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Ken Hyland, Options of identity in academic writing, ELT Journal, Volume 56, Issue 4, October 2002, Pages 351–358, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/56.4.351
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Abstract
Students often see academic writing as an alien form of literacy designed to disguise the author and deal directly with facts. Style guides and textbooks commonly portray scholarly writing as a kind of impersonal, faceless discourse, and EAP teachers direct students to remove themselves from their texts. But how realistic is this advice? In this article I briefly explore the most visible expression of a writer's presence in a text: the use of exclusive first person pronouns. I show that not all disciplines follow the same conventions of impersonality, and that in fact there is considerable scope for the negotiation of identity in academic writing. I argue that by treating academic discourse as uniformly impersonal we actually do a disservice to our students, and that as teachers, we might better assist them by raising their awareness of the options available to them as writers.
