A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Lexical Bundles in Authentic and Textbook English Business Emails

Abstract

This study investigates lexical bundle types found in authentic English business emails and sample emails in business English textbooks in order to identify their similarities and differences. The data employed in the study were sample emails from 77 business English textbooks and emails sourced from the Enron Corporation, representing authentic English business emails. The structural and functional categorizations of lexical bundles from Biber et al. (2004) and Biber (2006) were used as frameworks for the analysis. Findings show that structural categories of lexical bundles in textbooks and those in authentic emails are generally similar while functional categories are noticeably different. Although there are more lexical bundle types in the textbook email corpus, most of them actually belong to the same categories, pointing to a limited range of functional categories of lexical bundles presented in business English textbooks. This leads to a major observation that forms of expressions tend to outweigh their functions in the way textbooks present emails for pedagogical purposes. It is therefore suggested that the functional dimension of linguistic expressions be given more attention in business English teaching.