Introduction

The academic production from the various areas of knowledge is undoubtedly a crucial issue for the development and scientific advancement in contemporary societies, given its important role in knowledge socialization and the consequent improvement of its products and services. Thus, there is a growing incentive to intellectual production and, evidently, its circulation in the various spheres of human activity, and the university is par excellence the agency that promotes such practices, either in knowledge creation, professional training, or in the socialization of such knowledge. In this context, it is increasingly evident the need to insert the various actors involved in this process in the meander of academic production, from school training activities through initiation to research to the most complex and legitimate forms of production and dissemination of knowledge.

It is, therefore, an important study bias to understand the phenomena that underlie academic production in this sphere of writing social practices, given the crucial role it occupies in this literate universe. It can even be said that writing is an indispensable technology for society development and that the acquisition and mastery of textual genres - for instance, reviews, research proposals, reports, and articles, which circulate in practices that are legitimized in this sphere of human activities - are essential requirements for students’ insertion and success in their academic and professional training.

In this article, therefore, we intend to present a study on academic literacy practices that focuses on the mapping of linguistic markers, which shed light on the author’s point of view in papers published in Applied Social Sciences, Education, and Engineering journals. Having as a more specific objective the presentation of an overview of the language used in this intellectual production context, we try to index the subjectivity and objectivity that govern the textuality in papers that circulate in journals from those three areas of knowledge.

The problem posed in this context is the difficulty often encountered by students in the acquisition of academic genres and, simultaneously, teachers and/or supervisors’ expectations regarding the consolidated requirements for these genres production. Thereby, we aim to investigate linguistic regularities that denote legitimate ways of communicating in this sphere in order to outline a scenario that can provide insights into these academic literacy practices. Such insights may attenuate the distance between what is expected of students and what would be necessary for them to acquire those practices.

As it is a daring endeavor, we should point out that the study presented here is a part of a larger project called "Academic literacy, writing practices and representations", whose general objective is centered on the building of a representative framework of the academic literacy practices in the various areas of knowledge, and which seeks to map, describe, and understand the textual traits that characterize the academic genres in each area of knowledge in order to provide insights for teaching and research.

Academic writing: between discourses, practices and representations

Broadly speaking, under the point of view of fields such as Sociology, Anthropology, and Linguistics, the concept of literacy in this paper is the use of writing in social practices. In this sense, it must be considered a social phenomenon, always influenced by economic, political, educational, regional, and cultural issues. So, group organization - which guides literacy patterns - and personal issues - influenced by individual background - are determining factors to its understanding. In other words, it is an understanding that encompasses both social and individual dimensions, in which the regulation of written production in a particular sphere of human activity has interference from the potential articulations that are individually made possible in those practices.

In this sense, it is important to note, as pointed out by ^{Terzi (2006}), that a person, regardless of their level of literacy, or of their group, has some knowledge (for example, representations) about literacy practices: they recognize the function (and perceive social representation in a so-called literate society) of a check, road signs, indication of time, and bus routes, for instance, even though they have not effectively acquired the uses that writing has in social practices.

Nevertheless, literacy, as a social practice (or a set of social practices, according to ^{Kleiman, 2004}) strongly and closely linked to the uses that are made of writing as a symbolic system and as a technology, as well as to the values attributed to it, must be conceived as a process and has become, according to ^{Marcuschi (2001}), a social good, manifested through writing, indispensable to the very survival in the modern world: not due to its immanent virtues, but due to the way it imposed itself and the violence with which it penetrated modern societies and impregnated cultures in general (^{Marcuschi, 2001}, pp. 16-17). The status of writing, in this way, was raised to a high level, that symbolizes education, development, and power. Hence, for example, the importance of investigating the impacts that such practices have on the subject and on their processes of socialization / social insertion and, consequently, on the role that school - that is, the university - occupies in that place.

The academic writing in this context, as ^{Matencio (2005}) proposes, should also be approached in its social, cultural and circumstantial variables involved in the production of meaning, that is, it should be circumscribed in situated social practices in which, it is worth recalling, the university is inserted and is therefore an integral part of the literacy process.

