Formulaic Language In Social Sciences: A Functional .
Pakistan Social Sciences ReviewJune 2019, Vol. 3, No.1 [234-249]P-ISSN 2664-0422O-ISSN 2664-0430RESEARCH PAPERFormulaic Language in Social Sciences: A Functional Analysis ofLexical Bundles in Native and Non-Native Academic DiscourseMoazzam Ali Malik 1 Hafiz Zeeshan Fazal 2 Hassan Moavia 31.2.3.Assistant Professor,Department of English, University of Gujrat, Punjab, PakistanM. Phil Scholar, Department of English, University of Lahore, Chenab Campus,Gujrat, Punjab, PakistanM. Phil Scholar, Department of English, University of Lahore, Chenab Campus,Gujrat, Punjab, PakistanPAPER INFOReceived:January 16, 2019Accepted:June 24, 2019Online:June 30, 2019Keywords:FormulaicLanguage,Lexical Bundles,AcademicDiscourse,Ph. D ThesisCorrespondingAuthor:ABSTRACTThe current study explicates how differentially the native andnon-native writers functionally use the lexical bundles in theacademic discourse of PhD theses. The corpus data comprised200 PhD theses produced by non-native Pakistani scholars andthe native scholars in the five different disciplines of the socialsciences. To conduct the analysis, the study employs acombination of functional taxonomies of the lexical bundlespreviously proposed and used by Biber and his associates (see,Biber, et al., 2004 & 2003); Biber & Barbieri, 2007). For dataanalysis, a corpus tool, AntConc 3.3.5, was used to generate andenlist the 4-word units of lexical bundles found in the collectedcorpus. These identified lexical bundles were, later, categorizedinto three functional categories as referential, discourseorganizing, and stance. The findings of the study reveal that thenative and non-native writers make significantly more use ofreferential lexical bundles and a minimum use of discourseorganizing and stance bundles with certain qualitativemoazzam.ali@uo differences. It is expected that the findings of the study can helpEAP scholars in developing teaching materials to assist nong.edu.pknative writers in improving their academic skillsIntroductionThe term formulaic sequence is a broader term that refers to the frequentlyoccurring word-units ranging from sentence-stems to the lengthy clauses. So, anexample of a short formulaic sequence can be as “in conclusion” and that of a longerformulation can be as “In this section of the chapter”. Formulaic language is a verycommon feature of any academic discourse. According to Wray (2002), theseexpressions are “prefabricated” in the minds of the author who store and retrievethem from their memory (p. 9). These pre-constructed phrases are cognitively
Pakistan Social Sciences Review (PSSR)June, 2019 Volume 3, Issue 1accessible to the scholars who systematically use them as building blocks of theacademic discourse. There are many functions that are performed by the formulaicsequences in the academic discourse. For instance, the formulaic sequences givecoherence to the text, make it interactive, contextualize the meaning, establish awriter’s rapport and mark his/her identity with a particular discourse community(see Siyanova-Chanturia & Martinez, 2015). Nonetheless, formulaic language is abaggy term that, in discourse studies, is employed to refer to the various kinds ofword structures generally termed as phraseological Units, lexical bundles, socialroutines, sentence-stems, idiomatic expressions, collocations, etc (see, Wood, 2010).Lexical bundles, the focus of study, are regarded as the lexical units that “often cooccur in longer sequences” or “show a statistical tendency to co-occur” (Biber et al.,1999). Lexical bundles, according to Biber et al., (1999) are so much recurrent thatthey cover approximately 21% of written academic discourse.Academic discourse is a broad term which refers to any form of discourseproduced either by the academic community or for the academic community. Anumber of registers and text-types produced by the academic community, e.g.,assignments, presentations, lectures, study notes, academic speeches, theses, termpapers, etc., fall into the category of academic discourse. Interest in the structure ofthe academic discourse is not a recent phenomenon. Hyland (2009) explains thatsince the late 60s, scholars are taking interest in exploring the textual nuances of theacademic discourse. In recent times, with its empirical focus on generic andrhetorical features, metadiscursive aspects, rhetorical structures, syntacticpatterning, etc., the interest in academic discourse has expanded tremendously (seeHyland, 2000: Hyland, 2009; Swales, 2004; Yang & Allison, 2003). Likewise, studiesexploring the academic discourse, for the use of lexical bundles have got theirimpetus due to the empirical contributions of textual linguists and the practicalorientations of ESP scholars.Most of the research on the use of lexical bundles focuses on their structuralconfigurations or the functional use. In structure, arguably, lexical bundles are notconsidered having well-defined structural units. It is more appropriate to viewthem as bearing certain structural associations and phrasal combinations than thefixed lexical combinations. For instance, lexical bundles like “a large number of” and“in the conclusion of” are, respectively, the noun and prepositional phrases that maycome with different constituting components but their structural (phrasal)properties remain relatively fixed. The most widely acknowledged framework forthe functional use of lexical bundles has been proposed by Biber et al., (1999, pp.1014-1024), in which lexical bundles are divided into four different categories basedon prepositional, nominal, verbal and clausal structures.Rationale of StudyOver the last two decades, research in lexical bundles has evolved into twodifferent strands. Scholars like Cortes (2004), Hyland (2008), Kashiha & Heng,(2013) have explored how academic discourses have different disciplinary235
