Identity in Academic Writing: A study on Applied Linguistics Research Articles by Latin American scholars

Natalia Fabiola Muguiro - Enero 2014

Master of Arts (MA) Applied Linguistics & TESOL. College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities. University of Leicester. Reino Unido

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1. Actividad Administrativa. I. Título.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the construction of identity in academic writing with the aim of exploring the ways in which Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics manifest their authorial selves and give place to the voices of others in the Research Articles they write. This corpus-based, empirical study is based on an understanding of identity as socio-culturally constructed within contexts of linguistic interaction. The presence of conflicting disciplinary and generic tensions permeates the analysis of the findings, which report on specific uses of linguistic and rhetorical choices for the inscription of identity markers such as self-mention forms, discourse functions and author roles, as well as bibliographical citations and reporting verbs. Some insightful pedagogical implications also arise which lead to the issue of awareness-raising for EAP students and teachers alike.

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose and motivation

Writing is an act of identity (Ivanič, 1998). As Lillis (2013, p. 124) explains, writing is “the making, or inscription, of the self,” understanding inscription as the representational dimension of language. Thus, writing always conveys a “representation of the writer’s self” (Ivanič & Camps, 2001, p. 5). But writing practices are socially patterned and structured (Lillis, 2013) and identity is, in fact, constituted in linguistic interaction rather than an isolated process (Bucholtz & Hall, 2010). Therefore, identity is a relational and socio-cultural phenomenon and not a primarily internal psychological process, for what it has been defined as “the social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 586). Based on this broad definition of identity, the main aim of this Dissertation is to explore how identity is constructed in academic writing. More specifically, I will analyse the ways in which researchers from the Latin American context, who are non-native English speakers (NNES), inscribe their identities in Research Articles (RAs) in the field of Applied Linguistics.

The connection between academic writing and the creation of an author’s identity (Ivanič, 1998; Hyland, 2010) has been highlighted in recent research under the assumption that academic writing does not only involve an ideational content or knowledge to communicate, but also the representation of authorial identity (Hyland, 2012). Academic prose is not completely impersonal; writers gain credibility by “projecting an identity invested with individual authority, displaying confidence in their evaluations and commitment to their ideas” (Hyland, 2002a, p. 1091). At the same time, all writing is produced in relation to previous texts (Bakhtin, 1986) and as writers are influenced by them, they construct social identities in the sense of “representing themselves in alignment, or dissonance, with those discourses” (Hyland, 2010, p. 161).

I first became interested in issues of identity in academic writing within my own working context. As a lecturer of an undergraduate course whose aim is to introduce students to the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), I have noticed that students generally take a rather passive role as regards writing. It seems that what they look for is a given recipe, a set of instructions to be followed so as to shape an acceptable piece of writing. When presented with a new text type, for instance, they feel more confident once they are given examples to follow and sample texts to imitate as regards rhetorical patterns and language choices. But students, in my view, should not be blamed for that passive attitude towards writing. I have understood, by reflecting on my own teaching practice, that perhaps unconsciously, by means of rather prescriptive pedagogical approaches and teaching materials, students are given an implicit message leading to follow conventions strictly, imitate successful models, or avoid controversial issues as regards language use.

One of those controversial issues in academic writing relates precisely to the way in which writers construct their academic identities through the choice (or avoidance) of certain linguistic forms and patterns. As stated by Abasi et al. (2006, p. 102), it is not clear whether writers themselves “are aware of the link between identity and the linguistic choices they make when writing.” Thus, the second aim of this work is a pedagogical one. Based on the findings from the analysis of a corpus of RAs in the field of Applied Linguistics written by Latin American scholars, I seek to prove that an important issue of EAP teaching is to raise students’ awareness of the available language options they have in order to give shape to their own identities as writers. As a consequence, students might attempt to change their passive attitudes towards more agentive purposes.

To sum up, the aims of this work are rooted in the two different but intrinsically related professional identities I feel represented by. As a novice researcher in the field, I attempt to explore the ways in which scholars from my context portray their authorial identities and give voice to others in the RAs they write. As an in-service EAP instructor, I want to find out about the ways in which those findings might help students and teachers alike to develop awareness-raising processes towards the inscription of identity in academic writing.

1.2 Research questions

Based on theoretically grounded considerations and guided by the aims proposed, I will analyse the use of self-mention forms (Kuo, 1999; Hyland, 2001, 2002a), discourse functions (Tang & Johns, 1999; Hyland, 2002a), and author roles (Fløttum et al., 2006) as well as bibliographical references (Fløttum et al., 2006) or citations (Swales, 1990; Hyland, 2004) and reporting verbs (Thomas & Hawes, 1994; Thompson & Ye, 1991) in a corpus of collected texts with the purpose of answering the following research questions:

RQ 1) In what ways do Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics manifest their authorial identities in the Research Articles they write?

RQ 2) In what ways do Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics give voices to other authors in the Research Articles they write?

RQ 3) To what extent do Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics rhetorically construct their identities within conflicting generic and disciplinary tensions?

1.3 The Latin American context: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and scientific publication

English has emerged “as the premier vehicle for the communication of scholarship, research and advanced postgraduate training” (Mauranen et al., 2010, p. 634) in recent decades, whether it is used by native or non-native speakers. In fact, the status and contribution of the non-native speakers of English “has become somewhat more central than it used to be” (Swales, 2004, p. 52). That means that while research is widely transmitted through English, it is increasingly coming from countries where English is used and taught as a foreign language (Hyland, 2006). Latin American countries are also part of this international trend, as stated by Martínez (2011).

According to official reports (CAICYT, 2009; CONICYT, 2012) the scientific publication in English by the most productive Latin American countries (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia) has notably increased in the last years (Martínez, 2011). In fact, a report on the production in the SCI (Science Citation Index) states that Argentina and Venezuela increased 50%, Chile doubled, and Brazil and Mexico almost trebled their scientific production in the period between 2000 and 2008 (Martínez, 2011, p. 35).

As regards native languages, Portuguese is the L1 spoken in Brazil while Spanish is spoken in the rest of the Latin American countries. Both languages have a Latin origin, which might be thought of as an advantage for the teaching of EAP (Martínez, 2011; 2012). As the English language was greatly influenced by Latinate languages, “most scientific terms in English can be expected to be cognates of Spanish and Portuguese,” as Martínez (2012, p.4) explains. However, the interference from L1 as regards linguistic choices and rhetorical patterns is also important and these areas of transfer might pose a challenge (Loréz-Sanz, 2011a) for Latin American scholars publishing in English. Another advantage of the Latin American context, as proposed by Martínez (2011), is that most EFL/EAP teachers are NNES practitioners who share the same L1 with the students. This situation becomes advantageous because teachers can shape proximity with their students and select those aspects of the language “that are clearly problematic for the speakers of Latinate languages” (Martínez, 2012, p. 5). As for the language of instruction in higher education institutions, Latin American countries belong to the fourth group proposed by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998), formed by those countries where all education is offered in the native language of the country and where English is considered to be an Auxiliary Language (EAL). Thus, English is taught as a Foreign (EFL) rather than as a Second (ESL) language. However, some undergraduate and postgraduate official university courses are partially or completely taught in English, especially those related to the fields of TESOL, Applied Linguistics, and Literary and Translation Studies.

Finally, it is important to highlight that academic writing in English in Latin America, as in any other context, is not at all uniform but varies according to many factors, such as L1 and local culture, language competence, disciplinary field and community membership, professional expertise, gender and generic variations (Gotti, 2012). As a result, a wide range of analytical perspectives become available for the discussion of identity issues. This panorama is even more complex because of the process of globalisation and the spread of English as the international language of academic communication, since these phenomena brought to light a more visible awareness of cultural variability as well as the understanding of English as an international Lingua Franca (ELF) rather than as a language exclusively belonging to its native speakers in the “core” cultures (Mauranen et al., 2010, p. 639). Thus, issues of variation in English academic writing in the context and for the purpose of this study need to be approached as a multifaceted and complex endeavour.

1.4 Structure of the dissertation

In the following chapter, the literature review will be presented. Within that section, I will first introduce a general description of the academic written genre and the value of RAs. Then, the process through which identity is constructed in linguistic interaction will be described, paying particular attention to some biased conceptions evinced in various studies on authorial identity in academic discourse. Then, the concepts of ‘positioning’, ‘proximity’, ‘stance’, and ‘voice’ will be discussed with the aim of shaping a comprehensive theoretical framework for the analysis of the linguistic features selected. In Chapter 3, the corpus and methodology will be presented. More specifically, information about the collected texts, the subjects of the study, the processing of the data, and the dimensions for variation will be introduced. Some considerations about the advantages and limitations of corpus analysis will be also included. The results and discussion will be presented together in Chapter 4 based on the analysis of the findings obtained from the corpus in the light of the theoretical assumptions. Some pedagogical implications, limitations and suggestions for further research will be considered in Chapter 5 together with some general conclusions as the closing of this work.

Chapter 2. Literature Review

2.1 Academic written discourse: The power of genre and the value of the Research Article (RA)

Academic communication largely relies on the compliance with textual norms governing the construction of its different genres. A close relationship exists between each type of specialised text and its organisation, as well as between the conceptual, rhetorical and linguistic features that characterise the text itself. Genre, then, not only provides a conventional framework but also affects textual features in their conceptual and rhetorical development (Gotti et al., 2012).

In recent years, however, genre theory has taken a closer interest in context, as Gotti et al. (2012, p. 12) claim, paying particular attention to interactions which depend “not only on generic form and content,” but, more importantly, “on how genres are constructed, interpreted and exploited for the achievement of specific goals in specialised contexts.” Within this interactional context some conflicting tensions usually arise. Bhatia (2004, p.22) claims that genre essentially refers to the “language use in a conventional communicative setting in order to give expression to a specific set of communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution.” These conventions give rise to stable structural forms by imposing constraints on the use of linguistic and rhetorical choices. But at the same time, although genres are typically associated with those recurring rhetorical contexts and are identified with a set of communicative purposes which constrain the use of certain language forms, “they are far from being static” (Bhatia, 2004, p. 23).

The emphasis on conventions and the propensity for innovation that genres convey may appear to be contradictory in character, mainly for writers when faced with linguistic and rhetoric choices. Bhatia (2004, p. 23) argues that writers do not hesitate to exploit some of these conventions to create new forms, “in turn making this world of discourse much more complex and dynamic.” The way in which writers explicitly manifest their identities in their texts are first and foremost rooted in the inscription of those texts within the conflicting nature of specific discourse genres.

Among the different sub-genres within academic writing, the RA plays a role in knowledge construction which is of paramount importance. For a variety of reasons, the most typical product of a research is its published article (Swales, 1990). As Canagarajah (2002) affirms, there is consensus among recognised scholars in the academy that the journal article is the primary mode of validating their research findings. The value of the research is not considered complete until it is made available to the disciplinary community through its published journals. Thus, refereed journals become the gatekeepers of knowledge in each discipline. Such is the status of RAs that academic communities depend on them to legitimate new knowledge across fields (Canagarajah, 2002). This is why the manifestation of authorial identities in RAs has become a rhetorical strategy frequently used by the members of the international English-speaking community “for promotion and gaining accreditation for research claims” (Martín Martín, 2003, p.1).

