Abstract
Multiword structures that appear in a text more than expected frequency are called lexical bundles. These prefabricated structures vary in length but the most common lexical bundles are four-word lexical bundles which have been explored by many scholars worldwide. The current study aimed to explore five-word lexical bundles, which have lesser been researched. For this purpose a corpus of about 4.7 million words was compiled which consists of PhD dissertations written in Pakistani context. Moreover, the dissertations were selected from three different disciplines to make the study cross disciplinary. The corpus was analyzed according to the taxonomy of lexical bundles given by Biber et al. (1999). The analysis shows that lexical bundles are predominant feature of PhD dissertations in Pakistani context. Moreover, frequency of lexical bundles varies from discipline to discipline, and the structural variation of lexical bundles is also found across disciplines. Dominant structures across disciplines are not fixed as Prepositional Phrase Fragments is the dominant category in the corpus of English Studies and corpus of Social Sciences, whereas, Verb Phrase Fragments is the dominant category in the corpus of Bio Sciences.
Highlights
English is a very important language for academics as it is understood by a vast majority of people in the world
Dominant structures across disciplines are not fixed as Prepositional Phrase Fragments is the dominant category in the corpus of English Studies and corpus of Social Sciences, whereas, Verb Phrase Fragments is the dominant category in the corpus of Bio Sciences
The corpus of ELT too has Prepositional Phrase Fragments as the largest category which consists of 09 lexical bundles, which make 31% of the total five-word lexical bundles in the corpus of ELT in this study
Summary
English is a very important language for academics as it is understood by a vast majority of people in the world. The new knowledge that is produced is either in English at first hand or is translated in English to reach a wider audience This has benefited scholars across the world as they address wide audience without getting restricted by geographical or, in specific, linguistic boundaries. They can have an easy access to the knowledge produced anywhere in the world without getting in the trouble of having it translated themselves. Along with all the advantages of English in the world of academia there is a disadvantage in form discourse of native and non-native speakers or writers This discourse gives privilege to those who have native like proficiency in English language. Scholars have been striving hard for last few decades to understand the reasons of lacking native like proficiency in English and finding out ways to help learners to get native like expression
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