Unpacking pragmatic norms of Chinese speakers of English for English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication

This chapter focuses on pragmatic norms of Chinese speakers of English for English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) communication. English has increasingly been used by Chinese speakers for intra- and intercultural communication in multilingual and multicultural contexts. There has been a shift from exonormative orientation to endonormative propensity in ELF communication among Chinese speakers of English. Challenging the traditional norm providing, norm developing and norm dependent categorization of the three concentric circles of world Englishes (Kachru, 1982), this chapter adopts an ELF perspective, in relation to the “conforming”, “challenging” and “paradigm-shifting” approaches (Jenkins, 2014: 49-68), to unpack pragmatic norms of ELF communication involving Chinese speakers of English. In particular, this chapter draws upon relevant research areas including ELF and world Englishes to analyse data collected through semi-structured interviews with Chinese speakers of English regarding pragmatic norms for ELF communication. It can be argued that Chinese speakers of English do not only adopt and adapt shared linguistic and cultural norms in English, but also challenge, negotiate and trans-create pragmatic norms across linguistic and cultural boundaries for effective ELF communication.