The distribution of interactant pronouns according to language background is shown in Table 4.4. It can be seen that, in line with previous studies which observed the overall tendency for greater use of we than you by academic writers (for example, Hyland, 2002a; Kuo, 1999), we is used more frequently than you in both corpora. In fact, about 80% of interactant pronouns in both corpora are instances of we. The most striking finding according to language background, however, is the overuse of interactant pronouns we and you by Iranian students, deployed more than four times as often as British students.
Table 4.4 Instances of interactant pronouns we and you (recalculated as instances per 1000 words) in student essays according to language background
We You Totals Iranian essays [46,777 words] 948 (20.26) 241 (5.15) 1189 (25.41) British essays [60,209 words] 257 (4.26) 73 (1.21) 330 (5.48)
The overuse of these pronouns is opposed to the conventions of academic writing, as Coffin and Mayor (2004: 251-52) argue the high use of “personal reference (both in individual terms and generalised community terms) is in sharp contrast to the model of an
abstract and conceptually organised essay normally associated with tertiary education”. It can be seen from Table 4.5 that, when the figures of Iranian use of interactant pronouns are calculated according to language proficiency and test version, the use of interactant pronouns appears to be broadly consistent with the overall pattern in the combined Iranian data shown in Table 4.4, in that all Iranian sub-groups also used we more frequently than you.
The high incidence of we and you by non-native students in the present study is in agreement with Coffin and Mayor‟s (2004) study where they also find that we and you
were overused by non-native students in their IELTS corpus. Recognizing the lack of a comparable large-scale corpus of novice academic writing, Coffin and Mayor used professional academic prose drawn from the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999) in order to compare writer-reader interaction in their IELTS data with that of academic prose. Table 4.6, partly adapted from Coffin and Mayor (2004: 249), shows the use of we and you in different corpora (including both Iranian and British corpora used in this study and Chinese and Greek corpora in Coffin and Mayor‟s study). As can be seen, the findings are quite striking in that the usage of we by non-native students greatly exceeds that of Biber et al.‟sacademic prose and even conversation data. The use of you by non-native students is also more frequent than that of academic prose but, unsurprisingly, less than that of general conversation.
Table 4.5 Instances of interactant pronouns we and you (recalculated as instances per 1000 words) in the Iranian sub-corpora according to language proficiency and test version We You Totals High-scoring essays [26,265 words] 521 (19.83) 173 (6.58) 694 (26.42) Low-scoring essays [20,512 words] 427 (20.81) 68 (3.31) 495 (24.13) Academic version [23,475 words] 714 (30.41) 146 (6.21) 860 (36.63) General version [23,302 words] 234 (10.04) 95 (4.07) 329 (14.11)
Table 4.6 Comparative frequency of usage of interactant pronouns we and you per thousand words in different corpora
We You
Biber et al. academic prose
corpus: average across disciplines
4 1
Biber et al. data on ‘general conversation’ 8.5 33 Chinese essays [27,193 words] 23.7 6.2 Greek essays [28,961 words] 23.4 2.7 Iranian essays [46,777 words] 20.3 5.2 British essays [60,209 words] 4.3 1.2
The use of interactant pronouns we and you by the British students in the present study, however, closely resembles that of academic prose in Biber et al., indicating that British students are probably more aware of the generic conventions of academic writing than non-native students. Mayor et al. (2007: 286) suggest that one possible reason for the high usage of we by their non-native IELTS candidatescould be because of “coaching for the test, since they may be seen as a characteristic of academic writing”. They also argue that, in their overuse of first person plural, it is possible that IELTS candidates “may simply be overshooting the target, attempting to speak with an authoritative voice without always having the evidence to back it up” (p. 299). Similarly, „coaching for the test‟ may be a possible reason for the overuse of we by Iranian students in the present study too (the discourse functions that we (and you) perform in the data will be discussed later in Section 4.5.4). Overall, Mayor et al. suggest that it is possible that the strikingly high use of interpersonal resources (including we and you) is due to the wording of the tasks which emphasize the personal nature of the dialogue (p. 299). I shall return to the issue of wordings of the generic prompts shortly below.
