English as a lingua franca and interculturality: navigating structure- and process-oriented perspectives in intercultural interactions

ABSTRACT The growth in streams of online intercultural communication goes hand in hand with the use of English as a lingua franca. In this article, I argue that there are synergies between the theory and analytical notions developed in the frameworks of ELF and Intercultural Studies (specifically the notion of ‘interculturality’). The study of communicative practices in which linguistic and communicative common ground is created in situ can be combined with theoretical reflections on culturality and interculturality coupled with structural and processual understandings of ‘culture.’ The argument is substantiated by the empirical analysis of an interactional sequence in ELF that took place in the context of an online intercultural game.


Introduction
Since the origins of the Internet, we have witnessed accelerated flows of communication in general and an increase in intercultural practices in particular.This has happened to such an extent that digital and intercultural communication can be regarded as ubiquitous.Moreover, it cannot be separated from offline and intracultural communication as boundaries have become fuzzy.
In the context of the ubiquity of virtual intercultural communication, English has once again gained space.Thus, the spread of English is regarded by many as less and less a matter of an imperialist agenda (Phillipson, 1992) and increasingly a matter of access to knowledge and communication.The field of studies English as a lingua franca has helped unveil this perspective on the English language after freeing it (conceptually, at least) from its ties with English as a native language as 'the model' to be followed, as traditionally postulated and reinforced in studies of Second Language Acquisition and English as a Foreign Language.English as a lingua franca is furthermore often employed in combination with other languages in multilingual and sociolinguistically diverse settings (Heyd & Schneider, 2020;Jenkins, 2015;Mair, 2020).
In early studies of English as a lingua franca, scholars often stressed how cooperative and consensus-oriented ELF discourse is.For instance, in analysing telephone conversations between employees in Danish companies and foreign partners, Firth (1996) stressed how ELF speakers attempt to defuse potential points of trouble instead of attending to them explicitly, thereby adopting what Firth describes as a 'let-it-pass' attitude.Likewise, in a study with international students at Hamburg University, House (2003) highlighted that cooperative discourse production seems to be the most important feature of her findings.While undoing the ties between English as a non-native language and communication breakdown was an important step for establishing ELF's legitimacy, as time went by and research in the field developed, it became clear that English as a lingua franca can be attached to a struggle with communication, the imposition of world views, and even institutionalised dispositions towards non-understanding, especially in situations of asymmetric power relations (Guido, 2012).
A similar epistemological pathway can be noticed in some strands of Intercultural Communication as a discipline.At the beginning of the century, the early focus on 'cultural differences' came under criticism and gradually gave way to a more holistic view of intercultural situations as triggers of dialogue and intercultural understanding (Bolten, 2012).However, some recent considerations have invited more caution in this respect.This call for caution can be linked to several societal challenges, from the public reaction to the migratory flows into Europe in 2015 to xenophobic discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic.In a recent piece to this journal, Zhu et al. (2022) urge colleagues to: (re)focus our attention on questions of who talks about culture, under what circumstances, and how people strategically deploy notions of culture and interculturality in their day-to-day interactions as a way to address practical problems and manage their interactions and relationships with others (p.313).
Referring to Bourdieu, the authors explain that acts of distinction are 'made, unmade, and remade in and by the interactions between persons' (Bourdieu, 1977;p. 184 cited in Zhu et al., 2022, p. 319).In this article, I elaborate on the link between English as a Lingua Franca and Intercultural Communication with a focus on the notion of 'interculturality'.This elaboration is based on theoretical reflections as well as on the analysis of interactional data in the scope of a so-called intercultural game played in English as a lingua franca by higher-education students.Moreover, I propose new ways to go about works developed at the interface of these fields, very much in line with Zhu et al.'s call for action.

English as a lingua franca and interculturality
With a tradition dating more than 20 years back, a 'rapidly increasing interest' (Kecskes, 2019, p. 5) can be identified in relation to English as a lingua franca (henceforth, ELF) defined as uses of English by interlocutors who do not share an L1.This definition can gain different nuances connected to different research traditions.For instance, when considered from the viewpoint of multilingualism, ELF can be conceived as a contact language of choice (Jenkins, 2015, p. 73) or second-order language contact (Mauranen, 2018, p. 109).More recently, ELF has been defined 'not primarily as a lingual or multilingual phenomenon but as a global means of communication' (Seidlhofer, 2020, p. 35).
