Phrase frames in English pharmaceutical discourse: a corpus-driven study of intra-disciplinary register variation

• Authors: Łukasz Grabowski
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Focusing on the exploration of intra-disciplinary register variation in the pharmaceutical domain, this corpus-driven study attempts to describe the use, composition and discourse functions of phrase frames, that is, contiguous sequences of words identical except for one (Fletcher, 2002-2007), found in samples of four English pharmaceutical text types, such as patient information leaflets, summaries of product characteristics, clinical trial protocols and chapters/sections from academic textbooks on pharmacology. The study deals with a specific sub-type of phrase frames, that is, 4-word units with a variable slot in the medial position, e.g. be * with caution, to take * medicine. The results showed, among others, that the use and discourse functions of phrase frames vary across pharmaceutical text types, that the correlation between the frequency of phrase frames and their pattern variability may depend on a register or genre, and that it is justified to treat the discourse functions of phrase frames as distinct from those of their textual variants.

Keywords

EN

corpus linguistics; phraseology; phrase frames; register variation; pharmaceutical discourse

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 266-291

Dates

published

2015-09-30

Contributors

author

Łukasz Grabowski

• Opole University

References

• Bauer, L. (2008). Applied Clinical Pharmacokinetics. (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Medical.
• Biber, D. (2006). University Language. A Corpus-Based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Biber, D. (2009). A corpus-driven approach to formulaic language in English: multi-word patterns in speech and writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14(3), 275-311.
• Biber, D., & Conrad S. (2009). Register, genre and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). “If you look at…”: Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371-405.
• Bouayad-Agha, N. (2006). The Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) corpus. http://mcs.open.ac.uk/nlg/old_projects/pills/corpus/PIL/ (12 April 2012).
• Craig, Ch., & Stitzel, R. (Eds.). (2004). Modern Pharmacology with Clinical Applications (6th ed.). Lippincott: Williams & Wilkins.
• Fitzpatrick, S. (2005). The Clinical Trial Protocol. Marlow: The Institute of Clinical Research.
• Fletcher, W. (2002-2007). KfNgram. Annapolis: USNA. http://www.kwicfinder.com/kfNgram/kfNgramHelp.html (20 November, 2011)
• Fletcher, W. (2010). Phrases in English. http://phrasesinenglish.org/ (20 September, 2014)
• Forchini, P., & Murphy, A. (2008). N-grams in comparable specialized corpora. Perspectives on phraseology, translation and pedagogy. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 13(3), 351-367.
• Forsyth, R., & Grabowski, Ł. (2014). “Is there a formula for formulaic language?”. Paper presented at 6th Formulaic Language Research Network Conference. Swansea, UK, 14-16 July 2014. http://flarn.viviennerogers.info/wp-uploads/2014/02/Forsyth.pdf (6 August 2015) [paper under review].
• Fuster-Marquez, M. (2014). Lexical bundles and phrase frames in the language of hotel websites. English Text Construction, 7(1), 84-121.
• Grabowski, Ł. (2015a). “Keywords and lexical bundles within English pharmaceutical discourse: a corpus-driven description”. English for Specific Purposes, 38, 23-33.
• Grabowski, Ł. (2015b). Phraseology in English Pharmaceutical Discourse: A Corpus-Driven Study of Register Variation. Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego.
• Granger, S. (2014). A lexical bundle approach to comparing languages. Stems in English and French. In M-A. Lefer, & S. Vogeleer (Eds.), Genre- and register-related discourse features in contrast. Special issue of Languages in Contrast, 14(1), 58-72.
• Gray, B., & Biber D. (2013). Lexical frames in academic prose and conversation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18(1), 109-135.
• Hollinger, M. (2003). Introduction to Pharmacology (2nd ed.). London/New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical LBs and disciplinary variation. English for Specific Purposes, 27, 4-21.
• Koester, A. (2006). Investigating Workplace Discourse. London: Routledge.
• Martinez, R., & Schmitt N. (2012). A Phrasal Expressions List. Applied Linguistics, 33(3), 299-320.
• Montalt Resurreccio, V., & Gonzalez Davies, M. (2007). Medical Translation Step by Step. Translation Practices explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
• O’Keefe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter R. (2007). From Corpus to Classroom. Language Use and Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pęzik, P. (2013). Wybrane aspekty reprezentatywności małych i średnich korpusów. In W. Chlebda (Ed.), Na tropach korpusów. W poszukiwaniu optymalnych zbiorów tekstów (pp. 45-58). Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego.
• Römer, U. (2009). English in Academia: Does Nativeness Matter? Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 20(2). 89-100.
• Römer, U. (2010). Establishing the phraseological profile of a text type. The construction of meaning in academic book reviews. English Text Construction, 3(1), 95-119.
• Rowntree, D. (2000). Statistics Without Tears. London: Penguin Books.
• Scott, M. (2008). WordSmith Tools 5.0. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.
• Simpson-Vlach, R., & Ellis, N. (2010). An Academic Formulas List: New Methods in Phraseology Research. Applied Linguistics, 31(4), 487-512.
• Stangroom, J. (2014). Social Science Statistics. http://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/spearman (10 August, 2014).
• Stubbs, M. (2007). Quantitative data on multi-word sequences in English: the case of the word 'world'. In M. Hoey, M. Mahlberg, M. Stubbs, & W. Teubert (Eds.), Text, Discourse and Corpora (pp. 163-190). London: Continuum.
• The European Clinical Trials Register. https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/index.html (2 February, 2012)
• Tiedemann, J. (2009). News from OPUS – A Collection of Multilingual Parallel Corpora with Tools and Interfaces. In N. Nicolov, K. Bontcheva, G. Angelova, & R. Mitkov (Eds.), Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, 5 (pp. 237-248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Wang, D., & Bakhai, A. (Eds.). (2006). Clinical Trials: A Practical Guide to Design, Analysis, and Reporting. London/Chicago: Remedica.
• Wray, A., & Perkins M. (2000). The functions of formulaic language: an integrated model. Language and Communication 20, 1-28.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/rela-2015-0025