Abstract
The deep connections between English, globalization and intercultural communication are now well established. Research in English as a lingua franca (ELF) has made clear that this is a multilingual use of English in which other linguistic and communicative resources are present and frequently a core part of the interaction. Furthermore, ELF studies have highlighted that pragmatic strategies are a central part of those communicative resources. Yet how to approach pragmatics within an ELF framework has not been straightforward. Cross-cultural perspectives comparing the norms of first language communication in relatively static communicative contexts have little relevance to the dynamic and fluid communicative practices of ELF. This has led scholars to adopt intercultural frameworks to conceptualizing and documenting pragmatics in ELF interactions in which cultures and languages, and the accompanying pragmatic strategies, are viewed as adaptable and hybridized. Nonetheless, there are limitations to such intercultural perspectives due to the range and complexity of communicative resources we see documented in the superdiverse settings of much ELF communication. It is not always possible to delineate which languages or cultures are being hybridized and adapted and the ‘inter’ of intercultural communication becomes problematic. Transcultural communication perspectives are a recent extension of intercultural communication research in which interactants are seen to move through and across (rather than in-between) cultural and linguistic borders. Transcultural perspectives align with translanguaging and transmodal theories with participants making use of their full range of communicative resources in a manner which transcends national borders. Communicative resources and references may simultaneously index multiple levels or scales from the local, to the global, without being fixed to any single scale and often involve the use of emergent resources and practices. In this brief position piece, I will discuss a transcultural communication approach and consider its relevance for understanding, researching and teaching pragmatics in ELF.
Introduction
Over three decades worth of research has made clear that English as a lingua franca (ELF) is always a multilingual use of English in which other linguistic and communicative resources are present, and frequently a core aspect of the interaction, and that pragmatic strategies are a central part of those communicative resources (Walkinshaw, 2022a, 2022b). Yet how to approach pragmatics within an ELF framework has not been straightforward. Cross-cultural perspectives comparing the norms of first language (L1) communication in relatively static communicative contexts have little relevance to the dynamic and fluid communicative practices of ELF. This has led ELF scholars to adopt intercultural frameworks to conceptualize and document pragmatics in ELF interactions in which cultures and languages, and the accompanying pragmatic strategies, are viewed as adaptable and hybridized (Walkinshaw, 2022a, 2022b). Nonetheless, there are limitations to such intercultural perspectives due to the range and complexity of communicative resources we see in the superdiverse settings of much ELF communication where it is not always possible to delineate which languages or cultures are being hybridized and adapted. Transcultural communication perspectives are a recent extension of intercultural communication research in which interactants are seen to move through and across (rather than in-between) cultural and linguistic borders (Baker, 2022a). In transcultural communication, communicative resources and references may simultaneously index multiple levels or scales from the local, to the global, without being fixed to any single scale and often involve the use of emergent resources and practices. In this brief position piece, I will discuss transcultural communication and consider its relevance to understanding, researching and teaching pragmatics in ELF.
ELF and intercultural pragmatics
While many readers will be familiar with definitions of ELF as a global contact language, it is still useful to delineate how I approach it here. Jenkins defines it as ‘English as a Multilingua Franca,… Multilingual communication in which English is available as a contact language of choice, but is not necessarily chosen’ (Jenkins, 2015: 73). The emphasis on multilingualism is important since ELF is always a multilingual, and multicultural, phenomenon as the interlocutors will have a different range of L1 s. The settings of ELF encounters are similarly multilingual and multicultural (including intercultural settings in Anglophone contexts such as international universities). In other words, ELF communication involves participants drawing on a range of linguistic resources that can be assigned to various named languages (e.g., English, Japanese, Spanish, etc.) and, as has been shown in decades worth of empirical studies (e.g., Jenkins et al., 2018), English appears alongside other languages through translingual processes, influenced by participants full linguistic repertoire in both overt (e.g., code-switching) and covert (non-standard and original uses) ways (Cogo, 2016). This means that fundamental features of ELF communication are fluidity, adaptability and variability which has significant implications for how we might approach conceptualizing meaning making and shared understanding in communication, typically the focus of pragmatics.
