ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts

Abstract The purpose of this article is to put ELF in broader perspective and to speculate on how it raises general epistemological and practical issues in (socio)linguistics and language pedagogy. Such issues have not escaped the notice of ELF researchers, of course, and so this paper will have nothing to offer in the way of revelation. My intention is not to argue for the legitimacy of ELF study as such but to consider its effect as a catalyst for change in established ways of thinking. We can only make sense of the world by imposing our own order on it by devising abstract constructs so as to bring it under conceptual control. This is as true of linguistics and language pedagogy as of everything else: both of them necessarily disconnect the continuum of actual experience to make simplifying distinctions so as to come to terms with reality – distinctions between languages and varieties, for example, between competence and performance, between language learners and users. Making abstract distinctions of one kind or another is a necessary convenience and cannot be avoided, but having made them, we need also to consider how they are related and how far they remain convenient. What ELF research reveals so clearly is the need to review the distinctions that have become conventionally established in the description and the teaching of English.