To answer this question, ^{Street (2003}), in coining the notion of multiple literatures, distinguishes between autonomous and ideological models of literacy. According to him, the ideological model of literacy offers a culturally more sensitive view of literacy practices, taking into account that they vary from one context to another; that is to say, the practices are situated. This model takes into account premises that differ from those of the autonomous model, which postulates that literacy is a social practice and not simply a neutral technical skill and that it is always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. In this sense, the ways in which people direct reading and writing are rooted in concepts of knowledge, identity and being. And this conception is pertinent to our objective, which articulates to the proposal of understanding the learned practices in the academic universe of Administration and in the broader context of Applied Social Sciences.

It seems to be in this sense too that ^{Lankshear (1999}), when outlining the ‘history’ of literacy studies, proposes to understand it as a sociocultural practice, which means that reading and writing can only be conceived in the context of cultural, political, economic, historical, and social practices to which they are integrated and of which they are a part. Thus, the relation between human activity and production, exchange, distribution, and meaning disputes is a key idea.

This is an important fact as it leads to the recognition that different social spheres present particular practices of writing (which makes it possible to talk about multiple literacies) and, consequently, to think of an academic literacy (which makes it possible to talk about the specificities of this practice). This is another aspect that must be considered when discussing the competence of students dealing with the genres belonging to this universe: students entering university should be considered literate subjects who bring to this 'new' sphere of human activity in which they take part some already crystallized writing conceptions, which were constructed during their schooling and that, well or not, represent strong appeals to the way they deal with writing. Besides that, and also because of that, it must be clear that engagement in the literacy practices of the academic universe does not occur as simply as it may seem; there are always tensions that mark the passage from one rooted practice to another with which one has to become familiar: in general, students find themselves in the difficult situation of having to write texts for which they have not been sufficiently prepared in previous years of schooling, and that is not being taken into account (^{Oliveira, 2012}).

It can be understood, then, that situated practices suffer the intervention of representations about the subject’s way of acquisition and positioning according to their writing needs in their academic life - for instance, academic projects, papers, research reports. These practices are certainly influenced (directly or indirectly) by the 'models' chosen as the 'correct' ones in the environment in which they are inserted.

An interesting aspect in this area focuses on the issue of the author’s point of view in academic papers, that is, in the way of writing that are typical to this genre and that relates to the use of discourse subjectivity or objectivity, which are shown respectively by the first-person and third-person markers. Therefore, the author’s point of view is the way she/he inserts herself/himself in the text by choosing to use the discourse first-person (I / we) or the third-person (he, she, it, or passive voice constructions). In the first case (personal style), it is often said that the text is subjective due to an agentive position that the subject-enunciator (author) takes in relation to the studied object, whereas, in the second case (impersonal style), it is considered a strategy of objectivity that allows the author to take distance from the object and, consequently, to promote rationality, which would, eventually, be the guarantee of the scientificity necessary to the academic research and, by extension, to the genres belonging to that sphere, such as the scientific paper.

In general, there is a guideline that academic texts should be impersonal, that is, written in the third person. It is common to find this guideline (which is basically a requirement) in style manuals (^{Gil, 2010}; ^{Michel, 2015}, among others) and in the discourse of higher education professors. The explanation for this recommendation is that the use of personal style may compromise the neutrality, objectivity, and credibility of the text. Modesty is thus imposed on researchers, which obliges them to remove themselves (verbally speaking) from their work, to distance themselves from the knowledge they have produced. In this way, it is understandable that in most academic texts, the impersonal style prevails, since this is how students are taught. Therefore, they replicate what they have learned, acknowledging that the use of first-person is wrong at some level, and that the use of third-person is the 'right' way of producing academic genres. This representation that consists of using an impersonal style in order to build credibility is rather rooted in the academic environment.

Despite this, according to ^{Brasileiro (2013}), the idea that the inclusion of the researcher in the text through the first-person may confer greater credibility to the research is growing, especially in the case of qualitative researches.

In this framework, the question posed demands investigating on how and to what extent the representations and the emerging points of view in written production interfere in how literacy agents - professors, researchers, advisors, who are inserted in the university space, in this specific case - interpose structures (of production and representation) that consequently interfere with the way students deal with such structures in promoting their academic success. To investigate how these practices are consolidated and legitimized in texts representative of the sphere of activity in which they are inserted is, therefore, a pertinent way to understand these practices and, consequently, to attenuate the 'abyss' between what is expected of students in terms of their academic written production and what they effectively produce.

It is therefore a relevant research expedient that may allow relevant contributions to professors’ work in order to assist students in the development of important written production skills according to the 'textual models' expected / sought in their formation.

