تحلیل پیکره ای بسته های لغوی در مقالات نویسندگان ایرانی و بین المللی رشته آموزش زبان انگلیسی

the present dissertation aims to investigate four-word lexical bundles in applied linguistics research articles by iranian and internationally-published writers. the aims of this study are two-fold: first of all, attempts have been made to create a comprehensive list of the most commonly used four-word lexical bundles categorized by their type and token frequency, their structural characteristics and the functions they serve in texts. second, comparisons are drawn between the bundles used by iranian writers whose articles have been published in journals inside iran, and international writers whose articles have been printed in international journals in the field of applied linguistics. to this end, four word lexical bundles were extracted from a corpus of 400 research articles taken from eight established journals of the field. the articles were separated into four sub-sections (abstracts, introductions and literature reviews, methodology sections and results, discussions and conclusions). the resulting corpus of almost 2.5 million words was analyzed using concordance software as well as a program specifically written for the purpose of this study. following the extraction of lexical bundles, they were categorized both structurally and functionally using biber, conrad and cortes’ (2004) structural and functional taxonomies. the analyses reveal that differences exist in two directions. first of all, various parts of the research article make use of different structural and functional categories of lexical bundles. while some bundles were found across all observed sections, others were only seen in one particular section and not found in others. second, iranian writers tend to differ from their internationally-published counterparts in their use of four-word lexical bundles. these differences could be seen in terms of frequency, structure and function. the findings of this study, in addition to providing an inventory of lexical bundles which could be capitalized by academic writing instructors and materials developers, bring to attention the different functions that lexical bundles can perform in applied linguistics research articles, and how these functions allow writers to achieve the communicative goals in a manner expected by readers and members of the target genre community. these functions are of primary importance to novice writers and those who wish to write in an academically-appropriate style. the pedagogical and linguistic implications of the obtained list of lexical bundles are discussed, and suggestions into possible future research in this area are provided.