Self-mention in Chinese linguistic MA novices’ and experts’ academic writing: A corpus-driven investigation of ‘we’ / Средства указания на автора в научных текстах: корпусное исследование

Хань Хао ORCID: 0009-0004-3832-6660 аспирант, кафедра иностранных языков филологического факультета, Российский университет дружбы народов имени Патриса Лумумбы 117198, Россия, г. Москва, ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 6 Han Hao Postgraduate student 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia 1042218192@rudn.ru Другие публикации этого автора

Дугалич Наталья Михайловна ORCID: 0000-0003-1863-2754 кандидат филологических наук заведующая кафедрой иностранных языков медицинского института Российского университета дружбы народов имени Патриса Лумумбы, доцент кафедры иностранных языков филологического факультета Российского университета дружбы народов имени Патриса Лумумбы 117198, Россия, г. Москва, ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 6 Dugalich Natalia Mikhailovna PhD in Philology Head of foreign languages department of RUDN Institute of Medicine, Associate professor of RUDN Faculty of Philology 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia dugalich_nm@pfur.ru Другие публикации этого автора

Introduction

Academic discourse serves as a crucial medium for knowledge dissemination and scholarly exchange. With the development of functional linguistics and the sociology of scientific knowledge, it has been increasingly recognized that academic discourse not only conveys scientific information and produces credible texts but also expresses rich interpersonal meanings (see: F. Jiang ^[12], K. Hyland ^[8], F. Jiang ^[13]). The credibility and acceptance of a paper depend not only on the reliability and validity of the research itself but also on the persuasiveness of the author’s argumentation, namely academic persuasion. We should also consider the studies of Russian linguists V. V. Zueva ^[1] and I. Yu. Shchemeleva ^[2], devoted to the use of means of indicating the author of a scientific text. This is a relevant direction for theoretical and practical research, since English has become widespread as the language of scientific communication.

The premise is that the presentation of viewpoints should adhere to academic discourse conventions to resonate with readers ^[12]. The process of persuasion and argumentation is most directly manifested when authors intervene in the discourse explicitly through linguistic means, organize text segments, evaluate discourse content, and guide readers in co-constructing discourse ^[11]. For example, the phrase ‘we show that’ compared to ‘the results show that’ highlights the author’s involvement in the research findings, aiding readers in identifying the author’s innovative contribution. Thus, self-mention serves as an important means of interactive persuasion and enhancing the author’s visibility in academic discourse.

Self-mentions, such as ‘I’, ‘my’ and ‘we’, play crucial role in academic discourse, signaling the author’s presence and fostering engagement with the reader. They serve as essential tools for establishing authorial identity and advancing persuasive arguments. Despite their growing importance in academic writing and knowledge construction ^[10], Chinese novice writers face challenges in utilizing self-mentions effectively to craft their academic texts and present coherent arguments (see: Y. Sun ^[19] and J. Wang & F. Jiang ^[22]). This difficulty is compounded by the limited emphasis on the lexical and grammatical aspects of self-mention in existing literature, which tends to focus more on their rhetorical functions (see: K. Hyland ^[7], F. Jiang ^[14], M. Walková ^[21]). Furthermore, traditional Chinese pedagogy often neglects the instruction of self-mention, with some educational materials even discouraging its use in academic writing (see: K. Bennett ^[3], F. Jiang & K. Hyland ^[15]), further hindering students’ acquisition of effective self-referential techniques. M. Walková ^[21] suggests that rhetorical function is just one aspect of self-mention usage, and phrase structure pose greater obstacles for second language authors to master self-mention.

Hence, this research, utilizing self-compiled corpora of Chinese linguistic MA theses and international journal articles, compares the collocational and chunk features of ‘we’ usage between novices and experts, with the objective of offering insights and references for the comparative analysis of academic English writing instruction.

Therefore, this study primarily focuses on three tasks concerning the examination of self-mention ‘we’: firstly, extracting strong left and right collocates around ‘we’ and categorizing them from both disciplinary culture and semantic functional perspectives; secondly, utilizing corpus-driven methods to compute high-frequency chunks guided by ‘we’ in both corpora and summarizing the overall chunk characteristics in CLMA_C and ILJA_C; and finally, conducting a comparative analysis of the collocation features and chunk characteristics between Chinese learners and international journal authors.

Based on these three tasks, the research methodology of this study primarily employs a corpus-driven approach and academic discourse analysis. The examination of chunk characteristics of self-mention ‘we’ necessitates a bottom-up corpus-driven approach, while the comparison of collocation features of self-mention ‘we’ between Chinese linguistic MA novices and experts requires detailed analysis. Understanding the differences between the two groups relies on the application of academic discourse analysis.