The field's politicaland indeed, interculturalagenda to legitimise indigenised and non-native uses of English is timely and pressing.This is very much in line with a recent re-orientation in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics that rejects the dealings of 'linguistics as usual' in favour of encompassing definitions, practices, and theories that acknowledge multilingualism as part and parcel of linguistic practices (e.g.Rampton, 2022).Furthermore, the revolutionary character of ELF also broadens our understanding of languages as open and complex systems (Larsen-Freeman, 1997, 2017) and provides new layers for the investigation of ELF communication and ELF communicative practices (Hanks, 1996) or pragmatic and communicative strategies (Björkman, 2014;Kaur, 2022).
A relevant aspect that distinguishes ELF interactions from exchanges in which speakers share a linguacultural background is the degree of common ground between interactants, defined as 'a kind of collective salience on which intention and cooperation-based pragmatics is built' (Kecskes, 2019, p. 6).Common ground is instantiated in 'commonalities, conventions, common beliefs, shared knowledge and the like' (Kecskes, 2019, p. 6) and is often taken for granted in L1 interactions.In ELF conversations, however, common ground is often limited, and a substantial part of it must be created in situ, in contrast to L1 speakers, who often already count on a higher degree of linguistic common ground, which only needs to be 'activated.' Hence, in ELF, '[t]here is more reliance on language created ad hoc by individuals in the course of interaction than on prefabricated language and pre-existing frames' (Kecskes, 2019, p. 7).Thus, participants often have to 'invest relatively more 'work' in achieving common ground,' and, for this very reason, studying ELF in use offers 'particularly rich opportunities to study the emergence of social and linguistic norms' (Mortensen, 2019, p. 306).
Such ad hoc social and linguistic norms are characteristic of the intercultural context of ELF encounters.The intercultural context has been topicalised in ELF studies under the notion of 'interculturality,' described as: According to Baker, the excerpt above shows that identity is not fixed and that membership categories are interactionally constructed.Baker writes: [i]n this example, we can see that Sarah, Ying and Wasana all reject simplistic language, culture, nationality correlations and identities, underscoring the necessity of avoiding a priori assumptions.Importantly, in Wasana's case, we can see how different identifications are negotiated in situ and emerge from the interaction.(Baker, 2016) I agree with Baker that the interlocutors, in this case, dynamically negotiate otherwise static linguacultural categories.Nevertheless, it is essential to consider that simplistic correlations are present in the interaction in the first place, which shows that, while a dynamic rejection of stereotypical views can be identified, it cannot 'cancel' the fact that such reductionist generalisations are common in situations of intercultural communication either in verbalised or non-verbalised forms. 1  Early ELF studies underscored speakers' orientation towards consensus, cooperation, and mutual support.However, another facet of ELF has been unveiled, with several researchers agreeing that the consensus orientation found among the analysed data is more a result of the nature of the data (e.g. the student exchanges described in House, 2003) than an inherent characteristic of ELF (Mortensen, 2019, pp. 302-303;Mauranen, 2018, p. 110).For instance, in a study on communicative strategies in hierarchy-laden encounters between African immigrants and asylum seekers, on the one hand, and Italian immigration officials, on the other, Guido (2012) has shown that accommodation was impaired due to unequal power distribution.She makes the case that 'the lack of recognition of [ … ] variable versions of English may have critical consequences in contexts involving political and ethical questions concerning human rights' (Guido, 2012, p. 219).Against this backdrop, Seidlhofer (2020) has recently argued for the engagement of researchers with high-stakes encounters where willingness to cooperate is not symmetrically distributed and unequal power relations are a given.

