A cross-disciplinary corpus-based study on English and Chinese native speakers’ use of first-person pronouns in academic English writing

Abstract This paper reports on a study that comparatively investigated the differences and similarities in the use of first-person pronouns by English and Chinese native speakers (ENSs and CNSs) in their academic English writing. Using a corpus comprising journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Physics, Computer Science, Linguistics and Management written by ENSs and CNSs, I present data to reveal that (i) the use of first-person pronouns in Physics is more frequent than that in other disciplines for both ENSs and CNSs; (ii) there are no consistent ENS/CNS frequency differences in first-person pronoun usage across the four disciplines; (iii) the plural first-person pronoun we is used more often than the single form I in single-authored RAs, particularly so for CNSs; and (iv) the distribution patterns of we vary greatly in different RA sections. These findings may have implications for the teaching of academic writing, as well as for cross-cultural understanding among academics.