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First person pronouns in academic writing : a comparative study of journal articles in literature and computer science
Author
Lau, Louwena Seok Wan
Supervisor
Cheung, Yin Ling
Abstract
It is now recognised that authorial voice is central to academic writing but to date, research is unable to determine conclusively exactly where it lies on a page. A substantial body of work has investigated the use of first person pronouns in academic writing as clear markers of a writer’s presence in a text. These studies found that first person pronouns are multi-faceted resources performing a variety of purposes within a text. However, the forms and frequency of these pronouns and the functional roles behind them are not totally left to the personal preferences of individual writers. Rather, they are guided by disciplinary conventions to ensure acceptance by their disciplinary community. This study scrutinises how expert writers in the contrasting disciplines of Literature, a field considered highly interpretive, and Computer Science, an empirical field, use first person pronouns. The hypothesis is that in the absence of objective fact, Literature writers resort to frequent use of first person pronouns backed by stronger authorial roles to build credibility and convince readers, while Computer Science writers would avoid them. A total of 160 articles culled from 11 journals from both fields are analysed, to capture typical examples of expert writing in these disciplines. The findings suggest that the general dichotomy between hard and soft sciences may not apply in all cases. Even though all selected papers were single-authored, the pronoun we was most frequent in both sub-corpora. Though certain functional roles are present in both disciplines, the pronominal forms which front these roles differ as did the frequency between and within the disciplines. The study seeks to provide some illumination on the disciplinary conventions in Literature and Computer Science, thus contributing towards pedagogy and scholarship of the role of first person pronouns in voice construction in academic texts.
Date Issued
2018
Call Number
P301.5.A27 Lau
Date Submitted
2018