Analyzing the Concept and Field of Inquiry of English as a Lingua Franca from a Decolonial Perspective

Abstract

Recent epistemological and ontological revisions demonstrate a change within the elf geopolitics of knowledge as voices from the global South begin to claim themselves as knowledge producers within a field strongly marked by the European hegemony. This article aims at analyzing the concept and field of inquiry of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) from a decolonial perspective. Founded on the work of one the authors and departing from the decolonial exercise of identification-interrogation-interruption, the article identifies the main ELF tenets, brings up different voices in the field, and interrogates who these voices belong to, and where they come from. Findings show a complex weave of meanings still marked by coloniality traces in which hegemonic European views place themselves as hybris del punto cero despite the multiplicity of elf views and practices all over the globe. The authors advocate for attentive and critical reading of elf, particularly, with regards to where knowledge is generated and who generates such knowledge if one wishes to delink from self-assured global north elf epistemologies. They also propose a decolonial praxis in the reading of elf as a pre-condition towards the interruption of coloniality.

"Elfing na Educação Infantil Bilíngue”?

“…Com isso, ensinar inglês através da perspectiva de ILF representa um ato de empoderamento do aprendiz ao estabelecer objetivos vinculados à necessidade de comunicação internacional (El Kadri, 2010), distanciando-os dos moldes do falante nativo através da ótica decolonial e da valorização do repertório do aluno. Assim, quando tratamos de Inglês como Língua Franca, temos um sistema conceitual fluido e volátil, que está em constante desenvolvimento e atinge temas complexos inerentes ao ensino aprendizagem de idiomas, como a questão decolonial (Rosa;Duboc, 2022), a formação identitária do sujeito (El Kadri, 2010), além das relações de poder (El Kadri, 2010) e posse do idioma (Canagarajah, 2022;El Kadri, 2010).…”