English for Specific Purposes 34 (2014) 26–37

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English for Specific Purposes

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Personal pronouns for student engagement in arts and sciencelecture introductions

0889-4906/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2013.11.001

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 82 581760; fax: +60 82 581781.E-mail addresses: jacintayjy@gmail.com (J.-Y. Yeo), shting@cls.unimas.my (S.-H. Ting).

Jiin-Yih Yeo, Su-Hie Ting ⇑Centre for Language Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Keywords:Lecture introductionsStudent engagementPersonal pronounsAcademic speech

In lecture introductions, student engagement is important for receptivity of the lecture.The study examined the use of personal pronouns (we, I, you) in lecture introductions inthe arts and science disciplines. The 37,373-word corpus was compiled from 47 lectureintroductions delivered in English in a Malaysian university. You is the most frequentlyused personal pronoun, followed by I and we which both have similar frequencies. All threepronouns are used for activating prior knowledge and giving instructions or announce-ments, the two main activities of the lecture introductions. In addition to these discoursefunctions, you-audience is used when lecturers share personal experiences and direct stu-dents’ attention but you-generalised occurs in explanations of subject matter. Inclusive-weis used for stating aims and objectives of the lecture and occurs more frequently thanexclusive-we which sometimes surfaces in science lecturers’ explanations of the subjectmatter when reviewing content covered in previous lectures. The results suggest a disci-plinary difference in the use of personal pronouns for student engagement in lecture intro-ductions because the science lecturers used you-audience, we for I, we for one and I morethan arts lecturers but you-generalised is more frequent in arts lecture introductions.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The role of personal pronouns in engaging students with lecture content is important because interactive lectures en-hance comprehension (Morell, 2004; Suviniitty, 2010). Much of the previous research on university lectures has focusedon lecture comprehension (e.g., Flowerdew, 1994; Morrison, 1974; Olsen & Huckin, 1990; Tauroza & Allison, 1994, 1995).In view of the movement towards more interactive lectures, however, research has also begun to turn to techniques to en-gage students in lectures. One line of inquiry has dealt with the use of activity-based interventions which include personalresponse systems and mobile devices (Kinsella, 2008; Scheele, Seitz, Effelsberg, & Wessels, 2004) and low-tech solutions(Huxham, 2005) such as one-min papers (Dyson, 2008). Another line of inquiry has concentrated on traditional techniquessuch as lecturer questioning to solicit student engagement, which simultaneously serve to increase lecture comprehensibil-ity in some studies (Suviniitty, 2010) but not in others (van Dijk, van den Berg, & van Keulen, 2001). Some researchers havefocused on the functions of questions in lectures (e.g., Crawford Camiciottoli, 2008; Morell, 2004, 2007; Querol-Julian, 2008).Using lecturer questioning as an indicator of interactive lecture discourse, other researchers have found gender differences(Chang, 2012) and variations across disciplines (Garcia, 2010; Yeo & Ting, 2012). Besides questions, the use of personal pro-nouns also indicates interactivity in lectures.

Personal pronouns have been extensively studied as an engagement feature in academic writing (e.g., Hyland, 2001,2002a, 2004; Kim, 2009; Kuo, 1999; Sheldon, 2009; Tang & John, 1999). For example, Harwood’s (2005) analysis of 40single-authored journal articles from four disciplines revealed that writers from the hard fields use more exclusive-we

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but writers from the soft fields use more I to plug knowledge gaps. In Hyland’s (2002b) study, students and expert writersfrom the soft disciplines are more inclined to use author pronouns to establish their presence than those from the hard dis-ciplines. In comparison, fewer studies have examined use of personal pronouns in academic speech (but see Crawford Camic-iottoli, 2004; Morell, 2004; Webber, 2005). For example, Morell (2004) showed that more interactive lectures arecharacterised by a higher frequency of personal pronoun usage and Okamura (2009) identified you as ‘‘a useful tool forengaging students in the narrative of the lecture’’ (p. 17).

When researchers began to investigate the role of personal pronouns in academic speech, the focus was on the frequentlyused pronouns. Based on her analysis of a 26,734-word corpus of lectures delivered by native and non-native English-speak-ing teaching assistants of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, Rounds (1985) reported that we was used three timesmore frequently than I or you. The more successful teaching assistants were those with higher frequencies of we in theirspeech (Rounds, 1987a), success being associated with those who received positive end-of-semester student evaluation,few complaints and good evaluations based on their supervisor’s observations. Fortanet (2004) followed up on Rounds’ find-ings using a more multi-disciplinary corpus, the 1.7 million-word Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE),and found that the inclusive-we personal pronoun is more often used in academic speech than the exclusive-we. Contraryto Rounds’ findings, Fortanet identified you as the most frequently used pronoun in the lectures, colloquia and study groupinteractions and attributed the reduced occurrence of we to an evolution of academic speech towards I and you (see also For-tanet Gómez & Fortuño Belles, 2005). Okamura’s (2009) analysis of the same corpus revealed that the lecturers used you toengage undergraduate students in dialogue and to instruct them to act whereas I was used in public lectures to present aparticular perspective on the topic. Okamura excluded interactional lectures and question-and-answer sessions in monologiclectures from the analysis to eliminate possible use of you to refer to individual students because the purpose was to analysethe plural you. Based on the analysis of collocates, Okamura concluded that you was used to engage the students in talk (e.g.,if you were/are) and to show that it is the students who need to act (e.g., you read). In a case study, Crawford Camiciottoli(2005) compared the use of personal pronouns in lectures delivered by a senior lecturer to native speakers of English inhis home institution in the United Kingdom and to second language speakers of English as a guest lecturer in Italy. The lec-turer’s use of more inclusive-we in his home institution reflected his familiarity with the audience, but in Italy he used more Iand you-audience to establish rapport with an unknown audience.

Although there are indications of variations in student engagement across disciplines using lecture questioning as anindicator of interactivity (Garcia, 2010; Yeo & Ting, 2012), the differences have not been established. As interactivity playsan important role in improving comprehension of lectures (Morell, 2004; Suviniitty, 2010), it is relevant to examine studentengagement using another indicator of interactive lecture discourse, that is, personal pronouns – particularly since there arelimited studies on personal pronouns as an interactive feature in lectures.

