Global Interactions in English as a Lingua Franca. How Written Communication is Changing under the Influence of Electronic Media and New Contexts of Use

choice by speakers of different languages (Seidlhofer, 2011), is currently being used on the Internet as a contact language. In this sense, Franca Poppi tries to give us a better understanding of how written interactions in ELF take place in our globalized world. Her central thesis is that non-native speakers of English should no longer be recognized as language learners but as language users of a common code, which is adapted and adopted by each community of practice. After an introduction on the use of English for international communication, the decisive role of the Internet and the spread of English around the world in accordance with Kachru’s (1992) classification of “Englishes ” into concentric circles, the book reports several case studies which are gathered into two parts. Part one groups several corpus analyses of online media. The first chapter on transcribed interviews and group discussions recorded from two international channels concludes that the classical distinction between native speakers of English and non-natives should be overcome; instead, we should refer to internationally competent and efficient interactants. The second example processes a corpus of texts taken from an Indian online newspaper to explore how the English language is modified and shaped in accordance with the communicative needs of the users. Then, the case of the Baltic Times, which tries to identify instances of localized and globalized usages of the language, shows that users employ and accommodate their linguistic resources as a result of internal negotiation. Finally, the study of a Chinese newspaper also presents examples of rESEñAS / BOOK rEVIEW