ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the literature on Writer/reader visibility and draw up a list of features which indicate W/R presence in the discourse. It examines the results of a computer-aided corpus analysis are presented and discussed. The chapter determines whether there are differences between the different language/cultural groups in the way the participation of writer and reader are explicitly coded in the discourse. It is understood that the mere presence or absence of features of W/R visibility says nothing about their effect on the success or otherwise of a piece of discourse. It discusses the potential of this area as a field of research and the merits and demerits of using computerised techniques for this type of analysis. This initial piece of research is intended as a first step in a much larger-scale study1 and aims to establish the potential interest of W/R visibility as an area of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) research.
