Learning about author positioning in written academic discourse
Abstract
Graduate students are usually not sure of the appropriate stance to take in relation
to their writing. Even style guides provide little information regarding authorial
positioning in academic texts. This paper describes a study in which frequency
and usage of features of marking writer stance were compared between selected
dissertations in Kenyan Public Universities. It was found that humanities
dissertations preferred personal pronouns and the third person while science
dissertations mainly chose the ‘faceless’ agentless passive voice. Suggesting that
choices for such features in dissertations are a function of the epistemology and
ideology of the disciplines, the paper proposes a genre-based approach to teaching
those preparing to write their dissertations.