Expressing authorial self in research articles written by Polish and English native-speaker writers: A corpus-based study

Abstract

This cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, corpus-based study explores the notion of writer identity expressed through self-reference. The study examines how writers from two cultural regions – Polish and Anglo-American – construct a credible representation of themselves in writing. That is, it investigates the differences and similarities in the frequency of use, and the role of first person pronouns and determiners, in the corpora of 40 research articles in the area of applied linguistics – 20 written by Polish authors in English, published in Polish institutions, and 20 by native English speakers, published in Anglophone journals. Additionally, the frequency of use and the role of nominal lexical items referring to the writers, such as the author(s) and the re-searcher(s), are explored. The location of pronouns, determiners and the lexical items in the IMRD structure (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion) is also researched, as certain types of pronouns and determiners were expected to occur in the given sections, depending on their functions. The results clearly show that there is a striking difference between the use of pronouns and determiners in the texts written by the two groups of writers. The findings carry important implications for formulating clearer instructions and developing appropriate writing strategies by novices writing for publication in EFL.