Lexical Bundles in University First Year Economics Textbooks [thesis]

Ayman Sholkani
As part of formulaic language, lexical bundles (LBs) have been a rich topic of study for the last few decades. Following a frequency-driven approach, the present corpus-based study aims to identify the most frequently used LBs in first year Economics textbooks used in a number of Canadian universities. It also aims to classify the LBs according to the functional taxonomy of lexical bundles suggested in Biber et al. (2004a). The First Year Economics Textbook Corpus (FYETC) is a specialized
more » ... built especially for the purpose of this study. The text analysis software, WordSmith Tools 6.0, was used to extract the LBs from FYETC. To verify the results, three expert judges reviewed the FYETC LBs list. The results show that referential bundles are dominant in FYETC, and that quantity reference is by far the biggest subcategory. The final product of the study is a list of 165 LBs classified functionally along with some suggestions to improve the performance of the functional taxonomy. The findings of this paper can be of interest to EAP/ESP teachers, curriculum designers, and/or business and economics students.
doi:10.22215/etd/2018-12983 fatcat:oqij544c75fixhyv3mocbn57ue