ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the benefits, challenges and potential blind spots that emerge from the identification and study of global languages as well as from attempts to describe, quantify and predict which linguistic resources are or will be fulfilling an international lingua franca function. It reviews the indicators that are usually examined to classify and rank the global status of world languages, and briefly considers some of the reasons for which being able to attribute globality and a lingua franca function to some resources seems to be highly valued. The chapter discusses some main approaches in the study of labelled global languages and lingua franca communication. It shows how the field of ELF studies has been moving from working with metaphors of pluralisation of varieties and languages to the study of linguistic and sociolinguistic resources as social and multilingual practice. The chapter examines the role that users' understandings of language, multilingualism and language boundaries can have in actual linguistic developments.
