Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures

For years, word sequences which tend to co-occur have been studied under different terms, such as phraseology, chunks, n-grams and lexical bundles. Lexical bundles in the main are referred to as extended collocations which are used more frequently that we expect by chance. They are building blocks o...

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Main Authors: Kashiha, Hadi, Chan, Swee Heng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2014
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/35949/1/Using%20multi-word%20units%20to%20take%20a%20stance%20in%20academic%20lectures.pdf
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author Kashiha, Hadi
Chan, Swee Heng
author_facet Kashiha, Hadi
Chan, Swee Heng
author_sort Kashiha, Hadi
collection UPM
description For years, word sequences which tend to co-occur have been studied under different terms, such as phraseology, chunks, n-grams and lexical bundles. Lexical bundles in the main are referred to as extended collocations which are used more frequently that we expect by chance. They are building blocks of discourse which have three main functions. Among them, stance expressions appear to be frequently used in academic discourse to reflect the speaker or writers’ attitudes towards different propositions. With this idea in mind, the present study aims to portray the use of stance expressions in academic lectures to find out the discourse functions that the stance bundles serve. To this aim, the most frequent stance expressions in six English lectures taken from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus were studied and analyzed in order to see to what extent stance expressions are used and how English lecturers use them. Results revealed that lecturers deployed 62 different word combinations to carry out stance functions. Among the functions, attitudinal/modality stance bundles were found to be more used – about twice as many as the epistemic stance bundles which was next in the hierarchy. Most of the stance expressions found in the corpus of the study were of personal rather than impersonal. The study of stance expressions in lectures delivered in English could provide insights into the significance of lexical bundles as building blocks of academic discourse in the context of their communicative functions.
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spelling upm.eprints-359492017-01-17T03:43:12Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/35949/ Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures Kashiha, Hadi Chan, Swee Heng For years, word sequences which tend to co-occur have been studied under different terms, such as phraseology, chunks, n-grams and lexical bundles. Lexical bundles in the main are referred to as extended collocations which are used more frequently that we expect by chance. They are building blocks of discourse which have three main functions. Among them, stance expressions appear to be frequently used in academic discourse to reflect the speaker or writers’ attitudes towards different propositions. With this idea in mind, the present study aims to portray the use of stance expressions in academic lectures to find out the discourse functions that the stance bundles serve. To this aim, the most frequent stance expressions in six English lectures taken from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus were studied and analyzed in order to see to what extent stance expressions are used and how English lecturers use them. Results revealed that lecturers deployed 62 different word combinations to carry out stance functions. Among the functions, attitudinal/modality stance bundles were found to be more used – about twice as many as the epistemic stance bundles which was next in the hierarchy. Most of the stance expressions found in the corpus of the study were of personal rather than impersonal. The study of stance expressions in lectures delivered in English could provide insights into the significance of lexical bundles as building blocks of academic discourse in the context of their communicative functions. Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2014-03 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/35949/1/Using%20multi-word%20units%20to%20take%20a%20stance%20in%20academic%20lectures.pdf Kashiha, Hadi and Chan, Swee Heng (2014) Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures. Journal of Language and Communication, 1 (1). pp. 31-39. ISSN 2289-649X http://www.fbmk.upm.edu.my/sp/page/2861/jlc_bm
spellingShingle Kashiha, Hadi
Chan, Swee Heng
Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title_full Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title_fullStr Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title_full_unstemmed Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title_short Using multi-word units to take a stance in academic lectures
title_sort using multi word units to take a stance in academic lectures
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/35949/1/Using%20multi-word%20units%20to%20take%20a%20stance%20in%20academic%20lectures.pdf
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