Finding voice in biology: A diachronic analysis of self-mention in the discussions of an L2 scholar

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Abstract

A recent essay published in this journal by Swales (2019), calls for EAP genre analysts to pay more attention to (i) context and (ii) syntactic and phraseological patterns and uses. In this study, I address these two issues by taking a usage-based linguistics (UBL) approach to analyse how a molecular biologist, who writes in English as an additional language for research publication purposes, constructs representations of himself over a period of nine years through the use of self-mention. The analysis reveals that while the focal writer’s inventory of self-mention constructions becomes increasingly productive over time, his core frame of self-representation remains that of the ‘practical agent’. Closer analysis of these tokens of self-mention in the discourse context, however, reveals that over time he positions this practical agency in different ways thus realising a more or less self-promotional tenor. This case study approach highlights the historical embeddedness of the writer and the text and the ways in which voice features such as self-mention are contextually motivated.

Introduction

The construction of authorial identity in written academic discourse is frequently investigated and captured through notions of voice and ethos (Matsuda, 2015) in synchronic and textually focussed EAP studies. A large number of these studies focus on the incidence of linguistic features, such as first-person pronouns (Stock & Eik-Nes, 2016). While synchronic studies have added much to our knowledge of how often and in what ways first-person pronouns are used in academic writing, research that takes a diachronic approach to capture the embodied expression and development of such voice features over time (Dressen-Hammouda, 2014; Fogal, 2019a; Pérez-Llantada, 2009) are far less prolific. Indeed, EAP studies are oftentimes too textually focussed (Swales, 2019) and driven by large-scale analyses, which pay little attention to contexts and variation. This paucity of contextual information seems particularly puzzling given the centrality of context and community to voice construction (Tardy, 2012). The problem here is that textually focussed and synchronic studies fail to recognise the historical embeddedness of the writer and the text. As a result, they are unable to capture the dynamic and complex ecology in which voice features might be contextually motivated within the same discipline, rhetorical situation, and writer.

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use both talk and text to more closely investigate the expression and development over time of form-meaning pairings of self-mention in the contexts “for and out of which” (Tardy, 2012, p. 39) they are produced. This is achieved by adopting a case study approach to diachronically examine, through textual analysis and semi-structured interviews, how a molecular biologist, who writes in English as an additional language (EAL) for research publication purposes, uses self-mention in his research articles (RAs) over time. The articles were published at three-year intervals over a nine-year time period in which the focal writer moves from PhD student to Assistant Professor across linguistic, disciplinary and physical boundaries. Moreover, this study adopts a usage-based linguistics (UBL) approach, which posits that cognitive representations for language are built as language users experience, encode and categorize utterances based on form, meaning and context (Bybee, 2013). In other words, the focal writer’s language use represents the mental organisation (and subsequent reorganisations) of his language experiences as a scientist across timescales and contexts (Burgess & Ivanic, 2010). In adopting this approach, I not only recognise that writer identity is dynamic and fluid (Matsuda, 2015), but also that “a single act of writing involves the coordination of multiple processes that exist on different timescales” (Burgess & Ivanic, 2010, p, 229). Before embarking on the analysis, however, it is first necessary to establish (i) what is meant by self-mention and its significance in EAP studies and (ii) why self-mention is a particularly interesting construct to investigate in biology. The next section of the paper deals with each of these points in turn.

Section snippets

Self-mention and EAP research –an over-explored feature?

Following Hyland’s (2005) model of interaction in academic discourse, this study defines self-mention as the use of first-person pronouns (i.e. I and we) and possessive adjectives (i.e. my and our). First-person pronouns can perform a wide array of functions in academic writing (Harwood, 2005) and have been linked to authorial presence (Hyland, 2002) and portrayed as devices that can help writers create a promotional tenor (Harwood, 2005; Walková, 2019). Possessive adjectives are also used to

Research questions

As argued above, there is a lack of EAP research that captures the embodied expression and development of patterns of self-mention use and the functions they represent in closely defined contexts across timescales. Based on this identified research gap, the current study addresses the following research questions:

  • RQ1

    With what frequency does the focal writer use self-mention at different points in time?

  • RQ2

    What type of self-mention constructions does the focal writer use?

  • a.

    What is the influence of time?

  • b.

Method

In this study, I present a case in a series of case studies1 investigating the construction of authorial identity across contexts and timescales. Case study provides a powerful methodological approach for in-depth observation (Casanave, 2002; Yin, 2014) and situated and

Findings and discussion

This diachronic case study reveals that Renzo’s inventory of self-mention constructions becomes more productive over time, but not in a linear manner. There is a continued use of some core constructions of self-mention, the discontinued use of others, and importantly the emergence of new ones over the nine-year time period. Importantly, frequency counts alone only tell a partial story. As will be illustrated in section 5.2., they do not reveal the emergence of new self-mention construction

Conclusion

This study’s central goal was to adopt a usage-based approach to more closely investigate the expression and development of form-meaning pairings of self-mention and the frames they embody in the discussions of a molecular biologist writing in English as an additional language for research publication purposes across contexts and timescales. As has been shown, Renzo develops a productive inventory of form-meaning pairings of self-mention over time. This development was however, not linear, and

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Frances Junnier: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to Dr. Carol Moder (Oklahoma State University) for her guidance on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Frances Junnier is a PhD Candidate in the TESL/Applied Linguistics Program at Oklahoma State University where she also teaches in the International Composition and Technical Writing Programs. Her research interests include EAP and identity in written discourse.

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