This book investigates formal characteristics and discourse functions of linguistic creativity at the level of idioms in spoken ELF as represented in the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). Building on the findings of previous ELF research, the book proposes that creativity might serve as a fundamental concept in accounting for the variation that seems to be central to describing and understanding English as a lingua franca.

This book revisits the theoretical and psycholinguistic controversies centred around the intriguing nature of idioms and proposes a more systematic cognitive-linguistic model of their grammatical status and use. Whenever speakers vary idioms in actual discourse, they open a linguistic window into idiomatic creativity – the complex cognitive processing and representation of these heterogeneous linguistic constructions. Idiomatic creativity therefore raises two challenging questions: What are the cognitive mechanisms that underlie and shape idiom-representation? How do these mechanisms define the scope and limits of systematic idiom-variation in actual discourse? The book approaches these problems by means of a comprehensive cognitive-linguistic architecture of meaning and language and analyses them on the basis of corpus-data from the British National Corpus (BNC). Therefore, Idiomatic Creativity should be of great interest to cognitive linguists, phraseologists, corpus linguists, advanced students of linguistics, and all readers who are interested in the fascinating interplay of language and cognitive processing.This book has a companion website: www.idiomatic-creativity.ch.

Explores the language behaviour of speakers of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), through the lens of Gricean pragmatics. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars across the fields of pragmatics, language contact, world Englishes, second language acquisition, and English as a second language.

Language and Creativity has become established as a pivotal text for courses in English Language, Linguistics and Literacy. Creativity in language has conventionally been regarded as the preserve of institutionalised discourses such as literature and advertising, and individual gifted minds. In this ground-breaking book, bestselling author Ronald Carter explores the idea that creativity, far from being simply a property of exceptional people, is an exceptional property of all people. Drawing on a range of real examples of everyday conversations and speech, from flatmates in a student house and families on holiday to psychotherapy sessions and chat-lines, the book argues that creativity is an all-pervasive feature of everyday language. Using close analysis of naturally occurring language, taken from a unique 5 million word corpus, Language and Creativity reveals that speakers commonly make meanings in a variety of creative ways, in a wide range of social contexts and for a diverse set of reasons. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the author, covering a range of key topics from e-language and internet discourse to English language teaching and world Englishes. Language and Creativity continues to build on the previous theories of creativity, offering a radical contribution to linguistic, literary and cultural theory. A must for anyone interested in the creativity of our everyday speech.

The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) provides an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the main theories, concepts, contexts and applications of this rapidly developing field of study. Including 47 state-of-the art chapters from leading international scholars, the handbook covers key concepts, regional spread, linguistic features and communication processes, domains and functions, ELF in academia, ELF and pedagogy and future trends. This handbook is key reading for all those engaged in the study and research of English as a lingua franca and world/global Englishes more broadly, within English language, applied linguistics, and education.

This is a book about languages and the people who love them. Sophie Hardach is here to guide us through the strange and wonderful ways that humans have used languages throughout history. She takes us from the earliest Mesopotamian clay tablets and the 'book cemeteries' of medieval synagogues to the first sounds a child hears in their mother's womb and their incredible capacity for language learning. Along the way, Hardach explores the role of trade in transmitting words across cultures and untangles riddles of hieroglyphics, cuneiform and the ancient scripts of Crete and Cyprus. This is a book about languages, the people who love them and the linguistic threads that connect us all. 'Impeccably researched and engagingly presented... Sophie Hardach tells wonderful stories about words that have travelled vast distances in space and time to make English what it is' David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

This edited volume addresses perspectives and prospects of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in connection with other areas of linguistics. It is the first volume that brings together ELF scholars and experts from a wide range of areas in linguistics (such as corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language pedagogy, language policy, intercultural communication) in order to explore how ELF relates to these fields.