AUTHORIAL PRESENCE IN SERBIAN AND ENGLISH COAUTHORED SOCIAL SCIENCE ARTICLES

Abstract

This paper examines the means by which authors’ presence in co-authored articles is signaled directly in Serbian and international research articles belonging to social sciences and written in English by Serbian and native English speakers respectively. By comparing 15 Serbian and 11 international articles, the study tested the hypothesis that Serbian authors avoid the use of first-person pronouns in order to demonstrate authorial modesty, compared to English-speaking authors, whose direct usage of the first-person plural was expected to occur regularly. Additional research questions asked were about the discourse functions performed by first-person plural pronouns referring to the co-authors of the texts, as well as the use of the inclusive/exclusive we by the two examined groups. The results showed that Anglo-American authors use considerably more first-person pronouns in their research articles, although their placement in separate article sections had a similar pattern in both groups. According to Dontcheva-Navratilova’s (2013) taxonomy, the two dominant discourse functions performed by the authorial we were those of the recounter of the research process and the opinion-holder, although with their order switched between the groups. Finally, neither group used the inclusive we to a great extent, except for the Intro+Lit section of the papers, where its inclusion in the text grew up to 52.5% in the Sr group, but only 23% in the AnAm group. These results suggest that cultural practices in establishing authorial presence between Serbian and Anglo-American writers may be closer than previously thought.