To We or Not to We

Corpus-Based Research on First-Person Pronoun Use in Abstracts and Conclusions

Bibliographic Data

ID4181897
AuthorsShih-Ping Wang (0000-0002-9035-2469, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, corresponding author), Wen-Ta Tseng (0000-0001-5673-5944, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology), Robert Johanson, Robert E Johanson (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology)
Year2021
Volume11
Issue2
Publication date2021-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSAGE Open (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2158-2440 • E-ISSN: 2158-2440
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/21582440211008893
OpenAlexW3152957221
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited36

A growing trend exists for authors to employ a more informal writing style that uses "we" in academic writing to acknowledge one's stance and engagement. However, few studies have compared the ways in which the first-person pronoun "we" is used in the abstracts and conclusions of empirical papers. To address this lacuna in the literature, this study conducted a systematic corpus analysis of the use of "we" in the abstracts and conclusions of 400 articles collected from eight leading electrical and electronic (EE) engineering journals. The abstracts and conclusions were extracted to form two subcorpora, and an integrated framework was applied to analyze and seek to explain how we-clusters and we-collocations were employed. Results revealed whether authors' use of first-person pronouns partially depends on a journal policy. The trend of using "we" showed that a yearly increase occurred in the frequency of "we" in EE journal papers, as well as the existence of three "we-use" types in the article conclusions and abstracts: exclusive, inclusive, and ambiguous. Other possible "we-use" alternatives such as "I" and other personal pronouns were used very rarely-if at all-in either section. These findings also suggest that the present tense was used more in article abstracts, but the present perfect tense was the most preferred tense in article conclusions. Both research and pedagogical implications are proffered and critically discussed

Academic writing · Art · Corpus linguistics · Empirical research · Epistemology · First person · Linguistics · Literature · Mathematics education · Past tense · Personal pronoun · Pronoun · Reflexive pronoun · Academic Writing and Publishing · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Writing and Handwriting Education

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