A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’ in different genres of successful business student academic writing

Helen Taylor; John Goodall

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.009

A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’ in different genres of successful business student academic writing

Helen Taylor, John Goodall

Research output: Journal Publication › Article › peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The use of I in academic writing is a topic which causes debate among academics and academic language teachers and much confusion among students writing for assessment. Although some research into the use of pronouns in academic texts has been completed, the effect of genre on pronoun use in academic writing is under-researched. This paper therefore aims to identify the rhetorical function for which first person singular pronouns are used across different genres of business students’ academic writing. The rhetorical functions of the instances of I in thirteen genres of good quality student academic writing were analysed using a modified version of Hyland's (2002) typology. The results showed that the genre of writing seems to influence the rhetorical functions for which I is used.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	135-145
Number of pages	11
Journal	Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume	38
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.009
Publication status	Published - Mar 2019

Keywords

BAWE corpus
Business student academic writing
First person singular pronoun
Genre

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics
Education
Linguistics and Language

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.009

Cite this

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title = "A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of {\textquoteleft}I{\textquoteright} in different genres of successful business student academic writing",

abstract = "The use of I in academic writing is a topic which causes debate among academics and academic language teachers and much confusion among students writing for assessment. Although some research into the use of pronouns in academic texts has been completed, the effect of genre on pronoun use in academic writing is under-researched. This paper therefore aims to identify the rhetorical function for which first person singular pronouns are used across different genres of business students{\textquoteright} academic writing. The rhetorical functions of the instances of I in thirteen genres of good quality student academic writing were analysed using a modified version of Hyland's (2002) typology. The results showed that the genre of writing seems to influence the rhetorical functions for which I is used.",

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AB - The use of I in academic writing is a topic which causes debate among academics and academic language teachers and much confusion among students writing for assessment. Although some research into the use of pronouns in academic texts has been completed, the effect of genre on pronoun use in academic writing is under-researched. This paper therefore aims to identify the rhetorical function for which first person singular pronouns are used across different genres of business students’ academic writing. The rhetorical functions of the instances of I in thirteen genres of good quality student academic writing were analysed using a modified version of Hyland's (2002) typology. The results showed that the genre of writing seems to influence the rhetorical functions for which I is used.

KW - BAWE corpus

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KW - First person singular pronoun

KW - Genre

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ER -

A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’ in different genres of successful business student academic writing

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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