Authorial voice in addressing the readership

Abstract This paper examines authorial presence in late-Modern English scientific writing through a study of second-person pronouns in the chet (History texts) and cec he t (Chemistry texts) sub-corpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Although existing studies in this area have tended to focus on self-mentions ( Hyland 2001 , 2008 ; Flowerdew and Ho Wang 2015 ; Moskowich 2020 ; Suau-Jiménez 2020 ), I will argue that second-person pronominal forms can also reflect and underline more broadly the author’s voice through direct interaction with the readership ( Ivanić and Camps 2001 ; Matsuda and Tardy 2007 ), especially in terms of dialogic you . This interaction is seen in the use of you forms and the possible functions that these perform, according to period, discipline, socio-external factors, and the sex of the author. Whereas observing the data from these diverse perspectives can yield differing, partial results, it can be argued that, when taken together, such elements can lead to a far more accurate picture of an author’s voice. The analysis presented here is an attempt to confirm that this is indeed the case.