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

Shirley Carter-Thomas (1, 2) , Angela Chambers (3)

1 Lattice - Lattice - Langues, Textes, Traitements informatiques, Cognition - UMR 8094
2 IMT-BS - LSH - Département Langues et Sciences Humaines
3 UL - University of Limerick

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.

Mots clés: First person pronouns; Authorial roles; Economics research article introductions; CARS move model; English-French contrastive analysis; Corpora and language learning

Domaines: Linguistique

Shirley Carter-Thomas, Angela Chambers. From text to corpus: a contrastive analysis of first person pronouns in economics article introductions in English and French. 2012. ⟨halshs-00664073⟩