La inscripció de la persona en el discurs acadèmicun estudi contrastiu català-castellà-anglés.

Resumen

This thesis offers a contrastive study of the ways in which the self is manifested in academic discourse in three languages (Catalan, Spanish and English) and in three fields (Linguistics, Law and Physics). The study is based on a corpus of 367.330 words obtained from controversial research articles and bibliographic reviews published recently, with high level of specialization and written by individual and native authors. The data at issue have been analysed from both a qualitative and quantative perspective. Qualitative analysis comprises, on the one hand, the classification of verb forms, personal pronouns and possessives, considering their extratextual referent and their discursive function; in addition, I have looked into the behaviour of specific passive and impersonal constructions inasmuch as they represent mechanisms that hide the presence of the agent (first or third person) in the text. Quantitative analysis, on the other hand, has rendered numerical results that correspond to the qualitative analysis previously applied to my corpus. The data and variables are shown in tables in order to highlight the writing effects that are created in these argumentative genres, where the writer is the centre. This salient role of the agent writer contrasts with the traditional definition of academic discourse, which is characterized as an objective and universal discourse. The aim of this research is to analyse the balance between objectivity and subjectivity in the three languages and across the three fields. I also want to prove that academic discourse is not as objective as traditional studies have claimed. Besides, the choice of person markers and impersonalization strategies is triggered off both by the language and the style of the scientific research fields.