AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

English is the dominant lingua franca of the late 20th and 21st century. The involvement of speakers of various language backgrounds and levels of proficiency, however, means that English as a International or Global Language is marked by a great amount of variation in terms of phonology, grammar, lexicon, and pragmatics. While previous research focused to a great extent on English as a spoken lingua franca, the present study investigates readers’ reactions to grammatical variation in English as a written lingua franca. In an elicitation task, native and non-native speakers of various language backgrounds assessed the acceptability of non-standard structures in a constructed lingua franca text. The results revealed not only what morphosyntactic variants bear a great risk of being rejected in international communication, but also what passes as correct or incorrect English Advisors/Committee Members: Schröder, Anne (advisor), Lennon, Paul (advisor).