A Cross-Cultural Study of Self-Mention Markers in Native and Non-Native English Speakers’ Research Articles

A Cross-Cultural Study of Self-Mention Markers in Native and Non-Native English Speakers’ Research Articles

The linguistic structures used by academic writers in order to adopt a position and the ways in which the writers engage with their readers, have attracted considerable attention in recent years. The use of selfmention is one of this ways that establishes the writer s presence in the writing. Despite the classical model of impersonal and rigidly objective style of research writing, now it is possible to see less formal and more inclusive relationship between the writers and their readers. The purpose of the present study is to explore the key features regarded as representing self-mention of the writer in Applied Linguistics research articles written by native and non-native English-speaking writers. These key features are six kinds of first-person pronouns.Twenty research articles (ten articles belonging to native and ten belonging to non-native English-speaking writers) were selected from top ranking (Iranian and International) journals of Applied Linguistics and the use of first-person pronouns were analyzed. The analysis indicates that the overall distribution and frequency of first-person pronouns in non-native English speaking articles is higher than that in native English-speaking writings.

The linguistic structures used by academic writers in order to adopt a position and the ways in which the writers engage with their readers, have attracted considerable attention in recent years. The use of selfmention is one of this ways that establishes the writer s presence in the writing. Despite the classical model of impersonal and rigidly objective style of research writing, now it is possible to see less formal and more inclusive relationship between the writers and their readers. The purpose of the present study is to explore the key features regarded as representing self-mention of the writer in Applied Linguistics research articles written by native and non-native English-speaking writers. These key features are six kinds of first-person pronouns.Twenty research articles (ten articles belonging to native and ten belonging to non-native English-speaking writers) were selected from top ranking (Iranian and International) journals of Applied Linguistics and the use of first-person pronouns were analyzed. The analysis indicates that the overall distribution and frequency of first-person pronouns in non-native English speaking articles is higher than that in native English-speaking writings.