Local grammars and discourse acts in academic writing: A case study of exemplification in Linguistics research articles

Local grammar is an approach to linguistic analysis and explanation which seeks to account for one function or discourse act only. This study employs the local grammar approach to explore discourse acts that are frequently performed in academic writing and further discusses the pedagogical implications and applications of local grammars in EAP teaching, aiming to present an alternative approach to exploring and teaching academic writing. The study first demonstrates the applicability of local grammars in accounting for discourse acts in academic writing, by focusing on a case study of exemplification in Linguistics research articles. It then argues that the practice of local grammar analysis helps to further raise academic writers' awareness of the patterned nature of language in use, not only in terms of lexical-grammatical patternings, but also discourse-semantic patternings. Applications of local grammar research on discourse acts in EAP teaching are further discussed. (c) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.