ERIC Number: EJ1287755
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Mar
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2229-9327
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Acknowledgement Structure in Persian and English Theses and Dissertations: A Contrastive Genre Analysis
Arab World English Journal, v10 n1 p347-360 Mar 2019
Acknowledgement appears at the forefront of the high-stakes academic genre of thesis/dissertation writing. Previous research shows the generic structure of acknowledgements written by native Persian postgraduate students contains a 'thanking-God move', absent in native English speakers' acknowledgements. In an approximate replication of Hyland's (2004) study of the generic structure of acknowledgments, we aimed to verify 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 sample acknowledgements written in Persian or English. The authors were native Persian speakers and native English speakers. Fifty acknowledgements (100-400 words) were randomly selected from each corpus and analyzed using Hyland's model. Two coders carefully, content-analyzed, and coded the acknowledgments. Then the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results confirmed findings of previous research indicating that acknowledgements written by native Persian speakers (in Persian & in English) contain all the moves and steps defined by Hyland plus a new step called 'thanking-God' step. The use of this step was significantly different across Persian and English (84% in English & 100% in Persian; X[superscript 2] = 1.63, p[less than or equal to] 0.05) and across writers (84% Persian & 34% English; X[superscript 2] = 28.17, p[less than or equal to] 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.
Descriptors: Contrastive Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, English, Indo European Languages, Doctoral Dissertations, Writing (Composition), Graduate Students, Native Language, Text Structure, Applied Linguistics, Engineering, Business Administration, Content Analysis, Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Computer Science, Teaching Methods, Doctoral Students
Arab World English Journal. 10602 Davlee Lane, Richmond, Texas, 77407. e-mail: editor@awej.org; e-mail: info@ASELS.org; Web site: https://awej.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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