How pragmatics has been defined in ELF research is not the focus of this paper (and is discussed in detail elsewhere), so I will simply follow Walkinshaw's useful tripartite characterization which in turn is based on the definition by Taguchi and Ishihara (2018):
1. The ability to co-construct speech act sequences that advance the aims of the interaction, and to shape illocutionary force according to interlocutors’ reactions…2. The ability to employ a range of communicative strategies and discourse devices to negotiate meaning and support mutual comprehension…3. The ability to jointly negotiate norms of appropriateness, and manage solidarity and rapport, by means of a shared discourse repertoire (Walkinshaw, 2022: 4–5).
Such a characterization aligns well with an understanding of ELF in general with its emphasis on co-construction, negotiation and ‘a range of communicative strategies and discourse devices’. To this I would also add the central place of accommodation (including non-accommodation) as a core focus of pragmatics in ELF research from the beginning (see Jenkins, 2022). Similarly in intercultural pragmatics more generally Kecskes writes that ‘importance may be given to co-constructed and emergent elements in intercultural encounters’ and that ‘[e]mergent common ground dominates the relationship between interlocutors and their language use’ (Kecskes, 2022: 4). Following this, key questions for ELF researchers are how this emergent common ground is co-constructed and negotiated (what competencies and awareness are needed), and what are the communicative resources (linguistic and otherwise) that are used to achieve this.
The answers to these questions are not straightforward and, as has been much discussed in ELF research, far removed from conventional ways of thinking about pragmatics and communication that are based on standard language, monolingualism, native speakers and defined communities. Indeed, Seidlhofer and Widdowson responding to Jan Blommaert's call for more open and flexible concepts in the sociolinguistic study of globalization, argue that ‘[s]ince sociolinguistic concepts are centrally involved in the study of pragmatics, it would follow that here too there is a need to reconsider them in accounting for how people from different linguacultural backgrounds communicate with each other’ (Seidlhofer and Widdowson, 2022: 446).
This means that ELF research on pragmatics has eschewed earlier cross-cultural approaches where pragmatic norms of different supposedly stable speech communities (typically at the national scale) are compared to identify similarities and differences. Rather, as Pitzl (2022) points out, ELF researchers have followed an intercultural approach, which in keeping with the wider field of intercultural communication more generally, focuses on authentic data of interlocutors in interaction with each other and explores the use of pragmatic strategies that emerges from such communication. Again it is not the aim of this paper to provide an overview of this research (see Walkinshaw 2022a, 2022b), but core findings have highlighted the central role of pragmatic competence and awareness in successful ELF interactions. Furthermore, ELF has positioned the use of these pragmatic strategies, not as a compensation for communicative deficiencies compared to standard native English use (as in traditional second language acquisition SLA and English as a foreign language), but rather as a successful aspect of interlocutors’ multilingual and intercultural repertoires.
Nonetheless, I believe, there are limitations to these intercultural perspectives. In particular, the ‘inter’ of intercultural pragmatics is potentially problematic since it is not always clear what languages and cultures participants are ‘in-between.’ Participants are not simply drawing on pragmatic norms from their L1 and a foreign language/second language, nor are they necessarily hybridizing two identifiable sets of linguistic and cultural pragmatic conventions. Moreover, as Pitzl explains, ‘not only linguistic, social and pragmatic norms but also norm centres will thus, at least to some extent, be jointly developed and negotiated throughout interactions’ (Pitzl, 2022: 65). In other words, as already noted, we can expect norms to emerge from the interactions themselves rather than be related to any a priori named language and culture.
