As Hill seems to suggest: Variability in formulaic sequences with interpersonal functions in L1 novice and expert academic writing

Abstract

Formulaic sequences (FSs) are pervasive in natural language use and play an important role in differentiating socially-situated practices. The predominant trend in this research area is to take a frequency-based approach, relying on the computer to identify frequent recurrent forms in a given corpus, at the expense of disregarding their structural and semantic unity and multifunctionality, as well as overlooking discontinuous and infrequent sequences. Through careful manual identification and annotation of FSs in context, the present study provides additional insights into the use of interpersonal FSs that distinguish L1 novice and expert academic writing. The results show that the novice writers actually produced a wider range of FSs with interpersonal functions than did the expert writers. It is argued that less frequent FSs cannot be dismissed in FL research simply because of their low frequencies. Taken together, these seemingly idiosyncratic choices may reveal important functional and formulaic features that characterise a particular community. The main differences between the two groups of writers pinpoint areas (e.g., genre- and discpline-specific conventions, register awareness) that need further investigation and specific attention in the training of novice writers.