From text to corpus: A contrastive analysis of first person pronouns in economics article introductions in English and French

This contrastive study focuses on the functions of first person subject pronouns in economics article introductions in French and English. It combines a qualitative analysis of the way the pronouns are used within a typical 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 within the different rhetorical moves of the introductions. The text-to-corpus approach adopted gives rise to a number of recommendations concerning the combinations of discourse analysis and corpus investigation for teaching purposes.

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