Register and English for Specific Purposes pedagogyEnglish for Military Navy submariners

Resum

This study examines English for Military Navy Submariners (SE), an under researched area in English for Specific Purposes and Specialized Languages. Using corpus linguistics and corpus-based pedagogy, this research addresses the linguistic analysis of the register and related pedagogic applications. Using phrase constituency grammar and multidimensional analysis, our research identifies modification patterns and underlying dimensions of use in the two corpora analysed. Further, a Data Driven Learning (DDL) semiexperimental design uses some of the corpus data with professional Navy submariners. SE is characterized by heavy nominal premodification, low adjective premodification, low prepositional phrase postmodification and by the predominant use of appositive nouns in postmodifying slots. The multidimensional analysis of the register analysed discovered significant differences between the two corpora. These findings can inform professional language teaching by providing insight into the patterns of variation across dimensions of use. The converging and diverging patterns of variation found in the two corpora analysed is a first step in the integration of register variation in corpus-based curricula and materials.