Abstract
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have widely transformed teaching and learning of higher education worldwide. Based on Biber’s (1988) multi-dimensional analysis framework, this study uncovers linguistic features of English-medium MOOC video lectures in China and reveals linguistic variation across different disciplinary areas. The results suggest that the video lecture language in English-medium MOOCs provided by Chinese universities tends to be highly informational, non-narrative, explicitly referential, low in persuasion, abstract, and formally planned. Different from traditional university lectures, the closest registers to the target MOOC video lectures in China include academic prose, official documents, and press reportage. Significant differences also exist across disciplinary areas regarding all six functional linguistic dimensions. Findings of this study may provide insights into how language is used in the emerging spoken register, which may further be taken into consideration by instructional designers and instructors of MOOCs. For countries where English is used as a second or additional language, such as China, the results may be of particular interest when designing English-medium MOOC video lectures.
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