The repositioning toward the Multilingual Lingua Franca (MLF) concept implies that English should no longer be conceived as an autonomous linguistic system in global interactions, but rather as a fluid and intrinsically hybrid resource that operates “in the mix” with the speakers’ total and dynamic multilingual repertoire.

The author proposes that, under the MLF concept, research should shift to mapping and describing a “core of stable non-native speaker varieties” (such as European or Asian standards of English), replacing the old native standard with a new—and likewise normative—global formal and grammatical code.

In criticizing large-scale international proficiency tests (such as TOEFL and IELTS), Jenkins argues that they fail because they still evaluate multilingual speakers through the ideological lens of “native-speaker monolingualism,” ignoring crucial MLF skills such as linguistic accommodation and pragmatic malleability.

According to the ELF perspective advocated by the author, the phenomenon of code-switching and translanguaging among speakers of Global English should not be interpreted as a vocabulary deficit or a lack of proficiency, but rather as a legitimate and sophisticated communicative practice.

Jenkins argues that the shift to the ELF phase does not eliminate the relevance of speakers’ local identities, given that the need for intelligibility in international virtual environments does not require complete cultural neutralization and detachment from original mother tongues.