A Bibliometric Analysis of Trends and Hotspots in International Collocation Research in Recent 20 Years

Utilizing CiteSpace, the scientometric analysis software, this paper provides a systematic analyze of the overall development trend of international collocation research in the past 20 years. Research data were retrieved via the Web of Science SSCI database during the period of 2004-2023. In terms of the publication status, highly cited literature, highly cited authors, research hotspots and fronts, the results demonstrate: (1) the UK, China, and the US are the top three countries in terms of the number of publications, and Saudi Arabia has an outstanding burstness of publications, with Saudi Arabian authors such as Sonbul and El-dakhs contributing to the burstness. (2) Sinclair, Wray and Laufer are the most highly cited authors, among which Sinclair's ‘idiom principle’ is the theoretical basis of many collocation studies; the topics of highly cited literature focus on collocation processing and acquisition, collocation teaching and collocation lexical analysis, which represent the hotspots of collocation research. (3) Five research hotspots in the past 20 years were identified through the co-citation cluster analysis: the research on collocation processing and acquisition includes factors affecting the processing and psychological reality; the research on collocation teaching includes the collocation teaching for both L2 and English for Academic Purposes (EAP); in the analyses of the characteristics and composition of lexical collocations, the former focuses on the collocational vocabulary network and phrase complexity, while the latter includes collocational word list and lexical bundle research, highlighting disciplinary variation and group differences, with which Data-Driven Learning is the trend of collocation teaching, for which the research on collocation processing and acquisition provides theoretical support; in the collocation output studies, the types of output include written and spoken, and the domains include L2 and EAP; collocation competence involves assessing learners' vocabulary knowledge, writing, speaking and overall language proficiency.