and several volumes of Sociolinguistica have been devoted to issues related
to communication in an multilingual Europe. The papers in 'English only' (Vol. 8), 'Mono-
lingualism is curable' (Vol. 11), and 'European identity and linguistic diversity' (Vol. 9) 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 com-
munication 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, Lin-
gua Franca in inter-cultural communication and ethnolects, into a sociolinguistic/language
contract framework, considering the need, use and potential of lingua franca and ethno-
lects. Although inter-cultural communication has been taking place throughout human his-
tory, 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.

2. Lingua Franca (LF)

A Lingua Franca is used in inter-cultural communication between two or more people who
have different LI s other than the lingua franca. It is therefore intended as an intermediary
code. LFs have long been the basis on which people of different linguistic and cultural back-
grounds have been able to communicate.
A number of types of LFs need to be differentiated, for instance:
(1) National language of immigrant country as LFfor internal, inter-group communication,
e. g. Swedish in Sweden < :
Immigrants of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds (e. g. Kurds, Croats, Finns) com-
municate with each other (as well as with the dominant group) in this language.
(2) Allochtonic language for external communication, e.g. German in Central Europe
People from different countries and language backgrounds, meeting in a third country,
or in their own countries, or in correspondence. Typical interactants in this group are
those from countries that were once part of Austria-Hungary - Hungarians, Czechs, Slo-
vaks and Slovenians communicating in German.
(3) People from an officially multilingual country employing an allochtonic language as a
LF - e. g. English in Belgium or Switzerland. Increasingly, some people (especially

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84 Michael Clyne

young people) from multilingual countries use English in preference to one of the offi-
cial languages (French/Dutch/German in Belgium, German/French/Italian in Switzer-
land) to communicate across ethnic groups. This may vary according to domain. (For
Switzerland, see Lüdi et al 1997, Durmüller 1991, Watts fc).
(4) Domain-specific LF

There are certain domains (e. g. academia, aircraft, multinational companies, rock scene)
where one language, in this case English, is the international LF and is employed in some
cases even by people with a limited general proficiency in the language. The discourse rules
of English as a national language are often imposed as norms on English as a LF (For aca-
demic texts, see e.g. Clyne 1987).
English as a lingua franca has effected the internal use of English in speaking and es-
pecially in reading and writing in higher education, business, and other domains such as
Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands (For Denmark, see e.g. Preisler 1999).

2.2. Agents of choice:

Multilingual companies, the foreign service and scholarly organizations all make decisions
on the choice of LF. It should be remembered, however, that the choice of a LF is usually
not an official decision but an informal dyadic one taken by individuals on the basis of their
experience, assumptions and language proficiency.

2.2.1. A relevant anecdote:

Let me relate one of my favourite anecdotes: I was sitting on a train between Cologne and
Bonn some years ago when a young Turkish man entered the compartment nervously wav-
ing a piece of paper with an address on it. A number of people tried to explain to him in ever
louder and slower German where to get off, but he did not quite understand. Several people
tried in English but to no avail, and the man sitting opposite me attempted to communicate
with the Tlirk in French, but that did not succeed either. Almost as a joke, I tried Dutch and
it worked wonders, for he had been employed in the Netherlands for over a decade. At that
point, a traingular conversation developed between us and the person opposite who had
spoken French, a French-Canadian who had taken his doctorate in Utrecht. So the only
means of communication between an Australian, a Tlirk and a French Canadian turned out
to be Dutch! What this demonstrates is the dyadic or triadic and ad hoc nature of the deci-
sion to use a particular lingua franca which does not always have to be an international lan-
guage of wider communication.

3. Some issues concerning LF

The opportunities for LFs in inter-cultural communication have been the subject of much
discussion (e. g. in some of the issues of this journal mentioned under 1), but there has been
relatively little research on how they actually work. I would like to outline below some sug-
gestions for such research:

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Lingua Franca and Ethnolects in Europe and Beyond 85

(i) How LF communication takes place differently among proficient and non-proficient
speakers of the language.
(ii) How and on what basis the LF is chosen.
For instance, in Central Europe (e. g. Hungary), social, environmental and physical fac-
tors impinge on the choice of LF: Less educated people, women, older people, and
those in rural areas are more likely to employ German (rather than English) as a LF
while the more educated, men, young people, and those in large urban centres are more
likely to use English (Clyne 1995:12-13, based on information from Csaba Földes).
(iii) What negotiations might take place in the choice. What assumptions are there about
the preference and competence of the interlocutor? (Cf. Földes 1998, who comments
that many Germans assume that Hungarians will automatically use English as a lingua
franca without first attempting to communicate in German with them).
(iv) Language mode: Grosjean (1995, 1999) has postulated the notion of a 'language
mode' determining the extent to which more than one language is activated during
speech (see also Liidi 1998). A more monolingual or a more bilingual (or trilingual)
mode may be preferred by speakers generally or according to setting, interlocutor,
topic and input. It should be considered what is chosen as the 'default mode' for the
lingua franca - To what extent is it bi- or multilingual? How is it adjusted in the course
of the interaction by the two or more speakers, i. e. to what extent and how is the mode
or even the lingua franca changed?
(v) Who accomodates to whom?
(vi) What are the lexical, morphosyntactic, phonological, pragmatic and discursive fea-
tures of the LF? Are there pidginized grammatical features?
(vii) Do the pragmatic and discursive features persist longer than the others? To what ex-
tent are deep cultural values from the speakers' cultures transferred into the discourse
patterns in the LF? How do they lead to mis-communication and non-communication
(Gumperz 1982) and how are these resolved (Clyne 1994)?
(viii) There is clearly a need to collect corpora where a lingua franca is employed, to facili-
tate comparison in the actual use of different lingua francas and some generalization.
It would be useful to have as many descriptions as possible of actual LF use, including
LF communication where there are wide cultural differences (e. g. Vietnamese, Poles
and Maltese interacting in English (Clyne 1994) and smaller ones (e.g. Hungarians,
Slovaks and Slovenians communicating in German).
Much existing data focuses on native speaker - non native speaker rather than LF
communication. This includes the very rich data disseminating from the European
Science Foundation project comparing naturalistic adult second language acquisition
across five target languages (Perdue 1982).
(ix) How do English, German, French, etc. as LFs differ from those languages as native
languages or acquired for communication with natives? In this respect, English is dis-
tinguished by the large proportion of LF users as compared to LI users (About 1 bil-
lion: 350,000) and the global and therefore extreme cultural diversity of LI and LF
users. The discourse rules of LF are subject to wide culture-bound variation. Should
the aims and curricula of language teaching for those intending mainly to communi-
cate with native speakers be different from those wishing to use it mainly as a LF?

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86 Michael Clyne

4. Methdology of data collection on LF

The same kinds of dilemma apply to LF research as to inter-language pragmatics studies.

Authentic data has the great advantage of being real. The disadvantages are that data is dif-
ficult to collect and not always comparable, that the paticipants have fixed roles and status,
the situation is domain-specific, ethical problems may occur, and the Observer's Paradox
applies. In role-play and discourse completion tests too much correspondence between
actul and (self-)assumed tends to be presupposed. In role-play, stereotypes may be rein-
forced (Cf. Kasper and Dahl 1991, Wolfsohn et al 1989, Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1992).

