Functions And Co-occurrence Patterns: WE In IMRD Sections Of Research Articles By Native And Non-native Writers

The traditional view of academic writing emphasized the objectivity and impersonality of academic texts,and believed that scientific research articles should try to avoid personal involvement.However,in recent years,more and more studies have found that personal involvement is widely used in academic articles.Among all the expressions of personal involvement,the first personal pronoun we is used far more frequently than any other types of personal involvement and has the most complicated functions.Findings suggest that,as a writing strategy,we has been increasingly used in research articles either to construct salient authorial identity or to interact with readers,which considerably affects the academic writing style.Many studies have compared the use of we among different disciplines or different groups of authors（e.g.,native English writers and non-native writers）in terms of discourse function,semantic reference,and the role of author identity construction.However,few studies have compared the frequency and discourse functions of we in the Introduction,Method,Results,and Discussion（IMRD）sections of empirical research articles,and almost no studies have investigated the similarities and differences of co-occurrence patterns of we in the IMRD sections.In order to bridge this gap,the present study built a native English scholars corpus and a Chinese scholars corpus consists of research articles from international medical journals,totaling 1.11 million words.All texts of the two corpora are empirical research articles selected from the same eight international journals with high Science Citation Index impact factors in medical discipline.This study is divided into two phases.In the first phase,based on Luzón’ s（2009）classification,the study compared the frequency and discourse functions of we in the IMRD sections in the two corpora.In the second phase,the study compared the similarities and differences of the co-occurrence patterns of we（reporting verbs and tenses of verbs,modal verbs,adverbs）in the IMRD sections between the two corpora.The major findings of this study are summarized as follows.First,Chinese scholars use we more frequently than native scholars in all the IMRD sections.This finding is contrary to the previous research findings.The reason may be that the articles of Chinesescholars and native scholars in this study are all selected from the same international journals.The Chinese scholars who can publish articles in these journals already have a high academic level and English writing proficiency,and they are familiar with international academic writing conventions.The finding may suggest that the use of first person pronouns in English writing is subject to the influence from the academic writing proficiency rather than linguistic backgrounds.Second,in terms of the distribution of discourse functions of we,the functions with high frequency and the corresponding frequency rankings used by Chinese and native scholars are basically the same,which are“recounting the research process and methodology”,“showing results and findings”,“expressing opinion or volition”,and “stating a hypothesis or expectation”.Among these four functions,Chinese scholars use the function of “recounting the research process and methodology” significantly more frequently than native scholars,but use the function of“expressing opinion or volition” significantly less frequently than native scholars.Third,the most frequently used function of Chinese scholars and native scholars is “recounting the research process and methodology” in the sections of Introduction,Method,and Results.Chinese scholars use this function more frequently than native scholars in IMRD sections,and the frequency difference between Chinese scholars and native scholars reaches a significant value in the Introduction,Results,and Discussion sections.Chinese scholars use the “showing results and findings” function more frequently than native scholars in the Introduction,Method,and Discussion sections,while it is the opposite in the Results section.In the Results section,native scholars use more we to highlight their research results and emphasize their contribution to the research.Finally,the most frequently used tense of verbs co-occurring with we is the past tense,followed by the present tense and the present perfect tense both in the two corpora.Native scholars have the highest proportion of the present tense and the present perfect tense in the Discussion section,while Chinese scholars have the highest proportion of two tenses used in the Method section.The verbs used by Chinese and native scholars to collocate with we are mainly research verbs,followed by mental verbs and textual verbs.Native scholars and Chinese scholars use research verbs most frequently in Results section,and use mental verbs most frequently in Introduction section.The difference is that native scholars use textual verbs most frequently in Introduction section,while Chinese scholars use textualverbs most frequently in Method section.The present study compared the functions and co-occurrence of we in the IMRD sections of research articles written by native scholars and Chinese scholars in medical English journals,which has theoretical and pedagogical implications.Besides,the study has deepened the understanding of the use of we used by native scholars and Chinese scholars in IMRD sections,and it also has valuable implications for the teaching practice of academic English writing.