English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis

Abstract

The focus of this book is considerably narrower than the title suggests. Prodromou is primarily concerned with English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the sociolinguistic rather than the linguistic sense, to adopt a useful distinction made by Ur (2008). In analysing the English used by some successful non-native speakers (NNSs) for communication across language barriers, he does not generally assume the existence or emergence of a distinct NNS variety with its own codifiable norms (ELF in the linguistic sense). Further, he only studies one aspect of his subjects’ English: their use of some kinds of formulaic language. A more accurate, though less catchy title might therefore be: Certain Types of Idiomaticity in the English of Some Proficient Non-native Speakers. The book has two main parts. Part 1, ‘Background’ (Chapters 1–6), covers corpora and what they reveal; views of ELF; idiomaticity and fluency in native speaker (NS) and NNS speech; research into NNS conversation; and socio-cultural (‘dialogic’) views of language use. Part 2, ‘Foreground’ (Chapters 7–14), examines instances of two types of idiomaticity in a small (160,000 word) corpus of English speech produced by 42 proficient NNSs and considers the implications for our understanding of ELF.