August 2011 Volume 7 Issue 3
Autumn Edition
PDF Full Version


Title
A Pragmatic Analysis of MA Thesis Acknowledgements


Authors
Stephanie W. Cheng and Chih-Wei Kuo
National Chiao Tung University
                                               
Biodata
Stephanie W. Cheng is an assistant professor in Graduate Institute of TESOL, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, EAP, corpus-based analysis of academic and everyday discourse.

Chih-Wei Kuo received his master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of TESOL, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His research interests include EAP and corpus-based analysis of academic discourse.

Abstract
Most studies on gratitude have focused on spoken interaction. Less attention has been paid to written thanking expressions. From a pragmatic perspective, the present study explores the use of thanking strategies for different addressees in 20 MA thesis acknowledgements. Results reveal that explicit thanking strategies (using overt thanking words) are by far more frequently used than implicit thanking strategies (using no overt thanking words). The most common explicit thanking strategy is thanking + addressees + reasons (favor or positive feelings). Moreover, the choice of strategies varies, depending mainly upon the nature and importance of the assistance or support the addressees have provided. Simple thanking strategies occur much more frequently than complex thanking strategies. A small number of recurrent thanking words and formulaic and personalized structures feature the linguistic realization of this conventionalized part genre. The addressees in thesis acknowledgements include six categories: advisors, committee members, other faculty members, participants, classmates/friends, and family members, arranged in descending order of frequency. Among them, advisors are invariably thanked first, and complex thanking strategies are usually employed to elaborate on their specific assistance. These results signify thesis acknowledgements as the socio-pragmatic embodiment of the graduates’ professional as well as interpersonal supporting networks.

Keywords:pragmatic analysis; MA thesis; acknowledgement; thanking strategy; gratitude