Formulaic Language in Social Sciences: A FunctionalAnalysis of Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-Native Academic Discourseorientations, primarily attributable to their subject matter and the empiricalinclination. These scholars have demonstrated that there exists a qualitative andquantitative difference in the use of the lexical bundles across the knowledgeterritories of the disciplines (see Hyland, 2008; Strunkyt & Jurkūnait, 2008). Theirresearch has inspired many ESP and EAP scholars who are convinced that theappropriate use of multi-word expressions like lexical bundles, idiomaticexpressions, collocations, etc, can improve the language competence of the learnersin specific domains of the second language use. Nonetheless, there is a dearth ofresearch that aims to explicate how the lexical bundles are used to functionallycontextualize meaning, interact with the reader, build textual coherence, and markdisciplinary boundaries in the academic discourse. Second, there are also studies(e.g., Adel and Erman, 2012; Hernandez 2013; Crowley, 1991) that focus on thecross-linguistic differences in the use of functional lexical bundles in different typesof academic discourses. The findings of these studies are contradicting each other inexplaining the cross-linguistic use of the functional categories of lexical bundles.One of the possible reasons for the conflicting results of the previous studies couldbe the variation in the corpus-texts (e.g. spoken and written) that they use for thecomparisons. As different texts are produced under the influence of various social,cultural and contextual contexts, so these extra-textual influences affect thestructural and functional configuration of the text-design. We believe that to trulyunderstand the differences in the use of academic language among native and nonnative writers, ideally, a study must use a compatible corpus for the comparisonwith the only single cross-linguistic difference of the mother tongue.This current study, from a cross-linguistic perspective, unearths thefunctional aspects of 4-word lexical bundles in the academic discourse of socialsciences. The objective of this endevour is to document how the formulaic languageof lexical bundles functionally structure the the PhD theses produced by the Englishnative and the Pakistani non-native writers. So, the research objectives of thecurrent study are:1. What is the functional distribution of the lexical bundles in the PhD theseswritten by the native and non-native writers in the domain of socialsciences?2. How does the use of stance, discourse organizing, and referential lexicalbundles mark the communicative functions of interaction, textuality, andrefrentiality in the academic discourse of social sciences?Literature ReviewBiber and his associates (e.g., Biber et al, 1999; 2004) conducted someinfluential studies at the turn of this century. Through their influential work thesescholars have proposed structural and functional taxonomies of lexical bundleshave given rise to a bulk of literature that investigates lexical bundles in academicdiscourse. In their study, Biber and Barbieri (2007) have elaborated upon how the236
Pakistan Social Sciences Review (PSSR)June, 2019 Volume 3, Issue 1lexical bundles are different from other formulaic sequences like collocations,idiomatic expressions, phraseological units, etc. They explain that lexical units donot carry idiomatic meaning and have little perceptual salience. Furthermore,lexical bundles are not the typical linguistic structures; rather they conjoin certainstructural units (clause/phrase) of a text.Different studies like Biber (2006), Hyland (2008), Biber and Barbieri (2007)have proposed different taxonomies explicating the structural configuration oflexical bundles. These taxonomies are quite similar as they identify four major typesof structural lexical bundles. These structural units are generally regarded ascomposed of a) verb phrase elements, b) noun phrase elements, c) prepositionalphrase elements, and d) clausal structures. Each of these four types of structuralunits has multiple manifestations and types in the form of clause fragments andpragmatic clues. As the objective of the current study is to explore the functionaldistribution of the lexical bundles, so in the following we will discuss them indetail.For this study, three major studies by Biber and his associates (e.g., Biber etal 2003& 2004; Biber & Barbieri, 2007) provided a functional taxonomy of lexicalbundles According to this taxonomy, lexical bundles perform three major functionsof taking stance, organizing discourse and referring to the textual and extra textualentities. These three categories and their sub-categories are given in table 1.Table 1Functional Taxonomy of Lexical BundlesS.NoStance Bundles1Epistemic Stance Bundles2Desire Bundles345Obligation ty bundlesDiscourse OrganizersTopic introductionbundlesTopic elaboration,clarification esFramingQuantifyingTime/place/textdeixis bundlesThis table gives the functional taxonomy of lexical bundles with three majorfunctional categories along with their eleven sub-categories.Stance BundlesThese lexical bundles are used to expresses the attitudes of the speaker orthe writer about the propositional content of the statements. This major categoryhas five other sub-categories as well.237
