Article published in:
International Journal of Learner Corpus Research
Vol. 8:1 (2022) ► pp. 1–30
Research articles

“Please let me know”

Lexical bundles in business emails by business English learners and working professionals

| University of Cincinnati
| University of Cincinnati
| University of Cincinnati

Lexical bundles are frequently recurring word sequences (e.g. as can be seen) that function as building blocks of discourse. This corpus-based study examined the use of four-word lexical bundles in business emails written by three groups of writers: intermediate business English learners, advanced business English learners, and working professionals. The prominent structural and functional characteristics of lexical bundles expressed in business emails were identified and compared across the three groups. The results showed that lexical bundles were related to the extent to which formality and politeness were expressed in written business communications. The advanced business English learners and working professionals used more structural and functional characteristics of lexical bundles that are characteristic of written conventions than did intermediate business English learners. Both intermediate and advanced learner groups used functionally different lexical bundles from those produced by the working professionals.

Keywords: lexical bundles, business emails, workplace discourse, business English learners
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Business emails
    • 2.2Lexical bundles
  • 3.The current study
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Corpus data
    • 4.2Lexical bundle identification
    • 4.3Lexical bundle classification
    • 4.4Statistical analysis
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Structural analysis of lexical bundles in the BEL‑B, BEL‑C, and WP corpora
    • 5.2Functional analysis of lexical bundles in the BEL‑B, BEL‑C, and WP corpora
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 March 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.20019.xia
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