Shirley Carter-Thomas. Authorial roles in eco­nomics article intro­duc­tions : an explo­ration of sin­gular and mul­tiple iden­tities. 32e Colloque du GERAS “Hégé­monies et sin­gu­la­rités : comment orchestrer les langues de spé­cialité ?”, Mar 2011, Dijon, France.

This contrastive study focuses on the functions of first person subject pronouns in economics article introductions in French and English. It combines a qualitative micro-analysis of the way the pronouns are used within a single prototypical CARS-(Create a Research Space) type introduction (Swales 1990, 2004) with a more quantitative, concordance-based analysis of the varying authorial roles played by the pronouns and their distribution over a corpus of 100 article introductions. We contend that either approach alone can be limiting in itself and it is by combining the two that useful teaching applications can be developed (cf. Charles 2007). The choice of which (if any) pronoun to employ can be problematic for non-native speaker and novice researchers alike (Hyland 2002). The text-to-corpus (micro/macro) approach adopted in this study also gives rise to a number of recommendations concerning the combinations of discourse analysis and corpus investigation for teaching purposes. Drawing on recent research in data-driven learning (for example Chambers 2005), we propose an academic writing application, where learners and teachers are encouraged to explore small specialised corpora in their domains rather than simply following pre-conceived formatted models.