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ELT Journal 2002 56(4):351-358; doi:10.1093/elt/56.4.351
© 2002 by Oxford University Press
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Options of identity in academic writing

Ken Hyland1

1 The City University of Hong Kong. Email: Ken.hyland{at}cityu.edu.hk

Students often see academic writing as an alien form of literacy designed to disguise the author and deal directly with facts. Style guides and textbooks commonly portray scholarly writing as a kind of impersonal, faceless discourse, and EAP teachers direct students to remove themselves from their texts. But how realistic is this advice? In this article I briefly explore the most visible expression of a writer's presence in a text: the use of exclusive first person pronouns. I show that not all disciplines follow the same conventions of impersonality, and that in fact there is considerable scope for the negotiation of identity in academic writing. I argue that by treating academic discourse as uniformly impersonal we actually do a disservice to our students, and that as teachers, we might better assist them by raising their awareness of the options available to them as writers.

Received May 2001.


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