BOOK REVIEW / Kitap İncelemesi

Abstract

English as a Lingua Franca: A corpus based Analysis

Abstract

issue listing his personal accounts of confusion, and states the reasons why even expert L2 users find idioms to be problematic. The category of idiom types fall into four groups: formulae such as pragmatic phrases (you know, sort of), collocations, (river + rise, make + application), phrases verbs (make up for, lose track of), and cultural idioms (see you later, alligator, as cool as cucumber). The representations of idiomatic categorization start with the minimal units, then move to two-word markers such as you know and I mean, as they are frequently used and have become standardized forms. Finally they end with the long word units such as proverbs or other colorful catchphrases, which are less frequent than minimal units and strongly related with the socio- cultural context of speech communities. The author focuses our attention on creative idioms which is regarded as the ultimate expression of near-native speaker fluency (p. 52). Then he states that as the idiomatic competence is complex and paradoxical, L2 users, even the successful ones, could have a difficulty in understanding some idiomatic expressions due to the cognitive, discoursal, pragmatic, phonological, and socio-cultural factors. These factors could explain the reasons; why, there are few analyses of non-native use of idiomatic expressions to address the acquisition of idioms and spontaneous performance of formulaic language use

References

1. Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT Journal, 56(1), 57- 64.
2. Prodromou, L. (2008). English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis. London: Continuum.
3. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 133-158.