Self-mention and authorial identity construction in English and Chinese research articles

Abstract

Self-mention is a powerful rhetorical strategy for constructing authorial identity in research articles. This study proposes that researchers’ authorial identity can be considered in three aspects according to the self-mention devices they employ: the detached self, the individual self and the collective self. Based on a corpus comprising 90 research articles (45 in English and 45 in Chinese), the research explores the construction of authorial identity in English and Chinese research articles by examining the frequency of and roles performed by self-mention markers. Results show that both English and Chinese writers try to display their detached self by distancing themselves from the text and reader. But English writers are more ready to present the individual self by taking on the role of discourse constructor, arguer and evaluator, whereas Chinese writers are inclined to show their collective self and take on the role of researcher. The research results have implications for research article writing and the teaching of research article writing.

Language in Academic Writing: Features and Topical Issues

“…The scholarly research has a communicative purpose which constitutes the rationale that determines the schematic structure of discourse and constrains the rhetorical choice. The language is established and accepted by the culture of a specific discourse community whose members share the broad communicative purposes [8]. Scholarly language, though subject to specific genres, is explicit, formal and factual as well as objective and analytical in nature.…”

“…Wu and Zhu [8] that following the social semiotic view that language performs social functions, the research article is not taken as purely objective reporting of an independent and external reality. Rather, it should be seen as a narration of investigation, a process of reconstructing research, and a channel for distributing and advancing academic knowledge.…”

“…The combined effect of the language of authorial presence is validated in an earlier research by [16] emphasizing that the choices which express the writer's presence not only affect the ideational meaning that writers convey, but also influence the impression they make on their readers. The import of [16] and [8] is that the choice of scholarly language of the research article establishing authorial presence is guided by the purpose of the self-mention. Self-mention is deemed a powerful rhetorical strategy of emphasizing a writer's contribution [16].…”

Self-mention Markers and their Rhetorical Functions in Dentistry Research Articles: A Corpus-based Study of Intradisciplinary Variations within Seven Dentistry Subdisciplines

“…(Journal of Prosthodontics, 28, 2019) The use of self-reference is "a powerful means by which writers express an identity by asserting their claim to speak as an authority, and this is a key element of successful academic writing" (Hyland, 2002(Hyland, , p. 1094. Wu and Zhu (2014), however, argue that writers employ self-mentions (or third-person nouns) to distance themselves from readers and to sound unemotional as they present themselves as authoritative sources. The use of such terms to refer to author(s)/ researcher(s) in previous studies was not counted as an instance of self-reference: that is, 8) "In the same way, researchers reported the lesions of demarcated opacities to be more frequent."…”

A Comparative Study of Keywords and Sentiments of Abstracts by Python Programs

“…In terms of genres, the study of self-mentions ranges from research articles (Khedri, 2016;McGrath, 2016;Wu & Zhu, 2015;Chen, 2020), research article abstracts (Friginal & Mustafa, 2017;Bonn & Swales, 2007), presentations (Zareva, 2013), speech (Albalat-Mascarell & Carrió-Pastor, 2019) and introduction part in academic writing (Loi, 2010;Wang & Yang, 2015;Tankó, 2017), to literature review (Soler-Monreal, 2015), and personal statement (Li & Deng, 2019). However, these studies of self-mentions have not covered the sentiments of abstracts and their self-reference.…”