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.