English as a Lingua Franca and the International Pandemic Discourse: Investigating the BA First-Year Students’ Questionnaire Data Gained at Dept. of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University, Rome

This article reports on the results of a tailor-made mixed-approach questionnaire (Creswell 2014) inspired by the use of ELF communication occurring between BA first-year students at the Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University, Rome, and their international friends during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020-June 2022). The rationale behind the research is to acquire, collect and investigate the dominant feelings aroused and evoked during the lockdown due to COVID-19 restrictions, as expressed in the participants’ international exchanges via social media. Starting from the assumption that prolonged periods of isolation and social distancing can create difficult emotional states with a negative impact on mental wellbeing – as well as on learning processes – our goal is to inquire how international students experienced the quarantine and distancing phase sharing their feelings mediated through ELF. As a second step, the focus of our analysis is on the creative use and variation of idioms in ELF written interactions on social media, according to M.-L. Pitzl’s frame of ELF seen as a form of language contact and multilingual creativity (Pitzl 2009; 2012) in the TIGs’ (“Transient International Groups”) condition (Pitzl 2018; 2022). A third vantage point in this study is provided by Kurt Kohn’s “MY English” model (2018; 2020; 2022), through which we observe the empowerment of the ELF competence using linguistic-communicative strategies shaping non-native speaker’s identity in authentic circumstances of communication, resulting in a non-native repertoire. Finally, the data gained are examined integrating the quantitative analysis with the explorative qualitative research for the open-ended questions, investigating the participants’ dominant feelings in relation to the global pandemic conveyed through their ELF communicative resources.