ON THE IMPERSONAL STANCE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY AND CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

Аuthorial absence – marked through passive voice and impersonal constructions – is one of the most salient characteristics of scientific writing, contributing to objective writing and implicit expression of authorial stance. This study investigates the quantitative and qualitative uses of impersonal stance markers across three academic and three linguistic communities, based on a corpus of 124 research articles, written by native speakers in the English, Serbian, and German languages, within the scope of articles in linguistics, economics, and technology. Quantitative results reveal remarkable differences in the cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary use of these markers, as they are used most frequently by authors writing in German, and least in English. In addition, their highest overall number is identified in technology articles. These differences are elaborated in a qualitative analysis, highlighting cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary similarities and differences in functional and formal categories of impersonal stance markers.