Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns that consist of every-, no-, some-, and awy-words (everybody, everything, nothing, anyone) are markedly more frequent in L2 academic texts than in comparable NS prose (Hinkel, 2002a). Among these pronouns, every- and no-words are usually associated with overstatement and exaggerations and considered to be inappropriate in formal written texts (Quirk et al., 1985). However, some- and any-words are often so vague that they may have little semantic content. For example, People hear the word "information " everywhere any day and usually define "information" as news, facts, knowledge, data, and so on. Everyone wants to have as much information as they can when they make business decisions. However, in every field of business, information is different for many people, and it depends on what people specialize in. Every student using the internet as the information system tries to search for something that they want to gain through it. And the information systems transmit something to learners. People have heard the concepts of facts, data, and knowledge. Although these concepts have different meaning, facts are something that have happened or have been done. This is the type of information that is valuable for everyone in any business. (Excerpted from a student's academic paper on information technology.)

Studies of written English-language corpora have shown that every- and no-words are marked exaggeratives, and they are particularly rare in academic prose, although quantifiers such as some and no are encountered occasionally (2.5 occurrences per 100,000 words—i.e., 0.0025%; Biber et al., 1999). Their uses often create an impression of overstatement, inflation of facts, or hyperbole (see also chap. 12 on Hedges). In the spoken register, however, every- and no-words occur with greater frequencies.

Studies of L2 text have demonstrated that students often rely on overstatements and exaggerations as a means of rhetorical persuasion common in rhetorical traditions other than Anglo-American (Hinkel, 1997b; Matalene, 1985). In addition, as mentioned in chapter 3, when the NNS writers' lexical range is limited, they rely on the accessible lexical arsenal to produce academic prose. For this reason, instruction on constructing written academic text must focus on the development of learners' vocabulary.

However, some- and any-words (someone, something, anybody) often function as hedges with the goal of expressing vague general truths, commonly held opinions, together with uncertainty and imprecision. In some discourse traditions, such as Chinese and Japanese, indefmiteness and hesitation are considered to be desirable characteristics because they allow writers to state their opinions indirectly without the risk of offending or losing rapport with the reader (Maynard, 1997).

However, in Anglo-American academic prose, neither exaggerations nor vagueness are valued highly, thus the usage of indefinite pronouns is not likely to make a favorable impression on the reader. For instance, in the prior excerpt, the -body and-one pronouns can be relatively easily replaced with nouns such as business managers / researchers / students / community and -thing pronouns with contextually relevant nouns.