2.2 Language and identity: The socio-cultural construction of identity

As mentioned in the Introduction, this work is based on an understanding of identity as constructed in linguistic interaction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). This framework of analysis has been largely applied since research on identity has become increasingly central within areas such as sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and discourse analysis, among others (Bucholtz & Hall, 2010). The presence of relevant work on identity from these disciplinary fields serves to offer a general interdisciplinary sociocultural linguistic perspective on identity which involves the intersection of language, culture, and society (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). Rooted in socio-constructivist theories (Berger & Luckman, 1967; Burr, 1995), the analytic value of the sociocultural perspective in linguistics resides in approaching identity as emerging in discourse contexts of interaction rather than “as a stable structure located primarily in the individual psyche” (Buchholtz & Hall, 2010, p. 18). In this way, identity is viewed as the emergent product rather than the “pre-existing source of linguistic practices,” and therefore fundamentally as a social and cultural phenomenon (Buchholtz & Hall, 2010, p. 19).

However, as Castells (2004, p. 7) claims, it is easy to agree on the fact that, from a sociological perspective, “all identities are constructed.” Furthermore, he states that the real issue is to understand “how, from what, by whom, and for what” (Castells, 2004, p.7). I argue here that this lack of exploration of the roots of identity construction in linguistic interaction is present in many studies dealing with identity and authorial presence in academic discourse. Although successfully competent and clearly insightful for comparison and analytical purposes, some of these studies take from granted that readers already know how identities are socio-culturally constructed and provide them, straightaway, with research findings about linguistic uses and rhetorical choices whose causes and purposes would need to be discussed in more detail. But the significance of the need for more exploration about the process of identity construction does not reside in the scant background knowledge readers might find but, most importantly, in the fact that this lack of consideration might lead to biased assumptions, such as the naturalisation of ‘marked’ categories or the legitimisation of language practices as ‘inadequate’ or ‘inauthentic’ in comparison with ‘standard’ uses.

In order to fill this theoretical-analytical gap, I will present some conceptualisations drawn by different authors to describe the sociocultural construction of identity in relation to language in general (Ochs, 1992; Silverstein, 2003; Bucholtz & Hall, 2004; Johnstone, 2010) with the aim of applying some of those theoretical constructs on the specific field of academic writing. Some examples from studies which, in my opinion, reproduce biased assumptions on authorial identity issues will be also included.

2.2.1 Markedness, stigmatisation, indexicality, and naturalisation

Bucholtz and Hall (2004) contend that in most traditional views of identity the concepts of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ offer complementary perspectives. While the first refers to individuals imagining themselves as a group, the second allows for social distance between those perceived as unlike. However, these concepts are not adequate enough to picture identities as framed by power relations, “for sameness and difference are not objective states but phenomenological processes that emerge from social interaction” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 369). Therefore, the ways in which similarities and differences become organised hierarchically in social contexts need to be explained.

Difference generally implies hierarchies and vertical relationships between groups. These “ideological rankings” enable the identities of the more powerful groups “to become less recognizable as identities,” thus constituting themselves as the norm from which the less powerful groups diverge (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 372). This structuring of difference in hierarchical terms is known as ‘markedness’, a concept that “describes the process whereby some social categories gain a special, default status that contrasts with the identities of other groups, which are usually highly recognizable,” as stated by Bucholtz and Hall (2004, p. 372). These authors give an example about the North American society, where the unmarked categories may include “whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, middle-class status, and Christianity” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 372). In terms of academic discourse, I might argue that the unmarked-marked pairs would be: NES-NNES, experienced-novice, expert-student, centre-periphery, among others. In the following excerpts from studies dealing with authorial identity in academic writing, for instance, some examples of marked categories (student vs. expert writers) appear:

(1)Spanish Engineering students fail to understand the implications of authorial presence in the genre and are not adept at using first person pronouns to convey authority to different degrees and at resorting to other linguistic devices to reduce author’s visibility when necessary (Luzón, 2009, p. 203).

(2)The findings suggest that the semantic references of first person plural are often ambiguous and that expert writers are surprisingly inconsistent in their use of personal reference (Vladimirou, 2007, p. 139).

Marked identities are also ideologically associated with marked language (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). Thus, those linguistic practices or forms that differ from the norm are sometimes ‘stigmatised’. As for ‘stigmatisation’, a rich debate was raised by Flowerdew (2008) and Casanave (2008) in the field of academic publishing in English. First, Flowerdew (2008) suggested that English as and Additional Language (EAL) writers were discriminated against in academic publishing. He based his assumptions on the concept of ‘stigma’ as introduced by Goffman (1968). Stigmatisation, according to Goffman (1968, p. 12) refers to the process of establishing a “negative other” which is marginalised because of being different from the norm. Based on this assumption, Flowerdew (2008, p. 79) claimed that the EAL writer is the negative “other” who “possesses an attribute (non-standard English) that makes him different from others.” Casanave (2008, p. 264) responded to Flowerdew (2008) arguing that employing Goffman’s concept of ‘stigma’ to address possible discrimination against EAL writers “served only to oversimplify complex issues” and to underestimate the great diversity within groups labelled as EAL scholarly writers (or the ‘stigmatised’) and L1 writers, journal editors, and reviewers (or the ‘normal’) (Casanave, 2008).

As well as marked categories can be stigmatised, they are usually related to ‘non-standard’ language uses. The concept of ‘standardness’ can be explained through the notion of ‘indexicality’, understood as the mechanism whereby identity is constituted through language (Ochs, 1992; Silvestein, 2003). In its most basic sense, an index is a linguistic form that depends on the interactional context for its meaning, such as the first person pronouns, for example, as analysed later. In general terms, the linguistic form is used by a particular person in “performing an interactional, pragmatic activity, which can then come to index a social identity” (Johnstone, 2010, p. 32).

As noted by Ochs (1992), linguistic structures become associated with social categories in indirect rather than direct ways by chains of semiotic associations. In this way, ‘indexicality’ and ‘standardness’ inform each other (Davila, 2012). Following Davila’s (2012) assumptions, an example could be that of a writer who uses a lot of spoken language features in his or her academic written texts: the non-standard features present in the text (abundance of spoken language features) operate as indexical for the writer’s identity as a student. In the same way, the perceived identity as a student (and not as an expert) influences the reading of his or her text as non-standard.

Whether marked and non-standard categories are stigmatised or not can be more or less debatable, but what does not resist discussion is the fact that, when one category is perceived as an unmarked norm, its power is “more pervasive because it is masked.” As it is interpreted as powerful as well as normative, its status is “naturalised” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 372). Thus, those naturalised differences are perceived as failures to meet standards and serve as justifications for inadequacy or inauthenticity. This situation illustrates, in my opinion, another common misconception possibly derived from the lack of exploration of the process of identity construction mentioned before. Probably unconsciously, researchers sometimes describe the linguistic choices writers employ under analytical labels such as ‘underuse’, ‘overuse’, or ‘misuse’ when comparing, for instance, the language of NNES and NES.

In this way, the unmarked categories become naturalised as ‘the norm’ and thus establish themselves as parameters of comparison to label any language use which differs from the norm more as ‘deficient’ rather than as ‘different’. Related to this aspect, another danger is the legitimisation of language practices as ‘inadequate’ or ‘inauthentic’, as shown in this example:

(3)This article describes five political scientists’ interview-based accounts of appropriate and inappropriate use of the pronouns I and we in academic writing (Hardwood, 2006, p. 424).

Finally, another common biased trend is to present the findings as solutions for achieving more ‘standard’ conventions rather than as choices for awareness-raising:

(4)I hope my findings will assist Spanish scholars to achieve greater visibility worldwide by giving closer attention to English rhetorical conventions (Sheldon, 2011, p.238).

To conclude, there exists a thin line between comparing language uses to improve understanding and explain differences, and comparing them to justify ‘inappropriate’ uses based on biased assumptions. These are the dangers I will try to avoid throughout the analysis and discussion of the findings derived from this research.

2.3 Identity construction in academic writing

Self-representation in writing has been exhaustively analysed by Ivanič (1998, p. 23), who states that the writer’s identity is constructed depending on the “possibilities of self-hood” available to the writer in particular contexts. Three different selves interact in the construction of the writer’s identity in written discourse: the first one is “the autobiographical self,” which refers to “the identity which people bring with them to any act of writing” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 24) as related to their life-history and own personal experiences and personalities; secondly, “the discoursal self,” which refers to the impression which they “consciously or unconsciously convey of themselves in a particular written text” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 25); and finally “the self as author,” which refers to the extent to which writers present or view themselves as authors (Ivanič, 1998, p. 26), and which is also manifested in the extent to which a writer “intrudes into a text and claims responsibility for its content” (Hyland, 2002a, p. 1093).

Academic writers, however, do not construct their identities through a “choice among a freely available set of alternative identity-creating discourses,” as Ivanič (1994, p. 5) claims. In Hyland’s (2002a, p. 1094) terms, “writers are not free to simply adopt any identities they choose.” To project an identity as an academic means to acquire the practices of a discipline and to deal with its discourse with sufficient competence “to participate as a group member” (Hyland, 2012, p. 15). The way in which writers “exchange information, build alliances, dispute ideas, and work together” varies according to the group they belong to, so each discipline might be seen as a distinct academic “culture” (Hyland, 2004), “discourse community” (Swales, 1990), or “community of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991), each with its particular norms and practices. Thus, disciplinary membership becomes a reference for identification which implies both similarity and difference (Hyland, 2012, p. 26).

As claimed by Gotti (2012, p. 9), investigating identity in academic writing means exploring “the complex relationship that exists between shared disciplinary norms and individual traits.” Hence, disciplinary membership also implies the tension between conformity and individuality (Hyland, 2012, p. 22). In Gotti’s (2012) words, this tension challenges writers to balance the relationship between “their willingness to adhere to the common norms and conventions of their professional community,” and the desire “to express their own individual values and identity traits” (Gotti, 2012, p. 13). So as to understand this dialectical strain, I will refer to the concepts of ‘proximity’ and ‘positioning’ as introduced by Hyland (2012).

2.3.1 Proximity and positioning: The rhetorical construction of disciplinary identity

Through the identification with their discourse community scholars define who they are in relation to others. Identity therefore helps characterise both what makes them similar to and different from each other; in other words, their aim is to “achieve credibility as insiders” but also “reputations as individuals” (Hyland, 2010, p.160).

Proximity, defined as the relationship between “the self and the community” (Hyland, 2012, p. 22), proves useful to achieve the first aim, since it means “using language to adopt a disciplinary voice.” As for the second, positioning is the way, since it is means “adopting a point of view” towards the issues discussed in the text and to others who express points of view on those issues (Hyland, 2012, p. 42). While proximity focuses on conformity and positioning highlights difference, they are always mutually dependable. However, proximity and positioning “generally work in tandem although not always in concord” (Hyland, 2012, p. 123), because discipline conventions and individual choices stand as the two conflicting elements of a complex relationship of tension.

In academic writing, positioning is said to be accomplished through ‘stance’ (Hyland, 2012). However, I argue that for the purposes of identity studies, referring to stance without considering the broader concept of ‘voice’ would mean to limit the scope of analysis since both notions are part of same dialectic continuum, as it will be explained in the following section.

2.3.2 Stance and voice in academic writing

Stance concerns “the writer’s textual ‘voice’ or community-recognised personality” (Hyland, 2012, p. 40). It is a writer-oriented function which refers to the ways writers present themselves and convey their attitudes, judgments and opinions (Biber, 2006). Thus, stance is subsumed in the broader phenomenon of voice (Hyland & Sancho Guinda, 2012), but the two features constitute a reversible flow linked to particular rhetorical situations. Voice, like identity, is “crafted,” “constructed,” “built,” and “created,” and only once it is “found” and “made visible,” then voice “emerges.” Stance, in contrast, appears “to be there” and is “approached,” “expressed,” “realised,” or “taken” (Hyland & Sancho Guinda, 2012, pp. 5-6). As Fløttum (2012, p. 18) states, voice always implies stance, “regardless of how clearly marked the latter may be.”