Methodological paths: an interpretive approach to practices

The research presented in this paper is predominantly qualitative, which is supported by an interpretative approach of the data collected and analyzed to the detriment of objective generalizations anchored in easily quantifiable and universalizing data. Qualitative research is based on empirical experimentation, in which the researcher presents his/her ideas in detail, based on coherent analyzes resulting from participation, understanding and interpretation (^{Michel, 2015}). Articulately, the quantitative approach is necessary for the understanding of the phenomenon under examination, given its potential to elucidate as much as to explain the analyzes undertaken.

Moreover, the option of an interpretative basis methodology allows the researcher’s participation in the reference field construction and favors the non-displacement or purification of the linguistic, according to Latour as he analyzed language practices (^{Signorini, 1998}, p. 104). This implies that, for the purposes outlined for the research presented here, the quantitative dimension of data reveals an important mechanism for ascertaining and illustrating its qualitative dimension, which, in the end, is what most interests our perspective.

Thus, the research presented here, in terms of means, used both qualitative and quantitative approaches, consisting basically of an interpretative analysis of the data obtained in a statistical way. On this research method, ^{Michel (2015}) states:

This type of research, combining the quantitative (objectivity) paradigm with the interpretive one (subjectivity), has been widely accepted in the field of social sciences, especially Administration, due to the complexity of the area, in order to obtain more complete and reliable answers and a more accurate understanding of the studied object (^{Michel, 2015}, p. 46).

Thus, the data approach and its interpretation do not follow dogmatic parameters in a rigid and immutable way; differently, it allows us to observe the regularities of quantitative data in favor of qualitative interpretation, in line with a plastic conception of social practices of language use and, in this sense, of literacy practices in the academic sphere.

Regarding data collection and interpretation, the technique used was content analysis, which, according to ^{Vergara (2015}), consists in the treatment of data in order to identify what is being said about a given topic. According to ^{Michel (2015}), the data analysis is centered on the logic, coherence and trustworthiness of the data, aiming to elucidate what is implied, and can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research.

In this context, in the phase of the broader research that originated this article, the first step in the data collection focused on the selection of representative papers, in the area of ​​Applied Social Sciences, represented by the Administration sub-area (ADM), which must have been published in online platforms, in 2017, in journals classified by the CAPES Qualis system⁶ as A1, A2, B1 and B2. A total of 10 (ten) papers were cataloged for analysis, according to Table 1 ⁷.

After cataloging, a careful reading of each paper was carried out, mapping the linguistic markers that made clear the author's point of view, being restricted, at this stage of the research, to three linguistic mechanisms of subjectivity and objectivity: the use of the first-person singular (I); the first-person plural (we); and the pronoun (one) or the use of passive voice⁸. We do not disregard the fact that the linguistic markers of subjectivity and objectivity are not restricted to those that have been mentioned. Notwithstanding this explanation, for the purposes of the sample shown in this paper, they are sufficiently enlightening and meet the proposed objectives.

For clarification on how these linguistic markers operate in the texts, some examples are given in Table 2 ⁹.

The option for the exploration of subjectivity / objectivity markers in the texts is justified by the fact that they refer to an important textual dimension to be taken into consideration when it comes to the acquisition of writing in the academic sphere, since it is one of the most common aspects observed in the 'evaluation' of academic literacy practices, that is, it is an aspect that is generally considered in terms of the regularities that govern scientific written production. There is, in this sense, a well-grounded representation that scientific texts should value the impersonal style over the personal one, often implying that texts filled with subjectivity would be 'less' scientific than those imbued with objectivity, that is, a representation oriented to the fact that the objectivity of science would be guaranteed by the impersonal point of view of authors.

As a comparison with other areas of knowledge, the same procedure described so far has been used with papers from the areas of Education (represented by Pedagogy) and Engineering. The purpose of this comparison was to highlight the extent to which the issue of subjectivity / objectivity is related to the area of knowledge.

Tables 3 and 4 synthesize the cataloging of papers from the areas of Education (PED) and Engineering (ENG), respectively¹⁰.

All this methodological route, by articulating the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the research, allowed a rich approach to the data obtained, enabling analyzes and conclusions pertinent to the purposes of the study.

In the next section, we carry on presenting the analyzes and discussing the respective results.

The author's point of view: between subjectivity and objectivity

As presented in the theoretical framework, literacy here is understood as writing social practices and, in this sense, more specifically, the academic literacy as written practices in the university sphere. Thus, this research focuses on the understanding of writing practices in evidence in the areas of knowledge already mentioned, having as object of study the author’s point of view, demonstrated by a personal style and an impersonal style in papers published in scientific journals.

