Potentials and limitations of Lingua Receptiva in multilingual communication

Lingua Receptiva (LaRa) entails that partners use different languages or varieties when conversing, but mutual understanding nevertheless occurs, if each of them has sufficient receptive skills in her/his partner’s language (Rehbein, ten Thije & Verschik. 2011). Initially, this mode may seem somewhat unnatural, if it has not been seen in action, but empirical work (Beerkens 2010) suggests that people get used to it quite quickly. In this lecture the concept and practices of Lingua Receptiva will be discussed and compared with related concepts such as "intercomprehension" (Conti, Grin & Cassen 2008), "receptive multilingualism" (ten Thije & Zeevaert 2007) and the "Swiss Model" (Lüdi 2007).