(Un-)persönliches Schreiben in der Wissenschaftssprache? Eine vergleichende quantitative Studie zu deutschen und polnischen Doktorarbeiten aus der Germanistik

This paper deals with agent demotion and self reference in German as an academic language used by non-native speakers. It examines two comparative corpora consisting of German language dissertations written by L1 speakers from Germany and Austria and L2 speakers from Poland. Significant differences between the two groups are detected regarding the use of different types of agent demotion. These differences may be explained based on the different linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the authors. To complement these statistical findings, the paper also examines some forms of non-standard language use by the L2 speakers that may be traced to Polish influence. A comparison with two previous studies with bachelor and master theses shows that rare constructions increase in terms of type frequency among the Polish students. Moreover, on both sides there are developments in language usage that seem to be connected with an increase in academic expertise.