Argumentation Strategies in Nigerian English Academic Writing: A Genre-based Empirical Study

Argumentation structure in academic writing reflects both the disciplinary conventions of knowledge construction and the rhetorical traditions of the writer's educational culture, and Nigerian English academic writers may deploy argumentation strategies that diverge from those expected by international journal audiences in consequential ways. This study empirically examines argumentation strategies in Nigerian English academic writing using a genre-based framework, comparing structural and rhetorical features of argumentation in published Nigerian journal articles with counterpart articles published in international English-medium journals in the same disciplines. A parallel corpus of two hundred articles, one hundred Nigerian and one hundred international, in the disciplines of Applied Linguistics and Economics was assembled and analysed for claim type distribution, warrant provision patterns, counter-argument engagement, and evidence citation density. Move analysis following an argumentation-focused analytical scheme identified systematically lower counter-argument engagement in Nigerian journal articles across both disciplines, with only twelve percent of Nigerian articles showing explicit counter-argument acknowledgment compared to sixty-one percent in international articles. Evidence citation density is significantly lower in Nigerian articles in Economics but not in Applied Linguistics, suggesting discipline-specific variation. Warrant provision is predominantly authority-based across both corpora but Nigerian articles show higher proportions of unwarranted assertion. The study develops an argumentation awareness training module for Nigerian postgraduate writing development, grounded in the contrastive findings. Keywords: argumentation, academic writing, genre analysis, Nigerian English, contrastive rhetoric.