REFERENCE
Trad. Roldán Adriana
Interpretación I
2021
Título y diseño de contenido con lista
You use reference words to show the connections between ideas, giving greater
cohesion and clarity to your writing.
Reference words point backwards “ANAPHORIC” or forwards “CATAPHORIC” to
other words or concepts that have already appeared in the text or are about to
appear in the text.
Reference words are important because they are another way you can strengthen
the connections between different elements of your text and clarify the progression
of ideas.
CATEGORIES OF REFERENCE WORDS
There are six main kinds of reference words.
1. Personal pronouns
Because an impersonal style of writing is strongly favoured by most academic
disciplines, you may rarely find yourself using pronouns like I, you and we.
The most commonly used personal pronouns in academic writing are it (referring to
things) and they (referring to either things or people). In academic writing, ‘things’
are usually phenomena and abstract nouns, and people are usually previous
researchers. He and she may also be used, usually to refer to authors previously
mentioned in the text.
2. Possessive pronouns
The possessive pronouns show a relationship of ownership or ‘belonging to’. They
are: my, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs.
As with personal pronouns, my and our are not commonly used in academic
writing. The most commonly used possessive pronouns in academic writing are its,
their, his, her.
3. Demonstratives
Demonstratives are similar to personal and possessive pronouns in that they refer
to nouns usually already present in the text. However, they have a stronger
pointing quality – they identify (point at) exactly which thing or things are being
referred to.
The most common demonstratives are: this, that (singular), these,
those (plural), such.
4. Comparatives
Comparatives are sometimes used as pronouns and sometimes as adjectives. You
do not need to be able to distinguish the two because, in both cases, they are being
used to refer to something or someone in the text.
Comparatives include words like: another, other, both, similar, the same, better,
more, earlier, later, previous, subsequent.
5. The definite article ‘the’
The definite article the is often used to refer back to something which has already been
mentioned in the text and is now occurring for the second (or perhaps the third or fourth) time.
The definite article can also be used to point (refer) forwards, although this is less
common.
Note that the definite article is not always used referentially.
6. General reference
sually a reference word is tied to a word, phrase or other grammatical element which
is clearly identifiable in the preceding or subsequent text. However, sometimes a
reference word refers back to an entire stretch of text – perhaps even a paragraph
or two - without referring to any one particular component of it. In this case, the
reference word has the function of summarising the preceding information.
The words most commonly used to do this are the demonstrative
pronouns this and these.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The University of Sidney
[Link]