Finding a Voice: Lexical Bundles in Literary Writing in the Omani EFL Context
Authorial voice is an integral component of literary writing where interpretation and analysis play an important role. Based on Hyland (2008), this study focuses on functional lexical bundles, including text, participant, and referential-oriented bundles, to analyze samples of undergraduate students’ writings in literature in an L1 Arabic EFL context. This article aims to investigate the extent to which students’ written essays in literature used lexical bundles as a linguistic resource to assert their individual voice and stylistic identity. The study is significant as it contributes to an understanding of how lexical bundle usage shapes authorial voice among undergraduates, particularly in an L1 Arabic EFL context. The present corpus comprises 157 undergraduate literary essays from a public university in Oman. The corpus is over 90, 000 words. Analysis of frequency, variation, and functional roles is done using Ant Conc 4.0 software. The study adopts a corpus-based quantitative analysis complemented by qualitative contextual analysis by integrating quantitative analysis with textual interpretation to assess learners’ communicative and argumentative competence in academic literary discourse. Findings suggest that students tend to use research-oriented bundles of place and time, with minimal usage of participant bundles, which are key markers of their authorial voice. The study further recommends a targeted intervention through bundle-usage teaching to clarify voice, agency, and authorship in literary analysis.