Author manifestation and perceptions of self in Chinese academic discourse: Comparisons with English

Abstract

This paper examines the manifestation of authorial identity in Chinese-language research articles by contrasting the phenomenon with English across three fields. The study seeks to find patterns governing the use of self-mention devices among native Chinese writers, and to explain such patterns in terms of the Chinese perception of self. Based on a corpus-based investigation of pronominal and depersonalized forms of self-mention involving 180 research articles, the paper suggests that Chinese authors have a stronger tendency to use depersonalized forms than pronominal forms. It is also found that in using first-person pronouns, Chinese authors in single-authored papers have a salient preference for the plural form, in particular the inclusive plural pronoun. The paper attempts to link the linguistic phenomenon to the concept of the ‘interdependent self’ inherent in Chinese social psychology and proposes possible applications to research in bilingual scholarly writing and academic translation.