2. Related Research

As a lingua franca, English is commonly used in many places and for many purposes. And it also becomes the current lingua franca of the international business negotiations. Consequently, the relation between ELF and the international business negotiation becomes closer and closer. Therefore, both ELF and the international business negotiation have drawn many scholars’ attention. There are many scholars devoting to studying ELF. Among them, Jennifer (2013) occupies an important position in the study of ELF. He studied on English as a lingua franca: attitude and identity. In his research, he introduced what is ELF, the characteristics of ELF, attitude and identity of ELF, etc. In china, Liao Danping (2012) also made great contributions to the study of ELF. She mainly studied on ELF in communication. In addition, Ralph Fasold (1990) and Holmes J (1992) are the two contributors of ELF we shouldn’t ignore. Similarly, many scholars are dedicated in the study of the international business negotiation, such as Xue Zhenghua (2010), Zhang Jingwei (2009), and Li Fang (2006), etc. However, few researches were seen about ELF in the international business negotiations in the previous study. My paper studies on English as a lingua franca in the international business negotiations, and provides some supplements for the previous research.             

3. Brief Introduction of ELF 

3.1 Definition of ELF  

As we all know, people speak different languages in different countries. However, sometimes, they have to communicate with each other for some purposes. Under this circumstance, they need a language which can be understood by both sides. In a publication, UNESCO defined a lingua franca as “a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them.”(Ranald, 2000:1) More often, a lingua franca can be defined as a language serving as a regular means of communication between linguistic groups in multilingual speech community. In many countries, the most useful and more widely used lingua franca is a national language and an official language, or can be called a trade language such as Swahili in East Africa, a contact language, an international language like English throughout much of the contemporary world and auxiliary language such as pidgins and creoles often function as lingua franca, many kinds of lingua franca are neither pidgins nor creoles. In this paper, ELF is defined as “a contact language used among people who do not share a first language, and is commonly understood to mean a second language of its speakers.”(Jennifer, 2013:1)源:自*吹冰`%论,文'网·www.chuibin.com/

3.2 Characteristics of ELF

3.2.1 Phonological variation

Seeing the variation from the phonological aspect, we can find that the main variation usually happens on consonants. For instance, the confusion happens between voiced and voiceless consonants, such as [b], [p], [d], [t], [g], [k]. Sometimes, these sounds may be omitted. What’s more, the reduction and confusion of nasal consonants such as sum, sun, sung, etc. Apart from that, the most important features of their language are the omission or simplification of consonant cluster. More typically, they also make some mistakes and they often tend to put the first syllable like police.

What’s more, they often make some mistakes in the pronunciation, for instance, they cannot pronounce the “th” correctly. They often use [s], [z], [t], [d], as the substitutes. Another example is that they say [te:d] for third and say [tis] for this. It is greatly different from the Standard English. Thus, the incorrect pronunciation causes lots of troubles for the Chinese English-speakers in many aspects, especially for those new learners.文献综述

The earliest try was at the phonological level. However, Jenkins proposed a core of phonological features necessary for mutually-intelligible pronunciation among non-native speakers. Taking the international intelligibility criterion one step further, it was also argue that non-native versions or variants of the non-core features should be considered legitimate features of inpidual varieties rather than errors. In other words, whereas an error is defined in relation to standard native English, the error, according to this view, should be redefined in relation to mutually-intelligible non-native English.