The Study Of The Use Of First Person Pronouns In Chinese Linguistic Postgraduates' Dissertations

With the understanding that the use of first person pronouns in academic writing presents writer identity, enhances rhetorical features, and more importantly, communicates more appropriately, this thesis reports a study of the use of first person pronouns in Chinese linguistic postgraduates' theses, with the examination of international expert writers' uses in journal research articles as a reference, to see to what extent the students manifest themselves and the differences on person pronoun uses between Chinese linguistic postgraduates and international linguistic expert writers. With self-complied corpora, namely postgraduates' dissertations (PD), this thesis adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine the frequencies, semantic references and discoursal functions of first person pronouns in academic writing.The statistic data reveal that the use of first person pronouns in postgraduates' dissertations differs from that of the expert writers. Quantitatively, the data reveal that Chinese postgraduates employ first person pronouns in their academic writing in a much lower frequency than that of the international expert writers. Qualitatively, regarding the semantic references, Chinese postgraduates favor plural ones to create a distance between themselves and their claims while international expert writers tend to prefer first person singular which conveys a closer and stronger authorial presence. Students use first person pronouns mainly to "seek agreement and cooperation" while international expert writers use them to "state findings or results" for a strong manifestation of authorial identity.In addition, possible explanations are provided. Firstly, the lower frequency of the use of first person pronouns in student's dissertations may be due to the collective cultural identity that Chinese students are deeply engaged in. Secondly, they are existing conflicting ideas regarding the use of first person pronouns in academic writing manuals and text books-some advise students to avoid the use of first person pronouns in academic writing while some encourage their uses. Thirdly, personality may play a part on the use of first person pronouns. Fourthly, as students' dissertation will be viewed by supervisors and expert researchers in their discipline, they may not be confident enough to use first person pronouns to show clearly their writer identity.