Lexical Density V.S. Grammatical Intricacy: How Are They Related?

Abstract

Lexical density and grammatical intricacy are the two devices that should be taken into account in academic writing. The paper aims at explaining how lexical density (LD) and grammatical intricacy (GI) shown in students’ academic writing. The data were taken from the introduction section of thesis proposals written by graduate students of Universitas Negeri Padang. Based on the data analysis, the level of lexical density was found adequate enough and the level of grammatical intricacy was high. It is slightly different from theories, saying that the lower grammatical intricacy of a text, the higher its lexical density. However, it shows that the level of lexical density decreased because of the number of clause complexes found in the introduction section of the thesis. Moreover, the result of data analysis also showed that there was a significant correlation between lexical density and grammatical intricacy.