Generic Patterns of Verbs in Literature Review: Analysis of Dissertations in the field of English Studies in Pakistan

The encoding of the literature review in dissertations requires an understanding of the generic patterns of the use and functions of verbs. In the current study, the frequently used types and categories of verbs are identified and their generic patterns in terms of functions are analyzed in the literature review chapter of dissertations in the field of English studies in Pakistan. By adopting a Corpus-Based research approach, sample corpora of the literature review chapters from Ph.D. dissertations in the field of English literature, linguistics, and English language teaching were developed. A keyword list of different types and categories of verbs was generated by following the ‘Typology of verbs’ (Frels, Onwuegbuzie, & Slate 2010). Frequencies of these types and categories of verbs are analyzed by using Antconc (version: 3.4.1.0) and the generic patterns in terms of their functions are studied in the corpora of literature review chapters of dissertations in the field of English studies in Pakistan. The study is significant as it has described the verbal patterns of Pakistani writers in encoding review of literature in dissertations and compares it with the generic patterns of verbs in the literature review sections of research articles by native writers.