Authorial Pronoun We

Capturing Politeness in EFL Academic Writing

  • Lely Tri Wijayanti Universitas Jenderal Soedirman
  • Nur Indah Sholikhati Universitas Jenderal Soedirman
  • Exwan Andriyan Verrysaputro Universitas Jenderal Soedirman
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20884/1.jes.2022.3.1.5934

Abstract

This study aims to decipher the use of authorial pronoun we as a politeness strategy in the EFL academic writing. The data consist of 56 published research articles taken from the Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners’ English. The articles were written by Indonesian undergraduate students co-authored with their thesis supervisors. Attempting to categorize pronoun we into inclusive, exclusive, and ambiguous types in the co-authored texts, we identify seven functions of the authorial pronoun. The result unveils that the ambiguous authorial pronoun we appear to be the most frequently used politeness device to minimize face threatening acts (FTA).

References

Anthony, L. (2011). AntConc (Version 3.4.3) [Computer Software]. http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/
Atkinson, D. (2000). On Peter Elbow’s Response to “Individualism, Academic Writing, and ESL Writers,” by Vai Ramanathan and Dwight Atkinson. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(1), 71–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(99)00018-1
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press.
Burke, P. J. (2008). Writing, Power and Voice: Access to and Participation in Higher Education. Changing English, 15(2), 199–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/13586840802052419
Conrad, S. (2018). The Use of Passives and Impersonal Style in Civil Engineering Writing. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 32(1), 38–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651917729864
Elbow, P. (1999). Individualism and the teaching of writing: Response to Vai Ramanathan and Dwight Atkinson. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(3), 327–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(99)80120-9
Harwood, N. (2005). “We Do Not Seem to Have a Theory ... The Theory I Present Here Attempts to Fill This Gap”: Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in Academic Writing. Applied Linguistics, 26(3), 343–375. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami012
Hyland, K. (2001). Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles. English for Specific Purposes, 20, 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00012-0
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7, 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605050365
Hyland, K. (2010). Metadiscourse: Mapping Interactions in Academic Writing. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 9(2), 125. https://doi.org/10.35360/njes.220
Kitagawa, C., & Lehrer, A. (1990). Impersonal uses of personal pronouns. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 739–759.
Luzón, M. J. (2009). The use of we in a learner corpus of reports written by EFL Engineering students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 192–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2009.04.001
Martı́nez, I. A. (2001). Impersonality in the research article as revealed by analysis of the transitivity structure. English for Specific Purposes, 20(3), 227–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00013-2
McCrostie, J. (2018). Writer visibility in EFL learner academic writing: A corpus-based study. Icame Journal, 32(1), 97–114.
Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/10.1.1
Myers, G., & Lampropoulou, S. (2012). Impersonal you and stance-taking in social research interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(10), 1206–1218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.05.005
Ramanathan, V., & Atkinson, D. (1999). Individualism, academic writing, and ESL writers. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(l), 45–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(99)80112-X
Tang, R., & John, S. (1999). The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun. English for Specific Purposes, 18(September 1998), S23–S39. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(99)00009-5
Wang, S. P., Tseng, W. T., & Johanson, R. (2021). To We or Not to We: Corpus-Based Research on First-Person Pronoun Use in Abstracts and Conclusions. SAGE Open, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211008893
Published
2022-06-30
How to Cite
WIJAYANTI, Lely Tri; SHOLIKHATI, Nur Indah; VERRYSAPUTRO, Exwan Andriyan. Authorial Pronoun We. J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 1, p. 76-84, june 2022. ISSN 2723-357X. Available at: <https://jos.unsoed.ac.id/index.php/jes/article/view/5934>. Date accessed: 24 jan. 2025. doi: https://doi.org/10.20884/1.jes.2022.3.1.5934.
Citation Formats
Issue
Vol 3 No 1 (2022): June
Section
Articles
Creative Commons License

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

By submitting the manuscript, the author(s) agreed to these following terms:

(1) The copyright of received articles shall be assigned to J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies as the publisher of the journal. The intended copyright includes the right to publish articles in various forms (including reprint). J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies  maintain the publishing rights to the published articles.

(2) Author(s) are permitted to disseminate published articles by sharing the link/DOI of the article at J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies. Author(s) are allowed to use their articles for any legal purposes deemed necessary without written permission from J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies with an acknowledgement of initial publication to this journal.

(3) Authors should sign a copyright transfer agreement when they have approved the final proofs sent by J-Lalite: Journal of English Studies prior to the publication.

(4) User/public use of this website will be licensed to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.