Cross-cultural Mediation in ELF Migration Contexts: Pedagogical Implications on ELT Multilingual Settings

Abstract

ELF cross-cultural interactions and mediation processes in specialized migration settings are oftencharacterized by ‘gatekeeping’ asymmetries between the participants involved challenging a successfulmeaning negotiation (Guido, 2008). The exploration of migration encounters (Sperti, 2017) is particularlyuseful in the analysis of naturally occurring dialogues among ELF users, since it shows how ELFspeakers, engaged in intercultural interactions, appropriate the English language according to their ownnative linguacultural and paralinguistic schemata, and to specific pragmalinguistic purposes andprocesses. The multimodal investigation of the occurring hybridization processes is focused on (i) ELFredefinition of existing native paralinguistic correlates in the pragmalinguistic use of an ELF variation;and (ii) resulting L1 transfers affecting the performing of speech acts and the conversational compositionand progress. The analysis reveals (a) the mediation of meaning, experience and intentionality in termsof resulting lexical, syntactical, and register performance; and (b) the role played by prosody andparalanguage in the mutual acceptance of speakers’ intentions, attitudes, and cognitive schemata, inspoken specialized discourse related to medical and legal integration, mediated migration narratives,cross-cultural conceptual representations and reception of traumatic experience. The heuristic approachapplied to the analysis of data derived from the exploration of real plurilingual cross-cultural exchangesis particularly useful in the promotion of the conscious use of cross-cutting strategies as powerfullearning tools embedded in the language learning process, with the ultimate aim of (i) investigating thepossible impact of migration on teacher education, (ii) defining an ELF-aware pedagogical framework inplurilingual educational settings, and (iii) enhancing the development of learners’ skills in interculturalcommunication.© 2019 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).