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Article published In:
English World-Wide
Vol. 40:3 (2019) ► pp.299–324

Lexical bundles in conversation across Englishes

What can core and peripheral bundles reveal?

| Hong Kong Baptist University
| The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

This study adopts Nelson’s (2014) methodological framework to investigate core and peripheral lexical bundles (i.e. recurrent multi-word sequences) in conversation, using data from the British, Canadian, Singapore, and Hong Kong components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The overlap and non-overlap comparisons reveal (dis)similarities in the use of bundles across the four World Englishes (WEs). Our findings suggest that in terms of discourse building blocks, the more advanced a variety is according to Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model of New Englishes, the more lexical bundles it shares with the common core in conversation. Canadian English (CanE) shares the most common ground with British English (BrE). As a nascent variety, Hong Kong English (HKE) differs most from BrE, while Singapore English falls between CanE and HKE. Though the results do not correlate with Schneider’s Dynamic Model at the level of recurring chunks, they allow us to test predictions of WEs models. Quantitative and qualitative analyses enable the identification of bundles with significantly high frequency in each regional variety, thus enriching comparative research of WEs.

Keywords: corpus-based, lexical bundles, conversation, core and periphery, Schneider’s Dynamic Model, World Englishes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Existing research on lexical bundles in spoken discourse
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus and English varieties
    • 3.2Identification of core and peripheral bundles
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overview of core and peripheral bundles in conversation
    • 4.2Intervarietal comparison of bundles in conversation
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 24 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00033.hua
References

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ICE Canada
International Corpus of English. Compiled at the University of Alberta.
ICE Great Britain
International Corpus of English. Compiled at University College London.
ICE Hong Kong
International Corpus of English. Compiled at The University of Hong Kong and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
ICE Singapore
International Corpus of English. Compiled at the National University of Singapore.
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