Blogging ELFers

English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become a vibrant area of research in the last decade, investigating language use in plurilingual communication settings in different areas, from phonology to lexicogrammar, code-switching and pragmatics. English is indeed increasingly present in young people’s lives in Europe, who communicate in international contexts, both real and virtual, via English as a shared lingua franca. Blogs in particular have become an important self-expression and interaction place, where English is employed to address an international audience This paper aims to investigate the presence of ELF features and communication processes in a corpus of blogs produced by Italian young adults, using English as the lingua franca of interaction to communicate internationally with people from different L1s. Exemplifications from findings, such as instances of lexical innovations and code-switching, will illustrate how ELF is employed to effective communication in the international blogosphere.