ELF Users Research Articles

“I just wanted to give a partly answer”: capturing and exploring word class variation in ELF data

Abstract English as a lingua franca is generally viewed as a user language in which the formal characteristics are adapted to meet the communicative needs of its speakers, inherently resulting in linguistic innovation and variation. In the part-of-speech (POS) tagging of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), many cases were encountered whereby ELF users go beyond the commonly assumed boundaries of word class categories in Standard English by the process defined as word class change. Word class change is understood as a change of word class category, or syntagmatic function, without alternation of the morphological form. In this paper, it is demonstrated how forms which were used in a non-codified function were dealt with in the tagging procedure. Reviewing concepts commonly used to explain word class change, namely conversion and multifunctionality, it is argued that a number of presumptions inherent in these concepts cause difficulties when applied to ELF data. In a case study, the most frequent types of word class shifts or variation (terms which are considered more suitable for ELF data) in VOICE are exemplified, analysed, and discussed with regard to the forms which are shifted, the directionality of these shifts, as well as the environment in which the shifts occur. It is shown that word class shifts in ELF interactions follow clear tendencies and thus a reconceptualization of the concepts of conversion and multifunctionality with regard to ELF is proposed. Finally, it is argued that if tagging practices attempt to display, rather than disguise, initial “problems” arising in the tagging process, this can help to gain useful insights into the nature of the data.

On the other side: formulaic organizing chunks in spoken and written academic ELF

Abstract An ongoing discussion in ELF research is the ability of ELF speakers to store and retrieve holistic chunks of language, facilitating efficient and fluent production of speech. These questions involve the frequency effects of formulaic chunks of language and their varying degrees of entrenchment for ELF users. In addition, the variable forms in which these chunks may be attested can be treated as approximations of conventional chunks, while serving identical functions. This study addresses these issues by investigating high-frequency organizing chunks in ELF corpora using the Linear Unit Grammar (LUG) framework (Sinclair and Mauranen 2006). Drawing data from the ELFA corpus of spoken academic ELF, the study also considers organizing chunks in written academic ELF from the nascent WrELFA corpus. With ENL comparison data taken from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE), findings are presented on the forms and frequencies of textual and interactive organizing chunks in ELF, with implications for the reality of frequency effects and their connection to distributions of approximated chunks. The lower frequency, organizing chunks showed a higher rate of approximation and number of unique forms, while the higher frequency chunks were primarily attested in conventional forms both in written and spoken ELF.

ELF in international school exchanges: stepping into the role of ELF users

Abstract The presence of English in Europe is increasingly pervasive: experiences “from above” in educational contexts combine with contacts with English “from below” in the linguistic landscape at large. In educational contexts, international school partnerships create increasingly frequent opportunities for learners at different school levels to experience language use in ELF contexts. International exchanges can thus be seen as a point of intersection between bottom-up and top-down contact with English, where learners step into the role of ELF users deploying their linguistic resources to communicate in international ELF settings. This paper explores how English is used in its role of a lingua franca in a set of written and spoken data gathered within two such international projects which took place in the Verona area, Italy, in school years 2009–2011. As part of the project primary school pupils aged 9–11 interacted with peers from European countries using English as the shared lingua franca of communication. Besides the children's awareness of the presence of English and of the role of ELF in outside-school contexts, these interactions are characterised by several elements which are found in ELF communicative settings: for example, lexical innovations, code switching employed to signal cultural identity, and deployment of pragmatic strategies in oral communication. In this way these young ELF users appear to stretch their linguistic resources of self-expression and communication. Therefore, findings can bear significant potential implications in terms of teaching practices.

Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a Lingua Franca

ELF users, in appropriating the language for their purposes, naturally follow what Sinclair calls the idiom principle whereby words are combined in phrases in the interests of effective communication. But in ELF, these phrases are typically co-constructed on line and do not need to correspond to conventional native-speaker idiomatic usage. In this respect there is a primary dependency on the open-choice principle, but this does not preclude adherence to the idiom principle. Online idiomatizing can be seen as a means whereby ELF speakers make use of English as their common communicative resource to accommodate to each other and cooperate by developing pro-tem idiomatic expressions. These phrases serve to facilitate cooperative convergence on shared meaning. However, they also serve to establish rapport, to identify speakers as members of the here-and-now group, and in this respect are also markers of shared territory, expressive of common understanding and attitude. In other words, the co-construction of these pro-tem idiomatic expressions serves not only the cooperative function of communication, but the territorial function of establishing shared affective space.