Phraseological Expressions: Gender-Based Corpus Analysis of EFL/ESL Academic Research Articles

Abstract

Phraseological or multi-word-pattern corpus-driven analysis of language in use has offered significant insights in recent years into how linguistic discourse can vary. This variation has been researched across genres, registers, disciplines, and native or non-native differences. However, very few studies have presented the gender-based analysis of academic research discourse within the EFL/ESL perspective. The current study explored the use of lexical bundles practiced by male and female researchers working in the EFL/ESL academic context within KSA. Corpora comprising almost 300,000 words including 68 research articles, 36 by female and 32 by male researchers were collected and run through Lancsbox 6.0 software package. The analysis was based on the frequency and structural patterns across the selected data. For the critical analysis of structural patterns, the structural taxonomy framework offered by Gezegin-Bal (2109) adapted from Biber et al. (1999) was employed. As established by the findings of the study, prepositional and noun phrases remained overwhelmingly more frequent and common in both corpora. There were no significant gender-based differences in the use of lexical bundles found which reflects that both male and female researchers practiced similar expressions in their use of the English language.