The present study examined use of personal pronouns for student engagement in lecture introductions in a number ofdisciplines in the arts and sciences. The specific aspects examined were:

1. frequency of personal pronouns (you, I, we) used in lecture introductions;2. comparison of frequency of personal pronouns in arts and science lecture introductions; and3. discourse functions of personal pronouns in arts and science lecture introductions.

Lecture introductions are the focus of the study because lecturers usually begin their lectures by engaging students withthe lecture content (see Lee, 2009; Thompson, 1994), for example, by orienting students to some commonly known referentsand making a transition from the known to new teaching material or building continuity from lesson to lesson (Schuck,1970). The findings will show the different uses of personal pronouns by arts and science lecturers in lecture introductionsin relation to student engagement.

2. Theoretical framework

For the purpose of studying the use of personal pronouns to engage students in monologic lectures, it is necessary to drawupon the link between pronouns and distance in the speaker–audience relationship. Views of the relationship between thepronoun system and distancing strategies are consistent. For example, Brown and Levinson (1994) identify the use of inclu-sive-we with positive politeness (closeness) and one as a substitute for you and I with negative politeness (distance). On ageneral scale of pronominal distancing, Rees (1983) associates I, we and you (direct) with closeness and indefinite reference(one, you, it, she, he, they) with distance. Similarly, Kamio’s (2001) gradation of pronouns moves from we for the greatestcloseness through you to they for the least closeness.

To inclusive-we and exclusive-we, Rounds (1987b, pp. 18–19) adds three more types of we with different referents: (1) we torefer to the lecturer (I); (2) we to refer to the students; and (3) we which can be substituted by indefinite one. Rounds’ semanticremappings for we have not been widely adopted and many studies have retained the dichotomy of inclusive-we and exclu-sive-we (e.g., Crawford Camiciottoli, 2005; Íñigo-Mora, 2004). In a dichotomous categorisation of the five referents of we pro-posed by Rounds (1987b), inclusive-we includes we for you and I, we for I and we for you whereas exclusive-we includes we for Iand they and we for the indefinite one. The definition of we for the indefinite one as a form of exclusive-we is provided by Kuo(1999) and Fortanet (2004).

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As for the second person pronoun, you, Crawford Camiciottoli (2005, p. 194) has made a distinction between you-audience for referring to the students (e.g., I don’t know if any of you know about what happened in the Netherlands) andyou-generalised for referring to an indefinite referent (e.g., But the problem in Japan is how do you prop up the banking system).Webber (2005) refers to the latter as the impersonal you – for referring to the larger community with which the speakeridentifies or the potential audience (e.g., When you think you cannot simply. . . change the syringe, change the pump). Webber(2005, p. 163) acknowledged that in one or two cases, however, it is not easy to identify the referent of you: whether it isused as you-generalised or you-personal (e.g., I don’t know how you’re gonna answer that question).

The theoretical framework for this study on personal pronouns in arts and science lecture introductions takes note ofthese semantic distinctions in referents for we and you. For this framework, the five referents for we were adapted fromRounds (1985, 1987a, 1987b) and the referents for you, namely, you-audience and you-generalised, were taken fromCrawford Camiciottoli (2005) (see Table 1).

3. Method

3.1. Corpus

The corpus for this study comprised lectures delivered in English to students in undergraduate degree programmes fromboth science (Medicine, Engineering, Science, Information Technology) and arts disciplines (Social Science, Economics andBusiness, Human Resource Development, Creative Arts). Lectures given in the university’s Language Centre in which thisstudy took place were not included as they focused on skills, unlike disciplinary lectures which had a high informational con-tent. The corpus also did not include practical and laboratory sessions.

The lectures were delivered by lecturers in a Malaysian public university which is not a research-intensive university. Thelecturers have master’s or doctoral qualifications and teach at least one to two discipline courses per semester. The studentswere in Years 1 to 4 at the time of the study. Both the lecturers and students came from different language and ethnic back-grounds, as the Malaysian population is ethnically diverse. However, the lecturers and students share English and BahasaMalaysia as common languages – Bahasa Malaysia being the national and official language, and English the de facto officiallanguage in the private sector.

The first researcher observed and recorded the lecture introductions in the second semester of the academic year. Theconcern that the timing of lecture recording at the beginning, middle or end of academic year could affect the relationshipbetween lecturers and students does not arise because the students usually encountered different lecturers in differentsemesters. Some of the students were already in Year 3 before they were taught by a particular lecturer for the first time.The lecture recordings were done during the second half of the semester, and there was sufficient time for the studentsand lecturers to get to know one another. The relationship between lecturers and students could be friendly, formal or dis-tant, subject to individual differences.

In this study, a lecture introduction is defined as the preliminary part before the lecturer embarks on a new topic or subtopicfor the lecture proper. The demarcation between the lecture introduction and the body of the lecture is obvious as the latter isusually marked by displaying PowerPoint slides on a new topic or subtopic or signalling through phrases, such as our topictoday is . . .. The introduction of a lecture usually involved outlining of lecture objectives, linking to content covered in previouslectures and eliciting of related knowledge and experiences from students. The lectures were usually one to two hours in dura-

Table 1Framework for classification of personal pronouns used in lecture introductions.

Pronoun Referent Examples

you1. you-audience The addressee (student) is the sole referent So far you have studied survey . . .

2. you-generalised The addressee is a group identified by the context (you can be substituted bythey) or an indefinite subject (substituted by people or we) one

You never know what cases the interviewermight give you . . .

we1. Inclusive–we for

I + youThe addressee is included with the speaker We will do a bit of revision

2. we for I The speaker is the sole referent. A form that could denote a royal we Still remember the measure theory before weproceed further?

3. we for you The addressee is the sole referent In the last few lectures, we studied the chip, for8255

4. we for indefiniteone

An indefinite person or group is the referent. We can be substituted by one First one we call it income statement ya, orsometimes we call itprofit and loss account.

