Siinne töö uurib ehk Kuivõrd ja kuidas näitab end eesti teadusteksti autor
“This thesis studies”: To what extent and how do authors of Estonian academic texts show themselves

Summary/Abstract: The article studies the linguistic means used for expressing the author’s person in Master’s theses. Quantitative analysis was used to find the incidence of relevant linguistic means in the structures of the Master’s theses and across disciplines. Qualitative analysis was used to describe the linguistic means in more detail and to characterise their context. The analysis showed that authors express their person both explicitly (using first-person singular, first-person plural) and implicitly (third, metaphoric, indefinite and generic person, and other linguistic means). The first-person singular accounted for the highest proportion of all the linguistic means. The second finding was that authors express their person more explicitly in the first halves of their thesis, i.e. in introductions, theoretical and methodology chapters, while being present in the text in any way most often in introductions, methodology chapters and summaries. This suggests that students express their presence more explicitly in the more secure parts of the text that require less argumentation. The choice of linguistic means does not depend on the field as such. Instead, there are more similarities between the field of humanities of one university and the field of social sciences of another. The preference for certain linguistic means may therefore be influenced by some social norms that are accepted in a more limited group than a scientific field of study.

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