Pronominal Choice in Academic Discourse

2013

Academic writing has been recently defined as a social activity in disciplinary communities and cultures. As a result, there has been an increasing interest in the study of self as author, focusing on the way writers represent themselves in texts and how writers interact with readers. Additionally, authorial presence has been analysed across languages and across sections of the research article. This study explores the usage pattern of pronominal discourse functions across sections of 60 research articles in the fields of linguistics, psychology and educational research in English and Spanish. Drawing on a modified version of Tang and John's (1999) taxonomy of pronouns, I explain the frequency and usage of pronouns in each section of the research articles. The analysis of items revealed some differences and similarities in terms of linguistic choices writers make in a specific section of the research article in both languages.

Linguistica Pragensia, 2013

This paper addresses the issue of authorial presence in contemporary academic discourse. It considers factors influencing authorial presence choices and compares traditional assumptions to current practice in writing academic articles. While exploring the hypothesis that recently there has been a shift from the so-called scientific paradigm established by academic writing style guides to a more subjective mode of academic writing, the study discusses the results of a corpus-based research into authorial presence choices in a corpus of research articles in applied linguistics written by native speakers of English. The findings of the investigation show that the authors exploit various rhetorical functions of author-reference pronouns for maintaining the writer-reader relationship and construing an authoritative authorial voice. The paper also reports the results of a cross-cultural investigation into the ways Anglo-American linguists and Czech linguists approach writer-reader interac...

2018

Background: For decades scholars have been conducting research on English text complexity and influence of text metrics on its difficulty for different categories of readers. Recently, considerable steps have been taken towards better understanding of variations in metrics of Russian text of different genres. The current study is a pilot corpus-based analysis focused on differences in Russian texts on science and social studies as exemplified in two classroom textbooks for the 8th grade students of Russian secondary schools: (1) Social Studies by Nikitin A.F., Nikitina T.I. (hereinafter referred to as NIK); (2) Human anatomy, physiology, hygiene by A. M. Tsuzmer, O L. Petrishina, edited by V.V. Parin (hereinafter referred to as PAR). The present study extends the work in the area by analyzing differences in the use of pronouns in academic texts on Social studies and Science and their correlation with text complexity. This is the first study based on the sub-corpora of Russian Academic discourse Corpus (RAC) compiled by researchers of Kazan Federal University (see Solovyev et al 2018). Based on the intermediate results received in this study we plan to verify them on RAC the size of which has reached 1.75 mln. tokens. Literature Review: Personal pronouns in writing have been viewed as related to the author's voice and position which many textbooks lack, thus demonstrating that textbook writers address readers 'impersonally' and express some general views on the existing paradigm in the area. Based on the analysis of research articles from a wide variety of disciplines, Hyland (2001) comes to the conclusion that modern writers add 'the dialogic nature of persuasion in research writing' while addressing readers with personal pronouns. The idea was also mentioned by Cherry (1998) in his analysis of academic writing where the author points to the importance of writer's voice. suggests that personal pronouns allow authors to share their contributions and expect 'solidarity with readers'. Reporting on a high proportion of personal pronouns in the social sciences discourse Hyland (2001) defines it 'a valuable rhetorical strategy' used by writers to establish academic credibility. Regardless of the research on the number and range of pronouns used in the English academic discourse, no studies, to the best of our knowledge, have been conducted on the differences of the number and range of pronouns used in Russian classroom texts, which suggests that there is a need to have more studies to compare textbooks on Science and Social studies, thus contributing to solving the problem of defining text metrics correlating with text complexity. Research Question: The research question that guides this study is as follows: Are there significant differences in the number of personal, reflexive and possessive pronouns used in Russian classroom books on Science and Social studies?

REiLA: Journal of Research and Innovation in Language

This study aims at identifying the pronouns used in journal articles in terms of numbers and familiarity. The data taken from three different journals from three various fields, i.e., Education, Medics and Engineering. It consists of 21 articles taken from the current issue 2018, where this study started. It is selected conveniently due to its unique and fame as a discipline and reputable sources. In collecting the data, the researcher accessed the journals published by science direct (Q1 Scopus indexed). The analysis showed that the writer in these three international journals commonly used several pronouns interchangeably. However, some articles in journal from Medical and Engineering consistently used only one chosen pronoun, which was recorded found at different sections in the journal article. The data then coded and transcribed to ease the analysis in this researcher. As a result of the study, it was found out that the data showed 19 kinds of pronouns in total were used in th...

Discourse and Interaction, 2018

The tension between the need to present oneself in academic discourse unobtrusively on the one hand and promotionally on the other hand results in a range of options of hiding and revealing authorial presence in the text. The choice from among these options is, among other factors, determined by cultural background. This paper explores how Anglophone writers and Slovak authors writing in Slovak and in non-native English position themselves in linguistic research papers as individuals or as part of a society, and as participants or non-participants of the given communicative exchange. The study concludes that English academic culture is largely individualistic while Slovak academic culture is largely collectivist, a trait that Slovak authors also transmit into their writing in English for a mainly local audience.

