Phrasal verbs in academic lectures. Some semantic and pragmatic insights from a corpus-assisted analysis

Phrasal verbs are notoriously challenging for L2 learners of English, especially when such composite structures are not present in their native languages. Features of phrasal verbs that can create considerable comprehension issues include varying degrees of semantic opaqueness and high levels of polysemy, as well as the dynamic nature through which new forms and meanings frequently emerge. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of phrasal verbs in academic lectures as a spoken genre that requires listeners to process complex and abstract content in real time. The transcripts of 15 multi-disciplinary lectures collected from the OpenCourseWare web sites of Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were analysed with corpus methods, including part-of-speech tagging, in order to shed light on the use of phrasal verbs in terms of forms, meanings, and patterns of usage, with a view to those that may be problematic for L2 listeners. Results showed that phrasal verbs were quite frequent, while also displaying substantial variation in form and with roughly half having figurative meanings. Further contextual analysis of figurative phrasal verbs revealed instances of pragmatic strengthening to both expand on core meanings and communicate speaker attitude. The article concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of the analysis, with attention to strategies for helping L2 learners more effectively cope with the difficulties of phrasal verbs.