“We define X as …”: A local grammar of definition in linguistics research articles and its pedagogical value

Abstract

Local grammars have been shown to be useful for accounting for discourse acts (e.g., exemplification, evaluation) in academic writing. Focusing on the specific discourse act of defining, this study develops a local grammar of definition in Linguistics research articles and further discusses its implications and applications for EAP writing research and pedagogy. Using a corpus compiled from published research articles, the study searched for a set of lexicogrammatical markers to retrieve instances of definition and the subsequent analyses identified 36 local grammar patterns of definition. The pedagogical implications and applications are then discussed in relation to EAP course design and the development of local grammar informed EAP teaching materials. The study concludes that systematically developing local grammars of discourse acts of importance in academic writing is a worthwhile undertaking and the findings of such research can usefully inform EAP writing pedagogy.