Stance largely involves the writer’s expression of personal attitudes (described as ‘affect’ by Ochs and Schieffelin, 1989) and assessments of the status of knowledge in a text (understood as ‘evidentiality’ by Chafe, 1986), as stated by Biber and Gray (2012). Hyland (2005), who developed an extensive work in the area very much in line with this earlier research, put forth an overall paradigm of stance specifically related to academic writing which encompassed evidentiality (through ‘hedging’ and ‘boosting’) and affect (through ‘attitude markers’), but added a third element: ‘presence’, manifested by the degree to which a writer places him or herself in a text (Biber & Gray, 2012, p. 18). ‘Hedging’ refers to markers that limit commitment to a proposition (e.g. possible, might) and ‘boosting’ to those expressions indicating a high degree of certainty towards proposition (e.g. certainly, obviously). ‘Attitude markers’ indicate the writer’s affective attitude to propositions, conveying surprise, agreement, importance, frustration, etc. Finally, ‘presence’ focuses on authorial self-mention to give prominence to the role of the author in the text (Hyland, 2005, pp.178-180).

As regards voice, three dimensions of analysis have been presented by Tardy (2012, p. 34): “individual aspects, social aspects, and voice as dialogic.” Within these dimensions, conceptions about stance interweave. In this way, stance and voice constitute a continuing and reversible flow shaped by particular rhetorical situations. The dimensions of voice, together with the intermingling of stance features, will be described within a holistic framework of analysis in the following section.

2.3.3 Towards a comprehensive framework of analysis

The individualised voice is often described as a writer’s unique and recognisable imprint, associated with “authenticity, resonance, authoritativeness and authorial presence within a text” (Tardy, 2012, p. 37). In that sense, stance helps create voice through presence (Hyland, 2005). Thus, this dimension of voice is closely connected with the third possibility for selfhood described by Ivanič (1998, p. 26): the “self as author.” However, as already stated, self-representation is constructed within both, individual but also social dimensions.

While individual voice is generally understood as the property of the writer, social voice is liked with the writer’s disciplinary community (Tardy, 2012). The voice of a text is created within a social context in which writers position themselves in relation to the texts they draw upon. As writers choose certain discourses and align their work with particular texts and authors, they construct voice (Hyland, 2002a). Social aspects of voice make the multiplicity of voices interacting in a text visible. This is known as ‘heteroglossia’ (Bakhtin, 1981), and refers to the idea that the voice of a text needs to be perceived as a mingling of voices. The ways in which those voices are put into interaction, however, may be attributed to the individual writer’s choices (Tardy, 2012).

As regards its dialogic dimension, voice is neither individually controlled by writers only nor determined by the social conditions within which they write. “It is a subject to, and a result of, both writer and social context” (Tardy, 2012, p.39). Thus, conceptualising voice as dialogue highlights the interaction between the individual and the social towards the resulting co-construction of voice.

A dialogic view draws the attention as well to the reader and to the ways in which writer and reader interact. The interaction between writers and readers has been studied by Hyland (2005) under the label of ‘engagement’ as a complementary framework to ‘stance’. Engagement features, generally made visible through the use of reader pronouns, personal asides, appeals to shared knowledge, directives, and questions, however, will not be considered in this work due to scope and focus restrictions.

To sum up, academic discourse is characterised by the presence of different academic voices that are performed through linguistic and rhetorical choices conveying stance, which are rooted in individual as well as social contexts of interaction. In concord with these assumptions, Fløttum (2005, p. 29) describes the “self” and “the other” dimensions of academic voices in RAs.

Typical stance features related to ‘the self’ dimension are self-mention forms, which also stand for authorial presence (Hyland, 2005). Those features encompass first person pronouns and determiners, self-citations, and other authorial expressions such as this researcher, this author, etc. (Hyland, 2001). But self-mention forms in isolation cannot tell much about authorial identity. The exploration of the rhetorical functions (Tang & Johns, 1999) and author roles (Fløtum et al., 2006) performed by the writers in combination with personal pronouns also need to be considered.

As regards typical features of ‘the other’ dimension, bibliographical references (Fløttum et al., 2006) or citations (Hyland, 2004), which are also studied in combination with different reporting verbs, stand as suitable options. Verb selections can thus ascribe an epistemic status to the information reported, evaluating it as true, doubtful or false (Hyland, 2004). Furthermore, different subtypes of bibliographical citations, such as integral and non-integral citations (Swales, 1990), are useful to tell a lot more about how and to what extent other researchers are given the possibility to manifest themselves in a RA.

Chapter 3. Methodology and corpus

3.1 Identity and corpus-based studies: Advantages of the method

Strictly speaking, a corpus by itself “can do nothing at all” (Hunston, 2002, p. 3), being nothing other than a store of used language. In other words, a corpus can offer evidence but cannot give information. However, as linguistic evidence provided by a corpus can be analysed, corpora might become reliable sources for language description. As Widdowson (2000, p. 23) argues, the importance of corpora “lies not in the answers they provide but in the questions they provoke”.

According to Hunston (2007, p. 6), a corpus may be useful “in quantifying stance markers, and this quantification may lead on to more qualitative work.” The value of a corpus approach is that it provides evidence for how language is used by particular authors and so how individuals construct an identity through consistent patterns of rhetorical choices (Hyland, 2010). In this sense, corpus analysis is based on the idea that the study of a collection of texts can illuminate our understanding of the contexts and events those texts help to create. Its advantage for identity research is that it explores the regularity and repetition of “what is socially ratified and independently variant and therefore what represents preferred practices by both individuals and collectivities” (Hyland, 2010, p. 163).

Corpus evidence informs interpretations that can be strengthened by triangulation, using multiple methods or sources of data (Hyland, 2012). Some researchers, for example, interview subject specialists concerning their communication practices or even the authors of the texts collected in the corpus to complement the data they obtained from the corpus itself. Some others focus on discourse-based interviews (Odell et al., 1983). This method requires participants “to respond to features in selected texts as either writers or members of the community for whom the texts were composed” (Hyland, 2012, p. 62). For example, Hardwood (2006) carried out a study on the use of first person pronouns in political sciences following this method. He based his decision on the assumption that “corpora cannot investigate pronoun use from the writers’ perspective” (Hardwood, 2006, p. 425).

Although those considerations are valid and might help, in fact, to provide a complementary methodological approach, I argue that corpus studies, by providing evidence for repeated patterns of language, might provide, for example, enough data to illustrate disciplinary or generic preferences without the need of additional interviews. Besides, several international research projects investigating identity in academic writing have been carried out by means of corpus studies.

One of those Projects is known as KIAP (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose), carried out by the University of Bergen, Norway, and it adopts a double contrastive perspective: it investigates the linguistic characteristics of RAs from different disciplines (Economics, Linguistics, Medicine) and different languages (English, French, Norwegian). KIAP’s main research question is to find out whether ‘cultural identities’ exist in academic discourse, and if so, to what degree these are linked to discipline or to national language (Fløttum et al., 2006).

The SERAC (Spanish/English Research Article Corpus) Project, conducted at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, was designed to carry out an intercultural and rhetorical comparison of the work of Anglo-American scholars writing RAs in English, and of Spanish scholars writing RAs in English and Spanish. It identified various rhetorical strategies which are used in different ways by native-English scholars and Spanish academics when they write in international or local journals (Lorés-Sanz, 2009).

Finally, the CERLIS (Centro di Ricerca sui Linguaggi Specialistici) Group at the University of Bergamo, Italy, carried out research on the analysis of features of stance and authorial presence in several academic genres. Their research is also based on a self-compiled corpus, CADIS (Corpus of Academic Discourse) of RAs, books, book reviews and editorials in Law, Economics, Linguistics and Medicine. The purpose was to better understand how and to what extent language forms and functions are adapting to the globalisation of academic discourse (Gotti, 2012).

3.2 The corpus

Tognini-Bonelli (2001) distinguished between ‘corpus-based’ and ‘corpus-driven’ studies. Corpus-based studies understand the corpus “as a source of examples to check the researcher’s intuitions,” while corpus-driven studies are more inductive: “the corpus is the data and the basis for any discovery of patterns of use” (Hyland, 2012, p. 62). The present work can be described as a corpus-based study since I have focused on potentially productive items (self-mention forms and bibliographical references) based on my reading of the literature and previous research studies to explore identity traits in academic writing.

The corpus collected for this work consists of 30 Research Articles in the discipline of Applied Linguistics written by Latin American authors from the six most important countries (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela) concerning scientific production and publication in international indexed journals according to official reports (CAICYT, 2009; CONICYT, 2012).

As for the context of the study, my initial aim had been to focus on RAs written by Argentinian authors only. In fact, a pilot study on 10 articles by writers from Argentina was carried out aiming at testing the methodology and analytical approaches employed. However, I decided to broaden the scope to Latin American scholars’ articles based on Martínez’s (2011; 2012) assumptions. This author focuses on some aspects that distinguish the Latin America EFL context (Martínez, 2012), and suggests this context presents some common characteristics that, although at first sight may appear as disadvantages, may be turned into advantages that may be capitalised on, so as to favour the teaching of EAP (Martínez, 2011), as already stated in the Introduction.

The corpus was built following the design criteria suggested by Hunston (2002), according to whom its size should be related to its representativeness, thus allowing for generalisations. In this sense, I decided to collect 30 articles based on the research carried out by Hyland (2001), whose corpus comprised 240 RAs from 8 different disciplines (that is 30 articles per discipline) among which Applied Linguistics was included. Thus, his 30 articles comprised 211,400 words while the 30 articles I collected made 168,184 words. As my purpose was not to carry out cross-disciplinary analysis but to focus on one genre and one discipline, I considered the size of the corpus as adequate for this research.

Other studies of interest were based on the use of self-mention in only one discipline. Martínez (2005), for example, carried out a study using an authoritative corpus made of NES articles and compared it to a sub-corpus of 15 manuscripts by NNES Argentinian writers in the discipline of Biology. Luzón (2009) collected a corpus of 55 articles written by Spanish NNES Engineering students and compared it to other research works by expert writers. An average of the size of both sub-corpora is 35 articles, thus justifying my decision.

The 30 articles gathered were freely available online at the moment of the corpus construction and they were all published in different local and international journals. An interesting assumption pointed out by Mauranen et al. (2010, p. 647) highlights that the so-called “regional or local journals” are not regional and local any more once they make their articles “globally available on the web in PDF formats,” as in the case of this corpus. The journal in which the articles were published are: TESOL Quarterly, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (IJBEB), International Journal of English Studies (IJES), International Journal of Applied Linguistics (IJAL), ELT Journal, SYSTEM, PROFILE, IBÉRICA, MEXTESOL Journal, Brazilian English Language Teaching (BELT) Journal, ARTESOL ESP Journal, Revista de Lingüística Teórica y Aplicada (RLA), Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal (CALJ), and Colombian Journal of Bilingual Education (CJBE). The selected articles date between 2006 and 2013 and their authors can be considered expert writers, since all of them lecture in English in different higher education institutions and hold or are completing postgraduate studies in English, according to the biographical information provided by each journal.

3.3 Data analysis

The program WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2004) was used for quantifying occurrences of self-mention forms and bibliographical citations by using the Concord tool. Following Hyland (2002), I excluded appendices, reference lists, and texts associated with tables. With the aim of comparing results with other studies, percentages were calculated and the frequency counts were also normalised per 10,000 words. After the occurrences were quantified, each case of self-mention and bibliographical citations was analysed manually, in context and individually. Once different categories were identified, they were coded and summarised in tables and figures to illustrate the findings.

