Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 20:1 (2010) ► pp.1–26

Generic patterns and socio-cultural resources in acknowledgements accompanying Arabic Ph.D. dissertations

Even though the acknowledgement genre is a common practice in Arabic scholarly texts, this area is largely neglected in academic research. The present study examines the generic structure and the linguistic patterns of gratitude expressions used in acknowledegments accompanying the Arabic Ph.D. dissertation genre. To this end, I have analyzed the various rhetorical component options that writers use to convey gratitude and the role played by the socio-cultural factors in shaping this genre in a corpus of 100 Arabic acknowledgements accompanying Ph.D. dissertations in soft sciences written by doctoral Arabic native speakers. A discursive genre analysis reveals that Arab writers tend to use certain socio-cultural specific components that can be seen as contextualization cues bringing about the religious beliefs, and the academic and social conventions of the Arab writers. Further, they tend to utilize certain preferred address forms, and social honorifics together with various gratitude expression options having different degree of intensification to respond to different types of audience and reflect their complex relationships with the academic and social community members.
Keywords: Genre, Acknowledgements, Arabic dissertations, Socio-cultural motivations
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 March 2010
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20.1.01ali
References (60)
Al-Ali, M. (2004) How to get yourself on the door of a Job: A cross-cultural contrastive study of Arabic and English job application letters. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural development 251: 1-23. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
. (2006) Religious affiliations and masculine power in Jordanian wedding invitation genre. Discourse and Society 17.6: 691-714. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Al-Jawziyya, Ibn Qayyim (2000) ʕuddat Ɂal- s̼aabiriin wa- ðaxiirat Ɂal- ʃaakiriin. Beirut: Ɂal-maktabah Ɂal- ʕa s̼riyyahGoogle Scholar
Ali, A. (1989) The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentory. Brentwood. MD: Amana.Google Scholar
Bazerman, C. (1984) Modern evolution of the experimental report in physics: Spectroscopic articles in Physical Review, 1893-1980. Social Studies of Science 141: 163-196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1994) Systems of genres and the enactment of social intentions. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (eds.), Genre and New Rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis, pp. 79-101.Google Scholar
Ben-Ari, E. (1987) On acknowledgements in ethnographies. Journal of Anthropological Research 43.1: 63-84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berkenkotter, C., and T. Huckin (1995) Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, V. (1993) Analyzing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.Google Scholar
. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Boxer, D. (2002) Applying Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Brodkey, L. (1987) Academic Writing as Social Practice. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, P., and S. Levinson (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castleton, B. (2006) Frequency and function of religiously-based expressions. In J.A. Morrow (ed.), Arabic, Islam, and the Allah Lexicon. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 71-111.Google Scholar
Cronin, B. (1991) Let the credits roll: A preliminary examination of the role played by mentors and trusted assessors in disciplinary formation. Journal of Documentation 47.3: 227-39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1995) The Scholar’s Courtesy: The Role of Acknowledgement in the Primary Communication Process. London: Taylor Graham.Google Scholar
Farghal, M. (2002) Situational and discoursal social honorifics in Jordan: An empirical study. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1581: 163-181.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Farghal, M., and A. Shaker (1994) Kin terms and titles of address as relational social honorifics in Jordanian Arabic. Anthropological Linguistics 36.2: 240-53.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Faruqi, M. (2005) Umma: The orientalists and the Qur'anic concept of identity. Journal of Islamic Studies 16.1: 1-34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C. (1986) The study of religious discourse. In J. Alatis and D. Tannen (eds.), Language and Linguistics: The Interdependence of Theory, Data and Application. Georgetown Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, 1985, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Press.Google Scholar
Foley, W. (1997) Anthropological Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Genette, G. (1997) Palimpsests. Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Giannoni, D. (2002) Worlds of gratitude: A contrastive study of acknowledgement texts in English and Italian research articles. Applied Linguistics 23.1: 1-31. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Gu, Y. (1990) Politeness phenomenon in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics 141: 237-257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.K., and R. Hasan (1989) Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social- semiotic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harries. L. (1958) Jordan, its People, its Society, its culture. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Holemes, J. (1995) Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Hyland, K. (2000) Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.  BoPGoogle Scholar
. (2003) Dissertation acknowledgements. Written Communication 20.3: 242-268. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
. (2004) Graduates’ gratitude: The generic structure of dissertation acknowledgements. English for Specific Purposes 231: 303-324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2005) Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Hyland, K., and P. Tse (2004) ‘I would like to thank my supervisor': Acknowledgements in graduate dissertations. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14.2: 259-275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, S. (2005) How and why honorifics can signify dignity and elegance: The indexicality of reflexivity of linguistic rituals. In R. Lakoff and S. Ide (eds.), Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Company, pp. 45-64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kress, G. (1989) Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, S. (2002) Politeness and E-mail discourse: A study on the use of linguistic forms of politeness by Chinese learners of English. "Knowledge and discourse: Speculating on disciplinary features", 2nd International Conference, Hong Kong, June, 2002.
Levinson, S. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lu, Y. (2009) Cultural difference of politeness in English and Chinese. Asian Social science 5.6: 154-56.Google Scholar
MacKintosh, K. (1972) Acknowledgement Patterns in Sociology. Oregon: University of Oregon. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.Google Scholar
MacCain, K. (1991) Communication, competition, and secrecy: The production and dissemination of research-related information in genetics. Science, Technology and Human Values 16.4: 491-516. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manno, G. (2005) Politeness in Switzerland: Between respect and acceptance. In L. Hickey and M. Stewart (eds.), Politeness in Europe. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd., pp. 100-115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, J. (1992) English Text: System and Structure. Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
McAuliffe, J. (ed.) (2003) The Encyclopedia of the Qur’an. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Miller, C. (1984) Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 701: 151-167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morrow, J. (2006) The origin of the Allah lexicon. In J.A. Morrow (ed.), Arabic, Islam, and the Allah Lexicon.Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 115-187.Google Scholar
Mursy, A., and J. Wilson (2001) Towards a definition of Egyptian complimenting. Multilingua 20.2: 133-154. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Nelson, G., M. al-Batal, and E. Echols (1996) Arabic and English compliment responses: Potential for pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 17.4: 411-32. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Rugh, A. (1985) Family in Contemporary Egypt. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Said, A. (1979) Precept and practice of human rights in Islam. Universal Human Rights1.1: 64-79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Samovar, L., and R. Porter (1994) Intercultural Communication: A Reader. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Sell, R. (1991) Literary genre and history: Questions from a literary pragmaticist for socio-semioticians. In E. Ventola (ed.), Approaches to the Analysis of Literary Discourse. Abo: Abo Academy Press, pp. 1-35.Google Scholar
Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Setting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. (2004) Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swales, J., and C. Feak (1994) Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. An Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Swangboonsatic, C. (2006) Different requestive styles on E-mail between Australians and Thais. NIDA Language and Communication Journal 11.11: 62-84.Google Scholar
Watt, W. (1987) Islamic Political Thought. Edinbugh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Widdowson, H. (1990) Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1997) Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Wolfson, N. (1989) Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Wong, Song Mei-Lee (2000) Cross Cultural Communication: Politeness and Face in Chinese Culture. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cited by (15)