5. Exclusive–wefor I + they

The addressee is excluded. The speaker and other people are the referents Its important that we teach you comprehensivelyabout polymerase chain reaction

I1. I The speaker is the sole referent So before I proceed, I will ask several questions,

very basic questions2. I . . . (to) . . . you The speaker explicitly mentions the doer and recipient of an action Like I mentioned to you earlier, when we use this

iceberg model, . . .

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tion. The student numbers ranged from 40 to 100, which Crawford Camiciottoli (2008) and Lee (2009) considered a large classsize for lectures. The lecturers usually stood in front of the lecture theatre and taught using PowerPoint slides.

The corpus consists of 37,373 words from 860 minutes of lecture introductions given by 47 lecturers in a Malaysian publicuniversity. Out of 47 lecturers whose lecture introductions were audiotaped for analysis in this study, 27 were arts lecturers(referred to as A1–A27) and 20 were science lecturers (referred to as S1–S20). Permission was sought from 160 lecturers intotal, but only 53 gave consent for a lecture introduction to be audiotaped. Five lecture introductions were subsequentlyeliminated due to unclear recordings, leaving 47 for the analysis of pronouns used. The audiotaped lecture introductionswere transcribed using Eggins and Slade’s (1997) conventions, with non-verbal contextual information such as fillers indi-cated by (mm. . ., uh-huh), pauses by (. . .), and overlaps by (==).

3.2. Data analysis

To identify the personal pronouns, the transcripts of the lecture introductions were colour-coded for the subjective form ofpersonal pronouns: I, you, we, and he/she. Variations in the form of objective and possessive cases of the first person singular(e.g., me, my), first person plural (e.g., us, our) and second person pronouns (e.g., your) were not counted as the occurrencesof these items were infrequent in comparison. In Webber’s (2005) study on conference presentations, these objective and pos-sessive cases accounted for only 10% of the total number of personal pronouns identified in the corpus. Crawford Camiciottoli(2005) also did not include occurrences of the object pronouns me and us in her analysis because of their limited use.

A comparison of the frequency of personal pronouns used by science and arts lecturers in their lecture introductions wasmade to find out whether the use of personal pronouns for student engagement in lecture introductions varies across broaddisciplinary lines. The frequencies were computed as the number of pronouns per 1000 words for ease of comparison, as iscommon practice of reporting frequencies on interactive features in lectures.

Following the identification of personal pronouns, the transcript was repeatedly read to establish the referents, particu-larly for we and you. Reference was made to the framework for the classification of pronouns based on previous research (seeTable 1). As the referents for we were not immediately obvious from the lecture introduction transcripts, the collocatingverbs associated with the pronouns were analysed to obtain contextual and linguistic cues. For example, discuss means‘‘to talk about something with somebody’’, indicating that the task is shared by both the lecturer and students. Thus, theuse of we accompanied by verbs suggesting joint activity was coded as we for you and I. To facilitate the analysis, verbs whichcollocated with different referents for the pronouns were identified and added to the framework (Table 1). The intercoderreliability for the pronoun analysis was 97.74% agreement. The disagreement involving the coding of you-generalised andyou-audience as well as the referents for we was resolved by referring to the context of utterances and the framework.The number of occurrences for the personal pronouns was counted and the frequency per 1000 words was tabulated (Table 2)to facilitate comparison of the data from the science and art lecture introductions (Tables 3 and 4).

In addition to the identification of referents for personal pronouns, careful repeated readings of the transcripts were madeto identify the discourse functions of personal pronouns in the context of the lecture introductions (see Appendix for defi-nitions and examples of the discourse functions). This framework was consulted when difficulties in classification arose. Thediscourse functions which seemed to overlap are establishing a link with previous lectures, activating students’ prior knowl-edge and directing students’ attention and arousing interest. Activating students’ prior knowledge refers to the previous lec-ture content but directing students’ attention and arousing interest does not deal directly with the lecture content. For anutterance to be classified as establishing links, the lecturer has to mention topics covered either in the previous lecture orin the current lecture. For these discourse functions, the frequency was calculated per 1000 words for the arts and sciencelecture introductions (Table 4). As some of the frequencies were too small, inferential statistical tests were not run to deter-mine whether the differences were significant.

Table 2Frequency of personal pronouns used in lecture introductions.

Occurrences Frequency (per 1000 words)

you-audience 851 22.77you-generalised 267 7.14Subtotal 1118 29.91

Inclusive-we for you and I 109 2.92we for I 140 3.75we for you 62 1.66we for one 194 5.19Exclusive-we for I and they 10 0.27Subtotal 515 13.79

I 409 10.94I . . . you 128 3.42Subtotal 537 14.36Total 2170 58.06

Table 3Means and frequency of personal pronouns in art and science lecture introductions.

Pronouns Arts (n = 27) Science (n = 20)

Raw frequency Frequency (per 1000 words) Raw frequency Frequency (per 1000 words)

you-audience 562 20.08 292 31.08you-generalised 219 7.82 45 4.78Subtotal 781 27.90 337 35.86

we for you + I 81 2.89 28 2.98we for I 93 3.32 47 5.00we for you 44 1.57 18 1.91we for one 111 3.96 83 8.83we for I and they 0 0 10 1.06Subtotal 329 11.74 186 19.78

I 227 8.11 182 19.37I . . . to. . . you 95 3.39 33 3.51Subtotal 322 11.50 215 22.88Total 1432 51.14 738 78.52

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4. Results

4.1. Frequency of personal pronouns in lecture introductions

A total of 2170 personal pronouns were identified in the 37,373-word corpus which translates to 58.1 pronouns per 1000words. Since the cumulative duration of the lecture introductions was 860 minutes, this means that an average of 2.5 per-sonal pronouns was used per minute.

