Autorenpräsenz in wissenschaftlichen Fachartikeln: Ein sprach- und disziplinübergreifender Vergleich zwischen Englisch und Deutsch

In scientific writing, authorial presence is a key element in constructing authorship. The present study offers a comparative analysis of authorial presence in English and German research articles across four disciplines. The study investigates the use of first-person pronouns and metadiscourse markers as linguistic expressions of authorial identity in a corpus of 400 scientific articles, equally distributed by language and discipline. The corpus was constructed and studied using the online software Sketch Engine. The analysis of first-person pronouns is based on the rhetorical roles proposed by Fløttum/Gedde-Dahl/Kinn (2006), Steinhoff (2007) and Schmidt (2016). Furthermore, the analysis highlights the inclusive and exclusive uses of the first-person plural we and wir in articles written by a single author. Metadiscourse markers, categorized as textual references, spatial deixis, and temporal deixis, are examined. The statistical analysis shows that both language and discipline affect the distribution of first-person pronouns and that discipline has a significant effect on metadiscourse. This study contributes to the understanding of authorial identity in scientific writing, offering insights into cross-linguistic and interdisciplinary variation.