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Title:	A lexical investigation of engineering English: a corpus-based approach
Authors:	Noorli Khamis (P37989)
Supervisor:	Imran Ho bin Abdullah, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Keywords:	Contrastive linguistics Lexicology English language -- Technical English English language -- Study and teaching -- Data processing English language -- Discourse analysis Corpora (Linguistics) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia -- Dissertations Dissertations, Academic -- Malaysia
Issue Date:	17-May-2012
Description:	The application of corpus studies in ESP has led to the discovery of useful information on specialised languages. In linguistics studies, analyses with corpus-based data offers a systematic means to isolate and provide indications about important lexical, grammatical or textual issues to deal with in ESP classes. In view of this promising means, this study attempts to describe a specialised language from the perspective of its lexical behaviour in academic written texts. To achieve this objective, a corpus data for one of the Engineering English courses, English for Electronics and Computer Engineering (E2C), in a local institution, the Technical University of Malaysia, Melaka (UTeM), was collected and examined. E2C comprises written texts from two sub-corpora reflecting two genres of English used by the students of Electronics and Computer Engineering: online engineering journal articles (EJC) and engineering textbooks (RBC). Drawing on the lexical approach as the underlying framework, the investigation into the lexical (collocational) and grammatical (colligational) properties of the specialised language were conducted. Mainly, two contrastive procedures were carried out: one was between E2C and BNC (British National Corpus) to differentiate the specialised language from General English, and another was between EJC and RBC to gain insights into the distinguishing features of the genres. The comparison between the two genres was also essential to substantiate the description of E2C. Several analyses and software tools were employed including the wordlists (frequency, keyword and key-keyword) analysis of the Wordsmith 4 software and correspondence analysis (CA). Further investigations on selected significant word forms from the specialised corpus included concordance lines observation, three-word clusters and plot displays. The study highlights the lexical similarities and dissimilarities that form the characteristics of the specialised corpora as opposed to General English. The findings clearly indicate that the basic difference between general English and E2C is the lexis. E2C lexis proves to display more technical and academic traits. The finding also reveals that even between the text types (or genres) of E2C, one type of text can be found more ‘specialised’ than the other. The investigation according to the main word categories: function words, nouns and verbs, further enhances the technical quality of this specialised language from the collocational and colligational perspectives. The information on the language attributes is definitely very crucial for EST/ESP/EAP course designers, material developers and language instructors in determining what exactly constitutes an Engineering English. Most importantly, the study promotes the integration of lexical approach and corpus work for more systematic investigations into specialized language for ESP/EAP.,‘Certification of Master’s/Doctoral Thesis’ is not available,Ph.D.
Pages:	364
Call Number:	P128.C68N645 2012 tesis
Publisher:	UKM, Bangi
Appears in Collections:	Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan

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