Across Linguistics Study of Self-mentions in English and Persian Language Teaching Research Articles

This study is a quantitative and functional investigation on self-mention in language teaching research articles both in English and Persian. For this purpose, ۴۰ research articles (۲۰ in English and ۲۰ in Persian) were randomly selected out of the valid online journals. The quantitative findings showed that the frequency of the different forms of self-mention in research articles in both languages (English and Persian) is quite different. Findings showed that “I” in English language teaching research articles and ''we''ما in Persian language teaching research articles were the most frequent self-mentions. Based on Tang and John’s (۱۹۹۹) taxonomy of the discourse functions of personal pronouns, self-mentions were functionally analyzed. The findings showed that the most frequent discourse function of self-mentions in both sets of research articles was the recounter of the research process, whereas the least frequent role was the originator. The findings of this study have some implications for both instructors of academic writings and students to determine whether self-mention in academic writing is permissible and when and for what purposes, writers should use a particular type of self-mention.

Keywords:

Functions , English , language teaching research articles , Persian , self-mentions