Chinese And American Writers' Use Of Authorial Intrusion In Scientific Research Articles In English

The extent to which researchers can appropriately intrude into their articles is a controversial issue. Owing to the dispute of opinions, non-native English speakers may find it difficult if not impossible to make use of authorial intervention in drafting the articles. This paper aims at analyzing the use and distribution of authorial presence in a quantitative and qualitative way, which is realized by the use of passive voice and first person plural pronouns as these two features can be considered as the most extreme, polarized forms writers usually use to highlight or obfuscate their presence in the discourse.The use of the passive voice and the first person plural pronouns in scientific research articles by native English speakers(American scientists herein) and that by Chinese professional writers is compared. To make these comparisons, two corpora of scientific research article texts-----one by American scientists(56) and one by Chinese writers(61)----were obtained from the international journal of Cement and Concrete Research published in England and the passive voice and the first person plural pronouns were counted in each of the corpora. The frequency of their use in the two corpora as well as their distribution across the different sections(Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion and Conclusion) of the research articles is both explored and compared, and the functions for which Chinese scientists and native speakers used the passive voice and the first person plural pronouns were also compared.The major findings include: a) Compared with the American corpus, the Chinese corpus displays a far lower frequency in the use of FPPs(3.3‰ and 12‰), while there is no significant difference in the use of passives(36.3% and 36.7%). b) In terms of the distribution in article sections, Chinese scientists used a little more passives than American counterparts did, but there are no significant differences; difference in the Introduction(P-value=0.054) is the most significant; distributions in different sections are: 44% VS 38%, 33% VS 29.7%, 60.7% VS 59.3%, 28.5 VS 28.2,26% VS 25.5%. There are significant differences in the distribution of we, Chinese scientists underused we in all sections, especially the section of Abstract, distributions in other sections are: 1‰ VS 7.6‰, 2.3‰ VS 8.3‰, 4.6‰ VS 15.4‰, 3.4‰ VS 14.5‰. c) From the perspective of function, Chinese scientists are more likely to use passives to perform the functions of organizing texts, stating results and explaining procedures and the functions of explaining procedures, stating results, elaborating arguments, and organizing texts are all realized through the use of we in both corpora. All these findings suggest that American scientists are more likely to present themselves as authorial identities by use of personal authorial references than Chinese counterparts. They intrude into the texts more often than Chinese scientists do.These findings will help Chinese scientists know more about the international academic conventions, regulate their scientific writing, make their articles more readable and accepted by the international journals. At the same time, the present study will also help promote the communication and sharing of scientific and technological achievements of our country.