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.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 86 citations exist upstream.