English as a Lingua Franca in the Italian as a Foreign Language Class: Issues of Self-Narration and Reflexivity

This article reports on a research project that involved conducting interviews with a group of Italian language teachers working with the migrants as part of the SPRAR project in Southern Italy (“Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati”). Interview questions addressed a range of urgent issues, many of which demonstrate how the practice of language teaching/learning is particularly relevant in today’s context of migration emergency. Indeed, it profoundly shapes how we think about terms such as language, negotiation, contact, conflict, hospitality and community, and how we consider the roles of the language teachers in building effective cross-border solidarity networks in real time. The interview answers do not provide an idealized vision of welcoming the other; rather, they outline a geography of proximity marked by the ancient hospes–hostis dichotomy that reveals the complexity, the ambiguity, the uncertainty, the unpredictability and the contingency characteristic of relations with the other. The paper specifically discusses the status of English as a Lingua Franca in the context of the Italian L2 class and the role of autobiography and self-translation in the teaching/learning practice in the migration context. Finally, our aim is to investigate the possibility of developing ELF communication towards what Canagarajah (2013) defines as a form of “translingual practice” – a practice that, although recognizing norms and conventions established by dominant institutions and social groups within given contexts, is more closely focused on the fact that the speakers can negotiate such norms according to their own repertoires and translingual practices.