As already presented, style manuals generally require the use of the impersonal point of view, following the idea that this textual strategy would guarantee objectivity - a kind of rationality - necessary to the approaches chosen in the academic-scientific text. Despite this guideline, what can be further observed is that the academic literacy practices have demonstrated a relative change in that sense.

It is, in fact, a pragmatic turn that has been verified in the various spheres of human activity that uses the academic text. According to ^{Reutner (2016}), for example, objectivity is not disputed as an absolute editorial recommendation, but the author's role in the text has become a point of interest for certain branches of research (Reutner, 2016, p.253). For Reutner, the objectivity in the research is a myth, as the presence of the author is an indisputable fact. Therefore, an impersonal style - the author's effacement, as she said, would not guarantee scientific credibility. Concurrently, the acceptance of subjectivity is taken as a sign of sincerity and responsibility.

This seems to be the bias that has been adopted in Brazilian academic literacy practices, depending on the greater or lesser 'attachment' of the various areas of knowledge to the idea that the impersonal style of discourse would, in itself, guarantee a supposed distance from the author and, consequently, of the desired scientific rationality. In the area of ​​Administration, given here as an example, there is a discursive flexibility in this aspect, which by the way is constitutive of language practices.

For an introduction to the approach proposed here, we will first analyze two excerpts¹¹ from the papers selected from the Administration field, having in mind the author’s point of view in each of them: the personal style in the first example, and the impersonal style in the second example.

The two examples were taken from the introductions of papers with the highest incidence of personal style (ADM04) and impersonal style (ADM07), as can be seen in Table 5 below. The author’s point of view, in both cases, is quite distinct. On one hand, in example 1, the marked incidence of the first-person, shows the author’s insertion in the text; on the other hand, in example 2, the passive voice construction distances the author from the text. Comparing the two examples, could we say that the impersonal style in the second case would be evidence of greater scientific credibility? In the same sense, would the use of the first-person indicate less scientific rigor and, consequently, less credibility?

Although the use of the impersonal style is recommended in the manuals of academic and scientific texts and in the manuals of scientific methodology in Brazil, there is no linguistic-discursive aspect that corroborates this guideline. What there is, in fact, is the idea that an impersonal style would guarantee modesty, objectivity, neutrality and, consequently, scientific credibility. Then again, does the use of the first-person, recurrent in Example 1, detract from the credibility of the research presented? Certainly not. Proof of this is that the article from which this example was taken was published in a prestigious journal in the sphere of activity in which it circulates, that is, inserted in scholarly literacy practices legitimized by the area of knowledge to which it belongs.

Table 5 below shows, in absolute quantities, the occurrences of subjectivity, represented by the first-person, and objectivity, represented by the third-person or passive voice construction, in the papers from the field of Administration:

As previously said, there were no occurrences of the first-person singular (I). The occurrences of first-person plural (we), which are discursive indicators of subjectivity, according to the data presented in Table 5, were found in three out of the ten papers analyzed. Among these three, in two, the occurrence of subjectivity markers significantly exceeded the occurrences of objectivity markers: 73 against 31 in the paper ADM04 and 23 against 14 in the paper ADM05. As these two papers were published in different journals, we can infer that this is in fact a position taken by the paper author, and not an aspect that would characterize some kind of a general guideline from the journal, that is, it is a point of view chosen by the author himself.

These articles have been published in prestigious Qualis A2 journals in the field of Administration (FGV and ANPAD, respectively), and the occurrences of these subjectivity markers initially show a tendency to favor a more subjective point of view to the detriment of the myth of scientific objectivity guaranteed by the impersonal style. Even though it does not mean the prioritization of the subjectivity, the data reveal, at least, an initial acceptance that it may be viewed as an adequate linguistic resource - and, more than that, legitimate - to the author's point of view in the scientific discourse from the field under examination.

Figure 1, below, provides an accurate view of this finding:

Figure 1 Subjectivity / objectivity occurrences in papers from the Administration field. Source: Research data. 

As can be observed, the use of objectivity in the analyzed papers is still significant. Despite this, there are also significant indicators that subjectivity have been gaining space in academic literacy practices in Administration.

Now, we will be comparing these academic literacy practices to the practices in the two other areas of knowledge, Education (represented by the Pedagogy course) and Engineering.

