Self-reference in research articles across Europe and Asia: a review of studies

Abstract

Numerous cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary studies have looked at the manifestation of author stance in academic texts. One of the most recurrent areas of contrast has been the use of personal pronouns across linguistic and disciplinary cultures. This paper aims at reviewing previous research on self-reference in research articles taking an intercultural perspective. It focuses on 22 studies which report on results regarding this stance feature in 13 lingua-cultural contexts (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Persian, Russian, Spanish). They have been extracted from relevant publications in the fields of English for Academic Purposes and English for Specific Purposes over the past 25 years (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012). A close analysis of this research highlights different cultural trends in constructing writer-reader relationships in this academic genre and reveals important methodological issues across different studies. This review article also has implications for English as a lingua franca (cf. Mauranen 2012) as used in international publications.

Author’s Self-Representation in Research Articles by Anglophone and Slovak Linguists

“…In contrast, Slovak single authors typically use authorial plural when writing both in non-native English (70%) and even more so in Slovak (90%), as observed previously in other Slavic languages (e.g. Chamonikolasová 2005, Čmejrková 2007, Dontcheva-Navratilova 2013, Mur Dueñas & Šinkūnienė 2016, Vassileva 1998, see Section 2). In the non-native English corpus, the singular perspective (30%) is used in nine papers out of 27 single-authored papers.…”

Raising awareness around writers' voice in academic discourse : an analysis of writers' (in)visibility

“…Animate agents followed by active verbs, passive constructions and inanimate subjects followed by active verbs or abstract rhetors have proved to be the most recurrent lexico-grammatical features associated with the writers' voice in Med-RAs. Whereas writers of academic texts claim the authorship of their work using selfmentions (Hyland 2005(Hyland , 2018aLorés-Sanz 2006Mur-Dueñas 2007;Mur-Dueñas and Šinkūnienė 2016) as the most powerful voicing mechanism, they also use passive constructions and abstract rhetors in an attempt to emphasise the research process rather that the writers' agency (Luzón-Marco 2000;Martínez 2001Martínez , 2005Vande Kopple 2002). These devoicing mechanisms allow writers to be less visible as we move down the axe of this study's cline of visibility (see Figure 2 in section 1.2), yet never absent from their texts.…”

Authorial Identity in Research Articles

“…Research on the employment have identified various functions of self-mention devices across different academic genres (Afsari & Kuhi, 2016;Millán, 2010;Mur-Dueñas & Šinkūnienė, 2016) Hyland (2001), for instance, investigated the forms and functions of selfmentions used in English research articles published in eight different disciplines. The results revealed significant differences across disciplines in the employment of these features.…”