English as a Lingua Franca in Migrants' Trauma Narratives

This book examines how trauma is experienced and narrated differently across languages and cultures, drawing on rich ethnographic case studies and a novel cognitive-linguistic approach to analyse the variations of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) used in the narratives of West-African migrants and refugees in the course of intercultural encounters with Italian experts from domain-specific fields of discourse (including legal, medical, religious and cultural professionals). It examines the ways in which such experts interpret the migrants’ trauma narratives by applying discourse conventions from within their communities of practice, as well as their own native linguacultural norms. It argues persuasively for the development of a ‘hybrid ELF mode’ of intercultural communication to be used by experts in charge of unequal encounters in specialized migration contexts that can accommodate different culture-bound categorizations of trauma. This timely and important work will appeal in particular to students and scholars of applied linguistics, discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, intercultural communication, pragmalinguistics, migration studies and healthcare communication.

Maria Grazia Guido is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Salento, Italy, where she is also Director of the Masters Course in ‘Intercultural and Interlingual Mediation in Immigration and Asylum Contexts’, and of the International Ph.D. Programme (Universities of Salento and Vienna) in ‘Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures’. Her research interests are in cognitive-functional linguistics applied to ELF in intercultural communication and specialized discourse analysis. Her monographs include: English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains (2008), The Acting Interpreter (2013), The Acting Translator (2012), The Imaging Reader (2005), The Acting Reader (1999), Mediating Cultures (2004), and Register and Dialect in an Integrated Model of European English (1999).

“This book deserves high commendation not only because of its conceptual originality but also because this yields an exceptionally insightful analysis, which, far from being simply an academic exercise, addresses socio-political and moral issues of immediate urgency. It is an excellent example of what applied linguistics should be.” (Henry Widdowson, Honorary Professor of English Linguistics, University of London, UK)

"Providing a positive counterbalance to the current anti-immigration rhetoric which is so prevalent, Guido’s research offers pertinent insight into English as a Lingua Franca being used in high stakes communicative acts where power imbalances are acute and will make substantial contribution to the field." (Haynes Collins, Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK)