BAAL (IC-SIG) 2015 abstract accepted

Hi LANTERNERS!

An abstract by Richard and me has been accepted for the 2015 BAAL IC SIG (The British Association of Applied Linguistic- Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group) Annual Conference in Sheffield. It will be my second time for the BAAL IC SIG, but the first co-presentation with Richard (aka the boss!). I am looking forward to it 🙂 Please see our abstract below.

ASEAN policy documents as an articulation of discourses of intercultural communication and English as a lingua franca

Sutraphorn Tantiniranat and Richard Fay, The Manchester Institute of Education

School of Environment, Education and Development, The University of Manchester

Email: s.tantiniranat@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk, richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk

 ABSTRACT:

Thailand is a member state of the Association of South East Asian Nations socio-cultural community (aka ASEAN) which consists of ten countries each with differing linguistic and cultural characteristics. In policy and other strategic documents at both ASEAN and national level, in both English and the national languages (e.g. Thai), a vision for the region is articulated based on increased collaboration in ‘economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields’ (ASEAN, 2014). These documents explicitly and implicitly invoke an English-medium (as English is ‘the’ official lingua franca of the group) vision of intercultural communication between and beyond the countries in the association. They also articulate the skills and mindset (to be inculcated through education) required by young people in the region if they are going to succeed in the competitive global market. As informed by both content and discourse analysis, we consider what these documents might reveal about the application of intercultural and ELF thinking in strategic policy-making. We do so with one eye for the (Western and/or other) origins of the discourses in question, and the other on our specific context, Thailand, which functions as a case within ASEAN.

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KEYWORDS: ASEAN, Intercultural Communication, Intercultural (communicative) Competence (ICC), ELF, policy