Jürgen Bolten's theory of interculturality
Under conditions of hierarchy and uneven power distribution, interculturality, as described above, looks like something difficult to achieve.However, in this section I argue that the notion of interculturality put forth by the German intercultural studies scholar Jürgen Bolten (2012) can help with the difficult task of giving an account of intercultural encounters that comprise both (a) the compliance to or reinforcement of stereotypes, and (b) the transgression of the boundaries imposed by such stereotypes and ideologies. 2  Sociology has shown that routines of behaviours and actions are created and maintained in any established group which enable group members to predict each others' actions relatively well over the course of joint activities (see Berger & Luckmann, 1989[1966]).Thus, 'the cultural pattern peculiar to a social group functions for its members as an unquestioned scheme of reference' (Schütz, 1944, p. 499).Along these lines, Bolten (2012) defines such schemes of reference as indicators of 'culturality' instantiated as 'strongly structured and conventionalised ways of acting' (Bolten & Berhault, 2018, p. 127).In avoiding a deterministic perspective, Bolten also proposes that, within a cultural group or collective, a multiplicity of life-worlds can be identified whichdespite its heterogeneityis still recognised as familiar by its members (thus, the definition of culturality as 'familiar multiplicity, ' Bolten, 2015a, p. 118).
By contrast, interculturality denotes a situation in which an individual (or several individuals) enters(s) a new cultural field of action thereby bringing along unquestioned schemes of reference of their own.In this respect, from the perspective of the newcomer, interculturality can be defined as 'unfamiliar multiplicity' (Bolten, 2015a, p. 118); i.e. the conventionalisations of previous cultural fields of action do not seem to applyat least not in their entiretyin the new group.To non-members, intercultural encounters are often characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).Furthermore, interculturality 'is manifested by the heterogeneity of social agents, the uncertainty of shared courses of action and communication guidelines as well as the absence of a shared identity' (Gröschke & Bolten, 2013, p. 58).Thus, in such intercultural situations, speakers need to 'establish an action routine and negotiate cooperation rules' (Gröschke & Bolten, 2013, p. 58).
Another characteristic of Bolten's notion of interculturality is the orientation to culture speakers can take when experiencing intercultural situations.Two perspectives are described that are not exclusively related to one another but are poles in a continuum: the structure-and the processoriented ones.The structure-oriented perspective presupposes a view of culture marked by a high degree of spatial specification and boundedness.It is thiswidespread, one must sayunderstanding of culture that supports our unquestioned associations between a geographical region, a particular language, and a bounded culture, as when one speaks of 'British English and culture' and 'American English and culture' (with these often being the 'products' promised by language teaching materials and courses), because it regards cultures as containers.
At the other end of the continuum is the process-oriented viewpoint.Process orientation implies shedding light on the actual processes taking place during the interaction, be them working jointly on a specific task, as is often the case in the workplace and other institutional settings, or establishing rapport with conversational partners.Bolten (2012) argues that this kind of orientation is in line with changes in societal organisation (due to, e.g.globalisation).Here mobility also plays an important role, not only through migration but also communication technologies.
Concerning epistemological approaches, culture has been investigated through different epistemological traditions throughout the last decades, from cross-cultural, to intercultural and, more recently, transcultural ones. 3In providing a historical account of the use of the terms throughout the last decades in the Humanities and Intercultural Communication scholarship, Bolten (2020) concluded that different societal conjectures often called for different research orientations, which at times leaned more towards the structural and other times towards the processual perspective.He argued further that a consideration of both perspectives is necessary '[a]gainst the current background of resurgent national demarcation strategies and right-wing populist confrontational strategies, which are ultimately reactions to the perception of rapidly changing dynamics and the associated uncertainty (such as the flow of refugees towards Europe)' (p.8). 4  These theoretical notions have not been investigated in-depth by empirical studies focusing on the micro-analysis of interaction.In the following, I provide an analysis of some interactional data extracted from my current study on intercultural online encounters in the scope of an intercultural game.The purpose of the analysis is to provide empirical evidence of the workings of interculturality in ELF data.

ELF and interculturality in an online simulation game
Within the joint project ReDICo (Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively), 5 a database was created comprising more than 50 hrs of English as a lingua franca interactions in the context of an intercultural simulation game played via Zoom by University students from different higher-education institutions and different countries.The intercultural game Megacities (Bolten, 2015b) aims at the development of intercultural competence and requires players to create a plan for an area that is to (supposedly) become a new city in the future.Players meet once a week for five weeks for a 2-hour Zoom session and are supposed to perform several collaborative tasks.In these tasks, they are not pretending to be somebody else (i.e. they do not assume pre-set roles nor play a character).In the initial sessions, they stay in one (out of three) sub-groups; however, in the middle of the game, they are supposed to create new subgroups, which is a crucial moment designed to simulate an intercultural situation.In this occasion, several participants feel uncomfortable due to the need to start with a new subgroup from scratch once again and to deal with the volatility and indeterminacy of this reconfiguration, which adds a new level of uncertainty to the virtual and multi-channel setting in which they are already inserted.At the end of the game, students go back to their original teams to discuss their impressions of the whole game. 6While the game instructions developed by Bolten (2015b) presuppose debriefing sessions every week, the settings were adapted for the study and the debriefing was removed to reduce participant bias.Prior to the recording of the Zoom sessions, all participants signed a term of informed consent.For confidentiality reasons, the names of the participants were replaced with pseudonyms in the transcripts.More in-depth information on methodology can be found in Conti et al. (2022).
