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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Educational Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1545355

This article is part of the Research Topic Demystifying Academic Writing in Higher Education: A Process View on Academic Textual Production View all 7 articles

Lexical bundles in psychology lectures and textbooks: a contrastive

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 2 Department of English Language and Translation, College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Research on lexical bundles (LBs) has explored various academic domains; however, the field of psychology has received comparatively less attention. This study aims to address this gap by contrastively investigating the use of LBs in two sub-corpora: videotaped lectures and textbook chapters. Four-word bundles that meet a predetermined set of selection criteria are elicited and subsequently analyzed both structurally and functionally. The results indicate significant variation in the number of bundle types and tokens between the two registers, with the spoken register exhibiting a much broader variety of LBs than the written register. Structural analysis reveals that clausal constructions predominantly characterize LBs in the spoken psychology register, whereas phrasal patterns are more common in the written register. Additionally, the functional analysis highlights that stance bundles constitute the most prevalent category in the academic lecture corpus, while referential bundles emerge as the largest functional category in the academic texts. This variation reinforces the widely accepted notion that LBs are sensitive to register differences. Pedagogically, the study provides English for Specific Purposes instructors with data-based lists of LBs that can be integrated into classroom activities or tailored to develop instructional materials on academic writing and speech. Given that LBs are classified into distinct structural and functional groups, moreover, instructors can draw on the two lists for more register-focused, awareness-raising activities that help psychology students approximate an expert-like writing style.

    Keywords: psychology register, Lexical bundles, corpus analysis, Register variation, Writing instruction

    Received: 14 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Alasmary. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Abdullah Alasmary, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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