Ana IBÁÑEZ
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
anaibanez@etsit.upm.es

The use of the pronoun “we” by some Spanish telecommunication engineers: from scarcity to visibility?

In academic writing, one of the most widely accepted conventions is to present information in an objective and neutral way, thus giving primacy to impersonality at the expense of the author´s visibility. However, recent studies –mainly within the field of interactional pragmatics- have shown that academic writing is not so impersonal, and that there is room for writers to negotiate the creation of their own identity. In this respect, Hyland (1999:102)) says that reference to the presence of the author can ... be explicit or disguised, with the writer taking responsibility for actions, or avoiding agency by transitivity selections which favour the passive and non-specific subjects . Consequently, there are a number of rhetorical strategies available for writers to represent their authorial self differently, ranging from a more visible to a more invisible presence. According to Hyland, one of the ways to do that is the use of personal pronouns, which allows them to present their information subjectively ( we believe, we investigate...) , interpersonally ( as we can see) or objectively ( the data show) .

This study focuses on the ways that the first person plural subject pronoun “ we ” is used by a group of Spanish academic research writers in the field of telecommunications engineering, all working and doing research in the same place: la Escuela Técnica Ssuperior de Iingenieros de Telecomunicación – a well known and prestigious university institution. The data for the study consist of 14 research articles written in English and published in leading journals. The results show an occurrence of 79 cases every 10 000 words. When these data were analysed and contrasted with other studies from the same discipline, a high incidence in the use of we was noticeably present (occurrence of 32.7 per 10 000 words - Hyland, 2002) . In fact, it was the tenth most frequently used word in the corpus.

In this presentation I would like to discuss some features of the corpus created and analyze the cases found, which have been classified according to the pragmatic functions they perform in the text. In addition, the significant use of the pronoun “ we” draws some implicatures, which will also be revealed and discussed during the presentation.

References:

Hyland, K. (1999): Disciplinary discourses: writer stance in research articles, en N.
Candlin & K. Hyland (eds.) Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices . London,
Longman.
Hyland, K. (2002): Authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic
writing. Journal of Pragmatics 34, pp.1091-1112