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Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 26:2 (2025) ► pp.206–231

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Authorial voice in addressing the readership

You in lmode scientific writing

ORCiD logo with link | University of A Coruña
Published online: 18 March 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.23019.cre
Abstract
This paper examines authorial presence in late-Modern English scientific writing through a study of second-person pronouns in the chet (History texts) and cechet (Chemistry texts) sub-corpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Although existing studies in this area have tended to focus on self-mentions (. 2001. “Humble Servants of the Discipline? Self-Mention in Research Articles”. English for Specific Purposes 20 (3): 207–226. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Hyland, K. 2008. “Genre and Academic Writing in the Disciplines”. Language Teaching 41 (4): 543–562. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Flowerdew, John and Simon Ho Wang. 2015. “Identity in Academic Discourse”. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 351: 81–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2020. “Personal Pronouns in CHET and CECheT: Authorial Presence and other Nuances Revealed”. Studies about Languages 371: 56–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Suau-Jiménez, Francisca. 2020. “Closeness and Distance through the Agentive Authorial Voice: Construing Credibility in Promotional Discourse” IJES 20 (1): 73–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), I will argue that second-person pronominal forms can also reflect and underline more broadly the author’s voice through direct interaction with the readership (Ivanič, Roz and David Camps. 2001. “I am How I Sound: Voice as Self-Representation in L2 Writing’. Journal of Second Language Writing 10 (1–2): 3–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Matsuda, Paul Kei and Christine M. Tardy. 2007. “Voice in Academic Writing: The Rhetorical Construction of Author Identity in Blind Manuscript Review”. English for Specific Purposes 26 (2): 235–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), especially in terms of dialogic you. This interaction is seen in the use of you forms and the possible functions that these perform, according to period, discipline, socio-external factors, and the sex of the author. Whereas observing the data from these diverse perspectives can yield differing, partial results, it can be argued that, when taken together, such elements can lead to a far more accurate picture of an author’s voice. The analysis presented here is an attempt to confirm that this is indeed the case.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dialogic you and the three hypotheses
  • 3.Corpora and methodological concerns
  • 4.Analysis of data
    • 4.1General overview
      • 4.1.1Time
      • 4.1.2Discipline
      • 4.1.3Sex variable
    • 4.2Dialogic/non-dialogic
  • 5.Discussion of results and final remarks
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
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