By the end of this unit you should:
Read.
Scientistics, particuarly computer scientists, strive to write research articles that are objective. Although the goal of objectivity may not be fully realized, it is possible to draft research articles that appear objective. The appearance of objectivity is obtained by avoiding any direct references to subjective items. When you check your draft using the accuracy filter, there are three error types to look out for. Each of the error types are listed below.
Read.
The corpus example uses the first person pronoun I and the possessive adjective our. This directs attention to the people involved in the research rather than the research itself. This is in contrast to the expectations of the community of practice that focus on things and ideas rather than people and feelings. Research in the many fields within the humanities and social sciences has embraced the use of first person pronouns, we and I, and no longer eschews active voice in favour of passive voice. However, research in many applied and pure science domains continues to prefer research articles that are appear “objective” in terms of language usage. The corpus example can be depersonalized and written using just five words as follows:
Section 2 describes the results.
More corpus examples of inappropriate use
Suggested revisions
In each case ambiguous words are replaced with words that are clearer.
Read.
In the same vein as the previous example, this corpus example does not adhere to disciplinary expectations of “objectivity”. The use of the first-person plural pronoun we in some scientific domains may be acceptable, but the adjective pleased expresses happiness and, as such, focuses on feelings rather than ideas. The author might have been attempting to frame the result announcement in a manner so as to direct the reader to view the results positively. The sentence can be revised by omitted the emotive sentence stem as shown below:
Results show XXX.
Read.
Disciplinary expectations vary among pure and applied sciences, but excessive personalization, such as the overuse of personal pronouns or possessive adjectives is likely to convey the impressive that the research article is not “objective” enough. This “objectivity” refers to the appearance of objectivity through depersonalization of the research narrative. Hyland (2002b) notes that teachers of writing to students with English as an additional language, tend to direct them to depersonalize texts by removing references to themselves from their texts. There is a continuum of usage of first-person I in scientific and academic writing. Tang and John (1992) identified six functions realized by the use of first-person I, namely: representative, guide, architect, recounter, opinion holder and originator. The opinion holder function seems at odds to the desire to present factual information objectively. However, Hyland (2002a) found that expert writers used I when promoting their own work which was in direct contrast to novice writers who used I to, for example, describe the organization of their research article. The strongest authorial presences created using first person pronouns are when elaborating arguments and stating results or claims (Hyland, 2002a). Perhaps, well-established authors attempt to appeal to their own authority to persuade readers of the validity of their work. However, this is a technique that few would advise novice writers to attempt.
The corpus example can be revised as shown in a. This in turn can be made more concise by removing the repeated word, to. The final version is shown in b.
Make sure that you check your writing for the following types of errors: