Phraseology and Culture in English

6. Conclusion 
I began this paper by asserting the centrality of conventionalized language in 
competence and performance and by arguing that linguistics as a discipline 
needs to acknowledge this in a practical way by giving significantly more 
attention to formulaic language in introductory textbooks than is currently 
the practice. I also discussed the value of having a “big picture” understand-
ing of the broader field in which one works when conceptualizing one’s own 
research problems and questions. The study of conventionalization in lan-
guage – in both process and product terms – will always constitute a sprawl-
ing and conceptually unwieldy field because of the diversity of perspectives 
that can be taken. That very diversity, however, points to the centrality of 
the phenomena under investigation. To develop a sound appreciation of the 
role of one’s own research in developing better understandings of relation-
ships between language, cognition, society and culture, one really needs 
some level of awareness, at least in a peripheral way, of the state of the art 
in the contributing areas of research that Pawley describes in his opening 
paper. To gain a better sense of the specific ways in which research is ad-
vancing, and where more work is needed, one might profitably look again 
at Pawley’s paper and, in particular, his list of research questions (Pawley, 
this volume p. 11–12) summarized below. These, it will be recalled, had 
emerged as relevant to the study of formulaic language by the end of the 
1970s. Pawley also reviewed developments in a number of the areas in-
volved.
Pawley’s questions first deal with issues of taxonomy and description. 
He asked how we are progressing in the identification of well-formed
conventional expressions in text. He then considers classification, asking 
what structural and functional criteria need to be taken into account. Tran-
scription issues feature next. These definitely need more attention than they 
are currently receiving, if only because conventionalized expressions can 

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Formulaic language in cultural perspective
491
be especially difficult for non-native listeners to understand in speech. Bet-
ter insights into shifts of pace, prosodic structure and slurring of pronun-
ciation in the articulation of prefabricated expressions are urgently needed 
for more effective language teaching. Also from a technical point of view, 
Pawley draws attention to the fact that we are still developing the sub-
stantive concepts and a repertoire of notional devices needed to describe 
variability in productive formulae. When it comes to the composition of 
pragmatic speech formulae (also referred to as situation-bound expressions 
and discourse-strategic formulae), Pawley stresses the importance of iden-
tifying the range of features that set them apart from word-like conven- 
tional phrases that often operate as large lexemic units. He lists eight crite-
ria and comments that there are still relatively few studies that attempt
to accommodate the full array of features of these “quintessential speech 
formulae” which function as “tried and true ways of doing things” in recur-
rent social situations. A substantial amount of work on oral formulaic gen-
res has been done by Kuiper and his colleagues (see reference list for re-
presentative examples), but this is another area in which more work might 
fruitfully occur; parliamentary discourse comes to mind. Finally, in re- 
gard to matters of taxonomy and description, it is still profitable to try to 
estimate the prevalence of formulae in so-called “ordinary language”. The 
answers have profound implications for linguistic theory and cognitive 
science.
Pawley also lists research questions about the role of formulae in speech 
production and comprehension. In spite of his pioneering work with Syder 
in the 1980s, we still need to know more about the psycholinguistic and 
social dimensions of native-like selection, fluency and comprehension. At 
the core of this issue is the baffling question of how speakers (and listeners) 
know what is native-like and what is not when choices available in what 
may be said are all grammatically acceptable. The fluency of simultaneous 
interpreters is equally puzzling from a processing point of view. We also 
need better ways of understanding and talking about social enculturation. 
Pawley draws attention to the fact that we may know that well socialized 
native speakers know when and what to say in different situations, but we do 
not yet have a satisfactory theoretical framework that brings developmental, 
psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives into engagement with each 
other for talking about how this happens, although progress is being made in 
understanding acquisition of conventional expressions in children and adults 
and their role in neurolinguistic terms. Pawley reminds us that questions 
about the location of different kinds of language processes in the brain and 

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Penny Lee
the functions of formulae in aphasia are still important questions that help to 
throw light on formulaic language in normal social and cultural use. 
Pawley also reminds us that at the heart of all these concerns in theoreti-
cal terms, given the widely held assumptions by theoreticians and practical 
linguists alike that grammar and lexicon are in some sense essentially dif-
ferent and separate, there are questions to do with the origin of grammar, 
the grammar-lexicon boundary and the kinds of models we need to bring 
conventional language from the periphery of theoretical attention to its 
core. In this context we might do well to listen to Hockett (1987: 87) who 
argued that we should throw out the morpheme notion 
and just acknowledge that idioms come in a variety of sizes. Some idioms, 
true enough, are tiny and compact and don’t seem to be divisible into 
smaller pieces that are also idioms. But that is a matter of degree… 
I refer readers to Hockett’s book for an instructive and extensive explora-
tion of this idea developed in the context of an acute awareness that every-
thing we say and think (linguistically) depends on our exposure to, and ab-
sorption of, language patterns we have heard and probably said before. Of 
course creativity as well as conventionality is fundamental to language use, 
but the small chunks of language that we put together or pull apart may not 
be so very different from the large chunks with their inbuilt mini-grammars 
and situation-bound ties when it comes to creative manipulation. A proper 
understanding of language takes this into account and accepts that cultural 
as well as social and cognitive perspectives on language knowledge and use 
are all needed if we are to develop a better understanding of what we do 
when we talk, listen, read, write and engage in thinking that activates the 
internalized linguistic system at any level.