Lexical Bundles in Linguistic Research Articles: A Comparative Study of Native and Non-native Writing

corpus;lexical bundles;native speakers of English;non-native speakers of English;linguistics;research articles;820

인문대학 영어영문학과 ;

University:서울대학교 대학원

关键词: corpus;    lexical bundles;    native speakers of English;    non-native speakers of English;    linguistics;    research articles;    820;   

Others  :  http://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/131909/1/000000035802.pdf

美国|英语

来源: Seoul National University Open Repository

【 摘 要 】

The present study is a corpus-driven investigation on frequency, structure and function of lexical bundles (LBs) in linguistic research articles of native speakers of English (NS) and non-native speakers of English (NNS). By the use of Antconc 3.4.3 (Anthony, 2014), 4-word LBs were retrieved from 909,259 words of corpora that consist of 91 research articles published within the last 11 years from leading journals in theoretical linguistics, 52 NS researchers and 39 NNS researchers. In retrieval, the LBs were filtered by frequency and dispersion criteria. This initial list was filtered again by applying a set of exclusion criteria. In this manner, the most frequent 20 LBs used by each group were examined. The structural and the functional features of the generated LBs were explored through concordance analysis by modified versions of Biber et al.’s (1999) structural framework and Hyland’s (2008a) functional taxonomy.This mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed NNS’ more frequent use of LBs than the NS counterpart, which originated from more common use of metadiscursive bundles and less variations in use. In structure, both groups showed the similar overall tendency to favor PP-based, VP-based and NP-based LBs in order. Notably, the NNS preferred passive forms than active, which points to NNS’ reluctance to reveal the authorial identity (Hyland, 2008b). Functionally, although the NS and the NNS demonstrated a similar pattern to favor LBs in the order of text-oriented, research-oriented and participant-oriented, there were several noteworthy findings. In conveying personal views, the NS used indirect forms including anticipatory-it structures, whereas the NNS adopted personal pronoun I/we. Such self-mention strategies suggest that predicative adjectives might not be a familiar option for the NNS. Contrary to the literature, the NNS exhibited a varied use of hedges. The diversity in the use of the ;;native bundles” (Hyland, 2000b) ranging from the high end of certainty to the lower ends (Biber, 2006) indicates their expertise, while the extensive uses of modal and ;;speech act” verbs indicate their nonnative background.The present thesis aligns with the previous studies in revealing the differences in use of LBs between NS and NNS. However, the newly found similarities between the NS and the NNS researchers suggest that expertise is also an important element as much as nativeness.