The excerpt below was extracted from a game with the participation of students from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and China.It features the moment in which students discussed their previous experiences in the game.This is, in fact, the final task and their last online encounter.
There were three sub-groups in the game.The sub-group featured in this article comprised students from Germany, Italy, and Ireland and no students from China (who were in the remaining sub-groups of the game).However, as explained above, students were re-organised into new groups in the middle of the game; moreover, there is plenty of interaction between the sub-groups throughout the game.In comparison with other groups playing the same game, the sub-group in focus did not seem to create a 'team spirit,' characterised by the emergence of joint interactional routines (Schmidt & Deppermann, 2023).This lacking team spirit was also addressed in reflection reports written by players after the game (see Conti et al., 2022). 7, 8 The analytical framework is based on conversation analysis (CA) (Liddicoat, 2007;Sidnell, 2011), an inductive approach to the investigation of interactional practices used by speakers to co-construct social actions in the here-and-now of interaction.In other words, '[f]rom a CA perspective, the social conduct of participants in interaction is a public display of how they understand one another, and jointly create meaning, as they go about their social business' (Brandt & Mortensen, 2016, p. 303).In this vein, sequentiality plays a central role, for conversationalists and analysts alike, as each turn at talk is understood (and analysed) in relation to the preceding turn and is regarded as creating the context for the next turn.Thus, as explained in Brandt & Mortensen (2016, p. 304), CA analyses are guided by the following questions: (a) why does this happen, in the way that it does, at this precise moment?(…), (b) what does that display about the participant's understanding of the situation and, in particular, the prior turn?, and (c) what are the consequences for this in the next turn?
This article depicts a single case analysis of a sequence in which participants are engaged in a reflection task.The players are supposed to answer three questions that trigger reflections about their experiences in the game.As in the excerpt presented above (Are you Chinese?), membership categories also become relevant in this sequence.Camila starts by paraphrasing the first question, as displayed on a Miro board shared by the group.After Camila's reference to the task at hand (the first question is: what were for you the biggest intercultural challenges?, lines 01-02), there is a silence of 5.8 s, after which Lukas, who does not have his camera on, comes with a pre-expansion (ehm, just a question: we are, most of us are German here, or are there people from other places or being placed in our group?, lines 04-08).A pre-expansion is 'designed to be preliminary to the base sequence' (Liddicoat, 2007, p. 125), i.e. it is hearable as preluding some other action, which, in this specific case, is the answer to the question posed by Camila.However, his turn seems not to have been heard by participants due to technical problems.Camila reports on this problem (I don't think I heard you.I don't know if it's just me., lines 10-11) which gets solved by Lukas, who restarts by making sure the problem is solved upon asking for confirmation (Can you hear me?, line 13).This question is promptly answered by Michael and Camila, who use the thumbs-up gesture (line 14), indicating full attention and uptake of Lukas's previous turn.

Intercultural challenges
After that, Lukas restarts the pre-expansion (Are we all placed in Germany right now, or is somebody else from somewhere else?, lines 16-17).Upon this turn, there is silence (line 18) and a strong reaction by one of the participants, Michael, who multimodally puts into question the relevance of Lukas's ongoing action: Michael frowns his face (line 19) and raises hands, with palms up (line 25), seeming to question the relevance of Lukas's previous action.Lukas seems to orient to this reaction (I'm just interested., line 21).As became clear later, Lukas's pre-expansion was intended to launch an interactional project in which membership categories (Stokoe, 2012) were going to, and in fact did, become a topic.
