Academic English melting pot: Reconsidering the use of lexical bundles in academic writing

Russian Journal of Linguistics. 2024. Vol. 28. No. 3. P. 615–632.

Gritsenko E.S, Kamou O.M.

Many studies addressing the differences in the use of lexical bundles in academic English by L1 and L2 writers interpret these differences as a deficiency or deviation that L2 writers need to eliminate. In this paper, we argue that this “deviant” use is not essentially the product of insufficient knowledge of English and/or Anglophone norms of academic writing but rather a transfer of the academic conventions of non-native speakers, rooted in their local culture. To confirm this hypothesis, we reviewed some previous studies and analyzed the use of lexical bundles in dissertations and research papers written in English by graduate and post-graduate students from Russia and Cameroon. The Russian corpus was compiled from publicly available papers and dissertations of bachelor and master’s students at the Higher School of Economics; the Cameroonian corpus was compiled from papers contributed by students and teachers of the University of Yaoundé I. All in all, 59 texts have been analyzed: 38 Russian papers (576,186 words) and 21 Cameroonian papers (680,146 words). Using content analysis, corpus analysis, and the comparative method, we found that the most significant differences in the use of lexical bundles were connected with the peculiarities of the Russian academic style and the norms of Cameroonian communication culture. One of the key findings was that Cameroonian students use fewer participant-oriented bundles, which indicate the authorial presence, and rely more on text-oriented bundles, which suggest a cultural emphasis on deference and avoidance of criticism. Our study, therefore, reinforces the need to consider a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to the use of lexical bundles by L2 academic writers and take into account their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It will expand our knowledge of the linguistic features of different varieties of English and provide a deeper understanding of academic traditions in different languages and cultures.

Keywords: контактная вариантология английского языка, corpus analysis, корпусный анализ, академический английский язык, World Englishes, academic English, транслингвизм, translanguaging, lexical bundles, лексические связки