The results in Table 2 show that the occurrences of you exceed those of we and I combined. In the 47 lecture introductionsanalysed, you occurred 29.91 times per 1000 words, compared to we (13.79 occurrences per 1000 words) and I (14.36 oc-currences per 1000 words). For example:

(1) Do you think it is easy? So far so good? When you get your results, then you will know whether it is so far so good ornot, ok? Hopefully tomorrow. (you-audience, A12, Process and Technique in Design)

(2) So in retailing, in the same thing, in the same process, you have to go to interview, you have to go to selection; youhave to go to all this process of HRM, right? (you-generalised, A26, Retailing)

The use of you-generalised is much less frequent in the corpus of lecture introductions (7.14 occurrences per 1000 words)than you-audience (22.77 occurrences per 1000 words). The frequent use of you-audience reflects the lecturers’ efforts toestablish a relationship with their students at the beginning of lectures and to solicit audience participation and to orientstudents to the lecture. The lecturers could have used one instead of you-generalised but the former would evoke more dis-tance, and that would work against the presumed aim of the lecture, that is, to establish a relationship with the students andsolicit involvement. In a big class lecture setting, where the lecturers may not know every student by name and where thereis little opportunity for interaction with each student, the use of you-audience brings an interpersonal element into an other-wise impersonal lecture setting.

Table 2 shows that the exclusive-we and we for you are almost absent from the corpus (0.27 and 1.66 occurrences per1000 words respectively). One example of exclusive-we for I and they is ‘‘It’s important that we teach you comprehensivelyabout polymerase chain reaction’’. In an Asian setting, such statements may increase the social distance as they emphasisethe status difference. The lecturers in this study rarely alluded to their membership of their respective research communitiesor even professional groups such as engineers, accountants, statisticians and scientists through the use of the exclusive-we.The minimal use of exclusive-we shows that the lecturers were non-authoritative and did not wish to sound condescending(Íñigo-Mora, 2004).

In contrast, we for indefinite one, we for I and inclusive-we for you and I are more frequent (5.19, 3.75 and 2.92 occur-rences per 1000 words respectively). Excerpts (3) to (5) illustrate how cases of inclusive-we are used:

(3) Alright, we need to be able to include certainty factors to indicate a degree of correlation, and second we call it impre-cise language, what happen in precise language? (we for one, S18, Knowledge-based System)

(4) Still remember the measure theory before we proceed further? Can anyone give me the equation? Y is the function ofC plus I, plus G plus NX, OK? (we for I, A17, Public Finance)

(5) Alright, so this chapter is a very short chapter and later we will also going to see on the financial management onretailing activities. Alright, we are going to look at two topics for today. (we for you and I, A26, Retailing)

In (3), we as the indefinite one is mainly used in explanations and its use is inclusive. In (4), it may appear that we refers toboth lecturer and students, but it is the lecturer who decides to go on to another part of the lecture content (. . . before I go on).In contrast, the verbs in (5) suggest that it is a joint activity – going to see, going to look at. By using we, the lecturers included

Table 4Frequency of discourse functions and personal pronouns in art and science lecture introductions (per 1000 words).

Discourse function you-audience you-generalised inclusive-we for you + I we for I we for you we for one exclusive-we for they + I I I . . . you Total (per 1000 words)

Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc Art Sc

Activate students’ prior knowledge 5.65 13.09 2.75 4.15 1.00 0.96 1.46 1.92 0.36 0.85 2.22 6.07 0 0 1.54 12.45 0.96 1.06 15.94 40.55Give instructions or make announcements 4.11 7.77 0.29 0 0.29 0.96 0.21 0.96 0.64 0 0.07 0.21 0 0.21 1.89 3.72 1.00 1.60 8.50 15.43Direct students’ attention and arouse interest 1.86 4.26 1.32 0 0 0 0.18 0.11 0.14 0.43 0.43 0.32 0 0 0.61 0.43 0.14 0.43 4.68 5.98Share personal experiences and views 3.54 2.66 0 0.11 0.04 0 0.20 0.11 0.11 0 0 0.43 0 0.85 2.40 1.70 0.54 0 6.83 5.86State aims and objectives 0.64 1.06 0.07 0 1.22 0.32 0.61 1.49 0.25 0 0 0.43 0 0 0.11 0.53 0.29 0.43 3.19 4.26Explain concepts 1.57 1.06 2.54 0.43 0.04 0.21 0.14 0.32 0.04 0.21 1.18 1.28 0 0 0.82 0.11 0.14 0 6.47 3.62Establish link with previous lecture 0.29 0 0 0.11 0.25 0.53 0.29 0.11 0.04 0.21 0.04 0.11 0 0 0.07 0.11 0.11 0 1.09 1.18Check students’ understanding 0.96 0.43 0 0 0.04 0 0.32 0 0 0.21 0.04 0 0 0 0.11 0.32 0.14 0 1.61 0.96Engage in small talk 1.46 0.74 0 0 0.04 0 0.10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.57 0 0.07 0 2.24 0.74Use fillers 0 0 0.85 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.85 0Total (1000 words) 20.08 31.07 7.82 4.80 2.92 2.98 3.51 5.02 1.58 1.91 3.98 8.85 0 1.06 8.12 19.37 3.39 3.52 51.40 78.58

Note: The total frequency of personal pronouns in art and science lecture introductions in Tables 3 and 4 do not tally exactly due to rounding off.

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themselves in the same group as their students, that is, as participants of the subject, regardless of whether they are teachingthe subject or learning it. Solidarity with students is thus achieved, creating the conditions for student engagement.

Although the use of we reduces the distance in the lecturer–student relationship, this is balanced by the opposing effectfrom the equally frequent use of I. I injects a distance in the lecturer–student relationship whereas we brings them togetheras a single community. In the lecture introduction corpus, 409 occurrences of I were identified (or 10.94 occurrences per1000 words), excluding the use of I as the subject along with you as the object in the same utterance (128 occurrences),as shown in the following:

(6) So before I proceed, I will ask several questions, very basic questions. Why do you need to have a sound methodology?Sound meaning very strong, very good. Why? Any volunteer? (I, A1, Research Methodology)

(7) Alright, last week we covered Bayesian reasoning, now, Bayesian reasoning I told you, they are basically, there are fewsteps, correct? What are the steps? (I . . . you, S18, Knowledge-based Systems)

As in Excerpts (3) to (5), the personal pronouns here are used to signpost the progress of the lecture. However, when thelecturer said I [will] proceed instead of we [will] proceed, as in Excerpt (6), it sets the lecturers apart from the students as theyare the ones in control of the floor; the lecturers’ authority and higher status are emphasised through the use of I. In (7), whenthe lecturer shifts from we to I told you, it shows that although both parties were present in the previous lecture, it was thelecturer who did the teaching and was in the position to question students on their knowledge of the topic covered. However,in the lecture introduction transcripts, I is balanced by a similar frequency of we usage which downplays the status difference.

