An interdisciplinary corpus based analysis on the use of the first-person pronouns in the academic articles regarding gender

Within the scope of this study, the use of the first-person pronouns "I" and "We" in interdisciplinary academic articles by female writers (FWs) of English and male writers (MWs) of English was analyzed as a whole. The academic articles from social sciences were arbitrarily selected between 2016 and 2020. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of use of the first-person pronouns "I" and "We" in the interdisciplinary academic articles written in English by female writers (FWs) and male writers (MWs) in the departments of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy at universities in the United States of America. Additionally, it was restricted to the abstract, methodology, and conclusion parts of academic articles rather than the entire article owing to the reliability of the analysis as a whole. Furthermore, the study was limited to 50 academic articles written by female writers and 50 academic articles written by male writers. The frequency of the first-person pronouns was determined in this study using the Key Word in Context (KWIC) Concordance program, which was used to assess the usage of the pronouns in 1,000 words. Apart from the frequency analysis, log-likelihood (LL) calculation was employed for statistical analysis. At the conclusion of the study, it was determined that the LL frequency of the first-person pronouns demonstrated an overuse in the academic articles written by the female writers of English compared to the male writers of English between the years 2016 and 2019. However, it was revealed that first-person pronouns were underused in the academic articles written by the FWs of English compared to male writers in 2020. The findings were statistically significant in the academic articles written by the FWs of English and the MWs of English between 2019-2020.