5. Some ethnolectal issues

5.1. Ethnolects

Ethnolects' are varieties of a language that mark speakers as members of ethnic groups
who originally used another language or distinctive variety. Two types of ethnolects have
gained prominence in multilingual and multicultural societies.
One type is characteristic of a specific group. It has been an object of interest in historical
linguistics in connection with substrata, i. e. the influence of a language no longer spoken by
a group on the way it uses its new language - on its lexicon, grammar, phonology and pros-
ody. Of importance in language contact studies is that as the use of a minority language de-
clines, in the second generation and beyond, its symbolic significance as an identity marker
is transferred to a variety of the majority language, the variety which is employed by the mi-
nority group either generally or in in-group situations - e.g. Jewish American English
(Gold 1981, Glinert 1992), previous German Australian English and current Greek and
Yiddish Australian English (Clyne, Eisikovits and Tollfree fc), Jewish, Czech and Italian
ethnolects of Imperial Austrian German (Jacobs 1996, Clyne 1999). Due to imcomplete ac-
quisition of the second language, it is not useful to base research on ethnolects on samples
from first generation bilinguals. Within her Matrix Language Framework which focuses on
the roles played by the two (or more) languages in codeswitching, Myers-Scotton (e.g.
1993) has postulated that, over time, a turnover occurs and the embedded language
becomes the matrix language and vice versa, i. e. the other language provides the morpho-
syntactic frame for the code-switched utterances. However, many of the ethnolects are
characterized by phonological and prosodic features.
Some of the questions that still require consideration are:
(i) Why are some ethnolects marked by morphosyntactic features, some more by lexical
ones and still others phonologically or prosodically? Is this related to interaction with
other groups?
(ii) What social factors are conducive to the development and maintenance of ethnolects?
Geographical concentration leading to dense networks and a common specific relig-
ious affiliation seem to be candidates (Clyne, Eisikovits and Tollfree fc).
(iii) What is the role of social networks in ethnolects?
(iv) Is it the case (as has been suggested by Clyne 1999 for Austrian German) that ethno-

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Lingua Franca and Ethnolects in Europe and Beyond 87

lects play a substantial role in the transference of lexical items into the 'mainstream'
language? If so, what are the characteristics of the 'minority' group that are conducive
to the process of transference (e. g. concentration in certain occupations, integration
into the 'mainstream' with strong multiple identity, ethnolinguistic vitality - cf. Giles,
Bourhis and Taylor 1977). The use of the ethnolects by some members of the majority
group, e. g. youth, as in the case of mixed-code Italian ethnolect of Swiss-German
(Franceschini 1998) is a case in point.

5.2. 'Multiethnolects'.
The other type of ethnolect may be termed a 'multi-ethnolect' because several minority
groups use it collectively to express their minority status and/or as a reaction to that status
to upgrade it. In some cases, where members of the dominant (ethnic) group, especially
young people, share it with the ethnic minorities in a 'language crossing' situation (Kotsinas
1992, Rampton 1995,1998). It is the expression of a new kind of group identity.
Recent research on multi-ethnolects in Rinkeby (Stockholm) and Bradford and East
London (Kotsinas 1992, Rampton 1995,1998) is being complemented by a large project in
the Lombok district of Utrecht and similar research in Germany and Norway. Warren (fc)
in Melbourne is examining the stylized multi-ethnolect of "Wog theatre" groups of second
generation Australians of Greek, Italian, Turkish and Serbian and Croatian backgrounds.
Some questions that need to be asked about the actual speech:
(i) What are the linguistic featurs of multi-ethnolects? Do they constitute common fea-
tures of the source languages or salient features of one of them? Do they really extend
beyond individual lexical items and shared phonological features that differentiate
several base languages from the 'mainstream' language?
(ii) How consistent are multi-ethnolects in their features across speakers of different lan-
guages?
(iii) How do such varieties work at the discourse level?
(iv) What is the role of social networks in multi-ethnolects?

What ethnolects (of both types) have to do with LFs is that they are, in fact, ethnolects of
the LF.

6. Non-European languages

The world does not end at the European borders, whether the present EU borders or pro-
jected ones. All Europeans have to communicate with people from beyond Europe (as is
clear from the number of 'non-European' immigrants in Britain, Netherlands, and France).
Some of the LFs may in future be languages from outside Europe (e. g. Arabic, Mandarin).
If that is the case, some of the issues raised in relation to English may become relevant in
reverse. In any case, the study of LFs and ethnolects will undoubtedly enhance our under-
standing of convergence and divergence between languages and contribute to inter-cultu-
ral communication.

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88 Michael Clyne

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Lingua Franca and Ethnolects in Europe and Beyond 89

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