Further analysis shows that I is mainly used for activating students’ prior knowledge, giving instructions or makingannouncements, and sharing personal experiences and views (along with you-audience) in lecture introductions (Table 4).Fortanet Gómez and Fortuño Belles (2005) identified four main discourse functions of I in lectures, namely, metadiscourse,expressions of attitude by the speaker, subject of anecdotes and hypothetical I as an example. It is in sharing personal expe-riences and views that I is used to express attitudes and as a subject of anecdotes. There were only four instances of hypo-thetical I used as an example (e.g., if I ask you some questions . . ., if I put myself as super senior . . .) showing that this role is notprominent in lecture introductions. Instead, if occurs mainly as hypothetical you to pose questions and scenarios for studentsto think about (e.g., if you said your positioning is strategic . . .) or as if + topic (e.g., if the questions are accepted by the committee. . .) but sometimes with other pronouns (he, she, they, we). It is more common for the lecturers in this study to use I as toinform students of activities (e.g., now I will ask some questions). These findings allow the role of I and other pronouns in stu-dent engagement to be understood within the context of lecture introduction activities.

4.2. Frequency of personal pronouns in arts and science lecture introductions

The word counts for the lecture introductions given by the 27 arts and 20 science lecturers are 27,978 and 9395 wordsrespectively because the arts lecturers have longer lecture introductions than the science lecturers. The total number ofpersonal pronouns used by the arts and science lecturers are 1432 and 738 respectively. On average, an arts lecturer used53 personal pronouns whereas a science lecturer used 37 personal pronouns. In order to have the same basis for comparisonof personal pronoun use in the arts and science lecture introductions, the raw frequencies were converted to frequencies per1000 words.

Some disciplinary differences emerged from the frequencies of personal pronouns for the arts and science lecture intro-ductions but the differences are not statistically significant at 95% confidence level. The science lecturers used more you-audience but the arts lecturers used more you-generalised pronouns (Table 3). There is an absence of exclusive-we in thearts lecture introductions but the science lecture introductions had 1.06 occurrences per 1000 words. Inclusive-we occurswith similar frequencies in the arts and science lecture introductions. However, the science lecturers used more we for Iand we for one than the arts lecturers. The frequency of I is higher in the science lecture introductions but the frequencyof I . . . you is similar for the arts and science lecture introductions.

Although the overall frequency of you is higher than we or I in the lecture introductions, the inclination of the sciencelecturers to use you-audience rather than you-generalised indicates greater attempts at audience engagement by addressingthe students as the sole referent. However, this does not mean that the arts lecturers were detached from their students be-cause the frequency of you-audience in the arts lecture introductions is also high. However, their frequent use of you-gen-eralised shows that they not only addressed their students in a personal way but as a group whereas the science lecturerswere less inclined to do the latter. The personal and group orientation in the use of you is linked to the prevalence of par-ticular discourse functions in the lecture introductions (as explained in the next section).

The lecturers in this study were generally inclusive in their lecture introductions, regardless of whether the referents ofinclusive-we are narrowly defined as you and I or broadly defined to include we for I and we for you as well. When the anal-ysis was conducted using a dichotomous categorisation of referents into inclusive-we (we for you + I, we for I, we for you) andexclusive-we (we for I and they, we for indefinite one), the results show that the science lecturers used slightly more inclu-sive-we (9.89 vs. 7.78 occurrences per 1000 words) and, at the same time, more exclusive-we (9.89 vs. 3.96 occurrences per1000 words) than the arts lecturers (Table 3). Taken together, the results suggest that the science lecturers were sometimesmore inclined to present themselves as an authority by aligning themselves with external groups, although the whole groupof lecturers was largely inclusive in their use of we. The inclination towards inclusive-we could be an attempt to downplay

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status differences in terms of disciplinary knowledge and classroom role (Rounds, 1987b) – perhaps in an attempt to bondwith students.

4.3. Discourse functions of personal pronouns in art and science lecture introductions

4.3.1. Main discourse functions of personal pronounsTable 4 shows that the main discourse function of personal pronouns in lecture introductions is to activate students’ prior

knowledge. As there were 40.55 occurrences per 1000 words of this discourse function in science lecture introductions andonly 15.94 occurrences per 1000 words in arts lecture introductions, this translates to a higher frequency for all the referentsof personal pronouns in the science lecture introductions with the exception of inclusive-we which is similar for the twogroups. Examples of utterances to refresh students’ memory of previous lectures are:

(8) Ok, good morning again, anyway, let’s recall what we have learnt last Thursday, we studied the service activities andalso engineering ethics. (we, S5, Engineering Ethics)

(9) So you have learnt how to design using the working stress, then you also learnt about check for ultimate limit stateafter you design the prestressed course. (you, S3, Prestressed Concrete Design)

(10) So I have told you, multimedia super corridor was started off in 1996, the idea of high tech, the 2.5 fiber optic net-work, and by the way, if you guys know that, UNIMAS is the one of the first in Malaysia. (I . . . you, A20, MalaysianEconomy)

Regardless of the pronouns used to help students remember the content of the previous lecture, the referents are the stu-dents. It is the students’ responsibility to learn what was taught in last Thursday’s lecture (8). It is also their responsibility tohave learnt how to design the working stress (9), and to remember the details of the multimedia super corridor (10). Thediscourse function is the same but the distance in the lecturer-student relationship increases from we to you and I . . .

you. The lecturers in this study used you-audience more than you-generalised to activate students’ background knowledge.While the lecturer may be using you-audience to address the whole group of students listening to the lecture, individual stu-dents hear them as utterances directed at them. The large class setting does not allow speaking turns for all the students torespond to the questions verbally but at least the use of you-audience is a means of engaging with the students.