It can be argued that language proficiency can have an effect on the use of interactant pronouns by students. Language proficiency slightly affected the usage of we and you by non-native students in Mayor et al.‟s (2007: 285) study. Their findings reveal that more
proficient language users employed we and you slightly less often. Similarly, as shown in Table 4.4 above, more proficient language users in this study (i.e. British students) used fewer interactant pronouns we and you. A possible reason for the effect of language proficiency on the use of interactant pronouns emerges when the frequency of the use of
we by different levels of Iranian students is considered. As can be seen in Table 4.5, Iranian high-scorers used we slightly less than Iranian low-scorers, suggesting that more linguistically competent students may tend to use interactant pronoun we less than less proficient ones. But this relationship does not apply to you since you is deployed more frequently by high-scorers than low-scorers. In other words, unlike Mayor et al.‟s (2007)
study where high-scorers use both we and you less than low scorers, Iranian high-scorers in this study only used we less than low-scorers. It is not immediately clear why Iranian high-scorers adopted a more overt dialogic style through directly addressing their readers. It should be noted, however, that relying on simple frequencies makes the situation less clear. In fact, these figures do not give us a clear picture about the effect of language proficiency on the use of we and you.
Another possible explanation for the greater use of interactant pronouns by Iranian students could be their essays‟ test prompts. Coffin and Mayor (2004: 250) argue that “it may be that the test prompt, which cues students explicitly into a dialogic style, is responsible for directing them towards a more conversational tenor”, leading to their greater use of we and you. The generic test prompts of the Academic and General versions of the (sample) IELTS test used in this study are re-introduced below:
Academic Writing Task 2
Present a written argument or case to an educated reader with no specialist knowledge of the following topic
To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.
Write at least 250 words.
General Training Writing Task 2
Write about the following topic: [Controversial proposition] Do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Although the generic test prompts of both test versions may have encouraged Iranian students, in general, to adopt a personal style („use your own ideas, knowledge, and experience …‟) which have resulted in their greater use of interactant pronouns than British students, it can be speculated that the Academic test prompt cues students more towards an interpersonal style than the General test prompt since the former explicitly defines the reader for the students („Present a written argument or case to an educated reader…‟). This can potentially make Academic students more conscious of the reader‟s
presence and therefore cue them towards adopting a more dialogic style whereby they can explicitly involve their reader in the text partly by using interactant pronouns we and
General students through using the word argument („Present a written argument…‟)
which can potentially direct students towards thinking of an imagined reader to argue with. As argued earlier, one of the major ways in which writers can construct convincing arguments is by involving their readers in the text and creating a dialogic interaction through the use of we and you. As shown in Table 4.5, Academic students used interactant pronoun we considerably more than General students. In fact, they used we
three times more often than General students. Academic students also used you slightly more frequently than General students. On the whole, then, the wording of the controversial topics in both tests versions may have contributed to the greater use of interactant pronouns by Iranian students and the slightly different wording of the Academic test prompt may be also partially accountable for the greater use of interactant pronouns by Academic students.
Another possible explanation for the greater use of interactant pronouns by non-native students in the present study could be their lack of genre awareness. Luzόn (2009: 194) states that “the use of the first person pronoun as a strategic resource requires a high degree of genre awareness, which learners usually lack”. As we shall see in the next section, Iranian students tend to employ the features of spoken discourse in their written texts. Adopting (partially) an overt dialogic style, which is the characteristic feature of a face-to-face conversation, might have led Iranian students to employ a conversational tenor in which the writer and the reader interact most explicitly through the use of interactant pronouns we and you. In their high use of interactant pronouns, they might have simply overshot their target and overused these pronouns.