3 First-person pronouns
In the class, Maggie and her students investigate the use of the first-person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’. These pronouns (like the related forms ‘me’, ‘myself’, ‘us’, ‘ourselves’, etc.) are forms of self-reference – that is, ways in which you can refer to yourself.
Activity 1 Using first-person pronouns
Look at the text below, which is taken from Maggie’s PowerPoint presentation to the class, and note your initial thoughts on the bulleted questions.
Frequent student questions
- Can I use ‘I’ in my thesis?
- In my language we don’t use ‘I’ and ‘we’ in academic writing. Is it the same in English?
- Is it OK to say ‘we’ when I am the only writer?
- When can I use ‘I’ and ‘we’ and when should I avoid them?
- Can I use both ‘I’ and ‘we’ in the same piece of writing?
These are all questions about self-reference.
Discussion
The text in Maggie’s next slide addresses some of the points raised above.
Self-reference in academic writing
Writers can refer to themselves using first person forms (I, me, my, we, us, our).
- These forms allow the writer to take a clear position in the text.
- They express the writer’s identity.
- They establish the writer’s commitment to their work.
- They set up a relationship with the reader.
BUT
- There are differences between disciplines in the use of self-reference.
- It is not easy to know when these forms are appropriate.
SO
- Knowing when to use self-reference can be problematic.
Maggie’s class contains students with different first languages and from several different countries, so it’s impossible to cover all the variation in the use of self-reference. By drawing on a corpus to investigate language use, students can find out for themselves what the usual practice is in Anglophone academic writing in their own discipline.
The answer to some questions depends on the discipline of the academic writing. For example, look at the two ways of recounting one small step in an Engineering laboratory report and think about which is more usual:
- a.‘the perimeter was measured’
- b.‘I measured the perimeter’
In an Engineering laboratory report, it’s more common to use a) than b). Example a) uses the passive voice (‘was measured’ – we don’t know who took the measurement) and example b) uses the active voice (the ‘I’ narrator took the measurement). Here, it isn’t important to know who did the measuring.