From the perspective of: Functional Analysis of formulaic sequences in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

Abstract

The current study explored two levels of formulaic sequences, general and discipline specific, in a corpus of 200 applied linguistics research articles and examined the functions they serve. Using Antconc software, in total, 2563 sequences were identified including 593 general and 1370 discipline-specific sequences. These numbers account for 30% and 70% of the full list of formulaic sequences, covering 8.54% in comparison to 7.76% of one-million-word corpus, respectively. Functional analysis revealed that general and discipline-specific formulaic sequences follow the same pattern, with text-oriented sequences making it to the top of the list followed by research-oriented and participant-oriented sequences. Discipline-specific sequences surpassed general sequences, providing evidence for the existence of more diversity of discipline-specific formulaic sequences. Structural and functional correlates also showed that the form of formulaic sequences is closely related to the functional use of the sequences rather than whether they are general or specific domain.