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Part of
Constructing Collectivity: 'We' across languages and contexts
Edited by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 239] 2014
► pp. 287–308

Bulgarian ‘we’ and audience involvement 
in academic writing

| New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria

The present paper examines the functions of the audience-involving pronoun ‘we’ in Bulgarian academic writing, more specifically in reviews of linguistics books. The analysis is based on a modified version of speech-act theory combined with discourse production strategies. A comparison is also made with the use and functions of the academic ‘we’ in the genre of the research article. Special attention is paid to the various linguistic means of expressing reference to the first person plural which are available in Bulgarian as a pro-drop language. The conclusions deal with some issues of review authors’ motivation for writing (or not writing) reviews, as well as with the academic standards concerning the choice of evaluation – positive or negative.

Published online: 27 February 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.239.19vas
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