Critical Review of “Patterns and functions of I in academic writing: From a
local grammar approach” Journal Article by Jingjie Li and Ting Ye
Muhammad Rafif Izzuddin Arkan
“Patterns and functions of I in academic writing: From a local grammar approach” by Jingjie
Li and Ting Ye is a Linguistics journal article concerning the usage of the letter “I” on academic
journals (Li & Ye, 2022). It was accepted by ScienceDirect in 11th of October 2022 and was
published online in 19th of November 2022. The journal can be summarized as a research
conducted by Jingjie Li and Ting Ye regarding the usage of the letter “I” in academic journals.
Li and Ye uses a descriptive qualitative method of analysing and comparing academic journals
that belongs on the CARE (Collection of Academic Research Essays) corpus. The result of
their analysis founds that among the journals on the CARE corpus, they found 696 instances
of the usage of the letter “I”. They conclude that the usage of the letter “I” in academic journals,
with the basis of local grammar, functions as the way for the academic journal writers to refer
themselves as the architect, recounter of research, data analyser, or opinion holder/originator.
The end result of the journal is for the journal to be used for new journal writers to determine
the usage of the letter “I” in their journal to refer themselves and put an authorial presence in
their journal.
The downside that can be seen in this journal is the questionable decision to combine
grammatical formula and regular sentences in a wall-of-text paragraph, making the journal
rather difficult to read, especially to new journal writers, the intended demographic for this
journal.
References
Li, J., & Ye, T. (2022, October 11). Patterns and functions of I in academic writing: From a
local grammar approach. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1475-1585.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2022.101186
