“Please let me know” Lexical bundles in business emails by business English learners and working professionals

Lexical bundles are frequently recurring word sequences (e.g. as can be seen) that function as building blocks of discourse. This corpus-based study examined the use of four-word lexical bundles in business emails written by three groups of writers: intermediate business English learners, advanced business English learners, and working professionals. The prominent structural and functional characteristics of lexical bundles expressed in business emails were identified and compared across the three groups. The results showed that lexical bundles were related to the extent to which formality and politeness were expressed in written business communications. The advanced business English learners and working professionals used more structural and functional characteristics of lexical bundles that are characteristic of written conventions than did intermediate business English learners. Both intermediate and advanced learner groups used functionally different lexical bundles from those produced by the working professionals.