Ibérica (Jan 2016)
Features of ELF interactions in travel blogs
Abstract
Travel blogs constitute a new platform where travelers can tell about their travel experiences and share information and impressions with their readers. Most travel blogs incorporate commenting capabilities, which enable social interaction among members of communities with shared traveling interests. English is most often used as a Lingua Franca, facilitating interaction among people with different L1 backgrounds and transcending the native/non-native distinction. The purpose of this research is to analyze the features of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) interactions in travel blogs and explore some strategies used by participants in blog discussions to achieve shared understanding and show belonging to an ELF community. The small corpus consists of 36 blog discussions taken from 12 blogs where the commenters belong to different L1 backgrounds. The corpus was analyzed qualitatively to determine whether some strategies used in ELF interactions (make it normal, backchanneling, codeswitching, and metacomments) occur in travel blogs and, if so, how they contribute to identity and community construction