The object of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of self-mention ‘we’ between Chinese linguistic MA novices and linguistic experts. The subject of this investigation is to examine the resemblances and disparities in the collocational patterns and chunk structures of self-mention ‘we’ within the academic discourse of these two groups.

Previous research has identified various functions of self-mention in academic persuasion. K. Hyland ^[8] found that self-mention enhances the persuasiveness of academic discourse through five main functions: stating research objectives, introducing research processes, explaining arguments, presenting research results, and expressing personal contributions. R. Tang & S. John ^[20] argued that the persuasive function of self-mention constructs different academic identities for authors, such as ‘guide’, ‘recounter’, and ‘opinion-holder’, thereby influencing readers’ acceptance of viewpoints. Additionally, disciplinary differences and author groups can also influence the use of self-mention. K. Hyland ^[7] and F. Jiang ^[12] found that self-mention is significantly less frequent in natural sciences compared to humanities and social sciences. However, recent studies indicate a significant change in this trend, with a notable increase in the use of self-mention in natural sciences, primarily in the form of ‘we’ (see: F. Jiang & K. Hyland ^[15]). Regarding differences in the author groups using self-mention, M. Walková ^[21] and X. Yang ^[23] found that second language learners tend to use self-mention less frequently compared to native speakers, thereby downplaying their personal knowledge contributions. K. Fløttum ^[6] suggests that this covert presentation contradicts the English writing culture, which emphasizes explicit presentation of key information. J. Wang and F. Jiang ^[22], and X. Yang ^[23] found instances of underuse and misuse of ‘we’ in Chinese students’ academic writing, suggesting that differences in self-mention usage between students and experts warrant further systematic investigation.

The majority of previous studies in this area have primarily focused on identifying various rhetorical functions of self-mention, with minimal attention paid to collocational phrase structures. In fact, for second language (L2) writers, mastery of rhetorical functions represents an advanced writing skill, which cannot be achieved without a proficient command of the structural aspects of self-mention phrases.

Given this context, the present study employs a corpus-driven approach to contrast the collocational and chunk features of the use of the self-mention pronoun ‘we’ between Chinese linguistic MA novices and linguistic experts. Through this analysis, the aim is to gain insights into how novice scholars construct discourse, present knowledge, express academic stances, and establish interpersonal interaction when utilizing self-mention ‘we’ in academic writing. Therefore, the research questions are: (1) What are the collocation characteristics and chunk features of self-mention ‘we’ in Chinese linguistic MA theses and international linguistic journal articles? (2) Concerning these collocation characteristics and chunk features, what are the similarities and differences between them? And what are the reasons?

Research methodology

This study uses two corpora: the self-built Chinese Linguistic MA Theses Corpus (CLMA_C) and the International Linguistic Journal Articles Corpus (ILJA_C). The CLMA_C contains 804,935 words and contains 50 English Master of Arts theses written by Chinese postgraduate students in linguistics. The ILJA_C contains 802,490 words and contains 100 articles written by established linguistic experts. The research methodology involves the following steps:

1. Utilizing the GraphColl feature of the LancsBox 6.0 ^[5] software to calculate strong left and right collocates around the pronoun ‘we’ and categorizing them based on disciplinary culture and semantic functional perspectives.

2. Employing the N-grams feature of LancsBox 6.0 to compute high-frequency chunks within both corpora, and summarizing the overall chunk characteristics associated with the use of ‘we’ in CLMA_C and ILJA_C.

3. Conducting a comparative analysis of the collocation features and chunk characteristics between Chinese learners and authors of international journal articles.

Analysis and discussion

1. Overall collocation characteristics of ‘we’ in CLMA_C and ILJA_C

In this section, LancsBox 6.0 was utilized to calculate the frequency of left and right collocates of ‘we’ in the CLMA_C and ILJA_C corpora respectively. These frequencies were then sorted by MI3 score, a metric designed to rebalance the Mutual Information (MI) score by assigning greater importance to frequent words and lesser importance to infrequent ones ^[17]. This approach is influential for identifying strong collocates of a given search item. The detailed data concerning the left collocates of ‘we’ are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Left collocates of ‘we’ in CLMA_C and ILJA_C

CLMA_C			ILJA_C
Collocates	MI3	Frequency	Collocates	MI3	Frequency
in	21.70	78	in	22.20	671
of	20.63	569	of	21.40	618
this	19.97	511	this	20.67	297
from	19.96	236	and	20.63	483
and	19.51	206	as	19.77	278
above	19.29	© 1998 – 2024 Nota Bene. Publishing Technologies. NB-Media Ltd.