Emma answers Lukas's question (Well, I think at the moment not everybody is in Germany, right?Not everybody is from Germany, lines 22-24; but at the moment I think a lot of people are actually in Germany because of a student exchange, right?, lines 26-27) by stating that some participants in their group are not 'from Germany' but are in Germany for student exchange programmes (as happens to be the case for Camila).Emma's 'right?', (lines 23 and 27), sought further confirmation, which was given through Camila's 'insider's perspective'since she is not 'from Germany,' she seems to be speaking as a member of the group addressed by Lukas (I think like half of us are not from Germany, lines 30-32).
Later, Lukas uses indicators of dispreferred response to delay his action, such as 'well,' 'I just,' and 'like ' (lines 34-35).In conversation analysis, dispreferred actions (such as rejections to invitations or offers) are shown to be avoided or delayed in their production (Pomerantz, 1984).In this connection, Lukas uses another pre-expansion against which his next point is supposed to be interpreted (lines 34-41).To him, the use of the English language incurred no significant problems in the game, as players could understand each other.His uttering of 'I don't know how it is for you guys' (line 37) is probably seeking support, also through multimodal signs by colleagues, as happened in response to the technical issue with his microphone earlier in the interaction.However, he does not get any support for his argumentation at this point.
Lukas proceeds to his actual assessment, where he issues his main argument and his answer to the question stated in the task.He assesses the participation of a group of Chinese students in the game thereby using membership categorisation, i.e. 'people from the Eastern hemisphere' (line 44), and a category-tied predicate (Stokoe, 2012), i.e. the group did not make a lot of proactive comments in the game (lines 45-46).After that, there is silence, which could have been a place for a change of speakers.Since there is no voluntary speakership uptake in the group, Lukas orients to this silence and produces the next turn (I found that a bit difficult, line 47), restating (but also perhaps slightly downgradingsee 'a bit') his opinion. 9 Remarkably, the students who had shown active recipiency before (through thumbs-up and other gestures), Lukas and Camila, were not showing uptake this time.The silence of 5.2 s after Lukas's turn is interpretable as an indication of some problem (Liddicoat, 2007, p. 81) or some kind of discomfort in the group.Then, Emma takes the floor but uses resources that indicate she is about to issue a dispreferred turn (ehm I think, line 41).In conversation analytic terms, we can say she is orienting to Lukas's previous action as the first-pair part of an assessment sequence, to which she responds by providing a dispreferred second-pair part (Pomerantz, 1984); i.e. one that shows disagreement with the interactional project launched by Lukas.Emma's turn could also be regarded as trying to repair Lukas's assessment by offering an alternative interpretation: she makes the case that the lack of comments was not due to the cultural background of participants but to the very constraints in the game, which consisted of too many participants (lines 52-59).
Thus, in interactional terms, we can see the formation of an argument based on membership categorisation and the (lack of) uptake of this argument.In crafting his argument, Lukas shows a structure-oriented view of culture at this moment of speaking.On the other hand, the contestation of the relevancy of the first categories ('Germans,' 'from Germany') by Michael and Emma's assessment of the very setting in which the game took placewith a high number of players as causing the lack of participationpoint to a more process-oriented view.Thus, this example illustrates the complex interplay between structure and process orientations in an interactional sequence.Regarding Bolten's interculturality theory, Lukas's resorting to membership categorisation is comprehensible.It is precisely in moments of uncertainty that agents fall back on easily accessible, simplified categories that help them make sense of unknown schemes of reference.Now, equipped with this analysis of empirical data, in the following section I write about ELF and interculturality as paradigms that can complement each other epistemologically and methodologically.

Connecting the dots: ELF and interculturality
The sequence analysed above was conducted in English as a lingua franca in a 'space' of interculturality.It contained meta-comments on both language use and interculturality.
Regarding ELF interactional practices and strategies, it can be stated that students deploy devices for turn-taking, turn construction, and display of alignment or misalignment in ways that are similar to practices used in L1 conversations.For example, the (interactional) misalignment shown in the excerpt has nothing to do with a lack of understanding of the proposition contained in Lukas's utterances but seems to have been done in full consciousnessby Michael at some point and later by the group as a wholeas an attempt to distance themselves from a position advocated by Lukas.
