Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Innovations: Rethinking linguistic creativity in non-native Englishes
Edited by Sandra C. Deshors, Sandra Götz and Samantha Laporte
[International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2:2] 2016
► pp. 323–350

“It’s always different when you look something from the inside”

Linguistic innovation in a corpus of ELF Skype conversations

| Saarland University
The article discusses linguistic creativity in informal Skype conversations between university students from eight different European countries. The basis for the study is the Corpus of Academic Spoken English (CASE), a corpus of Skype conversations in an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) context. With the help of qualitative examples, the article examines innovative language use and proposes a taxonomy for functionally accepted innovations, distinguishing instances of L1 influence, approximations and ad hoc innovation. Our findings point towards an assertive and creative perspective on language use, which seems to have a positive influence on the communicative setting, e.g. illustrated by code-switching in combination with laughter. CASE participants use non-standard forms and innovations freely, accommodating to each others’ language use. They also establish their own ephemeral communication strategies and showcase and emphasize their respective language and cultural backgrounds.
Keywords: spoken corpus, Skype, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), linguistic innovation
Published online: 20 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.2.2.09bru
References
Anthony, L.
2014 AntConc. Version 3.4.3. Tokyo: Waseda University. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).Google Scholar
Auer, P.
2005 “A postscript: Code-switching and social identity”, Journal of Pragmatics 37(3), 403–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Björkman, B.
2008 “ ‘So where we are?’ Spoken lingua franca English at a technical university in Sweden”, English today 24(2), 35–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brunner, M.-L., Burghardt, S., Collet, C., Diemer, S. & Schmidt, S.
Forthcoming. BabyCASE. Saarbrücken: Saarland University.
Cogo, A.
2009 “Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: A study of pragmatic strategies”. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Ed.), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 254–273.Google Scholar
Corder, S.P.
1967 “The significance of learner’s errors”, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 5(1-4), 161–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W.
2000 Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. London: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Crystal, D.
2003 English as a Global Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, M.
2008-2015 The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-2012. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).Google Scholar
2012 WordAndPhrase.Info. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).
Deshors, S.C.
2014 “A case for a unified treatment of EFL and ESL: A multifactorial approach”, English World-Wide 35(3), 279–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diemer, S.
2013 “The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs”. In H. Hasselgård, J. Ebeling & S. Oksefjell Ebeling (Eds.), Corpus Perspectives on Patterns of Lexis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 223–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diemer, S., Brunner, M.-L., Collet, C. & Schmidt, S.
Forthcoming. Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Saarbrücken: Saarland University (coordination). Sofia: St Kliment Ohridski University. Forlì: University of Bologna-Forlì. Santiago: University of Santiago de Compostela. Helsinki: Helsinki University. Helsinki: Hanken School of Economics. Birmingham: Birmingham City University. Växjö: Linnaeus University. Lyon: Université Lumière Lyon 2. Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).
Edwards, A.
2014 “The progressive aspect in the Netherlands and the ESL/EFL continuum”, World Englishes 33(2), 173–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, R.
2008 The Study of Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Firth, A.
1996 “The discursive accomplishment of normality. On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis”, Journal of Pragmatics 26(2), 237–259. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garside, R. & Smith, N.
1997 CLAWS part-of-speech tagger for English. UCREL. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).
Gee, M.
2014 CASE XML Conversion Tool. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).
Gilquin, G.
2011 “Corpus linguistics to bridge the gap between World Englishes and Learner Englishes”, Comunicación en el siglo XXI, Vol. II1. Santiago de Cuba: Centro de Lingüística aplicada, 638–642.Google Scholar
Görlach, M.
1991 Englishes: Studies in Varieties of English, 1984-1988. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Götz, S. & Schilk, M.
2011 “Formulaic sequences in spoken ENL, ESL and EFL: Focus on British English, Indian English and learner English of advanced German learners”. In J. Mukherjee & M. Hundt (Eds.), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 79–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hundt, M. & Mukherjee, J.
2011 “Introduction”. In J. Mukherjee & M. Hundt (Eds.), Exploring Second-Language and Learner Englishes: Bridging the Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hülmbauer, C.
2013 “From within and without: The virtual and the plurilingual in ELF”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 2(1), 47–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G., Sacks, H. & Schegloff, E.A.
1987 “Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy”. In G. Button & J.R.E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 152–205.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J.
2009 “English as a lingua franca: Interpretations and attitudes”, World Englishes 28(2), 200–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Global Englishes. A Resource Book for Students (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kachru, B.B.
