Spalart-Allmaras

Both, phrasal verbs and English as a Lingua Franca in general have been much discussed in linguistic research over the past years and decades. However, little specific research has been conducted about the use of phrasal verbs in ELF. By means of this study I hope to have contributed to bringing these two linguistic fields together by analyzing how ELF speakers in VOICE use specific phrasal verbs in their conversations.

Chapter 2 provides some information about English as a Lingua Franca. It defines some central terms used in this study and provided my main motivation to conduct this study. Furthermore, the differences between ELF and EFL are explained.

In chapter 3, the most important characteristics of phrasal verbs are explained and presented. A summary of the syntactic, lexical and semantic features of phrasal verbs is given. Different models of semantic classifications are provided and the role of the particle is described. Furthermore, some previous research about phrasal verbs in ELF (e.g. Kecskes 2007) is briefly touched upon and the working definition for phrasal verbs that was used as a basis of his study is given.

Chapter 4 is concerned with the method and research design of my study. The

study (Gardner & Davies 2007) that was used as a point of reference is

presented and critically commented on. After the description of the search

process in VOICE, some of the so-called ‘questionable cases’ that emerged in

the course of the analysis of the search results are explained. Furthermore,

some possible ‘limitations’ of the study are discussed. The description of VOICE,

the corpus that was used as the source of empirical language data for this study,

forms the last part of this chapter.

In chapter 5 the results of the corpus search in VOICE are both presented and analyzed. In general, the phrasal verbs that were searched for occurred most frequently in the professional domain. The phrasal verb go on yielded the most occurrences in the corpus. The phrasal verb turn up was the least frequent one out of the ones that were searched for. In general, compared to which phrasal verbs Gardner & Davies (2007) claim to be the most frequent ones in the BNC, some differences are noticeable in VOICE.

Generally, it is interesting to observe that most of the instances of phrasal verb use that were analyzed for this study may be considered ‘conventional’. Or, in other words, in the case of most of the phrasal verbs that were observed, no differences to a conventional ENL use are noticeable. Nevertheless, some phrasal verbs in VOICE that were observed are used in a ‘non-conventional’

way. The analysis of these instances of phrasal verb use form the main part of chapter 5.

It is important to mention that although the ELF speakers in the interactions observed sometimes move away from how ENL speakers would probably use phrasal verbs in their utterances, in all the interactions observed, the interlocutors seem to ‘understand’ the utterances nevertheless. This seems to add to what Mauranen (2005: 275) suggests, namely that “[d]ifferences from L1 speakers are not important for judging the success, let alone correctness of ELF performance […]”. Or, in other words, one might say that some of the interactions observed tend to add to Hülmbauer’s (2010: 21) claim that although ENL is still often regarded “as the ‘real thing’ does not necessarily mean that it is also the right thing”.

What seems to be the ‘real thing’ with regard to phrasal verb use in ELF tends to not always be in line with what would be the ‘correct thing’ in ENL language use, at least this is what the observed interactions suggest. Differences to a

‘native-like’ phrasal verb use did generally not seem to present a problem in

terms of understanding in the interactions analyzed. However non-conventional

the phrasal verb use of the speakers in the conversations analyzed was, the

interlocutors usually seemed to understand what the others wanted to express.

This is emphasized by the fact that there were hardly any instances of backchanneling or requests for clarification noticeable. In the case of the utterances analyzed, the speakers seem to be very tolerant of non-conventional phrasal verb use of different kinds. No instances of misunderstanding are noticeable. It may thus be assumed that the utterances were still intelligible for the interlocutors, even if the phrasal verbs were used in a non-conventional way.

There are various utterances in the corpus that may not only be considered

‘non-conventional’, but even ‘grammatically incorrect’ from an ENL perspective.

Interestingly, difficulties in understanding were not noticeable in any of these utterances, although researchers like Leonardi (2010: 347) claim that the

‘incorrect’ use of phrasal verbs may lead to misunderstanding amongst the interlocutors. This statement does not seem to be verifiable by means of the analysis of the findings in VOICE.

Moreover, a certain influence of the speakers’ L1s on their phrasal verb use is observable in terms of the utterances analyzed. With regard to the idiomaticity of phrasal verbs, it is noticeable that the speakers of the interactions observed tend to be tolerant in terms of different wordings of phrasal verbs. In Sinclair’s terms, one could also say that unlike ENL speakers, they act according to the

‘open-choice principle’ rather than the ‘idiom principle’. The speakers of the utterances that were analyzed for this study sometimes use unusual particles with lexical verbs, prepositions in combinations with phrasal verbs that may seem ‘non-conventional’ when regarded from a native speaker perspective, and in some cases they use lexical verbs in phrasal verb constructions that would also be considered unusual in terms of ENL standards. Furthermore, there are examples of ‘unusual’ collocations with certain phrasal verbs. Arguably, this seems to add to a finding by Pitzl (2011: 15), who claims that “formal variation of idioms does not seem to be a disrupting factor in ELF conversations”. The interactions that were observed suggest that the speakers tend to be more creative in terms of phrasal verb use than ENL speakers would probably be, i.e.

phrasal verbs in ELF seem to be not as ‘fixed’ as they are in ENL.

It is a commonly acknowledged fact that languages are shaped and formed by

their users, and is said to be particularly true in the case of ELF. This seems to

be corroborated by the examples that are analyzed for this paper, as they suggest that ELF speakers ‘adapt’ the English language in a way that is suitable for them, and, more importantly, in a way that seems to help them communicate.

To sum up, one can say that despite its limited scale, this study provides some interesting insights into the use of phrasal verbs by the ELF speakers of the interactions that are analyzed. Due to the fact that the findings emerge from VOICE, which will shortly be available in the POS tagged version, it would be interesting to carry out further studies with the help of this version of the corpus.

I was allowed to sneak a peek of the POS tagged version of VOICE and I must say that it looks promising and definitely very interesting. As soon as the version will be available online, e.g. frequency analyses may be carried out more easily by means of the POS tagged corpus. Furthermore, in terms of further research, it would be another interesting area of research to analyze whether rather ‘literal’

phrasal verbs are used in a different way than rather ‘figurative’ phrasal verbs

by ELF speakers.