A Study On Lexical Bundles In Disciplinary Academic Writings By Native Scholars

In recent years, with the rapid development of corpus linguistics, the study of lexical bundles is receiving increasing attention from scholars. However, the extent to which they differ by discipline remains an open question. In the present study, a corpus-based approach is adopted to investigate the structures and functions of high-frequency lexical bundles in native scholars’academic writings in two different disciplines:Food Science and Education. The goal is to learn something of disciplinary variations in their structures and functions of lexical bundles in academic writings by comparing the use of such bundles by native scholars in those disciplines.In this study, first, all qualified four-word lexical bundles in two corpora are identified and classified structurally and functionally. Then the structural and functional characteristics of the four-word lexical bundles used in two corpora are compared. Finally, the relationship between structural and functional categories is explored.The study shows that there are significant disciplinary variations in the structures and functions of lexical bundles. Structurally, bundles with "NP+of structure account for the highest percentage in Food corpus, and in Education corpus there is a heavy reliance on "V" structure. Functionally, research-oriented bundles enjoy the highest percentage in Food corpus. While in Education corpus, the amount of text-oriented bundles is the largest. The study further explores that the possible reasons for the differences may be due to different characteristics of each discipline. It is well known that Education emphasizes much on theory studies and interpretations while Food Science focuses mainly on empirical studies, which indicate that bundles are not only central to the creation of academic discourse, but that they offer an important means of differentiating written texts by discipline.It is also found that there are close relationship between structural and functional categories. For instance, the structure "NP+of" structure contributes greatly to the realization of sub-categories "quantification" and "description". And in text-oriented bundles, PP-based strings, including bundles of "PP+of" and "other PP" structures help a lot with the realization of "framing signals". Participant-oriented bundles are typically realized by "It+V be+adj" and "V be" structures.Based on the above findings, it is hoped that the present research can enrich studies on lexical bundles in various disciplines and provide guidance for ESP and EAP teaching and learning as well.