English in the context of European integration: A corpus-driven analysis of lexical bundles in English EU documents

This study extends research into the use of English as a lingua franca in the European context by investigating the most frequent word combinations in English documents issued by EU institutions. As there is little research on the use of the English language within the European Union for ESP pedagogic purposes, as part of a larger scale analysis, the aim of this study is to explore the structures and functions of lexical bundles in English EU texts, and to draw conclusions regarding their relevance for language courses on English for EU purposes Findings suggest that the structural and functional classification of EU lexical bundles show similarities with the language of university textbooks and academic prose in general However, written English EU discourse applies lexical bundles in higher frequencies, which suggests that a fairly large proportion of EU texts are made up of formulaic patterns. The pedagogical implications of this study highlight the importance of explicit instruction in this type of word combination in courses on English for EU purposes. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved