Lexical bundles in master dissertations and PhD theses written by algerian researchers
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2024
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
Over the past several decades, there has been an increasing amount of research indicating that lexical bundles, a type of formulaic language, contribute to the development of native-like fluency in linguistic output. Lexical bundles are multi-word expressions that are primarily defined by their high frequency of occurrence and have been found to serve important functions within academic discourse. Hence, this study aims to investigate the development of lexical bundle usage in Master’s dissertations and Doctoral theses of the same Algerian researchers. This study examined the use of lexical bundles in a corpus of 15 master's dissertations and 15 doctoral theses written by the same Algerian researchers in the field of applied linguistics. The analysis employed the structural classification of Biber et al. (1999) and Hyland's (2008) functional taxonomy to categorize the identified lexical bundles into categories to facilitate the comparison process. The findings revealed that as Algerian researchers advance from the master's to the doctoral level, they demonstrate distinct patterns in their use of lexical bundles such as a decreased overall frequency of lexical bundles, increased use of longer and more structurally complex lexical bundles like pp-based bundles, emphasis on research-oriented lexical bundles in doctoral theses compared to master's dissertations, and a decline in the use of participant-oriented bundles. These results suggest that the development of lexical bundle repertoire is a crucial part of language growth and sophistication as graduate students transition from master's to doctoral-level in academic writing.