Register analysis and ESP pedagogy: Noun-phrase modification in a corpus of English for military navy submariners

Abstract

Abstract Research in Maritime English (ME) has paid no attention to the range of texts and language to which Navy submariners are exposed during their training and professional careers. This research looked at Noun Phrase (NP)modification patterns in a longitudinal corpus of Submarine English (SE) professional texts in the Cartagena Military Submarine Corpus (CMSC). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that SE is characterised by heavy nominal premodification, low adjective premodification, low prepositional phrase postmodification and by the predominant use of appositive nouns in postmodifying slots. These distinctive features of SE call for a register-sensitive pedagogy that unpack these characteristics and present them in context. We argue that the contribution of corpus linguistics is essential to explore registers which, for different reasons, have not been addressed or described linguistically in the past. Similarly, we maintain that the examination and teaching of NPs is essential to understand current trends in professional writing and communication.