‘Extending this claim, we propose…’ The writer’s presence in research articles from different disciplines

Abstract

In today’s academic world, creating an appropriate authorial identity by means of self-mention resources is essential to project an image of competence and reliability in research articles (RAs), and to highlight the relevance of one’s contributions. This paper offers quantitative and qualitative data on the use of exclusive first person markers in RAs from four different disciplines, namely Applied Linguistics, Business Management, Food Technology and Urology, complemented by insights from specialist informants in each of the fields. Moreover, the main discourse functions performed by authors when using exclusive “we” have been studied. The results indicate that there are significant variations in the frequency of these resources and in the preferred functions for which they are used across disciplines, although this variation is not entirely consistent with the dichotomy between hard and soft sciences.

Keywords

• research article
• metadiscourse
• disciplinary variation
• personal pronouns
• identity