“Here, We Investigate If There Is …”: A Functional Investigation of Self-Mentions in Research Article Abstracts

Erdem Akbaş; Gülin Dağdeviren-Kirmizi; Özkan Kirmizi

doi:10.1515/CJAL-2024-0203

Article

“Here, We Investigate If There Is …”: A Functional Investigation of Self-Mentions in Research Article Abstracts

Erdem Akbaş
Dr. Erdem Akbaş obtained his PhD from the University of York, UK in 2015 and now works as Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages Teaching at Erciyes University, Türkiye. His research interests include discourse analysis and language teaching; teaching academic writing; written and spoken genre analysis. He is the group leader of SWADA, focusing on ESP/EAP by examining spoken and written academic discourses for teaching purposes.
, Gülin Dağdeviren-Kirmizi
Dr. Gülin Dağdeviren-Kirmizi is Assistant Professor at Başkent University, Türkiye. Her research interests include second language acquisition and sociolinguistics.
and Özkan Kirmizi
Dr. Özkan Kirmizi works as Professor at the English Language and Literature Department of Karabuk University, Türkiye. He completed his PhD at the English Language and Teaching Department, Hacettepe University, Türkiye. His interest areas include L2 teacher education, pedagogical content knowledge, and academic writing.

Published/Copyright: July 3, 2024

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From the journal Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 47 Issue 2

Abstract

The present study explored authorial presence in the abstracts across three purpose-built discipline-specific corpora of RAs in major but relatively less represented disciplines in corpus studies: Civil Engineering (CE), Political Sciences (PS) and Veterinary Medicine (VM). In particular, due to less attention having been paid to these fields, we examined explicit authorial references with a functional perspective in a corpus of abstracts totaling over one million words. To this end, we first conducted a preliminary search for explicit third-person plural author references in the corpora and manually analysed a total of over 6,000 instances to check if they were all markers signaling an authorial presence in the text. Following this, the second manual analyses concentrated on categorizing the rhetorical functions of self-mentions based on Xia’s (2018) framework. The preliminary findings showed that the frequency of “we”-based authorial references in PS outweighed that in the other disciplines (PS: 722.13; CE: 636.81; VM: 481.30 per 100,000 words). Regarding the density of authorial references, we found that each discipline favored being more visible with divergent authorial roles in their abstracts. For example, PS were more rhetorically present in their abstracts by “proposing a theory or approach” whereas CE and VM authors used fewer self-mentions to mark their presence frequently with this rhetorical device. With respect to the functional analyses of the self-mentions of “we”, all three disciplines displayed more low-stakes functions such as “recount experimental procedure and methodology”. We focused on the significance of cross-disciplinary and functional analysis in the study in order to contribute to designing activities in EAP for each discipline.

Keywords: authorial voice; stance; engagement; academic discourse; cross-disciplinary writing

About the authors

Dr. Erdem Akbaş

Dr. Erdem Akbaş obtained his PhD from the University of York, UK in 2015 and now works as Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages Teaching at Erciyes University, Türkiye. His research interests include discourse analysis and language teaching; teaching academic writing; written and spoken genre analysis. He is the group leader of SWADA, focusing on ESP/EAP by examining spoken and written academic discourses for teaching purposes.

Dr. Gülin Dağdeviren-Kirmizi

Dr. Gülin Dağdeviren-Kirmizi is Assistant Professor at Başkent University, Türkiye. Her research interests include second language acquisition and sociolinguistics.

Dr. Özkan Kirmizi

Dr. Özkan Kirmizi works as Professor at the English Language and Literature Department of Karabuk University, Türkiye. He completed his PhD at the English Language and Teaching Department, Hacettepe University, Türkiye. His interest areas include L2 teacher education, pedagogical content knowledge, and academic writing.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) 2021 Conference titled “Challenges and Opportunities in Applied Linguistics” hosted by Northumbria University, UK.

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Published Online: 2024-07-03

Published in Print: 2024-06-25

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https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2024-0203

Keywords for this article

authorial voice; stance; engagement; academic discourse; cross-disciplinary writing