Considering variables of analysis, Mauraren et al. (2010, p. 636) state that variation in academic writing in English is “multifaceted and extremely complex,” mainly when trying to ensure that the sub-corpora used for comparative purposes are appropriately comparable. Besides, due to focus and scope restrictions, some pre-determined decisions need to be taken into account. The variables of language, genre and discipline will gain greater importance for the analysis of this corpus. However, as this is a single-genre (Research Article) single-discipline (Applied Linguistics) single-language (English) corpus, the focus will not be placed on comparing and contrasting identity traits through genres, disciplines, or languages but on exploring how those features are manifested in a particular context determined by a specific socio-cultural setting (Latin America). Other possible variation perspectives, such as writer’s gender and grade of expertise or variation across sections of the articles will not be considered.

As for parameters of comparison, several other studies framed within the variables of interest already mentioned were considered (Hyland, 2001; Martínez, 2005; Luzón, 2009; Belotti, 2012; Lorés-Sanz, 2011a, 2011b; Lafuente, 2010; among others), since they proved useful to shed light on the interpretation of the findings.

Chapter 4. Results and Discussion

4.1 The presence of the ‘self’: How ‘researchers’ manifest their voices

The ways in which writers choose to make themselves visible in their texts through self-reference are important for rhetorical purposes, indicating “the kinds of commitments writers are willing to make and the information they are prepared to give about their beliefs as individuals” (Hyland, 2002a, p. 1098). In this sense, self-mention forms constitute central pragmatic features of academic discourse because they contribute not only “to the writer’s construction of a text, but also of a rhetorical self” (Hyland, 2002a, p. 1110). Hence, their analysis as they occur throughout the corpus might become the primary source to address the first research questions of this study: In what ways do Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics manifest their authorial identities in the Research Articles they write?

4.1.1 Self-mention: Frequencies and forms

Only the cases of first person that referred to the authors of the papers, known as exclusive first person, were examined in detail. Also cases of self-citation and reference to work conducted by the same authors and examples of self-mention terms such as this writer, the research team, the author, etc. (Hyland, 2001) were included in the search. All cases were examined in context to ensure this exclusive use and to determine their pragmatic function. As half of the articles in the corpus were of multiple authorship, I looked for singular (I, me, my) as well as plural forms (we, our, us) of first person pronouns and determiners. However, and due to the important percentage of occurrence of pronouns performing inclusive functions (understood as ‘engagement’ features), a preliminary analysis is provided in the Appendix.

Pronouns were the most salient forms of self-mention in the corpus, followed by self-citations and other expressions such as the research team, this author or the researcher. The results have been summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 Self-mention frequencies and forms.

I

We

TotalI/we

My

Me

Our

Us

Self-citation

Other

expressions

Total

Self-mention

Number of occurrences

85

212

297

40

1

89

15

49

16

507

Percentage

(%)

16.77%

41.82%

58.59%

7.89%

0.19%

17.56%

2.95%

9.66%

3.15%

100%

Frequency (per 10,000 words)

5.05

12.6

17.65

2.37

0.05

5.29

0.89

2.91

0.95

30.14

A ratio of 30.14 per 10,000 words was observed considering frequency of self-mention forms in general. In comparison with Hyland’s (2001) findings, the presence of self-mention forms was much lower, since the author reported a ratio of 51.8 of self-mention forms in his sub-corpus of Applied Linguistics RAs (Hyland, 2001, p. 112). Although no other studies using comparable sub-corpora have considered the occurrence of all self-mention forms together, many scholars have examined one or more of those features separately. Some of their findings will be considered in the following sections for comparison purposes.

4.1.1.1 First person pronouns

First-person pronouns perform a strategic role in the modulation of the writer’s voice in academic texts. They are thought to constitute strategic linguistic choices (Kuo, 1999) that are used to persuade the reader about the validity of the writer’s claims, and at the same time to contribute to the construction of a voice for authorial positioning in the scientific community (Lorés-Sanz, 2011b).

The most salient finding was the difference between the use of first person singular pronouns and plural ones, considering that half the articles were single-authored. The frequency of occurrence was 5.05 for I while a frequency of 12.6 was found for the occurrence of we. Hyland (2001) reported a ratio of 18.02 for occurrences of I in his sub-corpus of Applied Linguistics RA, which is three times higher than the findings in this corpus. Considering that in 6 of the 15 single-authored articled collected in this corpus there was no presence of self-mention forms at all, this low rate of first person singular pronouns was not surprising.

Similar findings were reported by Belotti (2012), who investigated the use of first person pronouns in single and multi-authored RA abstracts by Italian (also a Latinate language) NNES writers in the field of Economics. The author stated that in single-author abstracts researchers tried to reduce personal attributions, while in multi-authored ones, they usually “conveyed the idea of plurality” (Belotti, 2012, p. 172). Also Lorés-Sanz (2009) concluded that single-authored Spanish RAs writers usually avoided the responsibility that the use of singular pronouns might convey.

These assumptions can be supported by the fact that as a feature of personal meta-discourse (Adel, 2006) the first person singular pronoun I is “unambiguous in referring to the writer” (Biber et al. 1999, p. 329), in contrast to we, which often involves a “fluidity and ambivalence of meaning,” as stated by Wales (1996, p. 58). These preliminary results might signal that when Latin American scholars do team research and write about their works together, they manifest their authorial presence much more visibly than when they work and write on their own.

Another possible explanation might also come from the influence of some L1 interference factors. Subjective forms are marked choices in Spanish, a pro-drop language (the same as Portuguese). In Spanish, explicit mention of the subject is grammatically redundant, as first person is also marked by a verb suffix (Martínez, 2005), so first-person pronouns are not normally made explicit and their use becomes emphatic (Lorés-Sanz, 2011a) Thus, the use of first person subjects tends to sound egocentric and pompous for what Spanish speaking writers may tend to transfer this perception to English.

As for multi-authored articles, Martínez’s (2005) study is useful for parameters of comparison. Through the analysis of two sub-corpora, she found that NNES Argentinian Biology RAs authors used first person pronouns to show authorial presence in a lower frequency (18.9) when compared to NES writers (38.2), who almost doubled the NNES value. A similar study was carried out by Lorés-Sanz (2011b), who investigated the use of personal pronouns in two sub-corpora of NES and NNES Spanish writers in the field of Business Management. Her findings showed a frequency of 56.3 by NNES and 107.5 by NES, also showing a use of first person pronouns which was twice higher than NNES RA authors. However, Hyland (2001) reported a frequency ratio of 13.7 for we in multiple-authored articles in his sub-corpus for Applied Linguistics, this time showing a much lower difference with the occurrence of we in the multiple-authored articles in the corpus.

Lorés-Sanz (2011a) stated that when Spanish writers publish in English in international forums they tend to boost their degree of visibility in the text by increasing the frequency of use of personal pronouns, although not to the extent of their Anglophone colleagues. A possible explanation for this preference of the use of we in multiple-authored articles might relate to the concept of “exclusive-collective” reference (Adel, 2006, p. 31), which emphasises personal involvement and responsibility in the research process by showing the researchers as actively involved in a disciplinary community working for the development and progress of their discipline (Carciu, 2009). Hyland (2006) also stated that through ‘we’ realizations, writers put forth a more visible stance “which involves expressing a textual voice or community recognized personality” (Hyland, 2006, p. 29).

As regards the use of possessive determiners (my, our) or objective pronouns (me, us), the results showed that the tendency was the same for singular as well as plural forms: possessive determiners were used in a higher rate than objective pronouns. Similar findings were reported by Lorés-Sanz (2011a), Martínez (2005), Lafuente Millán (2010), and Martín Martín (2003). According to Gosden (1993, p. 62), first-person references could be considered to “form a progressive cline of writer visibility.” Thus, as Carciu (2009, p. 73) claims, the presence of the writer in the text could be placed along a scalar continuum since the three overt first-person references have their strong (we), intermediate (our), and weak (us) forms that mark the explicit presence of the writer as a visible participant in the research/reporting process.

4.1.1.2 Other self-mention expressions

Considering the presence of other ways of signalling self-mention besides personal pronouns, 16 expressions appeared in 6 articles from the corpus: 11 expressions in 4 single-authored articles and 5 expressions in 2 multiple-authored ones. For the former ones, these expressions were: this author (twice), the researcher (twice), the author (five times) and the research team (twice). In multiple-authored articles the expressions were: the research group (three times), the authors (once) and the researchers (once). As shown by the results, the preference for those expressions was twice higher for single-authors, who, at the same time, avoided using the pronoun I. Moreover, when compared to Hyland’s (2001) findings, the ratios were similar: 1.0 (Hyland’s corpus) and 0.95 (this corpus).

Some interesting considerations could arise here in an attempt to understand why Latin American writers markedly avoid using the pronoun I but include other expressions to signal authorial presence in similar rates. According to Adel (2006), this type of reference is particularly common in academic writing. One reason for writers to refer to themselves in the third person is that it gives a formal impression. This usage may be a consequence of the fact that, as explained before, the use of I has been traditionally seen as quite unconventional. Nevertheless, on occasion, writers still find a need to make their presence or personal position explicitly known, for example “in showing the origin of an idea or argument” (Adel, 2006, p. 86) or the complete responsibility for a procedure or finding, as in the following examples from the corpus:

(5) Finally, the vocabulary identified by this author as unfamiliar to the students’ needs to be tested in the classroom to verify the accuracy of this author’s assessment.

(6) Every Friday, students were responsible for sending their journal entries by e-mail to the researcher.

(7) A questionnaire was designed and piloted, and the final version agreed by the researchers was prepared for electronic distribution and recovery.

(8) The researcher made sure beforehand that all students knew how to use MSWord.

4.1.1.3 Self-citation

Finally, another form of self-mention RA writers usually employ is self-citation by referring to their own earlier research (Hyland, 2001). The ways and extent to which academics refer to themselves and their work offer important insights into the assumptions they hold about their role in the research process and to the epistemological and social preferences of their disciplines. Cases of self-citation were present in 50% of the articles, thus resembling Hyland’s (2003) findings (56%). However, the frequency of self-citations (per 10,000 words) was lower in this corpus (2.9) compared to Hyland’s (2003) results (4.5). This means that Latin American authors use fewer citations per article. From the cases of self-citation found, 78% were non-integral and 22% were integral (Swales, 1990) citations.

By citing their own work, scholars indicate that their previous research has already been published and, thus, show proof of their valid membership to that specific culture. As such, self-citation is a very strong tool that the writer employs to be seen as an important player in a field and to have his or her work taken seriously (Mur-Dueñas, 2007). Integral citations (in which the researchers’ names form part of the actual text rather than between parentheses) tend to foreground the reported authors’ ideas, drawing the attention to the reported message rather than to the reported author (Mur-Dueñas, 2007). Thus, non-integral citations can be considered less self-promotional than integral self-citations in that more attention is drawn to the reported author. Non-integral self-citations, nevertheless, “still indicate that scholars have research published in the field, which contributes to their displaying a credible image of themselves” (Mur-Dueñas, 2007, p. 155).

According to Hyland (2001), the circumstances which motivate authors to cite their own works are varied and complex. Among those, psychological, rhetorical, and social factors are present, mainly related to issues of confidence, experience, and self-promotion. In the context of self-mention, self-citation can be seen as part of a comprehensive rhetorical strategy for emphasizing the writers’ personal contribution to research and “strengthening his or her knowledge claims, research credibility, and wider standing in the discipline” (Hyland, 2003, p. 251). By situating themselves within the research works they cite, writers enhance their authority. This helps to construct a more solid disciplinary identity and increases the probabilities that their work will be accepted.