The second most common discourse function of personal pronouns in lecture introductions is giving instructions or mak-ing announcements. For example,

(11) Today, what we will do is look through all the Test 1 questions and answers, we also go through it faster. And thennext thing what we want to do is look at one of the questions in partnership, that is the continuity of your knowledgein financial statement. (we, A15, Basic Accounting)

(12) So these are the things you can use to ensure your form can categorize information. Ok, no matter what the types arethe forms, you have to make sure it will meet the purpose of data capturing. What do you want to capture? (you, S16,Micro Analysis)

(13) I am going to give a short quiz to you, so please come early, alright, next week, I give you the quiz at 12 sharp. (I . . .

you, S2, Engineering Survey)

In (11), the lecturer of the Basic Accounting course used the inclusive-we to tell students how the time would be used duringthe lecture. The referents are both the lecturer and students. Although it was the lecturer who planned and directed the flow ofactivities, both were participating in the activity. The lecturer went on to use we to refer to himself, ‘‘we will emphasise more onthe theory part rather than the practical part’’. The logical pronoun to use is I as it is the lecturer who does the explanation butusing inclusive-we in the metadiscourse involves the student in the activities. Instead of we, the lecturer used you in (12) and I. . . you in (13), perhaps to give precise instruction to the students. The results show that the science lecturers were more inclinedto begin their lectures with announcements and instructions than the arts lecturers (15.43 versus 8.50 occurrences per 1000words respectively). More announcements and instructions also mean that more personal pronouns were used for every cat-egory of referents in the science lecture introductions with the exception of you-generalised and we for you for which the num-bers are too small (less than 1 per 1000 words) to make deductions on disciplinary differences.

4.3.2. Less frequent discourse functions of personal pronounsPersonal pronouns do not feature much to effect four discourse functions of lecture introductions, frequencies for each

being less than three per 1000 words. These functions are establishing a link with previous lecture; checking students’understanding; and engaging in small talk. The use of personal pronouns as fillers also falls into this category. The followingexcerpts illustrate how personal pronouns are used for these discourse functions:

(14) OK, last week we learnt about music notation, how music is notated, the staff, the treble clef . . . OK, today we will lookinto how music is notated. You will learn how music is being notated, and how long . . . (establishing a link with pre-vious lecture, A11, Introduction to Music).

34 J.-Y. Yeo, S.-H. Ting / English for Specific Purposes 34 (2014) 26–37

(15) Then the other is the best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back withexcuses. The two are actually related. So which part you don’t understand? (checking students’ understanding, S2, Engi-neering Survey)

(16) OK, good morning, it seems like many of you are not here . . . (engaging in small talk, S10, Statistics)(17) . . . you dare to be different but in the positive way, you see, I give this idea to my students and some of them are very

successful out there. . . (fillers, A23, Modern Economics)

The total raw frequency for these four functions is 185 (8.52%) out of 2170 personal pronouns identified in the data set.Although these functions are not a feature of most lecture introductions, a point to note is the relatively more frequent use ofyou-audience for checking students’ understanding (0.96 and 0.43 per 1000 words for arts and science respectively) andengaging in small talk (1.46 and 0.74 per 1000 words) compared to other personal pronouns which have frequencies closeto zero. The use of you-audience for these functions can be seen in Excerpts (15) to (16). When checking students’ under-standing and engaging in small talk, the arts lecturers used more you-audience than the science lecturers – although the sci-ence lecturers used more pronouns for most categories of referents for the top two discourse functions described earlier. Thearts lecturers in this study also tended to use you-generalised as fillers (you see, you know) but OK and alright are by far themore frequently used fillers. In fact, all the 24 fillers were produced by five arts lecturers.

Finally, there are four more discourse functions which feature even less frequently in lecture introductions: (1) statingaims and objectives; (2) directing students’ attention and arousing interest; (3) explaining concepts; and (4) sharing personalexperiences and views. The total for each of these four functions is between 129 and 245 occurrences out of 2170, which isbetween 7 and 13 occurrences per 1000 words (Table 4).

In the lecture introduction corpus, stating the aims and objectives of the lecture is a use of we that has the students as theintended referent. The total frequency per 1000 words for the five referents of we is 4.32, compared to 1.77 and 1.36 for youand I respectively (Table 4). For example, ‘‘And now we are going to talk about the Buffalo zone, the application, the effortsthat had been done by the government to solve the conflicts and also the national parks . . .’’ (S15, Zoology). Although it is thelecturer who planned what to teach, the lecturer emphasised the joint activity of the students and lecturer. The results alsoshow a tendency for arts lecturers to use inclusive-we and science lecturers to use we to refer to themselves when they in-form students of the purpose of the lecture. The conference presenters in Webber’s (2005) study used more we than I to indi-cate the structure of their talk, where use of we is possibly for deference or affiliation to the audience who are peers.However, in a lecture context where the lecturer is of higher status than the students, the same pattern of using more wethan I suggests that the lecturers may be using we to downplay the status difference.

Another activity during the lecture introduction is directing students’ attention and arousing interest in the subject mat-ter. You is the main personal pronoun used (you: 7.44, we: 1.61, I: 1.61 per 1000 words). This discourse function is achievedmainly by using you-audience, interspersed by I, for example:

(18) And one more thing, the storyboard that I have asked you to do, some of you do it in vertical, some horizontal, someeven vertical, what is that? So for that, redo properly. Ok? Although it is just a small part of the project. If you don’t doit right, it will affect your whole project. (you-audience, I, A13, Graphic Arts)

(19) So if you notice, when I talk about market structure later on, I do not really emphasise on the long-run, I emphasisevery much on the short-run because if you fail to see and understand the static nature, remember static? Static equi-librium? Remember economy is a dynamic phenomenon, so meaning it changes from time to time. (you-audience, I,A23, Modern Economist)

(20) First you have to do the summary, then you find the points in that articles. Articles, such as business articles, the issuesabout strategic marketing, so you need to find the articles. Because this is the way I encourage you to read more. (you,I . . . you, A19, Strategic Marketing)

The collocating verbs for you in (18) are similar to Okamura (2009) who explained that you tends to go with verbs which showstudents’ activities such as do, move, read, find, get and study. Examples of collocating verbs which show lecturers’ actions areemphasise, encourage, remind and announce. Examples (18) to (20) illustrate how the use of you-audience personalises theinstruction when lecturers direct their students’ attention to certain information or actions and, at the same time, arouses stu-dents’ interest in the subject matter. A disciplinary difference can be seen in that the science lecturers used more you-audiencebut the arts lecturers used more you-generalised. The frequencies for the other pronouns are too small for comparison.

