Constructing the Scientific Self: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Metadiscourse and Authorial Presence in 19th-Century Texts

Abstract

This study examines how nineteenth-century English scientific and instructional texts construct persuasion and authorial identity using interactional metadiscourse features, namely boosters, self-mentions, and modal verbs. Drawing on two historical corpora, the Corpus of English Texts on Physics (CETePh) and the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English (CoWITE19), comprising over 726,000 words, the analysis identifies significant contrasts in the frequency, distribution, and rhetorical function of these features. Physics texts exhibit a higher density and lexical diversity of these features, reflecting the persuasive, competitive, and epistemologically assertive nature of scientific discourse. Conversely, instructional texts employ more restrained linguistic choices, privileging impersonality, clarity, and procedural authority. These differences reveal how genre and disciplinary conventions mediate the negotiation between objectivity and individuality in nineteenth-century prose.