Use of first person pronouns: A Corpus based study of journal articles

Scientific writing is traditionally thought to be impersonal. Therefore, it is notsurprising for academicians to see the encouragement of the use of impersonalconstructions in scientific articles by most of style manuals. This study is based on aninvestigation of the use of first person pronouns in journal articles. In many of suchscientific articles, personal pronouns I and we can both be seen as a choice for authorsto stand their involvement in their writings. In this study, I have made a comparison of16 articles published between 2000-2005 in the Social Sciences Journal of ÇukurovaUniversity (SSJÇ) and English Language Teaching Journal (ELTJ) to determine thefrequency of occurrence of first person pronouns I and we. I have also investigated thesemantic references of these pronouns as inclusive and exclusive according to the waythey are used in these articles. In the light of the results, it is clear that writers of ELTJused first person pronouns more than those of writers of SSJÇ. Among the first personpronouns, I was used more than we by writers of ELTJ whereas we was used morethan I by scientific writers of SSJÇ. Scientific writers of ELTJ mostly preferred usingexclusive we whereas scientific writers of SSJÇ preferred using inclusive we. It isconcluded that pronoun use is an important aspect of scientific writing and should beincluded in the curriculum to raise awareness of learners to use them effectively intheir scientific texts.Key Words: Scientific Writing, First Person Pronouns, Scientific Journal Articles