Lexical Phrases Found In Spoken Discourse

Lexical phrases, with a variety of labels (formulaic language, ready-made chunks, unanalyzed language, prefabricated language, etc.), interchangeably used in literature, have attracted a great deal of researchers' attention in recent years in both linguistics and applied linguistics. One common pattern in language acquisition is that learners pass through a stage in which they use a large number of unanalyzed lexical chunks in certain predictable social contexts. They use, in other words, a great deal of 'prefabricated' language. Many early researchers thought these prefabricated lexical chunks were distinct and somewhat peripheral to the main body of language, but more recent research puts this formulaic speech at the very center of language and sees it as basic to the creative rule-forming processes which follow. In other words, these phrases provide raw material for later analysis and segmentation. Such phrases will likewise enable students not to violate certain lexical restrictions, nor produce as many incongruities of register. Most importantly, these phrases will lead to fluency in speaking and writing. Therefore, lexical phrases play an important role during the process of language acquisition.Based on Nattinger & DeCarrico's (1992) classification of lexical phrases from functional perspective, the paper does a case study which aims at comparing.the use of "lexical phrases" among a native and two non-native speakers of English in spoken discourse in order to gain the insight into the relationship between language proficiency, fluency, idiomaticity and the use of lexical phrases.The result shows that both the native speaker and the two non-native speakers use a large number of lexical phrases. However, the learners' use of lexical phrases lacks variety and tends to be the lexical phrases formed with the help of grammatical rules, thus resulting in unidiomatic and slow oral production.