Asian Journal of English Language Studies (AJELS) (Dec 2015)
Idioms across languages, and implications for ESL in Mother-tongue based Multilingual Education contexts
Abstract
In the heat generated by recent burning controversies over ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ (ELF) and its junior sibling ‘Asian Lingua Franca English’ (ALFE), one issue has repeatedly raised its head: that of access by second-language users of English to the idiomatic expressions which are thought to be the exclusive property of first-language or ‘inner-circle’ users. This article draws on three textual corpora to address issues of idiomatic competence, creative and unilateral idiomaticity. The first corpus is the output of Southeast Asians who meet at regional gatherings such as those convened by ASEAN or SEAMEO, where English is the language choice for formal speeches. This is compared with a corpus of similar size but intra- rather than international, consisting of business speeches made by New Zealanders to other New Zealanders. A third corpus, written rather than spoken, comprises articles published recently in Asia-based academic journals, the Journal of Asia TEFL and the EIL Journal. The corpus analysis is complemented by data from a survey of idiom awareness within a cohort of Brunei undergraduate students, including idioms across languages. The discussion and conclusions consider the pedagogical implications of research into idiom use and idiomaticity. In particular the paper considers the affordances of consciousness-raising by comparing English idiomatic expressions with those of Southeast Asian languages, including local vernaculars.
