Collocational Networks: Interlocking Patterns of Lexis in a Corpusof Plant Biology Research Articles

Scientific sublanguages evolve in accordance with the needs of the Discourse Community (DC) with new words being coined and a gradual change in the meanings expressed through existing lexis. In so far as the central concepts relate to each other, similar relational patterns emerge in their surface constructs, words. Consequently, the "frame of reference" for a given lexical item is to be found in the genre-specific lexical environment of that word. This is revealed through collocation, as measured using Mutual Information statistics. It is further posited that the conceptual frameworks of scientific sublanguages can be visualised through closed set collocational networks. These networks may be demonstrated locally through digraphs, but the network is posited as a more suitable means of demonstrating the complexity of relationships between individual items. The collocational networks are seen as forming the unique frame of reference for any "word" within a given sublanguage