1985 “Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle”. In R. Quirk & H. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11–30.Google Scholar
2006 “The English Language in the outer circle”. In K. Bolton & B.B. Kachru (Eds.), World Englishes – Critical Concepts in Linguistics 3. London and New York: Routledge, 241–255.Google Scholar
Laporte, S.
2012 “Mind the gap! Bridge between World Englishes and Learner Englishes in the making”, English Text Construction 5(2), 265–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mauranen, A.
2012 Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-Native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meierkord, C.
1996 Englisch als Medium der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Untersuchungen zum non-native-/non-native speaker-Diskurs. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2000 “Interpreting successful lingua franca interaction. An analysis of non-native/non-native small talk conversations in English”, Linguistik Online 5(1). Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).Google Scholar
2012 Interactions across Englishes: Linguistic Choices in Local and International Contact Situations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mesthrie, R. & Bhatt, R.
2008 World Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, A.
2006 The Linguistics of Laughter: A Corpus-Assisted study of Laughter-Talk. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, A.
2010 Language as a Local Practice. Oxford: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pitzl, M.-L.
2009 “We should not wake up any dogs. Idiom and metaphor in ELF”. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Ed.), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 298–322.Google Scholar
2012 “Creativity meets convention: Idiom variation and remetaphorization in ELF”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), 27–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S.
1980 “’Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español’”: toward a typology of code-switching”, Linguistics 18(7/8), 581–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ranta, E.
2009 “Syntactic features in spoken ELF-learner language or spoken grammar”. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 84–106.Google Scholar
Schmidt, S., Brunner, M.-L. & Diemer, S.
2014 CASE: Corpus of Academic Spoken English: Transcription Conventions. Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016).
Schneider, E.W.
2007 Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 English around the World: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2012 “Exploring the interface between world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition – and implications for English as a Lingua Franca”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), 57–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 A Concept of International English and Related Issues: From ‘Real English’ to ‘Realistic English’. Strasbourg: Council of Europe: Language Policy Division.Google Scholar
2004 “Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca”, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 241, 209–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A., Klimpfinger, T., Majewski, S., Osimk-Teasdale, R., Pitzl, M.-L. & Radeka, M.
2013 The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (version 2.0 XML). Available at [URL] (accessed March 2016). Vienna: University of Vienna.
Sinclair, J.
1991 Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H.
2000 “Rapport management: A framework for analysis”. In H. Spencer-Oatey (Ed.), Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. London: Continuum, 11–46.Google Scholar
Sridhar, K.K. & Sridhar, S.N.
1986 “Bridging the paradigm gap: Second-language acquisition theory and indigenized varieties of English”, World Englishes 5(1), 3–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Rooy, B.
2011 “A principled distinction between error and conventionalized innovation in African Englishes”. In J. Mukherjee & M. Hundt (Eds.), Exploring Second-Language and Learner Englishes: Bridging the Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 189–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Rooy, B. & Terblanche, L.
2010 “Complexity in word-formation processes in New Varieties of South African English”, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 28(4), 357–374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vettorel, P.
2014 English as a Lingua Franca in Wider Networking: Blogging Practices (Vol. 71). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Widdowson, H.G.
2003 Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2015 “ELF and the Pragmatics of Language Variation”, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4(2), 359–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Brunner, Marie-Louise & Stefan Diemer
2018. “Okay … so … nice to meet you? {smiles}”. In The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 296], ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
Brunner, Marie-Louise & Stefan Diemer
2018. “You are struggling forwards, and you don’t know, and then you … you do code-switching…” – Code-switching in ELF Skype conversations. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 7:1 ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo
Dooly, Melinda & Vincenza Tudini
2022. ‘We should google that’: the dynamics of knowledge-in-interaction in an online student meeting. Classroom Discourse 13:2 ► pp. 188 ff. DOI logo
Fernández Polo, Francisco Javier
2021. Backchannels in video-mediated ELF conversations: a case study. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 10:1 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Licoppe, Christian
2017. Showing objects in Skype video-mediated conversations: From showing gestures to showing sequences. Journal of Pragmatics 110 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Smirnova, Elizaveta & Svetlana Strinyuk
2020. Hedges in Russian EAP writing: A corpus-based study of research papers in management. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 9:1 ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.