The Use of First Person Pronouns in Master’s Theses Written in English by Turkish Authors

Cemre Isler

Abstract


The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the use of first person pronouns (I, my, me, we, our, us) and their functions in creating authorial self in 20 master’s theses written in English by Turkish authors and 20 research articles written in English by non-Turkish authors. Master’s theses used in the study were written in the field of English Language Teaching in twelve different Turkish universities and they were selected from the database of Turkish Council of Higher Education. Research articles used in the study were also written in the field of English Language Teaching and they were selected from five different journals: Applied Linguistics, System, TESOL Quarterly, English for Specific Purposes, and ELT Journal. For analyzing the data, each occurrence of first person pronouns in the theses and articles were coded and examined in order to find out the functions they serve. Results revealed a large difference in the use of first person pronouns and the functions they have. Turkish authors used these pronouns quite rarely and generally the use of these pronouns signaled low degree of authorial self; on the other hand, non-Turkish authors used these pronouns more frequently and they mostly preferred to use them for expressing greater degree of authorial self.

Keywords


first person pronoun; academic writing; authorial identity

Full Text:

PDF

References


Akbas, E. (2012). Exploring metadiscourse in master dissertation abstracts: Cultural and linguistic variations across postgraduate writers. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature,1(1), 12-26.

Bartholomae, D. (1985). Inventing the university. In M. Rose (Ed.), When a writer can't write: Studies in writer's block and other composing-process problems (pp. 134-165). New York: The Guilford Press.

Bartholomae, D. (1986). Inventing the university. Journal of Basic Writing, 5, 4–23.

Bitchener, J., & Basturkmen, H. (2006). Perceptions of the difficulties of postgraduate L2 thesis students writing the discussion section. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5(1), 4-18.

Dong, Y.R. (1998) Non-native graduate students’ thesis/dissertation writing in science: Self reports by students and their advisors from two U.S. institutions. English for Specific Purposes, 17(4), 369-390.

Duenas, P. M. (2007). ‘I/we focus on…’: A cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business management research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6 (2), 143-162.

Harwood, N. (2005). Nowhere has anyone attempted ... ‘In this article I aim to do just that’: A corpus-based study of self-promotional I and we in academic writing across four disciplines. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1207-1231.

Hyland, K. (2001). Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles. English for Specific Purposes, 20, 207-226.

Hyland, K. (2002a). Authority and invisibility: Authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 1091-1112.

Hyland, K. (2002b). Options of identity in academic writing. ELT Journal, 56, 351-358.

Hyland, K. (2003). Self‐citation and self‐reference: Credibility and promotion in academic publication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(3), 251-259.

Hyland, K. (2004) Disciplinary interactions: metadiscourse in L2 postgraduate writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 133-151.

Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2005) Hooking the reader: A corpus study of evaluative that in abstracts. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 123-139.

Isik Tas, E. E. (2008). A corpus-based analysis of genre-specific discourse of research: The research article and the PhD thesis in ELT. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kuo, C. 1999. The use of personal pronouns: Role relationships in scientific journal articles. English for Specific Purposes, 18(2), 121–138.

Lee, J. J., & Casal, J. E. (2014). Metadiscourse in results and discussion chapters: A cross-linguistic analysis of English and Spanish thesis writers in engineering. System, 46, 39-54.

Martinez, I. A. (2005). Native and non native writers’ use of first person pronouns in the different sections of biology research articles in English. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(3), 174-190.

Millan, E. L. (2010). "Extending this claim, we propose..." The writer´ s presence in research articles from different disciplines. Ibérica: Revista de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 20, 35-56.

Tang, R., & John, S. (1999). The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun. English for Specific Purposes, 18, 23–39.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.26486/jele.v4i1.382

Article Metrics

Abstract view : 242 times
PDF - 46 times

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright of  JELE (Journal of English Language and Education), ISSN 2541-6421 (online), ISSN 2460-7142 (print) Gedung LPPM Universitas Mercu Buana Yogyakarta. 

Kampus I  : Jl. Wates Km. 10 Yogyakarta 55753. Telp: 0274-6498212, 6498211, Fax. 0274-6498213 

Email: [email protected]

tumblr counter
Jele View My Stats

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.