4.1.2 Discourse functions

While frequency of occurrence is important in determining the differences in uses across different sub-corpora, a lot more can be understood about authorial identity by exploring the rhetorical functions of the uses of first person pronouns perform (Hyland, 2002a). A typology of authorial roles implied in the use of first person pronouns has been formerly suggested by Tang and Johns (1999), who contemplated exclusive as well as inclusive uses of self-reference under author roles through a continuum from the least to the most powerful authorial presences. Based on that typology, Hyland (2002a) created a similar categorisation but he eliminated those roles in which inclusive uses of pronouns were contemplated. Martínez (2005) took four of the five categories presented by Hyland (2002a) but added a new one based on her findings. Also based on Tang and Johns (1999) and Hyland (2002a), Luzón (2009) proposed nine different categories considering inclusive as well as exclusive first person pronouns. Finally, Vladimirou (2007) also proposed some specific functions for the pronoun I. Some of the categories presented by the above mentioned authors will be used to analyse the cases found in the corpus.

The 297 cases of first person exclusive pronouns found in the corpus were analysed individually and in context. The presence of several discourse functions were found, as illustrated below. For the description of each function, some examples from the corpus were selected so as to clarify uses or point out at especial cases.

Figure 1 Frequency of discourse functions

As illustrated in Figure 1, the most salient function (38%) was “elaborating an argument” (Hyland, 2002a), which derives from the role of “opinion-holder” (expressing an opinion of someone else’s views) and “originator” (venturing one’s own take on an issue) proposed by Tang and Johns (1999). This is a high-risk function associated with explicit cognitive verbs such as think, believe and assume. Setting out a line of reasoning would seem to be a key purpose of academic writing and generally only the professional academics rather than students or novice writers choose to stake their commitments to their arguments with the use of first person, according to Hyland (2002a). Some examples of this function are:

(9) We believe this “rethinking” is the result of the interaction between class participants’ positions and academic voices.

(10) I believe, in part, that in those reasons for the change is the way of seeing the relationships between theorists, practitioners and applied linguists.

(11) Following Koda (2005:29), we think that individual words are critical building blocks in text meaning construction.

It is important to mention the high presence of the verb argue, also denoting a clear cognitive activity by the writers:

(12) Still, I argue that it is possible to exploit many of the characteristics of the situation to the learners’ benefit.

(13) Based on our review of the research, we argue that PGG and the Whole Langua ge approach are not supported by empirical research.

Other verbs such as question and contend are clear examples of the discoursal function aimed at elaborating an argument:

(14) On one hand, I question whether it is just a semantic distinction, or whether it reflects any kind of ontological or epistemological assumption or stance.

(15) However, I contend that this feature precisely makes international course books unsuitable for any context as this ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach fails to effectively target specific learning situations.

The following discourse function in order of importance as regards frequency (22%) was “explaining a procedure” (Hyland, 2002a), which is based on the role of “recounter of the research process” proposed by Tang and Johns (1999). The use of the first person pronouns serves, in this case, to describe methodologies, different steps of the research process, or actions related to the research process. Harwood (2005, p. 1213) points out that the use of pronouns to describe process “helps writers to highlight their own contribution to the work and mark the methodology as their own.” Martínez (2005, p. 184) similarly states that this choice may be interpreted as a strategic decision to assume personal responsibility for actions or decisions “that were different from the norm or from what was expected,” since, in general, procedures in RA are mostly expressed with verbs in the passive voice (Martínez, 2001). Some clear examples of this function from the corpus are:

(16) We transcribed and analyzed the data using thematic analyses. First, we conducted open coding and looked for recurring themes related to literacy and language use. Then we conducted focused coding…

(17)To determine final results, we triangulated findings from the interviews and the class observations.

(18) The interview lasted about 90 minutes. I employed life story interview techniques through open-ended questions.

The discourse function aimed at “stating claims and/or results” (Hyland, 2002a) occupied the third place (15%) in the corpus. This is the most self-assertive, and consequently potentially “the most face-threatening use of self-reference” (Hyland, 2002a, pp. 1103). This function allows writers to explicitly foreground their contribution and commitment to a position. For those cases, the most typical verb used if find. It is important to notice, in fact, that it was the most frequently used verb (accompanying first person pronouns) in the corpus, although it does not mean that this feature stands for the most frequent discourse functions, since those are signalled by the presence of several verbs denoting similar meanings. In the case of find in the corpus, it represented 50% of the verbs used to express the function of stating results:

(19) I found that the ordering of the clauses was restricting the possibilities for analyzing some pieces of the interview and the content of it as a whole.

(20) Having explored both approaches, we found more similarities than differences in their underlying bases.

(21) As this article suggests, supported by other studies (e.g., Lima, 2004), we have found that sharing research findings as well as theoretical constructs with teachers is highly productive for foreign language teacher education in Brazil.

Other verbs used for this purpose, for example, were discover and provide:

(22) We discovered that this strategy facilitated the use of “transfronterizo” literacy and content for academic purposes.

(23) In this paper I have provided an analytic case on the way in which the social discourses influence a student reflection and construction of who he is.

In the fourth place, the discourse function aiming at “stating a purpose” (Hyland, 2002a) was present. In 13 % of the cases RA authors used authorial pronouns to state their discourse purposes in order to signal their intentions and provide an overt structure for their texts. This kind of framing helped clarify both the direction of the research and the schematic structure of the argument, but it also foregrounded a fairly low risk writer role, simply signposting readers through the text (Hyland, 2002a). In a way, it is connected with the roles of “guides” and “architects” of the text as proposed by Tang and Johns (1999). Typical examples of this discourse function are:

(24) Basically, I aim to explain these changes and the implications for language teaching based on the theory of three cognitive interests proposed by Habermas for the human sciences.

(25) In this article, we will take our construct of transfronterizo literacies and discuss some ways in which we found students using these literacies for academic purposes. Thus, we will look at texts and literacy practices crossing national and home-school boundaries.

(26) First, I will present the theoretical contexts linking narrative with self-construction. Next, I will discuss the methodological implications in the process of collecting and representing experiences.

Finally, the additional category presented by Martínez (2005) aimed at “expressing intentions and decisions” was also present in the corpus (9%). This function is signalled particularly by the presence of cognition verbs conveying meanings related to volition (Biber et al., 1999, p. 693, cited in Martínez, 2005, p. 178), as they express desires, intentions, decisions, and efforts. Some typical examples found in the corpus are:

(27) These are some features of collaborative learning that we would like to highlight.

(28) We want to focus only on the four main roles and behaviours that caught our attention.

(29) We hope that the results presented can assist in the understanding of emotions experienced by language learners during classroom instruction.

(30) We hope that this discussion will provide EFL teachers and scholars with material for reflecting on and improving their practice.

Important assumptions can be inferred from the analysis of the discourse functions illustrated, since this is an area where major differences occurred when compared to other studies. Lafuente Millán (2010) and Hyland (2002a) found that the most frequent discourse function performed by the use of fist person pronouns was “explaining a procedure” in their sub-corpus of Applied Linguistics RA. Similarly, in the sub-corpora of RAs written by NNES Argentinian and Spanish authors (both sharing Spanish as L1), Martínez (2005) and Lorés-Sanz (2011a) also found that “explaining a procedure” was present in the highest rate, thus diverging from the findings in the corpus of Latin American Applied Linguistics RA authors, who markedly used first person pronouns to “elaborate arguments”, followed by “explaining a procedure”. In the studies mentioned the function related to “elaborating arguments” appeared in the second (Martínez, 2005; Lafuente Millán, 2010; Hyland, 2002a) or fourth (Lorés-Sanz, 2011a) places.

Many factors might be playing an important role in this divergence of use, for what a much more detailed and multifaceted analysis would be necessary. However, it can be implied that this tendency might be clearly showing an explicit signal of authorial positioning by Latin American writers, also related to the degree of risk involvement. The presence of different rhetorical function signals a variation in the degree of risk involvement by the writers. Thus, some discourse functions such as “elaborating and argument” of “stating claims and results” are considered as involving high risk, “explaining a procedure” involves low-risk and “stating a purpose” is a non-risk functions. Finally, assuming responsibility for decisions and signalling desires or intentions also involves high risk (Martínez, 2005). A preference for the use of I and we in functions involving high risk (64%) over low or non-risk functions (36%) can be observed in the corpus, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Risk involvement in discourse functions

When compared to the already mentioned studies, differences appeared again. In Martínez’s (2005) and Hyland’s (2002a) studies, high and low risk functions were used in the same proportions, while Lafuente Millán’s (2010) and Lorés-Sanz’s (2011a) findings showed that low-risk functions were more frequent than high-risk ones. Again, multiple factors might be influencing these differences, although a clear intention to inscribe authorial presence is evinced.

Finally, the remaining 1.3 % of first person subject pronouns (4 cases) occurred in the Acknowledgements section. This section was only present in 4 articles and authorial presence through the use of self-mention forms occurred in all of them. In addition to the 4 cases of pronouns, the authors of an article used the expression the authors thank. This high frequency of occurrence of first person in this section is related to its communicative purpose, which virtually obliges writers to represent themselves and their views unreservedly. This is a place where writers are able to reveal an identity disentangled from the complex conventions of powerful academic discourse types (Hyland, 2002a). In his study, Vladimirou (2007, p. 145) included the category of “I for Acknowledgments” as bearing a somehow unique status which needs to be treated separately, as it constitutes “one of the strongest expressions of the interpersonal function in academic writing”.

For the purpose of this paper, as stated before, the presence of inclusive pronouns (mainly we) is to be avoided (Hyland, 2002a). However, as illustrated in Figure 3, the frequency of occurrence of inclusive forms in the corpus is highly important. Thus, I have counted them separately and I have presented some general considerations as regards the discourse functions those rhetorical choices portrayed in the Appendix. Needless to say, the analysis of these ‘engagement’, ‘addressee’ or ‘reader’ features would be essential in studies focusing on the interaction between writers and the readers.

Figure 3 Frequency of inclusive and exclusive forms

4.1.3 Author roles

I will finally consider the classification of author roles provided by Fløttum et al. (2006) to shed some more light on the kinds of authorial identities Latin American Applied Linguistics RA writers manifest in their texts. The authors suggested looking at the first person pronouns and the immediate co-text where the pronoun occurs, i.e. first and foremost the verb construction which it is combined with, but also metatextual expressions surrounding it, as it was shown when the discourse functions were analysed. They propose four roles: the author as “writer”, “researcher”, “arguer” and “evaluator” (Fløttum et al., 2006) together with four verb groups:

1. Discourse verbs (e.g. summarise, (re)turn to): typically manifested in the writer role.

2. Research verbs (e.g. analyse): typically manifested in the researcher role.

3. Position verbs (e.g. claim): typically manifested in the arguer role.

4. Evaluation and emotion verbs and verb constructions (e.g. be sceptical about; feel): typically manifested in the evaluator role.

The first group of verbs denote either processes involving verbal or graphical representation, such as describe, discuss, illustrate, outline, present, repeat, show, summarise, or processes directly related to the text structuring and the guiding of the reader, such as begin by, focus on, move on, (re)turn to, conclude by. The research verbs, in the second group, refer to the action or the activities directly related to the research process, such as analyse, assume, consider, choose, compare, explore, find, follow, limit, study, test, use.

Hyland (2000, p. 27) proposed a separate cognition act concerning mental processes as exemplified by verbs like conceptualise and view, which are included in this group because it is evident that there is a substantial part of cognition in all kinds of research processes. The position verbs, constituting the third group, denote processes related to position and stance, explicit argumentation concerning approval, promotion or rejection, for example argue, claim, dispute, maintain, propose, reject. Finally, the verbs of the fourth group are used to represent emotional and evaluating voices of the author – reactions towards different observations made by the author or by somebody else. Examples of such verbs and constructions are feel, be content to, be sceptical about, be struck by, find something + evaluative adjective (Fløttum et al., 2006).