With respect to interculturality, there are mentions of national cultures in the sequence, unveiling a certain leaning towards the structural view, which treats cultures as static constructs/containers (Bolten, 2012).Notwithstanding, participants also resort to explanations of how practices in the game got constrained by interaction-external contingencies (in this case, how the participation of some students got impaired due to the high number of participants in the gameplay).Moreover, it is important to stress that interactional/social practices are potentially creators of 'culture' or 'culturality' themselves, i.e. they create and help reinforce culture (i.e.emerging conventions in the group).We will come back to this aspect below.
Next, it is important to mention that neither specific practices nor membership categorisations are, per se, good or bad.In this connection, actions such as accepting and rejecting proposals of lines of action or aligning or misaligning with specific categories and/or practices are all done through interactional 'work.'Furthermore, in the simulation game, there was an excerpt in which a team consisting of Chinese students used the membership category 'European students,' which seemed to serve the function of making their (i.e. the group of Chinese students) own cultural patterns relevant. 10This is in line with the understanding that awareness of one's own scheme of reference is an important step towards becoming 'interculturally competent' (Gröschke & Bolten, 2013).
Thus, there are ELF-related interactional and communicative practices in play as much as there are higher-order processes and dynamic perceptions of self and others impacting group creation.This is true not just in the context of the Megacities simulation game but also in several other routine situations in today's globalised and connected world.Along these lines, my main argument is that the combination of ELF and interculturality can benefit both frameworks.Given that ELF communicative situations are often intercultural situations, the theory of interculturalityas a theory of how groups come together and how they undergo common macro processescan provide a bedrock for the field that reminds ELF researchers that much more is at stake in the communicative situation than the mere exchange of utterances in which linguistic processes are embedded.This is in line with a view of ELF as a framework able to deal with hierarchical (Guido, 2012) and high-stakes (Seidlhofer, 2020) encounters, among others.
The framework of interculturality can benefit significantly from the profound knowledge of communicative practices and processes that already circulates within ELF studies (e.g.Björkman, 2014;Kaur, 2022).Moreover, ELF can support the close and detailed examination of micro-practices in interaction, including practices that underlie power asymmetries.This unveiling of micro aspects of social interaction is beneficial to the framework of interculturality in that it allows for a close examination of interculturality turning into culturality without disregarding power relations that often permeate communicative settings.
These observations align with Zhu et al.'s (2022) call for analytical space in Intercultural Communication for the study of acts of distinction based on Bourdieu's work.Distinction refers to how ideas about difference are recognised, legitimised, and reproduced in routine practices.Through the investigation of such everyday practices, Intercultural Communication can help unveil acts used in expressions of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991).Zhu et al. (2022) make the case that we need to acknowledge 'the dynamics of acts of distinction in everyday mundane interactions, where individuals speak from the 'imagined' positions of their collective identities and make arguments based on collective positions they have 'invented' for others ' (p. 320).These dynamic acts can sometimes attest 'a certain self-consciousness about these dynamics, and a willingness to 'pull back' (…) to avoid interpersonal relationships from being swallowed up by cultural storylines' (p.320).Thus, again, with ELF contributing analytical expertise to the investigation of everyday interactional practices and the framework of interculturality contributing the macro understanding of interpersonal relations, an encompassing consideration of actsand counter-actsof distinction can be made that will help advance both fields.

Conclusion and future perspectives
In this article, I have provided an outline of ELF and explained how the notion of interculturality has featured in the work of the German Intercultural Studies scholar Jürgen Bolten.An online simulation game sequence was used to show how intercultural processes can be based on structural and process-oriented thinking.I argued that both structure and process orientations should be acknowledged in studies addressing intercultural and communicative practices.
Furthermore, I claimed that the coming together of ELF and interculturality could benefit both frameworks.First, ELF can be informed by knowledge of group formation and the general macro processes interlocutors can undergo in intercultural situations (such as uncertainty).Moreover, the notion of interculturalityand the process of creating culturality out of interculturalitycan gain empirical grounding by liaising with ELF, given the analytical tools and analytical knowledge developed in the field, such as the study of communication strategies and interactional practices.
A limitation of this study is the fact that it builds on only one piece of evidence of interactional data.Further analyses of other interactional sequences in the database are needed to substantiate and further delineate the claims presented here.
