In this talk, I consider some of the central sociolinguistic approaches to the study of English as a lingua franca in the literature and discuss the ways in which ELF studies might enrich the field of sociolinguistics and vice versa. I particularly focus on the notion of sociolinguistic change (Coupland 2014) which has been proposed as a theoretical concept that bridges theories of linguistic change in variationist sociolinguistics and approaches to social change in sociology. While the overall aim of the talk is theoretical, the presentation will include a discussion of several examples drawn from research into the sociolinguistic aspects of university internationalization (Mortensen fc). This will allow me to illustrate how the use of English as a lingua franca outside the Anglosphere is a key component in ongoing struggles over notions of ‘the nation’, ‘national identity’ and ‘the national language’, as part of what might be called the (post)national era.

Coupland, Nikolas. 2014. Sociolinguistic change, vernacularization and broadcast British media. In Jannis Androutsopoulos (ed.), Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change, 67–96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Mortensen, Janus. Forthcoming. Beyond language change: ELF and the study of sociolinguistic change. In Anna Mauranen and Svetlana Vetchinnikova, (eds.) Language change: The impact of English as a lingua franca, 152–174. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.