At this stage we might reasonably question, as Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2022) do, if the notion of culture and the intercultural has any real analytical value left. However, any term we might choose to replace culture with, such as community or discourse, is likely to result in the same potentially essentializing processes. Moreover, in the types of interactions studied in both ELF and pragmatics participants frequently make use of the idea of culture to explain their own behaviour and that of others. While researchers should not just accept participants’ explanations at face value, at the same time neither should we dismiss them. If we are aware of and distinguish between researcher categories and participant categories (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000), in qualitative research into intercultural and transcultural communication both categories should be treated seriously. Most importantly, that something is complex, difficult to capture in a simple definition, and open to multiple interpretations, is no reason to dismiss it. The same issue is present in almost all categories we make use of; with our lack of a coherent theory or definition of ‘language’ a prime example. It is through such critical examinations of our analytical tools that we move towards a better understanding of the phenomenon we are investigating. I believe, we now have a much greater understanding of the pragmatics of ELF communication than we did 30 years ago. Yet, while I am not suggesting we replace or dismiss intercultural communication as a framework for ELF and pragmatic research, I do think, for the reasons previously outlined, that we need to expand our thinking and toolkit.
Transcultural communication, ELF and intercultural pragmatics
Trans perspectives are becoming well-established in applied linguistics and, as Hawkins and Mori write, ‘this move toward a “trans” disposition signals the need to transcend the named and bounded categories that have historically shaped our thinking about the world and its inhabitants, the nature of knowledge, and communicative resources’ (Hawkins and Mori, 2018: 1). The most well-known use is translanguaging theories, which explore how communication involves linguistic resources that ‘go beyond narrowly defined linguistic cues and transcend culturally defined language boundaries to achieve effective communication’ (Li, 2018: 24–25). Trans perspectives have also informed the study of communication and modality through ‘transmodality’ (Newfield, 2017), communication, space and scales through ‘trans-digital space’ (Boumaza and Baker, 2026) and, as will be outlined here, transcultural communication (Baker and Sangiamchit, 2019; Baker and Ishikawa, 2021). However, trans theories have an earlier and deeper history in anthropology and post-colonial studies through notions of transculturality and transculturation (Abu-Er-Rub et al., 2019). These studies highlighted the potential complexity and hybridity of cultures in post-colonial spaces, but also the key role of power and resistance in social relations and the possibility of new cultural forms emerging which transcend their cultural origins. As Mary Louise Pratt has famously written in regard to contact zones, they are ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination…Transculturation is a phenomenon of the contact zone’ (Pratt, 2008: 7). Such perspectives are key in underscoring that while trans processes have the potential to transcend established boundaries, there are also significant power issues tied into colonial notions of language, culture and nation. These asymmetries may influence how participants are positioned within interactions (e.g., whose language is worth more and whose cultural references and practices are most prestigious). Within research this is frequently manifested through methodological nationalism in which the national scale of language and culture is assumed a priori and taken as the norm (Abu-Er-Rub et al., 2019).
Building on both trans and intercultural communication perspectives, transcultural communication can be characterized as communication where participants move through and across, rather than in-between, cultural and linguistic boundaries and in the process borders are transgressed, transcended and transformed, with cultural practices and references constructed in situ and multiple scales simultaneously present (Baker and Sangiamchit, 2019; Baker, 2022a). Thus, the trans metaphor replaces the inter metaphor to emphasize that participants can transgress and transcend linguistic and cultural borders in communication. Of course, in transcending borders we are presupposing their existence but to avoid methodological nationalism there should be no a priori assumptions about which categories and boundaries are relevant to interactions. Furthermore, through the processes of transgressing and transcending boundaries, the boundaries themselves are transformed, potentially opening new social spaces and identities. Nonetheless, as highlighted in earlier trans theories, we need to recognize that historical structures, limitations and asymmetries may continue to exert an influence, as well as the emergence of new forms of inequality (Baker, 2022a).
