Introduction

In the last chapter, it was possible to engage in some depth with the detail of formulaic language output from individual learners. This was because the research on children tends to be in the form of case studies, recording either all of their L2 utterances, or else regular samples. Research on adult learners is generally not like this. Within the case study approach, which predominates in the work on naturalistic acquisition in the L2 environment, accounts of formulaic language tend to be anecdotal rather than reflecting a full record or disciplined periodic collection. Meanwhile, formulaic language research on classroom-taught learners focusses on groups rather than individuals, so that it is rarely possible to gain more than a glimpse of a particular learner's profile over time. As a result, the data from adults and teenagers in published sources does not lend itself to a direct consideration of the interactional and processing functions of formulaic sequences, since the necessary context of utterances is not always given, and individual examples cannot be judged for their representativeness. In this chapter, then, we shall engage first of all with the data on its own terms, identifying the common patterns that are relevant to our current discussion. Only after that will it be possible to raise our main questions, regarding the roles which formulaic sequences may be playing in adult and teenage second language learners.