Given the proliferation of recent research on formulaic language, including several books, it seemed time to devote an issue of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics to the topic. Empirical research focusing on chunks of language shows no signs of waning, and the topic has even made its way into the popular press, thanks to Ben Zimmer's column in the New York Times two years ago.

The recognition that speech formulas play a role in first language acquisition—that children reuse sequences of words taken directly and seemingly unanalyzed from the input—goes back to the earliest days of the field. Until fairly recently, however, such formulaic language was considered part of an early and soon-superseded stage of development. The last decade has seen the rise of a perspective on language development in which such formulas are central to language acquisition across development. According to this perspective, which is often known as the usage-based theory of language development, acquisition begins when children identify, infer a communicative function for, and start to utilize pieces of language of different sizes (single words and multiword sequences). Generalization, and as a result grammar, is an emergent property resulting from the ongoing coexistence of such sequences in a shared representational space. The growth in popularity of such an account, which represents a radical break from traditional models of grammatical development, has resulted in large part from the appearance of very large corpora of child–caregiver interactions. Such corpora have supported a new understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the learner, as well as allowing new naturalistic analyses of children's productions and the creation of stimuli for experiments, all of which offer considerable support for the usage-based position. This article offers a review of these developments.

This article revisits earlier proposals that language learning is, in essence, the learning of formulaic sequences and their interpretations; that this occurs at all levels of granularity from large to small; and that the language system emerges from the statistical abstraction of patterns latent within and across form and function in language usage. It considers recent research in individual differences, the psycholinguistics of language processing, and longitudinal studies of first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition. The first section reviews studies of individual differences in phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and working memory (WM) and their correlations with vocabulary and grammar acquisition in L2. The second section summarizes evidence that language processing is sensitive to the statistical properties of formulaic language in terms of frequency and transitional probability. The third section examines the definition of formulas and formulaicity using different statistical metrics. The fourth section evaluates longitudinal research in L1 and L2 into the putative developmental sequence commonly proposed in usage-based approaches, from formula to low-scope pattern to creative construction. The final section weighs the implications of the statistical distributions of formulaicity in usage for developmental sequences of language acquisition. Zipf's law and the “phrasal teddy bear” explain the paradox whereby formulas seed language acquisition and yet learner language is formula-light in comparison to native norms.

It is generally accepted that we store representations of individual words in our mental lexicon. There is growing agreement that the lexicon also contains formulaic language (How are you? kick the bucket). In fact, there are compelling reasons to think that the brain represents formulaic sequences in long-term memory, bypassing the need to compose them online through word selection and grammatical sequencing in capacity-limited working memory. The research surveyed in this chapter strongly supports the position that there is an advantage in the way that native speakers process formulaic language compared to nonformulaic language. This advantage extends to the access and use of different types of formulaic language, including idioms, binomials, collocations, and lexical bundles. However, the evidence is mixed for nonnative speakers. While very proficient nonnatives sometimes exhibit processing advantages similar to natives, less proficient learners often have been shown to process formulaic language in a word-by-word manner similar to nonformulaic language. Furthermore, if the formulaic language is idiomatic (where the meaning cannot be understood from the component words), the figurative meanings can be much more difficult to process for nonnatives than nonidiomatic, nonformulaic language.

The importance of formulaic language is recognized by many branches of the language sciences. Second language learners acquire a language using a maturationally advanced neurological substrate, leading to a profile of formulaic language use and knowledge that differs from that of the prepuberty learner. Unlike the considerable interest in formulaic language seen in second language learning, attention paid to this theme in clinical communicative disorders has been limited. Historically, verbal expressions preserved in severe nonfluent aphasia, including counting, interjections, and memorized phrases, have been referred to as automatic speech. Closer examination of all forms of aphasic speech reveals a high proportion of formulaic expressions, while speech samples from persons with right hemisphere and subcortical damage show a significant impoverishment. These findings are supported by studies of persons with Alzheimer's disease, who have intact subcortical nuclei and abnormally high proportions of formulaic expressions, and Parkinson's disease, which is characterized by dysfunctional subcortical systems and impoverished formulaic language. Preliminary studies of schizophrenic speech also reveal a paucity of formulaic language. A dissociation between knowledge and use of the expressions is found in some of these populations. Observations in clinical adult subjects lead to a profile of cerebral function underlying production of novel and formulaic language, known as the dual processing model. Whereas the left hemisphere modulates newly created language, production of formulaic language is dependent on a right hemisphere/subcortical circuit. Implications of the dual process model for evaluation and treatment of language disorders are discussed.

In this article we review experimental and intervention studies published since 2004 on formulaic sequences in a second language (L2). There is plenty of evidence that learners have a lot to gain from building a sizable repertoire of L2 formulaic sequences language, but formulaicity is an area where learners are known to be slow to close the gap on native speakers. Pedagogical treatments proposed to help close that gap can be divided into three groups: (a) drawing learners’ attention to formulaic sequences as they are encountered, (b) stimulating lookups in dictionaries and the use of corpus tools, and (c) helping learners commit particular formulaic sequences to memory. We gauge the efficacy of treatments in these three categories by reviewing the (quasi-) experimental studies that put them to the test, and we refer to Laufer and Hulstijn's involvement load hypothesis to frame the discernible trends. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for much needed further research.