The occurrence of the most frequent verbs in combination with first person exclusive pronouns found in the corpus has been illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Frequency of verbs used in combination with exclusive first person pronouns

Throughout the corpus I identified 116 different verbs in combination with exclusive first person pronouns. So as to have a general picture of the main roles adopted by the authors I have considered the 16 most frequently used ones (occurring 5 times or more) which represent 45% (136 cases) of the 297 cases. The remaining 100 verbs occurred 4 times or less.

From the above results, it is clear that the main role adopted by the writers according to Fottum’s (2006) classification is the “researcher” (82 cases: find, believe, consider, analyse, decide, use, observe, identify) Then, the “writer” role follows (41 occurrences: present, discuss, focus, call, describe, show) and finally the “arguer” one (13 cases: argue, propose). There is no evidence of the “evaluator” role except for one occurrence of the verb question and two occurrences of the verb contend. As regards comparison with other studies, Fløttum et al. (2006) found the same tendency in their sub-corpora on NES Applied Linguistics RAs: 41 % for “researcher” roles, 24 % for “writer” roles and 21 % for “arguer” roles. In this case, the finding might signal a clear disciplinary influence by Latin American writers.

4.2 The presence of ‘the other’: How other ‘writers’ are given their voices

The previous section dealt primarily with the explicit presence of the author (self-dimension) in the text. I will now move towards those linguistic features that authors use in order to bring other researchers and their viewpoints into their texts. Thus, the focus is placed on the other-dimension with the aim of addressing this work’s second research question: In what ways do Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics give voices to other authors in the Research Articles they write?

Citation is a crucial means by which authors signal their affiliation to their disciplinary community. Choices made regarding what work to cite is an important aspect of the interpersonal dimension of academic texts, because a network of scholarly relations is made visible by citations. Citations also provide the opportunity for writers to promote their own work or the work of colleagues (Hewings et al., 2010). Citation is also central to the social context of persuasion because it can provide justification for arguments and demonstrate the novelty of the writer’s position: “By acknowledging a debt of precedent, a writer is also able to display an allegiance to a particular community or orientation, create a rhetorical gap for his or her research, and establish a credible writer ethos” (Hyland, 2004, p. 20). The inclusion of explicit references to the work of other authors is thus seen as a central feature of academic research writing, helping writers to establish a persuasive epistemological and social framework for the acceptance of their arguments.

4.2.1 Bibliographical references: Classification and frequencies

Several classification systems for bibliographical references have been developed based on different underlying theoretical assumptions. Although Swales (1990), Hyland (2004) and Fløttum et al. (2006) proposed a different framework each based on their own studies, the three approaches are related. However, in my view, Swales (1990) proposes a clear definition of how each type of reference is shaped but lacks examples and dated findings. Hyland (2004), despite presenting abundant results from his corpus studies, does not define the categories so clearly, while Fløttum et al. (2006) based their categories on Swales (1990) and Hyland (2004) but offer a much more qualitative kind of analysis to explain the rhetorical uses of each type of reference.

Based on those theoretical strengths, I will classify and analyze the bibliographical references present in the corpus. Further, I will focus on the type of bibliographical references in which the reference is used as a grammatical subject, paying particular attention to reporting verbs, and I will discuss the discourse functions they assume in the corpus and the authorial roles they help to create.

Fløttum at al. (2006) and Hyland (2004) distinguished several subtypes of bibliographical references, in order to inform better about how and to what extent other researchers are given the opportunity to manifest themselves in a RA. Like many other researchers on the topic, they were inspired by Swales’ (1990) distinction between integral and non-integral references in the setting up of these categories:

An integral citation is one “in which the name of the researcher occurs in the actual citing sentence as some sentence-element; in a non-integral citation”, the researcher occurs “either in parenthesis or is referred to elsewhere by a superscript number or via some other device” (Swales 1990, p. 148). Important qualitative distinctions are present within those references in which the name of the researcher occurs in the main text without parenthesis, mainly as regards the importance given to the researcher. According to Swales (1990, p. 148), integral citations can show the name of the researcher: (1) as “subject”, (2) as a “passive agent”, (3) as “part of a possessive noun phrase” or (4) as an “adjunct of reporting”. I will present some examples from the corpus to illustrate each type.

Integral/Subject:

(31) Grabe (2009) and Han and D’Angelo (2007) assert that current EFL reading pedagogy is very poorly developed and consists mostly of pre-teaching vocabulary, giving students background knowledge about the subject of a text, teaching how to guess the meaning of unknown words, and asking comprehension questions after reading.

(32)Ur (1996), for example, points out that “although the immediate responsibility for the maintenance of classroom discipline in most situations is the teacher’s, the ultimate goal is to reach the point where learners take on or at least share this responsibility” (p. 264).

Integral/Non-Subject/Passive Agent:

(33) The frequency ranking of each word was determined in reference to the ranking assigned to them by Davies (2006).

(34) As stated by Garret and Young (2009), “it is through experiencing the world and conducting an affective appraisal of these experiences that individuals develop their own unique preferences and aversions” (p. 210).

Integral/Non-Subject/Possessive Noun Phrase:

(35) This study also employed Schon’s (1987) concepts on reflection on action and reflection in action in order to identify within the data the student teachers’ considerations of both their daily activities and the consequences of their actions during their first teaching experience.

(36) For example, Jacobs and Goatly’s (2000, 261) investigation of the treatment of ecological issues in coursebooks suggests that these ‘occur less often in coursebooks for lower proficiency students’.

Integral/Non-Subject/Adjunct of Reporting:

(37) According to Carrell (1984), formal schemata, and particularly text structure awareness, guide L2 reading of texts and play an important role in L2 comprehension.

(38) This understanding of language education is based on the premises of postmodernity, a period that, according to Hall (2006), emerges from the decentralization of the modern way of life

As for non-integral citations, an important distinction needs to be made between those in which one or two authors are mentioned and those in which there is an accumulation of three or more bibliographical references represented within parentheses, a specific phenomenon known as “cluster” (Fløttum et al., 2006, p. 228). Finally, non-integral citations in which numbers are inserted in brackets or parentheses or superscript numbers refer to a bibliographical list (typically an end-list) are very common in medical discourse but almost absent in Applied Linguistics and other soft disciplines, and that is why no examples appeared in the corpus.

Based on the above classification, the results obtained from the analysis of citations in the corpus are illustrated in Table 2 below.

Table 2 Bibliographical citations. Frequencies and forms.

Integral Citations

Non-Integral Citations

Total

Cita-

tions

Subject

Total

Subject

Non-subject

Total

Non-

subject

Total

Integral

Non-

cluster

Cluster

Total

Non-inte-gral

Non-quoted

Subject

Passive

Adjunct

Posse-

sive

Number of occurrences

253

71

324

92

88

105

285

609

552

293

845

1,454

Percentage

(%)

17%

5.0%

22%

6.5%

6.0%

7.5%

20%

42%

38%

20%

58%

100%

Frequency

(per 10,000

words)

15.04

4.22

19.26

5.47

5.23

6.24

16.95

36.21

32.82

17.42

50.24

86.45

As regards the frequency of citations in the articles, 1,454 cases were found throughout the corpus. This corresponds to a frequency of 86.45 per 10,000 words. As for comparison to other studies, Hyland’s (2004) observed a relative frequency of 108 of citations in his corpus of academic texts in Applied Linguistics, while Fløttum et al. (2006) observed a relative frequency of 93 in English Linguistics. Thus, Latin American Applied Linguistics RA authors use relatively less citations than their NES counterparts, although the difference is not strongly marked.

As for the distinction between integral and non-integral types, Latin American authors preferred non-integral ones (58%) over integral ones (42%), in line with the percentages found by Hyland (2004). In his study, 65.6% of citations in Applied Linguistics were non-integral while 34.4% were integral. The use of one form rather than the other appears to reflect a decision to give greater emphasis to either the reported author (integral) or the reported message (non-integral). This preference has its roots on purely disciplinary choices. As shown by Hyland (2004, p. 24) all disciplines but Philosophy “display a distinct preference for non-integral structures.” Fløttum et al. (2006, p. 231) also supported this view through the results they presented about NES Applied Linguistics RA.

Finally, while within integral citations greater emphasis can be given to authors by choice of syntactic position, for non-integral ones, the clarity in which the information is reported needs to be acknowledged. For example, there is marked difference between the two examples that follow:

(39)But the potential of the web for ESL/EFL education is not limited to students exclusively. It also offers alternatives for teachers to further their education and maintain language skills through both formal and informal professional development formats (Hubbard and Levy, 2006).

(40) Formal online professional development has been available to ESL/EFL teachers for some time now in the form of Internet-based seminars, workshops and courses (Almeida d’Eça, 2004; Almeida d’Eça and Gonzalez, 2006; García and Susuki, 2008; González, 2004; Hubbard and Levy, 2006; Johnson, 2006; Lites, 2004).

(41) Psychoacoustic research has found that for pure tone sequences the higher-frequency components of the sequences were perceptually more salient than lower-frequency ones (Spiegel and Watson; 1981, Watson, Wroton, Kelly and Benbassat, 1975; Watson, 1976; Watson, Kelly and Wroton, 1976; Divenyi and Hirsh, 1978).

Although the three examples are non-integral citations, there might be, however, some confusion as to who did or found exactly what when there is a cluster of references (examples 40 and 41) in the same sentence, as Fløttum et al. (2006) explain. When faced with a reference of this type, it becomes legitimate to ask, for example, if all the higher-frequency components of the pure tone sequences were perceptually more salient in the same way in all the publications (example 41). In a study concerning the specific phenomenon of cluster, Fløttum (2004) claimed that even if clustering represents an efficient way of referring to and positioning oneself in relation to other relevant research, it may lead to considerable ambiguity and even go against the academic ideal of clarity. There are, of course, situations where clustering is practical, for example when referring to a group of publications treating the same subject (as in example 40), but in many cases it is necessary to ask why such accumulations occur. The presence of many clusters helps to increase the number of citation occurrences. In the corpus, in fact, 35% of non-integral citations comprising 293 citations appeared as accumulated in 64 clusters.

Integral citations, as stated before, tend to give greater prominence to the cited authors due to their presence as integrated members of the citing utterance. The most prominent syntactic role a cited researcher can get seems to be the syntactic subject, as in these examples:

(42)Based on content analysis of ELT coursebooks used in Argentina, López Barrios (2008) found that global coursebooks feature trivial as well as unrelated topics that highlight a disregard for sequence or organisation.

(43)Similarly, Moirano (2012) examined three coursebooks used in three different secondary schools in Argentina and concluded that topics were usually related to daily life, and culture-related topics were associated to the USA or UK or did not address Argentinian students’ cultural needs and context.

Within this category, however, there is a case in which the voice of the other(s) is the most explicit: when the author is directly quoted, as in the following examples:

(44) Referring to the context of the interview, Kvale (1996) states: “The interviewee’s statements are not collected – they are coauthored by the interviewer” (p. 183).

(45)In a study of five ELT coursebooks for adults, Tomlinson et al. (2001, 87) agreed that “the topic contents of many of the units, in many of the courses, are distinctly trivial for adult learners”.

The explicit presence of other(s) as realised through quoted or non-quoted subject integral citations corresponds to what is commonly called reported or represented speech. If we understand polyphony as the presence of several voices in one and the same text, or even in one utterance, “reported speech is the polyphonic phenomenon par excellence” (Fløttum et al. 2006, p. 230). The author gives the floor to another person, the represented author, either directly by transferring complete responsibility for the reported sequence to the represented author, as in examples 42 and 43, or indirectly by transferring responsibility of content only (and not form) of the reported sequence to the other, as in examples 44 and 45.