Formulaic Language in Social Sciences: A FunctionalAnalysis of Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-Native Academic Discoursea. Epistemic stance bundlesThese lexical bundles express writer/speaker’s knowledge status on thepropositional content of the statement. For example, It is quite probable that, I amcertain that. Epistemic stance bundles can have two types in structure,i.e., personal(involving personal pronouns) or impersonal (without personal pronouns).b. Desire bundlesThese bundles express writer/spearker’s wish or desire for something, e.g., Iwould prefer to, I wish to.c. Obligation/ directive bundlesThese lexical bundles impose some obligation on the addressee or they areused to direct someone. Generally, a second person pronoun is used in thesebundles, e.g., you will have to, I might ask you to.d. Intention/Prediction bundlesThese lexical bundles express the writer/speaker’s intention, e.g., I would liketo, we intend toe. Ability bundlesThese stance bundles express the ability of the writer/speaker to dosomething. Generally, this ability is expressed by using modals. There examplesare---- to be able to, to manage theDiscourse OrganizersThese are the cohesive lexical bundles as they connect t different parts of thediscourse. They can be used to take turns, introduce a topic, and draw attention ofthe addressee. They have three sub-categories as given below.a. Topic introduction/focusThese lexical bundles mark the beginning of a new topic, e.g., I would like toexplain, I have to sayb. Topic elaboration/clarificationThese bundles give clarification or add additional information about what isalready known or has been said, e.g., as you know, in the same wayc.Identification/focus bundles238
Pakistan Social Sciences Review (PSSR)June, 2019 Volume 3, Issue 1These lexical bundles organize a discourse. Their examples are as has beensaid and one of the most.Referential bundlesReferential bundles are used to make references. These references can maketextual (endophoric) and extra-textual (exophoric) references. These bundles havethree following sub-categories:a. FramingThese lexical bundles, in academic writings, are used to frame a discourse.The examples of framing are: the presence of the, in the wake ofb. QuantifyingThese lexical bundles attempt to quantify an entity. e.g., a great variety of, ahuge number ofc. Time/place/text-deixis bundlesThese lexical bundles have deixis which refer to some time, place or the partof a text, e.g., in the beginning of the, above the given picture.Research in Lexical BundlesWith an exploratory orientation, early studies on lexical bundles aimed atexploring the recurrent word-units in registers and text-types drawn from differentorigin. Later, the scholar became interested in conducting cross-disciplinaryanalysis of the different texts to comparatively highlight the differential use oflexical bundles in the target texts. For instance, Biber et al., (2004) comparativelyanalyzed the corpus of classroom language and text-books for the presence oflexical bundles. Their findings reveal that the corpus of classroom language hadtwice more lexical bundles than in the textbooks. In another study, Biber (2006)conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Longman Spoken & Written EnglishCorpus (LSWE) to explore the patterns of recurrent word-units and theirdifferential occurrences in the written (academic prose) and the spoken(conversation) registers. The foundational research by Biber and his associatesprovided the base-line data for the future researchers and the English for AcademicPurposes (EAP) scholars to investigate more in this direction.Hyland (2008) has analysed a large-sized academic corpus of 3.5 millionwords comprising texts taken from research articles, masters and doctoral thesesfrom four different disciplines. Hyland (2008), due to some methodological reasons,focused on the 4-word lexical bundles for analyzing the distribution of lexicalbundles in academic discourse. This was a significant study highlighted lexical239
Formulaic Language in Social Sciences: A FunctionalAnalysis of Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-Native Academic Discoursebundles as an important building blocks of the academic discourse and the definingfeature of the disciplinary boundaries.In their study, Herbel-Eisenmann, Wanger and Cortes (2010) delimited theirfocus to a single category of lexical bundles, i.e., stance bundles. Their corpuscomprised of secondary mathematics classroom corpus, conversation corpus, anduniversity classroom corpus. By comparing these three different corpora, theyconcluded that stance bundles were frequently employed by the teachers and thestudents in their secondary level mathematics classroom.In a cross-linguistic study, Hernandez (2013) has studied the spoken corpusof L1 and L2 speakers across three types of corpus. It was an important study as it,for the first time, compared the spoken academic corpus. The findings of the studyshow that L2 speakers made more frequent use of lexical bundles than L1 speakers.Nonetheless, the use of stance bundles was found more pronounced for L1speakers. Additionally, among the functional types, it was found that stance bundleswere the most frequently used across all three spoken corpora. Moreover, referentialexpressions were more frequently used in the corpus of L1 speakers.Chen and Baker (2010) have explored the corpus comprising L1 and L2written academic discourse to comparatively study the frequency occurrences of thelexical bundles. Their corpus comprised a) published academic