In order to spot key topics in research frontier and compare the similarities and differences between domestic and foreign research, this study conducts a knowledge graph analysis of research papers on L2 lexical chunks from Chinese and foreign core journals during 1998-2022 with CiteSpace5.7.R5, and depicts future development trends. It is identified that related research presents an increase in various fields and interdisciplines and stable development with focus on second language acquisition and teaching. A predominant corpus-based analysis is the recent research trend in Chinese and foreign research. Foreign research shows progressive and innovative hotspots which are more concerned with individual differences of learners, dictionary compilation and text classification and annotation, as well as psychological representation and processing of lexical chunks. Moreover, research methods of foreign research combine computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. In contrast, domestic research hotspots are sporadic and disconnected, exploring the use of lexical chunks and measuring the lexical chunks proficiency of learners. Therefore, it is suggested that domestic researchers further interdisciplinary validation of L2 lexical chunks studies so as to expand the width and depth of research on L2 lexical chunks.