English as a lingua franca in Europe: bilingualism and multicompetence

Many multilinguals in Europe habitually use the linguistic strategies often attributed to users of English as a lingua franca (ELF). ELF, in which native speaker norms are not invoked, may be the perfect arena for multilinguals to exploit what Vivian Cook calls ‘multicompetence’, a dynamic multilingual system in which more than one language can be activated at the same time. What might be considered, in the use of a native language, and from an...