The Use of Lexical Bundles by Native English Authors in Applied Linguistics: A Corpus-Driven Study

Lexical bundle research has recently come to the forefront of corpus-driven studies. Previous corpus studies have documented conflicting results regarding the frequency and function of lexical bundles (LBs) in academic prose. To date, however, no study has exclusively investigated LBs in the "discussion" sections of research articles generated by professional native English authors. The current study addressed this gap by examining the frequency, structure, and function of the most frequent four-word LBs. The corpus was composed of the discussions of published research papers authored by native (L1) writers. The data were extracted from five reputable international journals in the field of applied linguistics, consisting of over 300,000 words. Using AntConc, all the lexical sequences were retrieved with a frequency of 10 and a range of 5. The results revealed that LBs were predominantly used by English writers. Structurally, it was found that phrasal bundles were the most frequent in our corpus. Findings also demonstrated that functionally, referential bundles were extensively employed. In addition, stance bundles and discourse organizing bundles were the most prevalent after referential bundles. Finally, the findings are discussed in terms of the implications for non-native writers regarding the use of LBs in academic prose.