An analysis of the structural and functional patterns of four-word lexical bundles in legal spoken English

One of the most important aspects of developing native-like proficiency in a second language is the formation of lexical bundles, or recurring word strings. Earlier research has focused on analyzing lexical bundles within specialized academic contexts. For the purposes of applied linguistics and English language teaching and learning, this study aimed to investigate the forms, structures, and functions of four-word lexical bundles in legal spoken English. This research utilized data from the popular TV series Law & Order, focusing on law enforcement and prosecutors' collaboration in bringing criminals to justice. Since its premiere on September 13, 1990, the show has aired 17 seasons comprising 295 episodes. Two frameworks were adapted for use in this research: Biber et al.'s (1999) and Biber et al.'s (2004) approach for the structural categorization of lexical bundles. The research showed that there are 132 different bundle forms within the legal spoken corpus. Lexical bundles in the legal spoken corpus were constructed using a wide variety of grammatical structures. This demonstrates that the lexical bundles in the legal spoken corpus are clause-based rather than phrase-based. While stance bundles are prevalent in this spoken conversation dataset, four-word bundles that articulate with specific conversation qualities are less common. The research also uncovered a novel class of bundles consisting of pronoun + verb phrase fragments that do not conform to the aforementioned structural patterns.