Writer's Presence in English Native and Non-Native Speaker Research Articles

The purpose of the present study is to examine the degree of writer presence in Chemistry research articles written by native and non-native English speaking writers. Thirty research articles (fifteen articles belonging to native and fifteen belonging to non-native English speaking writers) were selected from leading (Iranian and International) journals of Chemistry and the use of first person pronouns were analyzed. The analysis shows that the overall distribution of first person pronouns in non-native English speaking articles is higher than that in native English speaking writings. These findings are consistent with the findings of Petch-Tyson (1998), and Cobb (2003) who found that non-native English speaking writing contains far more personal involvement than similar native English speaking writing.