Regarding the combination of ideas derived from these two disciplines, a promising notion recently adopted in ELF studies is 'transience' (Mortensen, 2017;Pitzl, 2018).Mortensen (2017, p. 271) describes 'transient multilingual communities' as 'social configurations where people from diverse sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds come together (physically or otherwise) for a limited period of time around a shared activity.'Thus, ELF transient encounters will often start with a situation in which at least one member is not acquainted with the other group members.This implies non-sharedness of conventions of action and behaviour or, more specifically, communicative and interactional practices.So, as argued by Kecskes, speakers find themselves in a situation where the existence of common ground cannot be assumed (2019). 11Communicative practices, thus, are likely to be negotiated by speakers turn by turn until a certain level of common ground is in place.In the interculturality framework, this would translate as turning interculturality into culturality; creating culture out of an uncertain and volatile setting.
However, ELF speakers are not blank slates; they unavoidably bring their prior knowledge and conventionalisations into the transient encounter.The extent to which this prior knowledgeor scheme of referenceis activated might vary significantly (depending on, e.g.speakers' emotional states, the tasks in which they are involved, and several other variables).When this scheme of reference is foregrounded and perhaps thematised in the ELF interaction, a structural orientation may come into play.When, conversely, the focus lies on the task and general processes (communicative and otherwise) at hand, the processual perspective becomes more relevant.Thus, one does not preclude the other; it is a matter of fore-and backgrounding.In this connection, if we are to fight 'the rise of tribalism and nativism' (Zhu et al., 2022, p. 231) and keep true to ELF and Intercultural Communication's support of diversity, we need to pay close analytical attention to all aspects of intercultural interactions, from explicit 'acts of distinction' (Zhu et al., 2022) to the successful negotiation and creation of shared practices in intercultural groups.
Finally, the theoretical reflections and empirical findings reported in this article can potentially shed light on other intercultural settings, ones in which other languages (lingua francas) or multiple languages (translanguaging) are at play.Notes 1.In the case of the excerpt, the mediumtext chatmight be an additional factor leading to such categorisations, since it is limited to written and thus mostly monomodal communication.2. Bolten's theory of interculturality was chosen because of its ability to account for different (and even conflicting) understandings of interculturality reported in the intercultural communication literature, as shown below with the structure-and process-oriented perspectives.Moreover, Bolten's work is highly influential in Germany but not so widespread in the international community; with this article I hope to make his work and ideas visible in other scientific communities (see also Bolten, forthcoming).3. Cross-cultural studies are the ones featuring comparisons of two (often national) cultures; intercultural studies is a label used for studies that investigate how two or more cultures 'interact;' the transcultural paradigm is used to refer to situations in which the imagined boundaries of culture are transgressed (Welsch, 2012;Baker & Ishikawa, 2021).4. Bolten (2020) also engaged with the notion of transculturalitywhich has been taken on by several scholars of Intercultural Communicationas a paradigm that disregards ideas of 'structure' and 'difference' thereby rendering invisible the notions of heterogeneity and diversity.5. http://www.redico.eu6.This game has been played by different groups in several kinds of settings which can be easily adapted to match the context.The description provided in this article reflects the settings adopted in 3 games that took place in 2021 for the purposes of the study.7.For the description of interactional practices of a team who succeeded in creating a team spirit in the game, see Mendes de Oliveira and Tuccillo (forthcoming) and Mendes de Oliveira, Räisänen & Oittinen (under review).8.Even though teams have developed differently, the groups in general do seem to orient mostly to consensus in their interactions and negotiations in the game (see ELF's consensus orientation in the section 'English as a lingua franca and interculturality' above), as they often focus on getting the job done (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2018) over expressing their opinions and points of view.However, the game shows that asymmetric power relations can arise even in groups that orient to getting the task done; often in ways that can only be unveiled through fine-grained interactional analyses.9.This is line with the literature on negative other-assessments, which has shown that such actions are often preceded and followed by delays or delaying devices (Pomerantz, 1984;Liddicoat, 2007, p. 122).10.Due to space constraints, this sequence is not reproduced here.11.Thus, 'transience' calls for investigations that account for the development of shared linguistic and communicative practices in these temporary communities.

Notes on contributor
Milene Mendes de Oliveira is a researcher based at the University of Potsdam and currently involved, as Principal Investigator, in the ReDICo project, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research from 2020 until 2024.ReDICo stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively.Milene's current study revolves around the development of intercultural competence through online intercultural simulation games.She is also interested in English as a lingua franca and workplace communication.Milene has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Potsdam and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais.