This is an outstanding book by Istvan Kecskes, a notable author in the area of intercultural pragmatics, a field founded by him and in which he has been very active for most of his life. Obviously, in dealing with the notion and uses of lingua franca, the author puts his knowledge of general pragmatics and intercultural pragmatics to use and hopes to extract useful considerations that have, in his opinion, implications for the general field of pragmatic studies and, in particular, the semantics/pragmatics debate. He also extracts useful considerations concerning the notion of intentionality/intentions and thus integrates the philosophical notion, according to which intention is an a priori notion, in order to embrace a more interactive notion, which sees intentions as being co-constructed in conversation, which may be called ‘emergent intentions’. Before going into greater detail, let us clarify the underpinnings of the book. Kecskes says:

These notions are central in so far as all considerations in the book are motivated by them, for example, the notion of intentionality, the semantic/pragmatic debate, common ground, the relationship between the individual and cultures.

In attempting to define lingua franca, Kecskes says that it is an elusive notion, it is something transient, it has little substance and ‘[i]n short, it comes and goes’ (17). According to him, it is useless to attempt to discern ‘patterns, norms, conventions and common ground in this language-use mode, at least in the way we traditionally understand these terms’ (17). According to Kecskes, while a language is normally attested in a relatively stable speech community, lingua franca interaction is based on temporary, unstable, always different, dynamic communities, who develop their own, albeit temporary norms, adding them to an equally unstable and dynamic common ground.

Since lingua franca users come from different backgrounds, Kecskes discusses the notion of culture and inter-culture. There may be a degree of controversy in Kecskes’ idea of culture; however, one should bear in mind that his ideas are deeply affected by his views on intercultural communication. First of all, there is the a priori notion of culture, a set of norms, values, customs and beliefs. These are clearly inherited by one generation from the previous ones, and cultural transmission (of which Kecskes says little) in the form of explicit or tacit speech acts is responsible for the representation of culture in the minds of language users/members of a certain social community. Kecskes distinguishes our tacit knowledge of culture from its manifestation or manifestations. We can change or affect culture only by acting on its manifestations. Subsequently, the author moves on to discuss what goes on in intercultural communication (distinguishing it from intracultural communication), where clearly – with different language users speaking different languages and having only a lingua franca in common – there may be more representations/manifestations of reality, cultural values, norms, beliefs, etc. These different representations interact and possibly are merged, in the sense that little by little we know how the other takes the same set of facts/events. However, Kecskes says that it is not enough to enlarge the set of norms, values, beliefs, etc., but the inter-culture will emerge from an interaction with the situational context and from adjustments by the participants of the encounters to problems that arise in interaction. Shared solutions may be part of an extended interculture.

Kecskes is persuaded that language proficiency, in addition to competence in syntax, requires knowledge of formulaic language – utterances which fit the occasions of use and cannot be obtained by combining lexical resources and grammar, since they require a mnemonic effort. These utterances are situated in, and respond to, knowledge of frames. Understandably, Kecskes notes that the use of formulaic language in lingua franca interactions is not at all frequent either because language users do not know in advance how much of their discourse will be grasped by the hearer, who is also non-native, or because they are not sure that they are going to make a correct use of the language: perhaps they do not remember the formulaic expression well, or are not sure of the fit between the expression and the situation of utterance. In order to use formulaic language, the speakers should share common ground, which is not only general knowledge, world views, conventions, shared beliefs, etc., but also consists in knowledge of the way utterances should fit the context of utterance and the situation (or the frame). Kecskes abandons a static view of common ground in favour of a more dynamic view, which he calls ‘emergent common ground’: ‘emergent common ground refers to the relatively dynamic, actualized and particularized knowledge co-constructed in the course of communication’ (35). There is a relatively deep discussion of formulaic language and creativity in this book. Needless to say, Kecskes stresses that both formulaic language and creativity are more preponderant in the native language (L1) than in ELF (English as a Lingua Franca). The author accepts the idea that formulaic language and, in general, idiomatic expressions allow language speakers and their hearers a certain degree of linguistic economy. The presumption is that combining constituents in a novel way may be a burden on the speaker and the hearer in that they must engage in a certain calculus. However, there may be reasons independent of linguistic economy that may favour the use of idiomatic language, e.g. the stress on belonging to a restricted linguistic community. Certainly, Kecskes is right in remarking that ELF users may avoid as much as possible formulaic language rooted in the English language and may display creativity as part of ‘ad hoc’ linguistic creations, which are temporary and licensed only by the temporary agreement of a restricted set of users.

One of the most interesting chapters of the book pertains to intentions and to the relationship between intention and attention, a combination of prior experience, salience, emergent common ground, etc. (see Giora Reference Giora2003, Kecskes Reference Kecskes2014). It is not surprising that the issue of lingua franca throws light on this complicated and thorny issue, and requires a shift from a purely philosophical to a socio-cognitive perspective. Kecskes concedes the importance of the philosophical perspective, according to which intention is an a priori notion, something that is formed and resides in the mind of the speaker/actor. However, he claims that although intention, as commonly intended, serves to start interaction and to some extent guides it, it then has to interact with what goes on in the conversation, in that it has to be interpreted and, thus, requires that hearers bring their prior experience to bear on the interpretation process. This has to do with conscious and unconscious efforts. It is obvious that hearers, in a multi-cultural environment, especially if they are lingua franca users, may have problems in coming to a full understanding of what the speaker means and may ask for clarifications. In this interactional perspective, meanings and intentions have to be seen, as Kecskes says, as being co-constructed. They interact with an ‘emergent common ground’, which is dynamic and also co-constructed (35, 120). Certainly, a degree of cooperation is required in coming to an understanding of the speaker’s intentions and it is quite possible that, in the course of conversation, the speaker may see his utterance in a different light (‘Do you really mean it?’), understanding the full range of implications of his or her utterance, using the hearer as an interpretative mirror reflecting the image of what was said. But for more down-to-earth utterances, this clearly does not happen, although it is possible that a lingua franca hearer does not understand a word and one needs to explain it for them. Furthermore, this hardly looks like meaning co-construction, it is at most a clarification process. And even in the case in which we are ashamed of something we said, once the hearer makes us notice the implication, and we decide to change the utterance, this looks more like a case of aborting an intention in favour of another.

The book has a chapter on the semantics/pragmatics debate. Kecskes distinguishes between situations in which interaction unfolds among L1 users, who are competent in their language and, thus, cannot be mistaken or totally mistaken about the interpretation of metaphors, figurative language in general and formulaic expressions. In speaking, they are confident that their messages will be understood in the right way and that few misunderstandings will occur. Thus, they are likely to make a more frequent use of expressions that require contextualization and pragmatic interpretation. Lingua franca users, instead, know in advance that they cannot presume perfect knowledge on the part of their interlocutors of the conditions of use of certain expressions (and they may also be unsure whether they themselves know the exact conditions of usage); thus, they prefer to stick to literal interpretations and manifest their communicative intentions by resorting to lexical semantics and semantic compositionality. Semantics, as used by Kecskes, refers to frozen pragmatics and, thus, presupposes a sort of diachronic pragmatics. Furthermore, he has a conception of pragmatics according to which even literal meanings presuppose knowledge of contextual factors (we have to know when a speaker speaks literally or non-literally). However, according to him, literal meanings are largely independent of pragmatics and, certainly, he does not opt for the idea that literal meanings are preponderantly under-determined. It is a bit surprising that Kecskes ends up supporting a view of semantics like the one by Cappelen & Lepore (Reference Cappelen and Lepore2005), which antagonizes contextualism of the radical and moderate form (see Bezuidenhout Reference Bezuidenhout1997; Carston Reference Carston2002; Capone Reference Capone2019a, Reference Capone, Macagno and Caponeb; Carapezza Reference Carapezza2019). Kecskes’ view does not say anything about anaphora, for example, which requires both syntactic and pragmatic resources (see Huang Reference Huang2000). Clearly anaphora is present even in lingua franca and, thus, needs to be taken into account.

Kecskes also deals with conversational implicatures and notes that lingua franca speakers also make use of them. Kecskes accepts that proficiency in a language facilitates the speaker’s use of implicatures, thus showing that semantics and syntax are a pre-condition for the conveying of extra information through pragmatics (this is taken to corroborate the views on the semantics/pragmatics debate). Kecskes also notes that lingua franca speakers have problems in understanding implicatures of utterances where formulaic and figurative language is used. He concludes his considerations by pointing out that the context actually employed to build implicatures is not the general common ground, but prior context, and emergent co-constructed common ground.

Summing up, there can be no doubt that this is a thought-provoking book that extends considerations about lingua franca to pragmatics and about pragmatics to lingua franca. It makes interesting and solid connections between two emerging areas of knowledge. The emphasis on prior experience, speaker/hearer egocentrism, emergent common ground, emergent intentions and co-constructed meaning renders this book ground-breaking and novel.