A corpus-driven analysis of Lexical bundles in research articles

Lexical bundles have attracted increasing attention from researchers as the institutionalized expressions contributing to meaning and uniqueness of texts, constituting building blocks of language in naturally occurring discourse, and marking situational, pragmatic, and communicative contexts. Given the emphasis on the importance of lexical bundles in different disciplines, the frequency, functions, and structures of lexical bundles in architecture as an academic discipline are yet to be thoroughly investigated. To this end, the researchers examined the frequency, functions, and structures of lexical bundles in architecture. The researchers used a relatively small written corpus consisting of research articles in architecture. The corpus was analyzed using wordsmith Tools 4. The results of corpus analysis showed 110 most frequent lexical bundles. The results also showed that referential lexical bundles were the largest functional category, and noun or prepositional phrases were the most frequent structural lexical bundles in the corpus. The findings of this study may carry some implications for ESP materials production in architecture and instruction of lexical bundles