THE USE OF FIRST-PERSON PRONOUNS IN ENGLISH SCIENTIFIC ECONOMIC DISCOURSE AND TEACHING ACADEMIC ENGLISH TO NON-LINGUISTIC STUDENTS

The article looks upon the use of first-person singular and plural pronouns in scientific economic English texts. The interest to this theme is caused by the increasing demands for Russian academicians to publish the results of their research in international journals. Thus, the issues of dialogical nature and author’s “I” in the light of intercultural interference and language types are in the focus of the author’s attention. The empirical data allows for identifying the frequency of singular versus plural first-person pronouns for the period of 1960—2021. The author concludes that there is some, but not much difference in the frequency of use between singular and plural forms. Another conclusion, based on historical perspective, is that there is a developing trend in scientific discourse to use personal pronouns more. The parts of scientific articles, where personal pronouns are used more or less are identified. The author also investigates pragmatic functions of first-person pronouns in scientific discourse and suggests a hypothesis about delexicalized nature of first-person pronouns in academic discourse. The empirical data allows for working out didactic recommendations for a course on academic English. These recommendations include corpus studies done in English language classroom, inductive approach to analyses of contextual use of pronouns, their speech functions and grammar peculiarities, as well as English — Russian translation of target structures. The author makes a conclusion that these activities may help eliminate intercultural interference and enhance social and cultural competencies of students.

first-person singular and plural pronouns, inflectional and isolating languages, corpus of texts, pragmatic functions, delexicalization, corpus studies, cliches, speech functions, inductive approach, translation, intercultural interference, social and cultural competencies

Shirokikh A. Yu. The use of first-person pronouns in English scientific economic discourse and teaching academic English to non-linguistic students. Business. Education. Law, 2022, no. 2, pp. 183—191. DOI: 10.25683/VOLBI.2022.59.205.