Lexical Bundles in University First Year Economics Textbooks

Lexical bundles (LBs) have been a rich topic of study for the last few decades. The present corpus-based study identifies the most frequently used LBs in first year Economics textbooks used in a number of Canadian universities. LBs are classified according to the functional taxonomy of LBs (Biber et al., 2004a). The First Year Economics Textbook Corpus (FYETC) is a specialized corpus built especially for this study. WordSmith Tools 6.0 was used to extract the LBs from FYETC. To verify the results, three judges reviewed the FYETC LBs list. The results show that referential bundles are dominant in FYETC, and quantity reference is the biggest subcategory. The final product of the study is a list of 165 LBs classified functionally along with some suggestions to improve the performance of the functional taxonomy. The findings can be of interest to EAP/ESP teachers, curriculum designers, and/or business and economics students.