A Diachronic Study Of Self-mentions As Realization Of Authorial Identity Construction In Applied Linguistics Research Articles

In recent decades,the view that academic writing is a highly socialized behavior has been confirmed in a large number of studies.With scholars’ deeper understanding on the interaction between the writer and the reader in academic RAs,the construction of authorial identity has become an interesting topic for research in the field of applied linguistics.Self-mentions,as one of the most frequently used linguistic resources in creating authorial identity,enable the writer to display his/her authorial presence and achieve specific communicative goals in the text.Earlier relevant studies have mostly focused on the use of first person pronouns which are regarded as the most explicit form of representing authorial identity in RAs,paying little attention to other more implicit forms of self-mentions,not to mention the research on authorial identity construction from a diachronic perspective.Therefore,this study investigates the changes in the use of various self-mentions as authorial identity markers in 96 single-authored RAs sampled from four internationally renowned applied linguistics journals across three time periods: 1990-1999(the 1990s),2000-2009(the2000s)and 2010-2019(the 2010s).Quantitative analysis supplemented with qualitative analysis is applied to the present study.First,following Liu’s(2011)elaboration on self-mentions,this study attempts to find out all the potential forms of authorial references that occur in the text.Then the software Ant Conc is employed to retrieve these self-mentions,and those not referring to the writer himself/herself are excluded.After the forms and frequencies of self-mentions are determined,the study adopts Fl(?)ttum et al.’s(2006)taxonomy to manually identify the four authorial identities behind those selected self-mentions,and their final classification and occurrences are ensured after a careful discussion with other members of the research team.Next,Chi-square and Log-likelihood Calculator is used to normalize the raw frequencies and compare the frequency differences among the three corpora,exploring the frequency features and diachronic evolution of various self-mentions and their construction of authorial identity.Last,the possible reasons for some of those frequency differences and historical changes are discussed as well.It is found that first person pronouns(particularly the singular ones)are the most frequently used self-mentions during all time spans,followed by abstract nouns and third person nouns.Furthermore,the incidence of first person singulars generally presents a remarkably increasing tendency,while that of plural forms persistently decreases,especially in the 2010 s.The abstract nouns generally do not demonstrate significant variations over the past three decades but markedly increase during the 2000 s,while the frequency of third person nouns noticeably rises overall.In terms of the four authorial identities realized by those self-mentions,the findings show that the low-stake ones(researcher and writer)are favored over the high-stake ones(arguer and evaluator).Both authorial identities as researcher and writer generally exhibit an obviously growing trend,with the former sharply falling in the 2000 s yet the latter reaching its peak during that period.However,authorial identities as arguer and evaluator overall display no significant diachronic changes,but the latter undergoes notably fluctuating evolution-upward from the 1990 s to the 2000 s and then downward to the 2010 s.The possible factors for some of the above frequency differences and variations are various,which could be explained from the characteristics of those RAs selected in our corpora,the changing social and rhetorical context,the increasingly intense competition for publishing internationally as well as the face theory.The study shows that rational use of self-mentions to construct appropriate authorial identities in academic writing is conducive to establishing writers’ credibility and authority in the academic community,thus making their RAs easier to be published and enhancing their professional credentials.It is hoped that this research would help scholars abroad and home further understand the use and development of self-mentions as authorial presence markers in applied linguistics RAs,so that they can write papers which are more in line with the norms of the contemporary academic context.It is also hoped that this study may offer some insights into the teaching of academic English writing.