A Corpus-based Study Of The Textual Functions Of Lexical Bundles In Alice Munro's Works

Lexical bundles are simply word sequences,which function as basic building blocks of discourse.The study of lexical bundles is an efficient way of analyzing the meaning of the literary works.Textual function enables the realization of the relation between language and context,making the language users produce a text which matches the situation.This thesis mainly studies textual functions of lexical bundles in Alice Munro's works from the perspective of thematic structure and cohesion.This study adopts the self-built corpus which takes Alice Munro's twelve novels as data.With the help of Ant Conc Tool,different word-length of lexical bundles and distributions are retrieved.This thesis attempts to achieve two major goals.Firstly,it is trying to explore the distribution features of lexical bundles,giving researchers of Alice Munro's novels a new brand perspective.Secondly,it is trying to investigate what are textual functions realized by thematic structure and cohesion.According to the results shown in the study,lexical bundles have textual functions,shown in the following aspects:1.Prepositional phrase expressions and(connector +)3rd person pronoun + VP fragment are frequently used in Munro's novels.(Connector +)Noun phrase with of-phrase fragment also have a higher frequency.Comparative expressions are the least used in Munro's novels.2.Lexical bundles have functions in realizing the themes of Munro's novels: 1)highlighting and emphasizing the main information;2)enriching information and deepening the themes.3.Lexical bundles have functions in promoting the development of plots: 1)thematic progression function;2)cohesion function.