texts (FLOB-J) andb) academic writings produced by L1 (BAWE-EN) and L2 (BAWE-CH) speakers.Qualitative and quantitative methods were used for the study. The findings of thestudy show that the L1 and the L2 corpora were functionally similar for the use oflexical bundles. Nonetheless, structurally, the noun phrase bundles are significantlydifferent between all three corpora. Moreover, it was found that the L2 corpus hadmore frequent use of idiomatic expressions and connectors than the native corpus.In a similar study by Byshokocsa and Lee (2017), the undergraduatestudents’ corpus of English argumentative essays was compared for the Englishand Chinese speakers. By using Biber et al.’s (1999) and (2004) taxonomies theresearchers explored the lexical bundles in these corpora for their structural andfunctional features. For analysis, 4-word lexical units were identified and analyzedto meet the research objectives. The results show that L1-Chinese students makemore use of lexical bundle types than L1-English students. Among structural lexicalbundles, the L1- English students were found to make more use of noun andpreposition phrases but the L1-Chinese students mostly used the verb phrases.Moreover, L1-Chinese students also frequently made grammatically erroneousstructures and committed mistakes in the use of prepositions and articles.Materials and MethodsFor this study the quantitative approaches were employed to analyze thefunctional types of 4-word lexical bundles in the corpus of PhD theses written by inthe native and non-native writers. These lexical bundles were identified and240
Pakistan Social Sciences Review (PSSR)June, 2019 Volume 3, Issue 1quantitatively explored by using a corpus tool (AntConc 3.3.5). The qualitativefindings required a close analysis of the contextual use of the identified lexicalbundles before grouping them into functional categories.Developing CorpusTwo different corpora (native & non-native) were compiled for the study tocompare the functional distribution of the lexical bundles the PhD theses of socialsciences.Non-native corpus data comprised 100 Ph.D. theses downloaded fromPakistan Research Repository (http://eprints.hec.gov.pk) maintained by PakistanHigher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan. These theses were randomlychosen from five different fields of social sciences (see table 2). The selected fields ofsocial sciences were Education, English, History, Political Science and Psychology.All the theses were downloaded in PDF format and then converted into the plaintext and cleaned before the files were analyzed.Native corpus data was downloaded from British online library(www.ethos.bl.uk). In the native corpus, 100 Ph.D. theses were randomly selectedfrom the same disciplines as selected for compiling non-native corpus. The detail ofboth the corpora is as below:Table 2Scheme for the Corpus for PhD Theses in Social SciencesType of CorpusNon-native Social SciencesNative Social SciencesNo. ofNo. olitical Science20Political Science20Psychology20Psychology2
the functional use of lexical bundles has been proposed by Biber et al., (1999, pp. 1014-1024), in which lexical bundles are divided into four different categories based on prepositional, nominal, verbal and clausal structures. Rationale of Study Over the last two decades, research in lexical bundles has evolved into two different strands.
learning 60 3.4 Summary and conclusions: formulas in second language learning 62 Chapter 4: Are high frequency collocations 'psychologically real'? 64 4.1 Introduction 64 4.2 Evidence on the processing of formulaic language 67 Introduction 67 Evidence from aphasia research 68 The processing of formulaic language 69 The processing of idioms 69
The growing, sometimes competing, demands for results and evidence require program designers and managers to constantly monitor and respond to systemic changes. Formulaic blueprints for measuring results are no longer appropriate. This paper describes indicators and approaches
Formulaic Type Basically, a formulaic “I Am” poem is a poem that is basically already written for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks with your own specific answers. Free Verse Here, the writer takes the basic idea of the “I Am” poem and runs with it.
ing appropriate uses of language (such as politeness routines and formulaic expressions). They refer to this use of language as the "language of socializa tion" (87, p. 205). The socializing function of input language is primarily linked to the message content of utterances addressed to children. Further,
Table 7. Doctorate-granting institutions, by state or location and major science and engineering fields of study: 2016 State or location and institution Science Engineering Life sciences and earth sciences sciences Psychology and social sciences Sociology Other social sciences
Section 53: Social and Political Sciences Section 54: Economic Sciences Class VI: Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences Section 61: Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences Section 62: Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences Section 63: Environmental Sciences and Ecology Section 64: Human Environmental Sciences
Social Sciences Abstracts Second Annual International Conference on Social Sciences 27-30 July 2015, Athens, Greece Edited by Gregory T. Papanikos 2015 THE ATHENS INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH. 2nd Annual International Conference on Social Sciences, 27-30 July 2015, Athens, Greece: Abstract Book
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