Referential expressions in English learner argumentative writing

• Autores: Deise P. Dutra, Tony Berber Sardinha
• Localización: Twenty years of learner corpus research: looking back, moving ahead / Sylviane Granger (ed. lit.), Gaëtanelle Gilquin (ed. lit.), Fanny Meunier (ed. lit.), 2013, ISBN 978-2-87558-199-0, págs. 117-127
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The aim of this paper is to report our findings of the investigation on lexical bundle types in learner argumentative writing. Our data consisted of the International Corpus of Learning English (ICLE), the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS), and Br-ICLE, the Brazilian sub-corpus of ICLE. Our classification followed the functional taxonomy proposed by Biber et al. (2004) and expanded by Simpson-Vlach & Ellis (2010). The research methodology included the extraction of 3-, 4- and 5-word bundles followed by manual and automatic categorization in broad categories (referential expressions, stance expressions and discourse organizing functions) as well as 18 specific subcategories (e.g. intangible and tangible framing attributes and quantity specification). Second, the most frequent categories in each corpus were identified. Third, we focused on the most frequent one: referential expressions. Fourth, the chi-square test, cluster analysis and ANOVA were used to detect significant differences across corpora. The subcategories that contributed the most to statistically significant differences across corpora were: specification of intangible framing attributes, identification and focus, and contrast and comparison. The results also show that there is more internal lexical variation of nouns in the intangible framing attribute bundles produced by native than non-native speakers. The conclusions are that referential expressions might need to receive more attention in pedagogical contexts so their discourse functions become more salient to learners.