A Phraseological multi-discipline approach to vocabulary selection for English for academic purposes

Abstract

This study is motivated by concerns about the adequacy of current corpus-based methods for the selection of vocabulary in studies of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) lexis. It is hypothesised that lists of general-academic vocabulary cannot reflect differences in word meaning between disciplines, and furthermore, that discrete-item wordlists cannot account for the role of context in conditioning meaning. The relatively recent turn towards discipline-specific lists of phrases represents a positive development in this regard. However, its impact is limited by the methods of phrase extraction typically employed.

These beliefs are tested via an innovative corpus-based experiment which compares the syntagmatic patterns of frequently occurring verbs in a corpus of research articles from the disciplines of history, microbiology, and management studies. The results demonstrate that, in many cases, the prototypical meaning of a given verb varies according to the discipline it is found in. Moreover, in order to fully appreciate these differences, a means of phrase extraction which accounts for both syntactic and semantic concerns is necessary.

In addition to the methodological contribution represented by the experimental procedure, the study demonstrates how approaches to language which might be termed phraseological provide plausible explanations for many of the differences in verb behaviour observed in the corpus. From a practical perspective, the combination of the findings with best practice in EAP pedagogy and lexicography allows the creation of guidelines for, and an illustrative example of, useful lexicographical resources for the EAP community.