Exploring the mediated side of ELF: Emerging challenges in academic settings

In this paper I present the English in Italy project, which includes different research lines addressing the role and status of English within the Italian context. In particular, I report on the pilot activities carried out to investigate the use of ELF in academic settings. An interview-based survey was conducted with the aim to ascertain to what extent ELF is used in research and teaching, with or without the aid of translation or interpreting services, in both written and oral communication. The respondents provided interesting comments and motivations pointing to a wide range of text types, not limited to research papers, and communicative situations in which ELF has become the default medium to communicate with the rest of the research community and with an increasingly international student population. Although the use of translation and interpreting services appears to be more the exception than the rule in the context taken into account, the respondents’ attitude towards language mediation reveals conflicting views on how they fulfill their communicative needs considering ELF or ENL as the gold standard in specific cases. The paper first introduces the general context that prompted the project design with reference to the recent debate on the use of English in higher education in Italy (§1). Then, it provides a brief description of the English in Italy project and its main research strands (§2). The next section (§3) focuses on the pilot stage of one of those strands, i.e. ELF in academic settings and its relation with language mediation (translation and interpreting) services, and discusses the preliminary results concerning written communication (§3.1) and oral communication (§3.2). The next steps that will be undertaken in the project are briefly outlined in the conclusion (§4).