Comparative Study Of Lexical Bundles In Periodical Articles And Master Theses In English Linguistics

Lexical bundle is a special type of multi-word sequences, the good command of which is helpful in producing accurate and fluent expressions in English. Since the early 19 th century,lexical bundles have gotten researchers’ attention in the field of linguistics. But most of them have focused on the theoretical level. Although some scholars have done some empirical researches about lexical bundles both at home and abroad in recent years, the studies which focus on the lexical bundles in different academic writing genres within one field are very few.The present study adopts a corpus-based approach to explore how variety, structures, and functions of 4-word lexical bundles in master theses are different or similar to periodical articles in the field of English linguistics. To achieve its research goal, two corpora of 140 periodical articles published in five international core journals by native scholars and 88 master theses written by Chinese postgraduates who major in English linguistics are collected respectively in the present study. Lexical bundles are extracted by taking advantage of the computer software Antconc 3.2.0 and these extracted lexical bundles are analyzed from the perspectives of their varieties, structural characteristics and functional characteristics.The findings are as follows: in terms of variety, master theses have a greater variety of lexical bundles than periodical articles; structurally, the most commonly occurred bundles in master theses and periodical articles are all VP-based bundles. But the overall use of lexical bundles with the structures of “noun phrases + of” and “prepositional phrases + of” in periodical articles are much more than that of master theses while the overall use of lexical bundles made up of “Noun phrase + other post-modifier fragment”, “Passive verb +prepositional phrase fragment”, “Copula be + noun phrase/adjective phrase”, “(verb/adjective+) to-clause fragment” and “(Verb phrase +) that-clause fragment” in periodical articles are much less than that in master theses; functionally, both periodical articles and master theses make a much heavier use of text-oriented and research-oriented lexical bundles than participant-oriented lexical bundles. Among the five sub-category of research-oriented lexical bundles, the overall use of “procedure” and “quantification” in periodical articles is more than that of master theses while the overall use of “description” is much less than that of master theses; with regard to the four sub-categories of text-oriented lexical bundles, the framing signals in periodical articles are much more than that of master theses while the structuring signals are employed much less in periodical articles than in master theses; the overall use of these two functional sub-categories of participant-oriented lexical bundles in periodical articles is relatively less than that of master theses.The present study further explores the possible reasons for the existing differences. The main reason may be due to the different characteristics of the two different academic writing genres, language proficiency and ideology in two different languages.The research finding of 4-word lexical bundles in master theses and periodical articles is good for enriching the studies of lexical bundles in different academic writing genres; it is beneficial to help students understand the different academic discourse in different academic writing genre and improve their academic writing ability; it is also good for guiding the teaching and learning of academic writing.