The Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca

Authors

  • Istvan Kecskes

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2016.8.2

Keywords:

idiom principle, formulaic language, psychological salience, second language idiom processing, lingua franca, open choice principle

Abstract

This paper examines how the “idiom principle” (Sinclair 1991) works in the language use of English as a Lingua Franca speakers. It is hypothesized that the idiom principle that drives word selection in monolinguals may be blocked in the L2 of bilinguals and the “open choice principle” governs instead. In order to investigate the validity of this hypothesis a small corpus of non-native speaker – non-native speaker (lingua franca) communication is examined and compared to a similar study (Kecskes 2007) where the bilingual speakers used their L2 (English).
Based on the two studies we can conclude that the “idiom principle” is the most salient guiding mechanism in any language production. But it results in less formulaic language use in L2 than in L1 of bilinguals. This claim basically concurs with the findings of other studies (cf. Bolander 1989; Pawley and Syder 1983; Warga 2008; Weinert 1995) that also talked about the limited use of formulaic language in L2.1

1 This is a version of a study that was published as Chapter 2. in Roberto Heredia and Anna Cieslicka (eds.) Bilingual Figurative Language Processing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 28-53, 2015.

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Published

2016-11-30

How to Cite

Kecskes, I. (2016). The Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca. Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, 8(1), 23–50. https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2016.8.2

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2016): BELLS - volume 8

Section

THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS

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