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