Lexical bundles and intradisciplinary variation: the case of applied linguistics

This corpus-based study explores frequency, form, and function of a particular group of formulaic expressions: lexical bundles. Lexical bundles are defined as commonly recurrent sequences of word combinations which are often semantically regular, structurally incomplete, and not idiomatic (Biber, et al., 1999). While most previous corpus-based studies of this group of multi-word sequences have been mainly concerned with variations across different disciplines, and registers, this study is looking at possible variations within some written key academic genres of one single discipline of applied linguistics. Lexical bundles within each of the genres are classified structurally as well as functionally using Biber et al. (1999) and Hyland (2008a) respectively. By comparing frequency, form ,and function of these clusters in high-stakes postgraduate genres with research articles, this study shows that not only are there relatively large differences between student genres and research articles in the types of bundles employed, but also there are some striking discrepancies in terms of frequency, and function of four-word lexical bundles.