Linguistics and Literature Studies, 2016

The paper investigates linguistic patterns of direct author reference in research papers in linguistics in English and Croatian. All research papers communicate empirically proven, verifiable findings of conducted scientific research, but the rhetorical practices of various disciplinary communities vary greatly in terms of what they consider appropriate ways of "academic persuasion", that is ways of communicating their research activities and findings in a persuasive way. The presented research is based on the assumption that, apart from differences in the rhetorical conventions of various disciplinary communities, there are also differences between the conventions of particular scientific communities within the same discipline. This assumption is tested by means of text analysis of two corpora of linguistics research articles written in English and Croatian. The use of the first person singular and plural is analyzed as a direct signal of writer presence in research articles, with a view to tracing down conventionalized rhetorical practices within a single discipline in two discrete scientific communities. In addition to the analysis of the preferred patterns of direct author reference, the text analysis is aimed at uncovering and comparing discourse functions of direct author reference in the two corpora. Interviews with members of the Croatian linguistics scientific community are conducted in order to find out in what ways those authors acquired the conventions of academic writing in linguistics, how much they emphasize their own authorial role in their research papers and what communicative effects they wish to achieve with the chosen rhetorical strategies. The contribution of this research is to shed light on the differences between the rhetorical practices of academic writing in linguistics in the two studied communities.

Journal of English as an International Language, 2014

In this paper, we examine the use of the first person plural forms "we", "us" and "our" when used to refer to single authors. For this purpose, we conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses on two master's theses and one PhD dissertation written by Turkish authors in their local context of the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. The results of the quantitative analysis showed that although the first person plural pronoun was used by all three authors, the PhD candidate's use of it was far more frequent, with a heavier focus in the methodology section. We also identified that the possessive adjective "our" was used mainly in the PhD dissertation, which we interpret as competent authorship in academic writing, giving her greater expertise in the field. We also found that the authors tended to use an inclusive "we" in the literature review more frequently to establish that knowledge ownership was shared by themselves and their readers. Their use of inclusive "we" in the results section, on the other hand, was rather for organizational purposes. The absence of first person plural forms in the abstracts and the authors' general avoidance of them in the introduction and recommendations sections was another important finding of our research. In the light of the results of this study, we suggest that any assertion that authors should avoid the first person plural in referring to themselves as single authors needs reconsidering, and authors' local contexts and reasons for their use of these pronouns need to be acknowledged in the era of English as a means of international academic communication.

Intercommunication among the members of academic discourse communities is usually achieved through certain defined genres that aim to achieve the community's goals. As a result, language analysts have focused their attention on how scientists from different fields manipulate their readership by using personal pronouns and persuade the reader of their claims. This study analyses the use of inclusive and exclusive pronominal signals in English and Spanish research articles and investigates whether there are differences between the two languages in terms of pronominal signals frequency and usage. A corpus of 60 research articles in English and Spanish in the fields of linguistics, education and psychology was used to analyse the pronominal items. The close qualitative analysis of items indicates that the use of exclusive pronouns is higher than inclusive ones in both data sets, and that the most common type of pronoun in both inclusive and exclusive uses is we/nosotros. However, the English speaking community shows an overall higher rate of personal pronouns. The results may indicate a tendency from the English speaking writers' to self-promote their competence as researchers in an international discourse community, whereas the Spanish speaking 9 Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 20 (2014)

A basic tenet of academic writing is the construction of authorial stance through the use of a variety of linguistic devices one of which is metadiscourse. Broadly speaking, it is a framework for linguistic devices that academic writers employ to get a credible in their discipline by manifesting their stance and interacting with their readers. It is widely accepted that the most effective manifestation of stance is conveyed through self-mentions. While they are a powerful source of the representation of self, they are not frequently applied by nonnative academic authors of English due to cultural conventions of disciplines, the influence of readers, and the lack of knowledge of the pragmatic role of these linguistic devices. This study looked at the employment of self-mentions in three corpora consisting of PhD dissertations written by American academic writers, Turkish-speaking academic writers of English who did their PhD at Turkish universities and Turkish-speaking academic writers of English who earned their PhD in the USA. The results revealed statistical differences among three corpora, which may be explained by cultural conventions and expectations of readers. It is worth to add that Turkish-speaking academic writers of English who earned their PhD in the USA created their stance through a combination of cultural conventions of Turkish and American academic community. In addition, this study sought to explain different types of identities inhabited by the use of first person pronouns across three corpora.

2003

Scientific discourse is usually thought to be impersonal. In fact, most style manuals encourage academics to use impersonal constructions in order to avoid making explicit their authorial presence in the texts. However, recent research has shown that in scientific writing the choice to announce the writer's presence in the discourse, mainly by means of the use of first person pronouns, is a rhetorical strategy frequently used by the members of the international English-speaking community for promotion and gaining accreditation for research claims. In this study, I have analysed the distribution and frequency of occurrence of first person pronouns in research article abstracts written in English and Spanish in the social sciences disciplines, in an attempt to reveal whether there is cross-linguistic variation in the use of personal attribution in the texts. I have also examined the possible semantic references and different socio-pragmatic functions that these pronouns may perform. The results showed a high tendency to impersonality in both languages. This indicates that most academics in English and Spanish favour strategies of depersonalisation: the use of agentless passive and impersonal constructions, which function as hedging devices that diminish the author's presence in the texts, avoiding personal responsibility for their claims.