Authorial identity in Turkish language and English language research articles in Sociology: The role of publication context in academic writers' discourse choices

Date

2018-01-01

Author

Isik-Tas, Elvan Eda

Metadata

Show full item record

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

Item Usage Stats

222
views

0
downloads

Few studies to date have investigated the role of publication context in shaping academic writers' linguistic choices in establishing authorial identity in different writing cultures. This study explores how authorial identity is represented through first person pronouns in 130 Sociology research articles (RAs) in Turkish and in English published in national and international journals. Both corpus-based and interview-based analyses were employed. Three sub-corpora were analyzed: (1) Turkish writers' Turkish RAs in national journals, (2) Turkish writers' English RAs in mainstream international journals, and (3) Native Speaker (NSE) writers' English RAs in mainstream international journals. The findings revealed extensive similarities in the frequency and discourse functions of first person pronouns in English RAs written by NSE and Turkish scholars in mainstream international journals. Both groups utilized first person pronouns in high-risk functions, such as expressing an opinion, to front a powerful authorial identity. In contrast to Turkish and NSE scholars publishing in international journals, Turkish writers publishing in Turkish national journals tended to avoid using first person pronouns and displaying an overt authorial presence in their RAs. The findings revealed the likely significance of the publication context in the discoursal choices of academic writers.

Subject Keywords

Academic writing, Authorial identity, Discourse analysis, First person pronouns, Publication context, Research article

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63624

Journal

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.10.003

Collections

Education and Humanities, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

"In this paper I will discuss...": Current trends in academic writing Tas, E. Eda Isik (2010-05-07) Corpus-based genre analysis studies not only describe the lexico-grammatical, discoursal and rhetorical features of academic writing in various disciplines but also reveal how these features change over time. In this respect, findings obtained through academic genre research potentially generate new pedagogical proposals or at least lead to a critical review of current practices in EAP writing programs. However, guidelines presented in academic writing manuals rarely respond to disciplinary variations revea...
Lexical features in argumentative writing across English writers from different language backgrounds Yu, Xiaoli (2020-04-01) This corpus-based research analysed three lexical features (lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and cohesion) in English argumentative writing and examined the potential differences in lexical performance (1) between native and nonnative English writers and (2) across all writers from various language backgrounds. The findings revealed that nonnative English writers demonstrated significantly lower performance in lexical sophistication than did native English writers. Significant differences in all t...
An investigation of the citation transformation types in MA and PhD theses Dogan, Fatma Seyma; YAĞIZ, Oktay; Kaçar, Işıl Günseli (2018-11-03) This study investigates the types of citation transformation preferred by both English L1 (native language) writers and Turkish writers who use English as a foreign language (L2). The corpus consists of 34 theses, 17 of which are Turkish writers' theses in English language including 10M.A. and 7 PhD theses and 17 English L1 writers' theses comprised of 10M.A. and 7 PhD theses. Based on the relevant literature, a rubric was prepared by the researchers in order to analyse the theses by means of qualitative co...
Convergence of text and reader: a study of textual strategies and the formation of configurative meaning in selected works of fiction Shadi, Mehran; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Literature (2018) In this study, first, the foundational developments in the domains of linguistics, philosophy of language and literary theory that have led to a transformation of the concept of the reader are reviewed closely. Then, to understand the nature of literary responses, an Interactionalist Model of Readership (IMR) is proposed to explore the two sides of the reader-text interaction and the nature of the final product of the reading act. Using various examples, the interaction between the text and the reader is, t...
Lexical Features in Argumentative Writing across English Writers from Different Language Backgrounds Yu, Xiaoli (2019-09-12) This corpus-based research analysed three lexical features (lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and cohesion) in English argumentative writing and examined the potential differences in lexical performance 1) between native and nonnative English writers and 2) across all writers from seven language backgrounds. Two major research questions guided the analyses in the current study: 1. Are there significant differences in lexical features between native and nonnative argumentative English writing, ...

Citation Formats

E. E. Isik-Tas, “Authorial identity in Turkish language and English language research articles in Sociology: The role of publication context in academic writers’ discourse choices,” ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES, pp. 26–38, 2018, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63624.