Investigating the Frequency and Function of Lexical Bundles in the Conclusion Section of Applied Linguistics Research Articles Published in Iranian Journals

Lexical bundles, sequences of words that recur frequently in corpus-based discourse, are indicators of fluentlanguage production both in L1 and L2. Hence, to the best of researcher’s knowledge, no research is conducted on thecharacteristics of lexical bundles in the conclusion section of applied linguistics research articles. Consequently, thepresent study aims to extend this line of research by investigating the function and frequency of lexical bundles in theconclusion section of research articles published in Iranian applied linguistics journals. A total of 100 research articlespublished from 2015-2018 were selected to be analyzed in this study. AntConc (2018) version 3.5.7, free computersoftware developed by Anthony (2007) was adopted to identify four-word lexical bundles. For analyzing functionalfeatures of lexical bundles, the [20] taxonomy was adopted. The findings revealed that that procedure and resultativebundles were used more frequently by Iranian writers. Results will be applicable for researchers and authors who wantto communicate more effectively in their communities of practice.

Keywords:

Applied linguistics , Conclusion section , Iranian applied linguistics journals , Lexical bundles