Identification of a dominant vocabulary in ELF interactions

Abstract

Abstract This paper reports on several studies whose common theme is the elicitation of the lexical preferences of speakers of English in localized and globalized settings. Findings from analyses of various corpora show that there exists a relatively small set of preferred words that speakers of English rely on regardless of where the interaction takes place, with whom they are interacting, and what the purpose of the interaction is. Results also show that these lexical preferences are consistently prevalent to the extent that it is possible to advance the hypothesis that a relatively stable dominant vocabulary dynamically emerges out of ELF speaker interactions in order to serve certain communicative functions.