Authorial presence indicates the existence of authors in a text. It also suggests the authoritativeness of writers as they demonstrate their opinions. Closely similar terms are authorial voice or authorial identity and others. This paper defines the concept of authorial presence in relation to one of the marginalised disciplinary discourse – an academic book review. The author in the text here is, therefore, the reviewer. Based on a bilingual multidisciplinary corpus of contemporary academic book reviews in five fields of study, a qualitative text analysis with the use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software is carried out to elucidate exponents of authorial presence in the texts and to compare the Thai and English reviews in different disciplines. The findings reveal various exponents of authorial presence, which are categorised into overt and covert entities with various sub-categories, e.g. the first-person point of view, the third-person point of view, self-citation, inclusive we, pro-dropping, and the review. Quantified data also indicate striking differences concerning not only linguistic and/or cultural issues but also disciplinary ones. It is expected that this study can contribute to the understanding of authorial presence, which is significant for readers’ comprehension of the text, including the position of the author that is portrayed in it.

Keywords: authorial presence; academic book review; disciplinary discourse; interpersonal issues; cultural differences

American Heritage. (2011). Editorial we. In American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (5th ed.). https://www.thefreedictionary.com/editorial+we

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.

Carrió-Pastor, M. L. (Ed.). (2020). Corpus analysis in different genres: Academic discourse and learner corpora (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367815905

Chancheewa, S., & Haruechaiyasak, C. (2012). Plangsarn: Thai Romanization Library Application [Conference presentation]. Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Asia Pacific.

https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/councils/asiapac/meetings/2012annual/Thai%20Romanization%20Library%20Application.pdf

Chavez Munoz, M. (2013). The “I” in interaction: Authorial presence in academic writing. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas, 8(0), 49–58. https://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2013.1162

Cherry, R. (1988). "Ethos versus Persona: Self-Representation in Written Discourse". Written Communication, 5, 251-276.

Davies, P. (2012). ‘Me’, ‘Me’, ‘Me’: The use of the first person in academic writing and some reflections on subjective analyses of personal experiences. Sociology, 46(4), 744–752. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038512437897

Dobakhti, L., & Hassan, N. (2017). A corpus-based study of writer identity in qualitative and quantitative research articles. 3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 23(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2301-01

Dontcheva-Navrátilová, O. (2013). Authorial presence in academic discourse: Functions of author-reference pronouns. Linguistica Pragensia, 23(1), 9–30.

Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without Teachers. Oxford University Press.

Fairclough, N. 1992a. Discourse and social change. Polity Press.

Fløttum, K., Gedde-Dahl, T., & Kinn, T. (2006). Academic voices: Across languages and disciplines. J. Benjamins Pub. Co.

Fowler, J. H., & Aksnes, D. W. (2007). Does self-citation pay? Scientometrics, 72(3), 427–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1777-2

Goffman, E. ([1959] 1969). The presentation of self in everyday life (2nd ed.). Doubleday.

Hartwell, L. M., & Jacques, M.-P. (2014). Authorial presence in French and English: “Pronoun + Verb” patterns in biology and medicine research articles. Discours, 15. https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.8941

Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (Eds.). (2003). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse (Reprinted). Oxford University Press.

Hyland, K. (1999). Disciplinary discourses: Writer stance in research articles. In C. N. Candlin & K. Hyland (Eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices (1st ed., pp. 99–121). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315840390-6

Hyland, K. (2001). Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles. English for Specific Purposes, 20(3), 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00012-0

Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. University of Michigan Press.

Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605050365

Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2015). A generalized view of self-citation: Direct, co-author, collaborative, and coercive induced self-citation. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 78(1), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2014.11.008

Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins.

Januarto, A., & Hardijanto, T. D. (2020). Authorial presence in English research articles by native and non-native English scholars. Journal on Language and Language Teaching, 23(2).

Kim, H. Y. (2017). A phenomenological approach to the Korean “We”: A study in social intentionality. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 12(4), 612-632. https://doi.org/10.3868/s030-006-017-0042-3

Klaibanmai, K. (2022). Interpersonal Aspects in Academic Book Reviews [Doctoral thesis, The University of Huddersfield].

Kuo, C.-H. (1999). The use of personal pronouns: Role relationships in scientific journal articles. English for Specific Purposes, 18(2), 121–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(97)00058-6

Li, Z. (2021). Authorial presence in research article abstracts: A diachronic investigation of the use of first person pronouns. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 51, 100977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2021.100977

Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave Macmillan.

Martin, J. R., Maton, K., & Doran, Y. J. (Eds.). (2019). Accessing academic discourse: Systemic functional linguistics and legitimation code theory (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429280726

Matsuda, P. K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 35-53.

Morley, J. (2021). Academic phrasebank: A compendium of commonly used phrasal elements in academic English in PDF format (3rd ed.). University of Manchester. http://www.phrasebankresearch.net

Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/10.1.1

Nelson, N., & Castelló, M. (2012). Academic writing and authorial voice. In M. Castelló & C. Donahue (Eds.), University writing: Selves and texts in academic societies (1st ed., pp. 33–51). Emerald.

Obeng-Odoom, F. (2014). Why write book reviews? Australian Universities Review, 56(1), 78–82.

Pahor, T., Smodiš, M., & Pisanski Peterlin, A. (2021). Reshaping authorial presence in translations of research article abstracts. ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, 18(1), 169–186. https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.18.1.169-186

Phimsawat, O.-U. (2011). The syntax of pro-drop in Thai [Doctoral thesis, Newcastle University].

Rounds, P. L. (1987). Multifunctional personal pronoun use in an educational setting. English for Specific Purposes, 6(1), 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(87)90072-X

Seoane, E., & Hundt, M. (2018). Voice alternation and authorial presence: Variation across disciplinary areas in academic English. Journal of English Linguistics, 46(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424217740938

Taylor, H., & Goodall, J. (2019). A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’ in different genres of successful business student academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 135–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.009

Thonney, T. (2013). ‘At first i thought…but i don’t know for sure’: The use of first person pronouns in the academic writing of novices. Across the Disciplines, 10.

Xia, G. (2017). A cross-disciplinary corpus-based study on English and Chinese native speakers’ use of first-person pronouns in academic English writing. Text & Talk, 38(1), 93–113. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2017-0032