Register analysis and ESP pedagogy: Noun-phrase modification in a corpus of English for military navy submariners
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Publication Date
2019-01Journal Title
English for Specific Purposes
ISSN
0889-4906
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
53
Pages
118-130
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Noguera-Díaz, Y., & Perez-Paredes, P. (2019). Register analysis and ESP pedagogy: Noun-phrase modification in a corpus of English for military navy submariners. English for Specific Purposes, 53 118-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2018.06.002
Abstract
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Research in Maritime English (ME) has paid no attention to the range of texts and language to which Navy submariners are exposed during their training and professional careers. This research looked at Noun Phrase (NP)modification patterns in a longitudinal corpus of Submarine English (SE) professional texts in the Cartagena Military Submarine Corpus (CMSC). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that SE is characterised by heavy nominal premodification, low adjective premodification, low prepositional phrase postmodification and by the predominant use of appositive nouns in postmodifying slots. These distinctive features of SE call for a register-sensitive pedagogy that unpack these characteristics and present them in context. We argue that the contribution of corpus linguistics is essential to explore registers which, for different reasons, have not been addressed or described linguistically in the past. Similarly, we maintain that the examination and teaching of NPs is essential to understand current trends in professional writing and communication.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2018.06.002
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/286427
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