Writer Visibility in Applied Linguistics Research Articles vs. Thesis Proposals: Analysis of Introduction and Methodology

Seeking to appear cogent and communicative not merely self-evident or detached is one of the main features of academic writing which has gone unnoticed or devalued by some novice and even expert writers. Responding to this need, our study, as one of the first of its kind, set out to explore how authorial presence markers work in introduction and method sections of 50 RAs and 50 graduate thesis proposals. Selection aside, the process of coding came along way from identifying I, my, me, we, us, our, self-citations, and meta-comments in the texts, and then assigning appropriate pragmatic functions based on categories suggested by Hyland (2002) while keeping an eye on the typologies suggested by other researchers in this regard. The results of qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed that we should not ascribe similarity to the concerned genres in relation to employed strategies in portraying writers in their texts. More precisely, whereas academics tended to connect themselves to their writing, students inclined to be more cautious about situating their own views and arguments in the text through personal authorial references. It is worth mentioning that we were not trying to extend and generalize the research findings but rather to invite academics to make a connection between elements of the study and their own experience.