Who says "I" in the essays? On the clarification of authorship in academic writing

Abstract

The aim of this study is to contribute to a sharper contouring of authorial concepts in the context of scientific writing in the humanities. In doing so, a distinction is made between an authorial instance and the real author. In a first step, the structuring aspect of a scientific text is taken into focus. From this it emerges that both performative and narrative aspects characterize scientific texts. In a second step, the specific author concept underlying scientific texts is investigated: It differs from the author concept of literary texts in that it strives for supra-individual knowledge and statement constancy. The scientificness of an essay is thus not so much determined by stylistic forms, but by scientific procedures carried out by this auctorial instance: The more conformable they are to a field of action of a discipline, the more recognized the text becomes as a scientific contribution. If objectivity is guaranteed by this conformity – according to the thesis of this paper – the question of the appropriateness of personal or impersonal formulations becomes secondary. The decision to use the conventions of everyday scientific language (in German AWS) for the purpose of better communication is ultimately left to the author.