Corpus Analysis of English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract English as a lingua franca (ELF) is a complex contact language, which accounts for the most widespread use of English in today's global communication. Like contact languages in general, ELF is used when speakers do not share a first language. It is neither codified nor regulated but emerges in encounters between multilingual speakers. Research seeks to uncover how English gets shaped and negotiated in such multilingually based communication. The most natural option for compiling corpora to represent language use of this kind is (a) to start with spoken language, specifically with dialogic interaction and (b) to include bi‐ and multilingual speakers from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds. The first and most widely used ELF corpora are accordingly drawn from speech and comprise speakers from dozens of L1 backgrounds. Research on these corpora utilizes and complements qualitative analyses of spoken interaction and throws light on emerging patterns and phraseological preferences. ELF scholars have delved into issues of structural and lexical simplification in ELF or, indeed, lack thereof, and investigated morphological regularization and productivity. In this way, corpus work also elucidated similarities and differences between ELF and other Englishes and supports observations on L2 processing in relation to L1 processing. Methodologically, ELF corpus work highlights aspects of small, specialized corpora, corpus comparability, and distribution patterns. This chapter goes through some of the main questions in ELF corpora and suggests new directions for the research.