Explicit Author in Scientific Discourse: A Corpus-based Study of the Author’s Voice

Abstract

The relationship of the author with the discourse community and how the author views himself has no (Cooper,1985; Anthony,1999,2001; and Posteguillo,1995,1999) or limited place (Kuo’s 1999 corpus included only three articles from one CS journal) in Computer Science Research Articles studies. This paper attempts an in-depth analysis of the Computer scientist’s voice in research articles, analyzed through computer-based techniques using WordSmith Tools. The author’s voice is studied with reference to the personal pronoun we and its inclusive and exclusive use. A comparison drawn with the Hyland Corpus (1999 a, b; 2000, 2001 b) of hard sciences and social sciences research articles clearly supports the results of the study.