Acknowledgement Structure in Persian and English Theses and Dissertations: A Contrastive Genre Analysis

Appearing at the forefront of non-native student writers thesis/dissertation, acknowledgements can illustrate cross-cultural genre variations relevant to research and instruction in academic writing. As an approximate replication of Hyland’s (2004) study of the generic structure of theses/dissertation acknowledgments, the present study aimed to explore the occurrence, frequency, and variation of moves and steps in three small corpora of acknowledgments from six disciplines (applied linguistics, business management, computer science, electrical engineering, microbial biotechnology, & biochemistry). Each corpus contained 200 acknowledgements written in Persian by Persian native speakers, in English by Persian native speakers, and in English by native English-speaking authors. Fifty acknowledgements (varying in length from 100 to 400 words) were randomly selected from each corpus and analyzed following Hyland’s (2004) model. Two coders carefully read, content-analyzed, and coded the acknowledgments for their moves and steps. The analysis confirmed that acknowledgements written by Persian native speakers (in Persian & in English) contained all the moves and steps defined by Hyland (2004) plus a new step called ‘thanking-God’. The use of this step was significantly different across Persian and English (X2= 1.63, p≤ 0.05). ‘Accepting responsibility’ and ‘dedicating the thesis’ were used least frequently by all writers, while ‘thanking move’ and ‘reflecting move’ were used most frequently. Pedagogical and conceptual implications are discussed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Genre analysis ، acknowledgment ، thesis/dissertation ، move analysis ، Academic writing