The Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Competence in a Lingua Franca Context

In a world where an increasing amount of communication takes place in English among non-native speakers, this study presents data from email exchanges to provide the first examination of sociolinguistic competence and the acquisition of native-like variability in an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) context. The analysis of a range of linguistic variables (future tense, relative pronoun choice, complementizer use and adverbial placement) in the online interactions of Swiss speakers (with German,