Quantifying objectivity across disciplines
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Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
This study is intended to quantify objectivity as a formal language style to write an effective research paper. However, some learners find it difficult to use the passive voice which is the marker of objectivity and they end up using first person pronouns which indicate subjectivity in their academic writing. To fulfill the research purpose, a corpus-based analysis was conducted. The corpus consists of twenty (20) methodological sections written by postgraduates of Language Sciences and Anglo-American Studies streams at the department of English, Larbi Ben M'hidi University. The uses of first person pronouns and the passive voice were tallied using AntConc and SPSS software. After that, results of first person pronouns 'I' and 'we' were classified according to Hyland's classification (2002a) of high risk and low risk functions of author identity. The current study aims, also, to find out postgraduates' reasons of using first person pronouns depending on Gilquin and Paquot (2007, 2008). The results demonstrated that the Language Sciences stream used more personal pronouns than the Anglo-American Studies stream. What was shared, by both streams, is that they have used first person plural pronouns more than first person singular pronouns. The results of Hyland's (2002a) classification revealed that the high risk function was the most used by both streams. This latter, was due to the teaching-induced factor and the developmental factors. Finally, from the obtained data of the passive voice use, it was revealed that postgraduates of Anglo American Studies stream used the passive voice more than the Language Sciences stream. The findings confirmed the stated hypothesis which claims that master dissertations written by Anglo-American Studies are more objective than those written by Language Sciences postgraduates and rejected the null hypothesis. On the whole, the language style choice should be taken within teacher's ultimate objectives so that postgraduates will be aware of the appropriate language style.
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Keywords
Objectivity, Subjectivity