1. Introduction

This chapter discusses the importance and significance of the authorial voice and abstracts in academic writing, highlighting the role of self-mentions as a rhetorical strategy. It also emphasizes previous research on disciplinary variations in abstracts and the need for further investigation. The chapter introduces the current study, focusing on three under-represented disciplines and aiming to contribute to understanding cross-disciplinary divergences in self-mentions from a functional perspective.

2. Self-Mentions as Sources of Authorial Voice Signaling Authors’ Visibility in Academic Writing

This chapter discusses the significance of self-mentions in establishing an authorial voice in academic discourse and how they contribute to the development of the written text and the establishment of the author's rhetorical identity. It highlights the changing attitudes towards the use of self-mentions in academic writing and the accumulated body of literature on authors' rhetorical self in written academic discourse. The chapter also explores the relationship between authorial voice and self-mentions and the influence of culture and language on writers' choices regarding their authorial presence.

It also discusses the importance of interdisciplinary and cross-linguistic variation in relation to self-mentions and highlights the findings of previous studies in different disciplines such as applied linguistics, psychology, environmental engineering, and chemistry. The chapter emphasizes the need for further exploration of self-mentions conventions across disciplines, particularly in areas such as Civil Engineering, Political Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine, which have received limited attention in this regard.

3. Methodology

This chapter discusses the methodology used in the study, including the corpus of the study and data analysis. The corpus consisted of research article abstracts from three distinct fields, and data analysis was conducted using quantitative corpus linguistic data analysis procedure. The study also adopted a framework for the rhetorical functions of authorial references proposed by Xia (2018), identifying low-stakes and high-stakes functions of self-mentions. Additionally, the study examined the verbs accompanying self-mentions to ensure that rhetorical roles were assigned based on a wider context. Finally, the analysis process was supported by an inter-rater reliability calculation procedure, reaching a perfect level of agreement among the coders.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Variations of Self-Mentions Across Disciplines: The results showed that the use of "we" as a self-mention was prevalent in all three disciplines. However, the soft sciences represented by the PS field employed statistically more self-mentions than the other two disciplines. When the verbs accompanying "we" instances were examined, PS authors were found to use the verbs "examine," "conduct," and "investigate" more frequently for establishing "state a goal or purpose" functions in their abstracts.

4.2 Variations of Authorial Roles Signaled by Self-Mentions: The analysis revealed that the authors in the three disciplines employed self-mentions mainly to flag low-stakes functions more than high-stakes functions. Notably, all three disciplines had a dominant rhetorical element of "recount experimental procedure and methodology," followed by "state a goal or purpose" in their corpus. There was a statistically significant difference in the use of low-stakes functions (such as "state a goal or purpose") among the disciplines, with PS texts containing the most authorial references. The abstracts in all three disciplines did not show a prevailing desire to undertake "organize the text and guide the reader through the argument" as the third low-stakes function.

5. Concluding Remarks, Implications and Recommendations

The present study investigated disciplinary variation in RA abstracts in terms of the use of self-mentions ("we") in Civil Engineering, Political Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine. Self-mentions were found to be a prominent practice across all three disciplines, but there was a significant difference in the frequency and functions of self-mentions. Self-mentions were predominantly used to signal low-stakes functions, particularly in stating goals or purposes, rather than high-stakes functions. The disciplines also exhibited distinct patterns in the use of collocating verbs with "we". The widespread use of self-mentions in these fields indicates a shift towards more collaborative and visible academic writing practices. The study holds academic significance due to its focus on under-represented disciplines and its comprehensive analysis.