As for parameters of comparison, Hyland (2004) found 10% of direct quoted citations in Applied Linguistics academic texts and 90% of non-quoted citations. Although he considered all citations (subject and non-subject) and I only counted direct quoted citations within subject citations, the percentages are similar and can serve to show tendencies. As shown by the results, 20% of citations occurring within subject position references are quoted while the other 80% are non-quoted. Hyland (2004, p. 26) explains that as the way in which information is presented is crucial in gaining acceptance for a claim, “writers will tend to express the original material in their own terms.” This entails employing the cited text in a way that most effectively supports their arguments. Summary and generalization are the most effective ways of achieving this and they allow the writers greater flexibility to emphasise and interpret the comments they are citing (Hyland, 2004).

Considering the preference for integral subject or non-subject references (whether by the use of passive constructions, adjuncts of reporting or possessive noun phrases), there is a slightly marked preference for subject ones, also resembling Hyland’s (2004, p. 24) findings. While the cases in which the author assumes the grammatical function of subject represent 53% of integral citations, the other 47% corresponds to non-subject references. In Hyland’s (2004) study, the percentage of subject integral citations is higher (59%), while non-subject forms weight the remaining 41%.

In the following section, I will concentrate on the cases in which the bibliographical references assume the grammatical function of subject in an attempt to describe what the other researchers are allowed to do in the texts, thus highlighting the importance that reporting verbs carry for this purpose.

4.2.2 Bibliographical references as grammatical subjects and reporting verbs

The use of a reporting verb to introduce the work of other researchers is a significant rhetorical choice. Hunston (1993) points out that verb selection ascribes information as received knowledge and thus influences its evaluative status, while Tadros (1993) shows how this choice enables writers to detach themselves from a proposition, predicting their later declaration of their own position. Thomas and Hawes (1994) and Thompson and Ye (1991) categorized the ways in which this variation of commitment to reported information is realized in particular reporting verb selections, detailing the choices as a network of writer options. The importance of these verbs therefore lies in the fact that they allow the writer to convey clearly the kind of activity reported and to distinguish precisely an attitude to that information, signaling whether the claims are to be taken as accepted or not (Hyland, 2004).

Following Thompson and Ye (1991) and Thomas and Hawes (1994), Hyland (2004) classified the reporting verbs according to the type of activity referred to. This gives three distinguishable processes: 1) Research Acts, referring to real-world activities, which occur in statements of findings (observe, discover, notice, show) or procedures (e.g. analyse, calculate, assay, explore), 2) Cognition Acts, concerned with mental processes (believe, conceptualize, suspect, view). 3) Discourse Acts, which involve verbal expression (ascribe, discuss, hypothesize, state). As stated in the previous section, this broad classification served Fløttum et al. (2006) to distinguish the four author roles: “researcher”, “writer”, “arguer” and “evaluator”.

In addition to selecting from these process categories, “writers also exploit the evaluative potential of reporting verbs” (Hyland, 2004, p. 28). Thus, writers can vary their commitment to the message by adopting an explicitly personal stance or by attributing a position to the original author. The writer may represent the reported information in one of three ways: as true (acknowledge, point out, establish); as false (jail, overlook, exaggerate, ignore); or non-factively, giving no clear signal. This last option allows the writer to ascribe a view to the source author, reporting him or her as positive (advocate, argue, hold, see), neutral (address, cite, comment, look at), tentative (allude to, believe, hypothesise, suggest) or critical (attack, condemn, object, refute) (Hyland, 2004).

The ten most frequently used reporting verbs in the corpus, which showed 10 or more occurrences in combination with bibliographical references in subject position have been presented in Figure 5 with the aim of identifying the roles Latin American authors assign to the other researchers in their texts.

Figure 5.Reporting verbs in subject position citations.

First of all, it is important to notice the high number of different verbs used present in the corpus (101 different verbs), although most of them were used only once or twice, as also stated by Fløttum et al. (2006). Hyland (2004) also found great variation in the choice of verb used in referencing. As for the most frequently used verbs, those occurring in the Applied Linguistics articles studied by Hyland (2004) were: suggest, argue, show, explain, find and point out. Four of them, as can be shown, were present also in our corpus. As for Fløttum et al. (2006) they found that argue, note, point out, show and propose were the most used ones by English Linguistics, thus sharing two verbs with Latin American Applied Linguistics authors. However, state, which is one of the most typical verbs to describe discourse acts, was the most frequent reporting verb in the corpus but did not appear in any of both studies aimed at comparing findings, even when Hyland (2004, p. 27) claims that, broadly, applied linguistics and other soft disciplines “largely favoured discourse activity reporting verbs.” It might be argued that the over presence of state is related to its completely neutral denotation as a reporting verbs; in fact, it represents the formal option to refer to the meaning that the verb say conveys.

As for the exploitation of the evaluative potential of reporting verbs, Latin American writers usually represent the reported information as true, due to the high frequency of the verb point out, for example. However, much reported information is also represented in a non-factively way, reporting the author as positive, for instance through the use of the verb argue; or tentative, as shown by the high frequency of the verb suggest. Although Hyland (2004) reported that humanities and social science papers contained some explicitly critical examples (counter-factive), no cases of such verbs were found in the corpus, thus highlighting the neutral voice given by other writers.

Verb variation is also interesting from a dialogic perspective. One of the challenges for all discourse analyses of citations is the interpretation of the relation between the writer and the citation, i.e. between the different voices integrated in the text. This relationship varies according to level of responsibility; thus, different subtypes of relations exist according to the verb that is used in the introduction to the citation. Fløttum et al. (2006) argue that there is a clear non-responsibility relation between author (self) and represented researcher (other) in the case of reporting (non-factive) verbs. However, in the case of factive verbs, this non-responsibility seems weakened.

Finally, as regards classification of author roles, it can be stated that other scholars are presented as “writers” by Latin American authors. This assumption differs from the role given to other authors according to Fløttum et al. (2006), as they claim that in all their nine sub-corpora, including English Linguists, the others are presented as “researchers” who show or find something. However, they also state that position verbs (like argue and claim) are typically used in Linguistics, showing in this case a similarity with the corpus studied.

4.3 Emerging globalized identities: The resolution of conflicting tensions

“Every act of communication is an act of identity because identity is what the writer does in a text” (Hyland, 2012, p. 195). Language offers a system of choices for representation in various ways, so the constraints which are imposed by genre and discipline are simultaneously the raw materials which facilitate similarity and difference, conformity and idiosyncrasy, compliance and resistance (Gotti, 2012). Writers draw on a repertoire of options in their local contexts and make judgements about how far successful communication will involve juggling communal and personal voices, subordinating some choices and foregrounding others in expressing positions, while observing proximity to recognised norms (Hyland, 2012). In other words, the secret seems to lie in finding the way to negotiate difference from similarity.

So far, I have tried to show how Latin American Applied Linguistics RA writers manifest their identities as authors through the analysis of only a few from a multiplicity of linguistic features that can be thought of as identity conveyors. However, understanding identity construction in academic writing cannot be limited to the mentioning of preference or avoidance of certain self-mention forms, discourse functions or way of citing others’ claims. This atomised analysis would lead to an also fragmented view of authorial identity, more focused on the interpretation of linguistic features in terms of desirable vs. non-desirable or standard vs. non-standard options. The key issue is to find out what influences have led writers to make those choices and, once performed, how those choices portrayed them as members of shared communities (proximity) as well as distinctive protagonists of particular contexts (positioning). A follow-up question is to find out to what extent those tensions are solved or if any of the conflicting elements is more powerful than the other.

For example, by avoiding the use of self-mention forms in general and first person singular pronouns in particular, Latin American writers seem to adhere to genre conventions related to the historically acknowledged impersonality and formality of academic genres. However, by performing high-risk discourse functions like the elaboration of arguments and the stating of results and claims through the use of those same pronouns, Latin American Applied Linguistics scholars position themselves as authoritative protagonists of their own findings. In the same way, they show proximity to their discourse community by adopting the role of 'researchers' and the abundant use of cluster citations that denote continuity of a scientific tradition, but make themselves more visible as authors by relegating other voices in their texts as 'writers', usually reported in non-factive, neutral ways. In other words, their authorial identities are shaped within the interstices that genre and discipline conventions left accessible as choices. Undoubtedly, those choices were accepted by the discourse community because their articles have been published, which was, in fact, the writers’ ultimate goal.

These particular relationships between the discourse community conventions and the rhetorical positioning of their participants gives birth to “transversal identities” (Gotti, 2012) that merge in the globalized context of academic discourse. Thus, in order to understand English as the major language of academic communication, it needs to be captured in its current contexts (Mauranen et al, 2010), marked by two divergent effects in academic writing: an increased emphasis on “Englishization” (Swales, 2004, p. 52) in the world-wide academic context, and a growing attention to the culture-specific textual and rhetorical preferences of Academic English by non-native scholars on the other. While the former effect acts as a centripetal force towards the standardization and hence homogenization of academic writing practices, the latter is a centrifugal force which contributes to heterogeneity and diversity as it brings to the fore the linguistic richness of culture-specific uses of normative Academic English. (Mauranen et al., 2010). It is then within the resolution of those tensions that local academic identities emerge. Thus, this might answer, to some extent, the third research question which is aimed at exploring the ways in which Latin American scholars in the field of Applied Linguistics rhetorically construct their identities within conflicting generic and disciplinary tensions.

A last consideration about the concept of “local knowledge” (Canagarajah, 2005a), however, deserves further attention. In the academic sense, it refers to knowledge that diverges from with is established or legitimised in the disciplines (Foucault, 1972). Although globalization, as mentioned before, has brought a new understanding of diversities and has permitted local identities make more visible, the “local” finds representation only according to the purposes and forms permitted by the powerful (Canagarajah, 2005a), the norms, and the conventions. In other words, Latin American Applied Linguistics RA writers’ identities, as performed by diverse linguistic choices manifested in their texts, will only pass the gatekeepers of international publication in English as long as their “local” features are accepted by the global communities they form part of. In this sense, the local will always have a questioning effect on established paradigms in the same way that individual positioning will always be framed by disciplinary and genre constraints, no matter how flexible they seem to be.

Finally, Mauranen et. al. (2010) claim that academic discourses in themselves “have no native speakers,” since they are learned in secondary socialisation by every participant of an academic community of practice. Thus, register, generic, and specific aspects “are all consciously learned skills which are not acquired in the same way as a mother tongue.” That is why, as it will be illustrated in the following chapter, it is not surprising that guidebooks to academic genres are addressed to by native and non-native speakers alike. Finally, it is important to understand that “relations of power and authority in the globalized academic community are therefore far more complex than simply ‘natives know best’” (Mauranen et al., 2010, p. 670).

Chapter 5. Pedagogical implications, future research, and limitations

5.1 Pedagogical implications

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) “is usually defined as teaching English with the aim of assisting learners’ study or research in that language”, but is also a “theoretically grounded and research informed enterprise” (Hyland 2006, p. 1). Hence, the roles and responsibilities of the EAP practitioner are multiple and varied: “needs assessor, specialized syllabus designer, authentic materials developer, and content knowledgeable instructor, capable of coping with a revolving door of content areas relevant to learners communities” (Belcher 2006, p 139).

A dilemma faced by all academic writers, and by teachers of academic writing, as I stated in the introduction, is how to help students to deal with the compelling claims of “self-assertion and self-effacement, individual creativity and institutional authority, personal commitments and community expectations” (Cameron, 2012, p. 249). Multiple pedagogical implications might arise from this work. However, I will focus on the issue of awareness-raising as the most important aspect.