Next, you-generalised, you-audience and we for one usually occur in explanations of concepts covered in previous lectures.The frequencies show that the arts lecturers used considerably more you-generalised than science lecturerswhen they explain concepts but the frequencies for you-audience and we for one are similar for the lecturers from the arts andscience disciplines. The following examples show that you-generalised and we for one are both used for explaining concepts:

(21) Once you check your ultimate limited state, if the moment resistance is more than the applied moment, then yourdesign is satisfactory. In American code, you still have to ensure some ductility, so ductility requirement is actuallynot in British code. (you-generalised, S3, Prestressed Concrete Design)

(22) Boundary layer, we have the structure of boundary layer, remember those? The fluid that is closest to the surface issubjected to the laminar flow. So we form the laminar flow. (we for one, S12, Hydraulics)

J.-Y. Yeo, S.-H. Ting / English for Specific Purposes 34 (2014) 26–37 35

You-generalised in (21) directs the explanation at the students and builds a connection with them. Connor (2008) ex-plains that you-generalised makes general statements that apply specifically to the students in the lectures, but we in(22) appears to perform the same function. Use of the indefinite one would appear too formal in the context of lecture intro-ductions (e.g., once one checks one’s ultimate limited state . . ., one has the structure of boundary layer . . .). We and you are asso-ciated with closeness whereas the indefinite one is associated with distance (Rees, 1983). In this light, using we for one andyou-generalised in explanations of concepts is more appropriate for engaging students with the lecture content.

In the lecture introductions, lecturers sometimes shared personal experiences and views. For example, expressing attitudestowards students’ work (e.g., I am satisfied with your assignment) or relating a personal anecdote (e.g., I have been a student before).You-audience and I are usually used for this function. Crawford Camiciottoli (2005) explained that the high incidence of thesetwo personal pronouns in a lecture delivered outside of the home institution is due to the guest lecturer’s efforts to establish arelationship with the students. In the present study, the science lecturers used I more often than the arts lecturers when theyrelated their personal experiences to their students. These self-references may create an informal atmosphere in the lecture halland encourage student participation. The second category of I in an I . . . you construction deserves attention. We did not code thefrequencies under either I or you because this construction reveals a stronger assertion of lecturer authority. Statements such as(23) come across as gentle admonishment of students regarding what they are supposed to have learnt but have not:

(23) This is very crucial, alright, normally, at the beginning of our class, we will be flash back, we will flash back, we willdiscuss, ok, I will ask you once again, alright, regarding your understanding on what we have already covered duringthe yesterday slot. (A24, Human Resource Development)

Other examples of the I . . . you construction are I wanted you, I showed you, I ask you and I want to make you. The emphasis ofthe lecturer as the doer (I) and students as the recipient (you) puts a greater distance between them than the use of I as a subject.The arts and science lecturers are similar in their use of the I . . . you construction when sharing personal experiences and views.

5. Discussion

The frequent use of personal pronouns (2.5 per minute) makes for interactive lecture introductions. Using the averagenumber of words per lecturer as the basis for measurement, the arts lecturers can be considered more interactive becausethey tended to talk more in the lecture introduction and therefore used more personal pronouns in their academic speech.However, when raw frequencies are converted to frequency per 1000 words, the science lecturers can be seen as more inter-active because the pronouns occur in greater density. The latter method of measurement is the more common method forcalculating frequency of personal pronouns in lectures (e.g., Fortanet, 2004; Morell, 2004; Webber, 2005) and researcharticles (e.g., Harwood, 2005; Kuo, 1999), although percentages (e.g., Crawford Camiciottoli, 2005; Íñigo-Mora, 2004;Okamura, 2009) and raw frequencies (e.g., Rounds, 1987a, 1987b) have also been used. In this study, the more commonmethod was adopted, and the science lecture introductions turned out to be more interactive – contradicting findings fromstudies using questions as a measure of interactivity where arts lecturers were found to be more interactive in lectureintroductions (Yeo & Ting, 2012) and also in the entire lecture (Garcia, 2010). However, personal pronouns and questionsdo not necessarily measure interactivity in the same way.

If gradation of pronouns from we through you to they is taken as an indication of closeness in the lecturer–studentrelationship (Kamio, 2001), then the high frequency of you shows good rapport between lecturers and students in the study.The results concur with previous studies on you being the most frequently used pronoun in undergraduate lectures(Crawford Camiciottoli, 2004; Fortanet, 2004; Fortanet Gómez & Fortuño Belles, 2005; Okamura, 2009). In this sense, the fre-quent presence of you produces a personalised style of conducting lecture introductions which draws students into the lecture.

Delving further into the use of the second person pronoun, the results on the more frequent use of you-audience rather thanyou-generalised can be explained by the main function of lecture introductions, which is to activate students’ backgroundknowledge. So far Fortanet, Palmer, and Ruiz (2004) had analysed how lecturers refer to shared background knowledge in lec-tures to facilitate comprehension in terms of the kinds of information highlighted (cited in Fortanet Gómez & Fortuño Belles,2005) but findings from the present study indicate that you-audience and I are the main personal pronouns that accompany theelicitation of students’ prior knowledge. You-audience also serves the purpose of giving instructions or making announcements,directing students’ attention or action and sharing personal experiences or views, and it tends to be used more by science lec-turers. Arts lecturers, on the other hand, have a tendency to use more you-generalised, mainly to personalise explanations of complex subject matter (e.g., After you have your segmentation then you needto do the targeting). The function of you-generalised in explanations has also been identified by Fortanet Gómez and FortuñoBelles (2005). In their study, the impersonal you (you-generalised) accounts for most of the discourse functions of you becausetheir corpus comprised the whole lecture which constitutes mainly explanations of an academic subject matter.

