Topic
Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers
Time: May 17 (Thurs) 3:00pm-4:30pm
Venue: 对外经贸大学英语学院
Biodata
Douglas Biber is Regents' Professor of English (Applied Linguistics) at Northern Arizona University. His research efforts have focused on corpus linguistics, English grammar, and register variation (in English and cross-linguistic; synchronic and diachronic). His publications include books published with Cambridge University Press (1988, 1995, 1998), Oxford University Press (1994), John Benjamins (2002, 2006), and the co-authored Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999) and Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (2002).
Summary
Lexical bundles – recurrent sequences of words – are important building blocks of discourse in spoken and written registers. Previous research has shown that lexical bundles are especially prevalent in university classroom teaching, where they serve three major discourse functions: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions.
The present study extends this line of research by investigating the use of lexical bundles in a wide range of spoken and written university registers, including both instructional registers and student advising/management registers (e.g., office hours, class management talk, written syllabi, etc.). The findings show that lexical bundles are even more prevalent in non-academic university registers than they are in the core instructional registers. Most surprisingly, lexical bundles are very common in written course management (e.g., course syllabi), in contrast to previous research which showed bundles to be much more common in speech than in writing.
Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers
Time: May 17 (Thurs) 3:00pm-4:30pm
Venue: 对外经贸大学英语学院
Biodata
Douglas Biber is Regents' Professor of English (Applied Linguistics) at Northern Arizona University. His research efforts have focused on corpus linguistics, English grammar, and register variation (in English and cross-linguistic; synchronic and diachronic). His publications include books published with Cambridge University Press (1988, 1995, 1998), Oxford University Press (1994), John Benjamins (2002, 2006), and the co-authored Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999) and Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (2002).
Summary
Lexical bundles – recurrent sequences of words – are important building blocks of discourse in spoken and written registers. Previous research has shown that lexical bundles are especially prevalent in university classroom teaching, where they serve three major discourse functions: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions.
The present study extends this line of research by investigating the use of lexical bundles in a wide range of spoken and written university registers, including both instructional registers and student advising/management registers (e.g., office hours, class management talk, written syllabi, etc.). The findings show that lexical bundles are even more prevalent in non-academic university registers than they are in the core instructional registers. Most surprisingly, lexical bundles are very common in written course management (e.g., course syllabi), in contrast to previous research which showed bundles to be much more common in speech than in writing.