First of all, students need to raise awareness towards the myth of impersonality traditionally given to academic discourse. Academic discourse has traditionally been perceived as impersonal and objective. Thus, researchers were assumed to report their knowledge claims objectively, avoiding the use of personal involvement in order to gain acceptance for their work (Lafuente Millán, 2010; Martín Martín, 2003). Besides, the use of impersonality has been proposed by most manuals and textbooks which often advise authors to avoid a personal style of writing under conventions of anonymity, as stated by Hyland (2001a, pp. 208-209). However, as it has been discussed throughout this work, academic writing is moving away from its traditional image of distance and impersonality, a fact that is also evinced by the publication of teaching materials in concord with these new assumptions.

An insightful example of how genre conventions and preferences change with time is provided by the widely used textbook on academic writing for graduate students written by Swales & Feak (2004; 2012). In its second edition (2004), the authors presented a set of recommendations to follow on the use of a formal academic grammar style (Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 22), where no mentioning of personal features appeared at all. However, in its third edition (2012), the same section is presented but the way in which it is introduced radically changes the teaching perspective:

While you may prefer to closely follow the stylistic conventions of your field, you may also want to seek ways to “push gently at the boundaries of conventions” (Casanave, 2010), more strongly position yourself, and create your scholar identity. What follows are some other considerations that you can investigate and possibly incorporate in your academic writing style. These are not rules to follow, but rather choices you can make (my emphasis) (Swales & Feak, 2012, p. 22).

After these introductory lines, the authors place, as the first aspect to consider, the possibility for academic writers to use personal pronouns (I or we) to signal authorship. After that, they repeat the exact information on other recommendations from the previous edition. I believe that this example is telling enough of many of the assumptions provided in this work.

First, it proves that genres are not static, as claimed by Bhatia (2004). Secondly, it serves to claim that the requirements of academic conventions do not form “a closed and determining system” but can be perceived as patterns of options that allow writers “to actively and publicly accomplish an identity through discourse choices” (Hyland, 2010, p. 159). As Fairclough (1992, p. 91) observed, subjects are “ideologically positioned”, but they are also capable of acting creatively to “make their own connections between the diverse practices and ideologies to which they are exposed, and to restructure positioning practices and structures”. There is, in other words, always potential for reproduction as well as for transformation. Finally, the issue of identity as constructed within discourse interaction rather than as a fixed phenomenon is also implicit.

As for suggesting students to investigate and incorporate different linguistic features into their writing styles, the use of corpus analysis as a pedagogical tool within the EAP class might become an interesting approach (Muguiro, 2012). Corpus work is interesting “not only because it provides texts, but also because it provides a methodology to investigate these texts” (Gavioli, 2005, p. 69). Finally, by doing corpus work students might develop their ability to analyse language, thus enhancing their autonomy as language learners by “getting their own teeth into the corpus” (Aston, 2002, p. 133).

Finally, this changing of perspective evinced in a short paragraph accounting for the passing of eight years might also be signalled as a corollary of a general shifting orientation towards academic writing, which is especially insightful for the context of this study. This means moving from a “monolingual orientation” to a “multilingual orientation”, where the deviations from the norm might not be perceived as errors or signals of deficiency but as rhetorical choices to adopt, thus fostering the emergence of more agentive rather than passive writers (Canagarajah, 2005b, p. 62-63). As Cameron wisely claims (2012, p. 256), the teacher’s role would be to “demystify” what many students regard as a daunting task by “focusing on the interplay of constraint and choice,” without denying the importance of either but inviting students to reflect critically on both. As claimed before, it is useless to suppose that any academic writer can ignore externally implied conventions and expectations, but there is some space for writers “to negotiate their own positions” (Cameron, 2012b, p. 256).

5.2 Future research

Considering this study as a preliminary approximation to the issue of identity construction in published Applied Linguistics RAs in Latin America, two main research trends might become interesting. The first one is related to the research publication process, specifically as regards the previous instances before publication. For example, writers can be asked whether their articles were subjected to processes of revision to find out if the revised aspects were related to discourse markers of identity. Contrastive analysis of first drafts and published articles to focus on trajectories could also become an appropriate approach, since gatekeepers may condition the authors’ decisions. Finally, exploring the extent to which the dichotomy periphery/centre plays a role in the revision and publication processes could be of special interest for the Latin American EAP context.

The second research trend is rooted in the possibility of exploring identity in academic writing according to a different, not very much explored, parameter of comparison. Most of the subjects whose texts were analysed in this study are NNES researchers in the areas of Applied Linguistics and TESOL but they are also EFL/ESL practitioners working in higher education institutions. This implies not only that they do research ‘about’ the English language but also that they commonly ‘use’ English to teach their lessons, correct papers, design tests, etc. Thus, they share an important advantage over, for example, NNES Biology or Engineering researchers who also publish their RAs in English, because besides possessing the knowledge about the subject matter, they also manage the knowledge (and meta-knowledge) about the code.

However, that benefit does not guarantee “the ownership of the genre.” As Bhatia (1997, p. 314) states, “the knowledge of the code is a prerequisite to communicate expertise in any specialist or even everyday discourse.” However, a perfect knowledge of the language “is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to the acquisition of the genre.” The way in which the knowledge and meta-knowledge (or lack of it) of the code might influence the linguistic and rhetorical choices writers perform might be a thought-provoking parameter of comparison that can shed light into disciplinary variation issues.

5.3 Limitations

As regards limitations of this work, some complementary methodologies could have been useful so as to provide a broader context of analysis. For example, interviews to specialists or even to some of the authors who wrote the articles might have proved insightful since writers could have presented the motivations and intentions which informed their linguistic choices from their own perspectives. Also EAP students from higher education contexts could have been interviewed too so as to know what their main areas of difficulty as regards authorial presence are, thus helping to shape a better informed diagnostic panorama for the implementation of the pedagogical applications suggested. However, as this is a preliminary, completely exploratory work and not many studies, at least in this context and about the discipline chosen have been published, the information provided by the corpus served as a first, introductory encounter with the subject matter. Besides, as already mentioned, many well-grounded similar studies have been carried out by the solely means of corpus analysis. A further limitation is the fact that no inferential statistics have been employed to test the findings. However, as this as preliminary, completely exploratory work from which no generalizations are to be stated, this lack of inferential statistics can be accepted.

Another methodological limitation involves the absence of an external validation of the findings. Ambiguous issues such as the identification of discourse functions or the classification of reporting verbs, for instance, could have been analysed by another researcher for agreement, since some cases of overlapping roles or unclear rhetorical choices appeared. Some reliability tests could have been designed too. Unfortunately, and due to time restrictions, any of these options was applied, so it is very likely that some mistakes have been made.

5.4 Concluding remarks

Throughout this work I have attempted to provide a general framework for the analysis of identity traits in academic writing. As regards theoretical considerations, my intention was to unravel certain biased misconceptions still surrounding within some research traditions, as well as to shape a comprehensive web of intermingling concepts that can help to the understanding of identity in writing as a multidimensional phenomenon. As for methodology, its value is double: corpus analysis serves itself to analyse the ways in which writers inscribe their identities in the texts they write but it also might be useful as a pedagogical tool for EAP students and teachers alike. Finally, the findings showed the particular ways in which Latin American scholars manifest themselves as writers and give voices to others through the adoption of linguistic and rhetorical choices that become visible within the co-exiting tensions of generic and disciplinary nature. As a Latin American NNES writer myself, this work has allowed me to reflect on my own academic writing style so as to make more well-grounded decisions on the ways in which I manifest my identity as a writer. Thus, although some limitations and weaknesses are surely present in this work, its metacognitive and reflective value is to be strengthened.

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Appendix

1. Analysis of inclusive first person pronouns

The rate of frequency per 10,000 words for pronouns with exclusive use was 17.65 (the 297 cases analysed) while the rate for inclusive ones was 8.2 (around 138 occurrences). Among the functions involved in the use of inclusive we, the most frequent form, Luzón (2009) proposes that of “assuming shared experiences/knowledge, goals, beliefs.” Inclusive we is also often used to refer not to people in general but to a smaller group, such as the audience of the paper. In these cases, we collocates very often with need to, have to, don’t need to, want to, should. In this sense, we is use with modals and semi-modals as a solidarity strategy intended to involve the reader and build a working relationship (Luzón, 2009, p. 201). Some examples from the corpus were:

(1) We are part of social structures, and we participate in social events and interact with others in diverse forms.

(2) As narrators, we evaluate events of our lives in terms of the cultural norms and expectations of our particular community. >

(3) They propose that as literacy researchers, we should ask ourselves ‘what is localizing and what is globalizing in what is going on’.

(4) Collaborative learning has developed certain roles and values that we as teachers have to promote in our students when working in collaborative environments.

Used this way, the first person pronoun, far from giving the reader information about the writer, effectively “reduces the writer to a non-entity” (Tang & Johns, 1999, p. 27). Therefore, in terms of the potential power wielded by an authorial presence, this “representative” role (Tang & Johns, 1999) is the least powerful role that the first person pronoun can front.

A related function of the use of inclusive we is that of “emphasising or calling the reader’s attention” (Luzón, 2009). Writers of research papers use phrases such as it should be noted to draw the reader’s attention to a specific aspect. The verbs used for this purpose usually are emphasize, notice, point out, stress. Fløttum et al. (2006) observed that see, which they regard as a reader inclusion verb, is very frequent in Linguistics to open up for reader interaction. Some examples from the corpus were:

(1) Looking at the interactive meanings construed in the image, we note that there is not eye contact with the viewer (single-authored article).

(2) In sum, we see the interconnection of the three meta-functions towards a representation of Carrie as a woman who both acts and represents new things to come (single-authored article).

Finally, a small percentage of first person pronouns (34 cases), representing a ratio of frequency of 2.0 in the corpus, occurred in phrases whose discourse function was aimed at providing the reader with some contextual information about the working context of the researchers, their professional background and previous experiences, etc. In the field of Applied Linguistics in Latin America this might happen because many authors, who are teachers and researchers at the same time, carry out studies in the educational contexts they work. I have labelled this discourse function as “providing background personal information”. Some examples from the corpus follow.

(3) Since phonology is the area in which we work, we are constantly looking for methods that will help our students to understand and use phonology as a tool which combines with other linguistic, paralinguistic and contextual features in the negotiation of meaning.

(4) In this paper, by using excerpts from a conversation I had with a High School student in an urban school in Bogotá.

(5) I have participated in two projects of this nature: one about evaluation in the primary schools and another in higher education, related to the pedagogy of research with undergraduate students.

(6) Findings from both studies, especially those related to the concepts of ‘identities’ and ‘investment’ as defined by Norton (1997), were discussed with English teachers on two occasions in 2006 when we had the opportunity to lecture in two training courses.

Vita

Natalia Muguiro es Doctora en Lengua Inglesa y Lingüística Aplicada (PhD English Language & Applied Linguistics) por la Universidad de Birmingham, Reino Unido (2019) y Magíster en Lingüística Aplicada y Enseñanza de Inglés (MA Applied Linguistics & TESOL) por la Univerisdad de Leicester, Reino Unido (2014). Es Licenciada en Ciencias de la Educación (2012), Licenciada en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa (2004) y Profesora en Inglés (2004) por la Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Se desempeña como Profesora Titular en la asignatura Lengua Inglesa IV y como Profesora Adjunta en la asignatura Teoría y Análisis Literario del Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, UNLPam. Participa en proyectos de investigación acreditados, ha publicado sus trabajos en diversos ámbitos y ha realizado presentaciones en eventos científico-académicos en Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Estados Unidos y Reino Unido. Sus principales áreas de interés son la lingüística del corpus, el discurso académico y la escritura creativa.