Abstract This article describes naturally occurring interactions drawn from three disparate English as a lingua franca (ELF) settings, all in Japan but involving diverse multinational groups of users, each bringing with them repertoires of experiences, skills, strategies, and linguistic features. Adaptations were observed in the language practices, including well-attested strategies and non-selections, but also distinct and hybridised patterns (e.g. question–response exchanges, address-reference forms). Although these features can be explained in terms of the improvisational stances of the users, in light of the wide disparities in proficiency, strategies, degrees of success, and of the hybrid forms that came to be locally preferred, a more satisfactory explanatory framework was sought in the broader study of historical language contact and change, especially in Mufwene’s recent re-interpretation of creoles as situated cases of language restructuring. The observed ELF practices are explained as the result of cooperative restructuring, by means of fitness-based selections from the feature pool, or virtual capacity, fed by the diverse repertoires of the participants. Such an approach foregrounds functional interpretations of ELF, and creates an inclusive framework wherein the variables that define different contact situations can be discerned.

中文翻译：

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用户、设置和实践的多样性：如何将特征选择到 ELF 实践中？

摘要 本文描述了从三种不同的英语作为通用语言 (ELF) 环境中自然发生的交互，这些环境都在日本，但涉及不同的跨国用户群体，每个群体都带来了经验、技能、策略和语言特征。在语言实践中观察到适应，包括经过充分证明的策略和非选择，但也有不同和混合的模式（例如问题-响应交换、地址-参考形式）。尽管可以从用户的即兴立场来解释这些特征，但鉴于在熟练程度、策略、成功程度以及当地偏好的混合形式方面存在巨大差异，因此寻求更令人满意的解释框架在更广泛的历史语言接触和变化研究中，尤其是在 Mufwene 最近将克里奥尔语重新解释为语言重组的情境案例中。观察到的 ELF 实践被解释为合作重组的结果，通过从特征池或虚拟容量中进行基于适应度的选择，由参与者的不同曲目提供。这种方法突出了 ELF 的功能解释，并创建了一个包容性框架，其中可以识别定义不同接触情况的变量。