Within the category of we, the lecturers’ choice of inclusive-we over exclusive-we is similar to that of the teaching assis-tants in Rounds’ (1985) study and the lecturers in Fortanet’s (2004) study – regardless of whether we is narrowly defined asreferring to you and I or to include we for I and we for you as well in a dichotomous division of the referents for we. Preferencefor inclusive-we has been interpreted as sending a message of solidarity–inclusion rather than opposition–exclusion (Íñigo-Mora, 2004). What this study reveals is that inclusive-we is mostly used for activating students’ prior knowledge, the mainactivity in lecture introductions in the context under study.

36 J.-Y. Yeo, S.-H. Ting / English for Specific Purposes 34 (2014) 26–37

Our initial intention was to investigate five referents for we in lecture introductions, identifying the referents from theverb collocates and the context. But the analysis revealed that the lecturers were sometimes using we for actions which onlythey could perform (e.g., proceed with the next topic to review), actions that only students could perform (e.g., study) andactions that both parties could perform (e.g., look at). Because of this, there is little need to differentiate the referents of webased on Rounds’ (1985) semantic mappings of the five referents for we. This brought us to the same conclusion as CrawfordCamiciottoli (2005), that is, what matters in a lecture context is whether students are included or excluded as referents of we.It may suffice to analyse the use of we using the dichotomy of inclusive-we and exclusive-we to study use of personal pro-nouns for student engagement in lectures.

6. Conclusion

The study shows frequent use of personal pronouns for student engagement in arts and science lecture introductionsbased on two indicators. First, the preference for you over we and I indicates interactivity because you is regarded as the mostinteractive form among personal pronouns since it explicitly acknowledges the presence of the students (Kuo, 1999). Second,the high frequency of inclusive-we over exclusive-we reflects lecturers’ attempts to establish rapport with students by rep-resenting themselves as participants in the lecture activities. Based on the choice and frequency of personal pronoun use per1000 words, the study shows that science lecturers were more interactive than arts lecturers in that they used more personalpronouns for the same amount of spoken text. In other words, the density of personal pronouns in science lecture introduc-tions is higher. However, the science lecturers were possibly not as inclusive as the arts lecturers because of their relativelyhigher use of exclusive-we and we for one compared to the arts lecturers. Based on the frequency of personal pronoun use,the arts lecturers were less interactive than the science lecturers but they were more inclusive – a deduction made not onlybased on their avoidance of exclusive-we but also the strong presence of you-generalised in their lecture introductions whenthey explained concepts during reviews of previous lecture content, gave instructions or made announcements, and directedstudents’ attention and aroused their interest in the subject matter. The higher frequency of you-generalised in the arts lec-ture introductions stands out because the frequencies of the other pronouns were all higher in the science lecture introduc-tions. This study therefore indicates that there is a disciplinary difference in the use of personal pronouns for specificdiscourse functions in the lecture introductions.

Although the findings may not be generalisable to lecture settings with different characteristics, they show that personalpronouns can be used as an indicator of student engagement in the lecture setting. As the findings were derived from an analysisof lecture introductions, they cannot be applied to the whole lecture but some extrapolations can be made based on the find-ings. Given that the explanation of concepts makes up the bulk of lecture time, the findings suggest that you-generalised, we forone and you-audience would occur frequently in the lecture proper, and arts lectures may turn out to be more interactive, butthese conjectures have to be empirically tested. An extension of the study to the whole lecture would provide more insights intothe role of personal pronouns for student engagement in the lecture setting. However, it is too early to specify the pedagogicalimplications of the research for lecturers in the arts and science disciplines as the impact of these pronominal choices have yetto be studied in terms of students’ and lecturers’ awareness of and attitudes towards the different choices of pronouns in thelecture setting. Another area to explore is lecturers’ awareness of their self-representations through personal pronoun use.

The discourse functions of lecture introductions.Appendix

Discourse function Example of utterances

1. Activate students’ prior knowledge, to make students recallcontent of previous lecture

‘‘So what is qualitative research methodology. . .we have discussed this already. Adescriptive research why descriptive?...’’

2. Direct students’ attention and arouse interest, bymentioning general topics but not the previous lecturecontent

[Lecturer shows pictures of some building] ‘‘OK, the building is 400 hectare, howmuch is the cost?’’

3. Check students’ understanding or problems with theprevious lecture (in the form of either statements orquestions)

‘‘Any problems for the last lecture? Any problem before we proceed? Anything toclarify before begin?’’

4. Give instructions or make announcements (e.g., extrareadings, practical sessions and assessments)

‘‘OK, you read the articles, and please use that five points to make a report. Firstyou need to do the summary, then you find the points in that articles. Articles,such as business articles, the issues about strategic marketing, so you need tofind the articles. . .’’

5. Engage in small talk (including greetings) ‘‘OK, good morning, it seems like many of you are not here. . .’’6. State aims and objectives, to give direction to lecture ‘‘Today we will start with NFS management. . .’’7. Establish links between previous lecture and lecture of the

day‘‘OK, last week we learnt about music notation, how music is notated, the staff,the treble clef. . .OK, today we will look into how music is notated. You will learnhow music is being notated, and how long. . .’’

8. Explain concepts, excluding previous lecture content ‘‘First accounting is for the manager to control the cost, water and cost, so this iscontrolling through cost. . .’’

9. Share personal experience and views ‘‘I think students nowadays are very lucky, you can start coming to class at 9,9.05, even the class start at 9. In the old days, we came very early, and if we werenot in class, by the first minute, the lecturer will lock the door. . .’’

10. Use as fillers ‘‘. . .you dare to be different but in the positive way, you see, I give this idea to mystudents and some of them are very successful out there. . .’’

J.-Y. Yeo, S.-H. Ting / English for Specific Purposes 34 (2014) 26–37 37

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Jiin-Yih Yeo holds a degree in the Teaching of English as a Second Language from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Masters of Arts (Applied Linguistics) atUniversiti Malaysia Sarawak. She is a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi MARA (Kota Samarahan campus) in Sarawak, Malaysia. Her research interests includediscourse features of academic discourse.

Su-Hie Ting received her Ph.D (Applied Linguistics) from the University of Queensland, Australia. She is an associate professor of applied linguistics at theCentre for Language Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. Her research interests are language choice in multilingual communities, strategic competenceand academic writing.