Study On The Construction Of Authorial Identity Through First-person Pronouns In Chinese And English Research Articles Of Applied Linguistics

Academic writing is a social activity integrating subjectivity and objectivity.The authors inevitably express their stances and attitudes towards related propositions and claims,and construct the authorial identities when reporting the objective disciplinary content.As the most visible linguistic resource to show authorial presences in academic discourses,the first-person pronouns can be used to construct various authorial identities.Previous scholars have conducted a series of contrastive studies investigating the construction of authorial identities through first-person pronouns from the following perspectives: cross-culture,cross-discipline and cross-section.Nevertheless,little is known to the impacts of publication conventions on the linguistic choices to construct authorial identities in different writing culture so far.Thereafter,this thesis aims to explore the similarities and discrepancies of constructing authorial identities through first-person pronouns among and within research articles of applied linguistics published in national and international journals.88 research articles ranging from 2010 to 2019 in national and international leading applied linguistic journals are collected in this thesis.Hence,three corpora are built: 30 Chinese research articles in national journals by Chinese writers(116288tokens),30 English research articles by Chinese writers in international journals(183621 tokens)and 28 English research articles by native writers in international journals(193413 tokens).The frequency and distribution of first-person pronouns are first calculated and analyzed.Then,four authorial identities embedded in first-person pronouns(representative,writer,researcher and arguer)are identified and tagged for the further analysis of similarities and differences in establishing authorial identities among three corpora.At last,the possible factors influencing the construction of authorial identities like educational backgrounds and individual differences are discussed.The findings of this project show that publication conventions play an important role in linguistic choices of constructing authorial identities.“We” is mostly employed for the construction of authorial identities among three corpora.The role of researcher is the most popular one among four roles in three corpora though different proportions in different corpora.There are extensive similarities demonstrated in English research articles by Chinese scholars and native speakers in internationally oriented linguistic journals in terms of the frequency and distribution of first-person pronouns and authorial identities.In contrast to the Chinese scholars and English scholars publishing in internationally-oriented linguistic journals,Chinese scholars publishing in nationally-oriented journals are accustomed to use fewer first-person pronouns to construct roles with low risks.The findings of the thesis are illuminating for teaching academic English writing and offer novice writers practical guidance to construct appropriate authorial identities through first-person pronouns.