A Corpus-Driven Analysis of Explicitness in English as Lingua Franca

Abstract

This paper examines explicitness in English as lingua franca (ELF) spoken interactions. Using a conversationanalysis procedure, about 11h of audio-recorded naturally occuring ELF interactions of 79 incoming Erasmusstudents were analyzed for this purpose. The corpus was compiled by means of 54 speech events, 29 interviews and25 focus group meetings and the participants represented 24 mother tongues. Research into ELF reveals that ELFspeakers tend to use various “explicitness strategies” (Mauranen, 2007) in order to enhance intelligibility. Thefindings of this study show that there are indeed variations from standard ENL forms with respect to the degree ofexplicitness in spoken interactions. There is a tendency among ELF speakers to make the meaning more explicit forthe listeners. Repetitions of same expressions in subsequent sentences, use of over-explicit forms, use of an extrasubject following a relative clause and use of emphatic reference are the emerging patterns observed in this study.