"English is not my mother tongue'" ELF users' self-perceptions of 'their English'

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has become a thriving field of research, particularly over the last two decades; following globalization processes, English is increasingly used as the shared code among users of different first languages communicating internationally. ELF research spans over several domains, from academia to international mobility, business and other areas. More recently, interest in ELF in written and digital media settings has been growing; despite the internet being a multilingual environment, English continues to represent one of the major languages in virtual environments, above all in its lingua franca function, allowing people of different languages and cultures to connect and communicate across geographical, linguistic and spatial boundaries. Research into ELF as employed in digital media is a developing field of research; it can be foreseen that, with more than three billion internet world users as of today, academic interest in this area will expand. The studies that have been undertaken so far point to commonalities with research in the future into spoken ELF data at several levels, in terms of both form and function, from lexicogrammar and pragmatics to the use of plurilingual resources and code-switching. Furthermore, some recent ELF studies have focused on metalinguistic comments related to ELF users’ perceptions of their competence in English, both in face-to-face and in online digital environments. The main aim of this paper is to investigate how ELF users construct their selfperceived English competence in ELF communication through metalinguistic comments. As will be seen, data shows that several commonalities seem to emerge: on the one hand, ELF users’ overt expressions of ‘linguistic insecurities’ appear to be mostly set against an idealised native speaker model; on the other hand, these negative self-perceptions are at odds with the communicatively effective use of the code, and a growing recognition that English as a Native Language (ENL) normative standards may not be the appropriate benchmark in ELF settings seems to be emerging.