International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Authorial Self-Representation in Abstracts of Research Articles of Applied Linguistics
Linxiu Yang, Jin Han

Abstract
Authorial self-representation has been a much-discussed topic in research on academic discourse, most of which has concentrated on the personal pronouns, ignoring some implicit authorial self-representations such as passive voice. To make a systematic and comprehensive exploration of the authorial self-representation in abstracts of research articles, this paper examines both the explicit (first-person pronouns) and implicit (impersonal pronouns and passive voice) representations of the authorial self, and explores various author roles with their discourse functions in abstracts of research articles of applied linguistics. Meanwhile, this paper takes move into consideration by adopting Hyland (2000)’s classification of abstract moves to find out the influence of abstract move on authorial self-representation. The findings are as follows: 1) Authorial self-representations are unevenly distributed among the five moves. 2) writers of research article abstracts tend to choose implicit ways to represent themselves. 3) As for the author role, the frequency of author as researcher and writer is significantly greater in all the moves than as arguer and promoter. However, all the four role with different forms of authorial self-representation serve specific discourse-related purposes. It is hoped that the findings of this study can both raise awareness and be pedagogically suggestive for abstract writing and teaching.

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