Lexical bundles in spoken academic ELF

Abstract

This corpus-based study explored the effects of two factors – genre (i.e. speech event type) and disciplinary variation – on spoken academic ELF, from the perspective of lexical bundles (i.e. recurrent word combinations). The material was drawn from a corpus of transcribed spoken academic lingua franca English (ELFA). The investigation involved a quantitative analysis of the use of four-word bundles, in terms of frequency, form, and function, across a range of genres (academic lectures and seminars) and disciplines (Medicine, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences). A qualitative analysis was also carried out to give an in-depth account of functional variations associated with one particular lexical bundle I don’t know if. The results demonstrated that genre and discipline are two important factors that cannot be ignored in understanding academic ELF communication and idiomaticity, and lexical bundles provide useful glimpses on genre and disciplinary variation that are worth following up.