Vocabulary and English for Specific Purposes Research - Averil Coxhead 2018

Introduction
Multi-word units and metaphor in ESP

This chapter focuses on multi-word units and metaphor in vocabulary research in ESP. According to Nation (2016, p. 71), ’Multi-word units are phrases that are made up of words that frequently occur together’. Examples of multi-word units include collocations made up of two words (e.g. heavy work, heavy heart) through to lexical bundles of three or more words (e.g. on the other hand; in the case of). The chapter begins with a short discussion of why research in this area is important. The next section looks into various types of multi-word units, including two-word collocations, lexical bundles and academic formulas. Examples in this section include corpus-based research into general and subject-specific EAP, based on professional academic writing, textbooks and learner corpora. The section on metaphor draws predominantly on research into EAP and ESP in Engineering, Health Communication and Computer Science. The chapter ends with limitations for research into multi-word units and metaphor in ESP.