The royal "we"
Updated: Sep 17, 2021
Should you use “I” or “we” when referring to yourself and your actions in your academic work? Writing in the third person—sometimes called using “the royal we”, or writing as though you are royalty and must refer to yourself as a group—is actually an established convention in academic circles. Which pronoun to choose when referring to yourself as the author is a topic that frequently confuses students, however. I feel that this confusion most likely arises because conventions for the issue are caught up in methodological and theoretical variation and change.
In general, I have found there is a tendency in students’ work to fall back on the use of the third person stance, albeit usually with a latent sense of disquiet.
Third Person
Some sources consider the use of the third person essential to generating the formal tone required in academic work, or of upholding a scientific, objective stance. Thus, in most learning domains, referring to yourself in the third person plural (as “we” or as “the researcher”) is perfectly acceptable, and many student guides continue to consider this use of the third person plural standard author positioning.
First Person
However, writing in the first person, or as the “I” that thinks, reasons, argues, and engages in experimental actions, is becoming more widely acceptable. Certainly, in terms of the entanglement of the researcher in the research process, there are some research methodologies that are quite incompatible with the idea of an “objective” stance at all (feminism, for example).
In her very informative University of Adelaide learning guide, Dianne Rodger (n.d.) provides a good discussion of these issues. She notes:
In many disciplines, using first person is negatively associated with subjectivity, informality and ego-centric writing. Conversely, writing in third person is argued to “convey, an impression that the ideas being discussed have a neutral, value-free, impartial basis” (Webb 1992:748). Yet, as Webb discusses, the use of third person can conceal how knowledge is actively being created (i.e. the role of the author / researcher) and can result in the omission of important information (1992:749). From this perspective, using phrases like “this essay” or avoiding discussing the self can actually mask power relations or poor research practices (…). (Rodger, n.d., p. 2).
In the interests of a transparent presentation of your (necessary) intersection with the text—such as in cases where you need to describe steps taken by you in your experiment—I (personally) recommend the use of the first person, which has long been upheld by APA style (this is the style created and used by the American Psychological Association). Both recent versions of APA style (2010, 2020) reject the use of the third person in academic writing. Version 7 of the Manual is very clear:
Pronouns replace nouns, and each pronoun should refer clearly to its antecedent. To avoid ambiguity in attribution, use the first person rather than the third person when describing the work you did as part of your research and when expressing your own views. If you are writing a paper by yourself, use the pronoun “I”; do not use the pronoun “we” to refer to yourself if you do not have coauthors (…). If [however] you are writing a paper with coauthors, use the pronoun “we”. Do not refer to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as “the author(s)” or “the researcher(s)”. (APA, 2020, p. 120)
To sum up, in choosing your stance, I feel you will need to consider:
what style your paper is being presented in, and what that style manual says about the use of pronouns for author self-referencing;
what others in your field (such as your examiners) expect in this regard; and
what your methodological position requires of you.
So, no more latent disquiet! Instead, have a beautiful day!
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (6th ed.). Author.
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.
Rodger, D. (n.d.). Writing in the first person (University of Adelaide learning guide).
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