Referential, vague or impersonal? Pronominal reference and identity. Evidence from the academic writing of Italian students of English

Abstract

The issue of authorial stance has been the topic of much research. A rather obvious way to claim authorial presence is to use first person reference and the corresponding determiners. However, not only is the I emerging from the text plural, but different genres are associated with differing degrees of I-ism, and these conventions vary from culture to culture. In this paper I explore the issue of authorial stance in connection with identity by focusing on the use of the first person pronouns and their respective determiners in the academic writing of Italian students of English. The study shows that referential, vague and impersonal uses of personal pronouns are intertwined in a complex way and create shades of impersonality in a heteroglossic space in which a reconstruction of the self takes place