A Corpus Analysis Of Phraseological Sequences In Academic Writing

Abstract

Findings from corpus-based research have illustrated the importance of phraseology in language acquisition and language use. Many studies which explored the facet of language acquisition and language use have focused on phraseological sequences such as lexical bundles, collocations, lexical phrases and etc. More recent studies have forayed into the use of phraseological sequences in different academic disciplines. The current study aims to add to this growing body of literature by examining a type of phraseological sequence, namely the lexical bundles that are employed by research article writers in the field of International Business Management (IBM). The study is concerned with the identification of lexical bundles. By adopting Mutual Information (MI) statistical measure, the corpus analysis tools, Collocate 1.0 and AntConc 3.4.1w were used to identify and extract three- to five-word lexical bundles commonly found in IBM research articles. Results indicate that three-word lexical bundles, i.e., more likely to, in order to, as well as, in terms of and the number of are most widely found in IBM research articles. This study contributes to the development of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses as the lexical bundles identified could be used in EAP settings to develop the relevant teaching materials for the courses. This study also contributes towards raising the awareness of the phraseological nature and tendency in academic writing, particularly in discipline-specific research articles.