Abstract
The paper applies the Matrix method to an investigation into translinguistic features of English academic discourse that is serving worldwide a means of cross-cultural exchange between researchers with translingual skills. Based on the corpus approach to the comparison of the two corpora that comprise samples of professional academic writing in various fields of study (Art and Humanity, Natural and Social sciences), the paper seeks to identify both quantitatively and qualitatively correlations in repertoire and frequencies of recurrent linguistic expressions between the native English-language and non-native (Russian) academic discourse performers. The corpora were investigated along with the use of lexical bundles, re-occurring lexical units, which were grouped into noun-based and preposition-based phrases with post-modifier fragments, verb-based phrases with any form of verb components. The data comparison points to a code-mixing trend at the syntagmatic layer, which is a translingual fusion of English words in accord with a mixture of syntagmatic relations typical of English and Russian variations of academic discourse. It was found that non-native writing does not reveal as much lexical flexibility as native writers do and to a large extent relies on formulaic expressions, most of which are not conventional for expert native academic writing. Native Russian writers use excessively noun-based phrases with abstract nouns and underuse noun phrases without prepositions. Verb phrases with that- and to-clauses are mainly characteristic of native professional writing whereas non-native writing employs patterns with active verbs and passive constructions. It was found that non-native writing lacks quantifying phrases and hedging expressions that mitigate the proposition.
Highlights
Translingualism has become increasingly popular as a theoretical construct that points to a current trend – a dynamic fusion between permeability and convergence of languages and cultures in human brains; it is a characteristic of modern translingual communication in the globalizing world
Due to the Matrix approach, that allowed us to draw structural and functional comparisons of lexical markers in their syntagmatic environment, it has been proved that the use of discourse organizing lexical bundles in native and non-native academic writing in English demonstrates some generic similarities and differences
Both corpus data contain Noun-based phrases (NP)-based bundles to organize academic discourse, Verb-based phrases (VP)-based bundles composed by the anticipatory it-clause
Summary
Translingualism has become increasingly popular as a theoretical construct that points to a current trend – a dynamic fusion between permeability and convergence of languages and cultures in human brains; it is a characteristic of modern translingual communication in the globalizing world. These studies, most of which employed the corpus-based approach to counting and comparing the use of linguistic features, have found some ways in which professional academic writing of English natives and nonnatives differ.
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