ENGLISH WITH THE “MARRIED” NAME: THE CASE OF LINGUISTIC HYBRIDITY IN ELF COUPLE TALK

This paper aims at extending the analysis of ELF discourse to the domain of intimate interactions and to explore how partners with different linguacultural backgrounds accomplish their “coupleness” through English as a lingua franca with a focus on the hybrid features of couples’ ELF. For this purpose fi ve European couples with different fi rst languages were asked to audio-record their ELF home interactions and comment on selected excerpts of their recordings so as to gain some insights about how these interactions were perceived from a participant viewpoint. The investigation of the data suggests that ELF partners use hybrid forms to activate and ratify particular contexts (schematic constructs), and to achieve a particular pretext (an interactive purpose) of domestic intimacy and togetherness