This article reviews the concrete effects that the theoretical findings on the formulaic nature of language have had in instructed second language acquisition (SLA). The introductory section includes some terminological comments and a general discussion on the validity of adopting a formulaic approach in second or foreign language teaching. The second section discusses various points in time when instructional intervention is possible and presents the rationale adopted in the article to trace elements of formulaicity in instructed SLA. The next three sections each center on one aspect of foreign language teaching, namely, input, classroom activities, and feedback. The discussion broaches pedagogical choices, teaching materials, types of activities, and tools currently available to teachers and learners. The results show that the increasingly refined understanding of the formulaic nature of language has clearly impacted second language teaching but that a number of questions still remain unanswered. These questions pertain to the types of formulas that deserve teaching time and to the assessment of the actual learning outcomes of using a formulaic approach.

Formulaic language is at the heart of corpus linguistic research, and learner corpus research (LCR) is no exception. As multiword units of all kinds (e.g., collocations, phrasal verbs, speech formulae) are notoriously difficult for learners, and corpus linguistic techniques are an extremely powerful way of exploring them, they were an obvious area for investigation by researchers from the very early days of LCR. In the first part of this article, the focus is on the types of learner corpus data investigated and the most popular method used to analyze them. The second section describes the types of word sequences analyzed in learner corpora and the methodologies used to extract them. In the rest of the article, we summarize some of the main findings of LCR studies of the learner phrasicon, distinguishing between co-occurrence and recurrence. Particular emphasis is also placed on the relationship between learners’ use of formulaic sequences and transfer from the learner's first language. The article concludes with some proposals for future research in the field.

Automated, frequency-driven approaches to identifying commonly used word combinations have become an important aspect of academic discourse analysis and English for academic purposes (EAP) teaching during the last 10 years. Referred to as clusters, chunks, or bundles, these sequences are certainly formulaic, but in the sense that they are simply extended collocations that appear more frequently than expected by chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense of coherence in a text. More recently, work has extended to “concgrams,” or noncontiguous word groupings where there is lexical and positional variation. Together, these lexical patterns are pervasive in academic language use and a key component of fluent linguistic production, marking out novice and expert use in a range of genres. This article discusses the emerging research which demonstrates the importance of formulaic language in both academic speech and writing and the extent to which it varies in frequency, form, and function by mode, discipline, and genre.

This article reviews recent research on the roles of formulaic language in language socialization theory and research from the point of view that formulaic language is a chunk of language (e.g., one word, string of several words) repeatedly used in verbal routines and other contexts. Although the notion of formulaic language is not always explicitly discussed in the literature of language socialization, previous research suggests that formulaic language is indeed an important notion within the theory of language socialization, for it often plays a crucial role in socializing novices to social dimensions such as politeness, hierarchy, and social identities including social roles and statuses, and relationships. This article first provides a brief introduction of language socialization theory, its research methods, and recent developments. It then reviews recent language socialization research on formulaic language in first and second language (L1, L2) and heritage language environments, including how novices are socialized to use formulaic language, how they are socialized through its use, and how they actually use it in normative and novel ways in participating in social interaction with experts and/or peers. Finally, the major findings of recent studies are summarized, and the article concludes by suggesting several directions for further research on formulaic language in language socialization.

Since the late 1990s, the field of applied linguistics has seen a revival of interest in the topic of linguistic creativity and language play, with several theoretical works spawning a variety of empirical studies of (second language) L2 learners. This chapter reviews recent literature in order to examine the reciprocal relationship between formulaic language and L2 language play. Formulaic language provides a point of reference against which other uses can be recognized as creative or playful. At the same time, language play can also create new linguistic conventions. Thus, while the relationship between formulaic language and language play has not been explicitly addressed, as the examples presented here will demonstrate, formulaic language is a necessary part of much language play. This article begins by theorizing the relationship between formulaic and playful language. This relationship is then examined in terms of functions, age differences, and media differences, and the article closes with a number of suggestions for future research.

This article reviews the recent research on formulaic language in pragmatics from three perspectives: foundational issues, recurrent research questions, and the populations studied. Examination of foundational issues, including definitions and operationalization of the concept of formula in pragmatics, shows the way in which pragmatics understands formulaic language and what it contributes to the study of formulaic language, namely, a strong sense of social contract. Recurrent themes in contemporary investigations include how formulas are used in general and in specific contexts, determining how extensive the use of formulas is, attitudes toward formulas, acquisition of formulas in second language (L2) pragmatics, and formulas in pragmatics pedagogy. The third section reviews pragmatic research according to language community, defined for the purposes of this review as first language (L1; native-speaker communities), L2, cross-cultural comparisons, indigenized varieties, and lingua franca communities. The investigation of formula use by different communities addresses questions of the particular and the universal in formula use and the importance of community and community membership.

This article briefly summarizes key developments in formulaic language research over the past 5 years, before exploring certain assumptions typically made, regarding the coherence of formulaicity as a phenomenon, the significance of frequency as a property, and the location of subtypes of formulaic language along various continua. It is argued that we do not yet have the full measure of how different features associated with formulaicity fit together. The challenge lies in reconciling the range of evidence types within an explanation that is rooted not only in usage itself, but in the underlying motivations that determine usage.

Boldface numerals indicate the ARAL volume in which the contributor's work appears; numbers following the backslash indicate the beginning page number of the contributor's chapter. For example, Clapham, C. 2000. Assessment and testing 20/147 means that C. Clapham's 2000 chapter on Assessment and testing begins on page 147 of volume 20.