Within ELF research there are a growing number of studies which adopt trans perspectives. Cogo (2016) positioned ELF as a translanguaging phenomenon in her study of a multilingual workplace in London. Similarly, Li (2016) discussed how ELF and ‘Chinglish’ could be viewed as part of wider translanguaging practices among Chinese Internet users. Dovchin et al. (2018) made use of a transtextual, translanguaging, transmodal and transcultural framework to explore the linguistic and cultural practices of youth in Bangladesh and Mongolia. Their findings highlighted the creativity and freedom that ELF and digital communication provided, but also the limitations of pre-existing social structures (e.g., Anglophone linguistic ideologies) and unequal opportunities and affordances (e.g., access to technology and communication). Wang (2024) employed translanguaging and translanguaging space, to investigate Chinese speakers’ online intercultural communication through ELF with a focus on how interactants deployed spatial repertoires for meaning making and identity construction. In my own research with colleagues (Baker and Sangiamchit, 2019; Baker and Ishikawa, 2021; Ishikawa and Baker, 2025; Boumaza and Baker, 2026) transcultural communication has proved an effective approach to understanding ELF as part of fluid linguistic and cultural practices where boundaries between languages, modes and cultures are transcended and transgressed. Findings show multiple scales simultaneously constructed and referenced in interactions, including spatial scales from local, to national, to global, physical and digital scales, and temporal scales from contemporary to historical.
However, at present trans perspectives have had little influence on ELF and intercultural pragmatics research except for Pitzl (2022). Pitzl proposes a ‘transcultural pragmatics,’ arguing that ‘the investigation of ELF interactions warrants a shift from inter to transcultural pragmatics’ (Pitzl, 2022: 55). To illustrate this shift Pitzl draws on data from the Vienna−Oxford International Corpus of English to explore three case studies of spoken ELF use in what she terms transient international groups (TIGs) (Pitzl, 2018). TIGs involve communication among multilingual speakers who come together for a relatively short period of time, from minutes to a few days, and are likely to be a very common setting for ELF communication. Given the transient nature of such communities, norms and conventions for communication are unlikely to be established or deeply sedimented. Instead, in these different multilingual groupings the norms of communication, including pragmatic conventions, are negotiated in and emerge from the interaction itself. For Pitzl this entails a significant methodological change to a micro-diachronic approach whereby ‘analysing (spoken) interaction would allow a more thorough empirical description of linguistic and pragmatic transcultural conventions as these emerge in real-time interaction’ (Pitzl, 2022: 74).
Pitzl's research offers an important example of how transcultural perspectives can open new ways of understanding pragmatics in ELF communication, but at present this is an isolated instance suggesting that there is still much space for potentially productive crossovers in future research. I believe, ELF pragmatics research is well placed to take up a more transcultural approach due to its ongoing concern with exploring ELF interactions in their own terms rather than in reference to a particular set of established norms for language or pragmatics. But it is important that research does not fall back on methodological nationalism in intercultural interpretations by which participants are seen as drawing on, and positioned between, pre-defined sets of nationally conceived languages and cultures and their associated pragmatic conventions and strategies. The links between languages, cultures and communicative practices, including pragmatics, is always an empirical question that can only be answered through an examination of how they come together in each instance of communication (Baker and Ishikawa, 2021). While national scales may be relevant, other scales from the global to the local and across a range of communities (e.g., gender, ethnicity, sexuality, profession and many others) may be equally or more relevant in understanding communication, meaning and affect (Baker, 2022a).
Pedagogic implications
While the discussion so far has focused on theoretical, methodological and empirical concerns, a transcultural perspective on pragmatics also has important implications for pedagogy. As already emphasized, ELF and inter/transcultural pragmatics research has repeatedly highlighted the emergent and negotiated manner of pragmatic and linguistic norms in the construction of meaning during interactions. This would suggest that successful ELF communication does not entail adherence to a fixed set of linguistic and pragmatic conventions, that is, a standard model of language and associated pragmatic conventions such as British or American English. Instead, it is the ability to flexibly employ all of one's communicative resources in response to the communicative scenario we find ourselves in that is crucial. This, as has long been noted by ELF researchers (e.g., Widdowson, 2012), means that we need alternative notions of communicative competence to the narrow, idealized, Anglophone models typically employed in English language teaching (ELT). ELF scholars have proposed a range of more dynamic and contextually appropriate notions of competence and awareness better suited to preparing learners for the multilingual and multicultural nature of intercultural and transcultural communication through ELF (e.g., Baker, 2022b). Although an overview of all these approaches is not possible here, one core concept is a shared view of communication through ELF as being predicated on successful use of communication strategies, including pragmatic strategies, and with these strategies being as important as, and intertwined with, the use of linguistic resources.
To further illustrate this point, I will briefly outline transcultural language education (TLE) as one such example of an ELF and transculturally informed approach to ELT and the place of pragmatics within that (Baker, 2022b). Under TLE the traditional ELT goal of native speaker orientated communicative competence with a focus on linguistic and grammatical competence is replaced with intercultural and transcultural awareness (ICA), including pragmatic competence, fostering positive attitudes to diversity, difference and others, and the ability to transcend cultural and linguistic borders (Baker and Ishikawa, 2021: 309). ICA is best viewed as a process rather than a fixed end point or goal and hence the features can only be specified in general terms with the specifics being adapted to context. This means that pragmatic strategies, such as accommodation, repetition, repair, clarification and code-switching/translanguaging, are a key part of both teaching and using English. However, the specifics of which strategies to employ and how will always be dependent on the communicative scenario ELF users find themselves in. Thus, the role of teaching for pragmatics becomes one of providing learners with a repertoire of pragmatics’ strategies and an awareness of the need to employ them in a flexible and context specific manner, rather than specifying correct and incorrect pragmatic strategies and uses.
Additionally, in keeping with TLE, teaching needs to provide space for critical reflection on pragmatic strategy use. Currently most ELF studies of pragmatic strategies have focused on consensus orientated communication with reasonably equal relationships between interlocutors. However, as Walkinshaw and Kirkpatrick (2022) point out, there are likely to be many encounters using ELF where not all participants are equally positioned, accommodating, or consensus orientated. This may include large scale international Anglophone language tests such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), as well as encounters with officials in positions of power such as immigration interviews or interactions with staff at Anglophone international universities. In such scenarios questions about who accommodates to who and how adaptable pragmatics conventions are become crucial. Learners need to be aware of differing power dynamics and the influence that this may have on their use of pragmatic strategies. This awareness can be developed through critical pedagogy and decolonial approaches in ELT which encourage learners and teachers to explore dominant discourses around culture and language, and what is considered ‘correct’ and ‘appropriate’ language use (Boumaza and Baker, 2026; Canagarajah, 2023; Cogo et al., 2023). Critical and decolonial perspectives emphasize the importance of alternative outlooks to mainstream ELT's focus on Anglophone, standard and native speaker English. Locally based linguistic and communicative practices, knowledge, cultures and pedagogics are valued. However, at the same time, it is also underscored that power relationships are not even and that learners will need to negotiate when and how different communicative practices are acceptable. So, for instance, translanguaging may be both appropriate and effective in local classrooms and social networks with peers, but less ‘acceptable’ in an IELTS or similar examination.
Conclusion
To return to the main argument of this position paper, the complexity and diversity of ELF communication, as documented in three decades of research, forces us to reconsider some core aspects of intercultural pragmatics. While hybridity, adaptability and fluidity are key notions for pragmatic use in ELF communication, how we conceptualize these processes do not always easily fit into an intercultural framework. Participants in ELF communication frequently make use of a range of communicative resources, including pragmatic ones, in a manner that cannot be attributed to the hybridization or adaptation of any specific named cultures or languages. Instead, I have put forward transcultural communication as a more productive heuristic in which interlocutors are viewed as using their full communicative repertoire in a manner that transcends fixed boundaries while simultaneously drawing on multiple scales from the local to the global. In such communication pragmatic norms emerge from the interaction itself rather than being established a priori. I have suggested that this transcultural perspective could be particularly useful for pragmatics research, as illustrated by Pitzl (2022), and aligns well with ELF approaches to pragmatics which typically analyse interactions in their own terms rather than in reference to external norms and conventions. Similarly, I have proposed that the connected concept of TLE provides teachers and learners with a framework that encompasses the dynamic ways in which they are likely to use pragmatic strategies outside the classroom, while also recognizing the potential power imbalances in intercultural and transcultural communication.
