Academic voice in the rhetorical construction of author identity

Abstract This paper compares the linguistic features contributing to the construction of academic voice in English, Chinese and Translation corpora consisting of 180 research article introductions (RAIs) in the fields of biology, geology, and technology. The study reveals significant differences in the strategies for constructing academic voice across languages. In comparison to the English Corpus, the Translation Corpus exhibits higher or nearly equal normalized frequencies of certain linguistic features, such as hedges, first-person pronouns, and passivizations. This pattern may suggest that Chinese authors project a less confident, less committed, and less interactive voice in academic English discourse. Moreover, the uncritical academic voice that emphasizes authority in Chinese-authored English RAIs may be attributed to their mother language background. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for multilingual professional writing and the teaching of academic writing within the paper.