Revisiting Will be V-ing: Insights from English for Tourism Textbooks

• Main Author: Aleksandra M. Radovanović
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Philology 2018-06-01
• Series: Filolog
• Subjects: will be v-ing; future time; progressive aspect; semantic features; pragmatic functions
• Online Access: https://filolog.rs.ba/index.php?journal=filolog&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=228&path%5B%5D=pdf

This current study is intended to set forth a characterisation of will be V-ing with the general aim to investigate whether its meanings and functions can be reduced to aspectual and temporal values and to shed light on the implicit meanings with respect to the context. The results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis carried out on the corpus comprising text samples of spoken interactions in tourism industry confirmed the frequent use of will be V-ing without any reference to progressivity. Hence, the satisfactory characterisation encapsulates several semantic notions: volition-neutrality, already-decided future and matter-of-courseness. These features coupled with the progressive aspect as a pragmatic modifier account for the distinctive uses of will be V-ing. As efficient usage of this construction is a matter of both grammatical and pragmatic competence, the approach to will be V-ing in teaching English for Tourism purposes is worth revising.