Self-mentions in anthropology and history research articles: Variation between and within disciplines

The aim of this study was to investigate the deployment of self-mentions in 18 history and 18 anthropology published research articles. ‘I’ was used more frequently in the anthropology articles than in history articles, a finding that can be traced to the knowledge-making practices of the disciplines. However, considerable intra-disciplinary variation was also observed, both in terms of frequency of self-mentions per article and the author roles adopted via the use of the first-person subject pronoun. Based on the results, I argue that there is a need to raise students' awareness of intra- as well as interdisciplinary variation in academic discourse, particularly in the humanities.