In Table 6, the quantitative occurrences of subjectivity / objectivity are presented in each of these three areas:

Table 6 shows, in absolute numbers, that the incidence of first-person (we) is greater in Pedagogy papers (322 occurrences out of 834) and very rare in Engineering papers (only 11 out of 407). In the case of Administration, the number of first-person occurrences (98 out of 646), although still well below third-person occurrences (548 out of 646), represents a significant incidence of subjectivity, which deserves attention.

For a better understanding of this information, we shall analyze Figure 2 below, in which the percentages of subjectivity and objectivity occurrences in the three areas are presented:

Figure 2 Subjectivity markers (we) / Objectivity markers (one or passive voice) in the three areas. Source: Research data. 

First-person (we) and third-person (one or passive voice) occurrences, in percentage, put the ​​ Administration field in a context of flexibility regarding the use of subjectivity. On one hand, the first-person occurrences are much less frequent compared to the ​​Pedagogy field, on the other hand, they are much more frequent compared to the Engineering field. In this sense, it can be inferred that the ​​Administration field is not so resistant to the changes that have been observed regarding the use of the first-person as a valid point of view in the scientific text, legitimized by the academic literacy practices of this area of knowledge.

By the way, this trend is also seen in international studies. ^{Oliveira (2014}) presents a study investigating theses written in Portuguese and in English, and the results show that in English, the authors prefer to use the first-person singular (I). Similarly, ^{Reutner (2016}) found that, in papers written in French, the first-person singular (Je) and the first-person plural (nous), though still less frequent than the third-person (on), is relatively frequent (122 occurrences for the first-person singular, 130 occurrences for the first-person plural, and 304 occurrences for the third-person).

Therefore, we can say that the ​​Administration field, as the data show, is inserted in the ever-growing group of researchers, who consider the author’s inclusion in the text, by the use of the first-person, an effective strategy to give credibility to the research, as pointed out by ^{Brasileiro (2013}). This phenomenon, more common in human sciences, such as Pedagogy, is at the very least a demonstration of flexibility that is being fostered in the academic literacy practices, as demonstrated by the data presented and analyzed in this study.

Final considerations

As mentioned in the introduction, we aimed at presenting a study on academic literacy practices, which focused on the mapping of linguistic clues that show the author’s point of view in papers published in representative journals from the analyzed areas of knowledge. In order to do so, we tried to identify the use of subjectivity and objectivity markers, respectively, by the use of the first-person (we) and the third-person (the pronoun ‘one’ or passive voice structures).

The analysis and interpretation of the data obtained in the research showed that in the Administration field there is still the prevalence of objectivity in the writing of scientific papers, however, there is an evident tendency towards the use of subjectivity, which reveals, when compared to other areas of knowledge, that the Administration field is in an intermediate position between more conservative practices and more innovative ones regarding the use of subjectivity / objectivity.

When compared to Pedagogy, Administration has a higher incidence of third-person; however, when compared to Engineering, we can notice a more frequent use of subjectivity rather than objectivity. This shows that the Administration is an area that accepts some flexibility in the author’s point of view in academic writing.

Another important data obtained from the research is the demystification of the idea that, in order to give scientific credibility, papers should be written in the impersonal style, with the use of the third-person. This assertion is corroborated by the fact that notably prestigious journals in the ​​Administration field accept and publish papers in which subjectivity (the use of the first-person - we) is used as the author’s point of view.

This fact confirms, alongside other similar researches, that there has been a change in the academic literacy practices, which have been adhering to the use of the first-person in scientific texts, taking the author’s inclusion in the text as an effective way of conferring credibility to authorship and, consequently, to research.

The study finally shows that the ways of communicating - more specifically, the author's point of view - in scientific papers are based on representations built on writing social practices, in which the subjects are inserted and which show the academic literacy as practices situated in spheres of human activity that change themselves and also change the ways of giving credibility to the text and to the transmission of knowledge.

These findings, in our view, represent important contributions to professors and advisors, as they provide relevant didactic input that allows a greater approximation to students in order to search for better results in their academic performance, having in mind the knowledge gained on academic literacy practices in their area of formation.

Finally, we should reassert that this study is an integral part of a broader research project, called 'Academic literacy, practices and representations of writing', whose objective is to map representations and writing practices in the various areas of knowledge, seeking a more accurate understanding of the phenomena that underlie the use of writing in the academic sphere.