Cited by 15 other publications

Al-Ali, Mohammed Nahar & Raneem B AlDwairi
2024. Socio-cultural and contextual resources shaping the initiation of closings of public utility service interactions. Discourse Studies DOI logo
Bao, Kai & Meihua Liu
2024. A Contrastive Study of Lexical Bundles Expressing Gratitude in Dissertation Acknowledgments Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics. Sage Open 14:1 DOI logo
Ghai, Affef & Sharif Alghazo
2024. The Expression of Gratitude in English and Arabic Doctoral Dissertation Acknowledgements. Open Education Studies 6:1 DOI logo
Adekannbi, Janet O.
2023. Acknowledgement behaviour of Information Science students of Nigeria’s premier university. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 55:2 ► pp. 323 ff. DOI logo
Dabbagh, Ali & Mohammad R. Hashemi
2023. Conceptualizations of gratitude: A comparative analysis of English and Persian dissertation acknowledgements written by Persian authors. Australian Journal of Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 137 ff. DOI logo
Agbaglo, Ebenezer
2022. “My heartfelt gratitude goes to …”: The construal of gratitude in master’s dissertation acknowledgements. International Journal of Research Studies in Education 11:6 DOI logo
Al-Ali, Mohammed Nahar
2022. A genre-pragmatic analysis of Arabic academic book reviews (ArBRs). Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo
Al-Ali, Mohammed Nahar & Fahad M. Alliheibi
2022. Struggling to retain the functions of passive when translating English thesis abstracts. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Al-Ali, Mohammed Nahar & Rana N. Abu-Abah
2021. The functional components of telephone conversation opening phase in Jordanian Arabic. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:1 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo
Falade, Bankole Adebayo & Bimbo Lolade Fafowora
2021. Science, beliefs, sociocultural and economic influences on doctorates in South African universities. Cultures of Science 4:4 ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo
TAŞAR, Hacı Hüseyin
2021. Türkiye’de Eğitim Yönetimi Alanında Yapılan Doktora Tezlerinin Ön Sözlerinde Yer Alan Minnettarlık İfadelerinin Analizi. Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences 20:2 ► pp. 552 ff. DOI logo
TOPRAK YILDIZ, Tuğba Elif & Yasemin AKSOYALP
2021. A Contrastive Study on the Generic Structure and Socio-pragmatic Proclivities in Acknowledgements. Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry DOI logo
Desrochers, Nadine, Adèle Paul-Hus, Stefanie Haustein, Rodrigo Costas, Philippe Mongeon, Anabel Quan-Haase, Timothy D. Bowman, Jen Pecoskie, Andrew Tsou & Vincent Larivière
2018. Authorship, citations, acknowledgments and visibility in social media: Symbolic capital in the multifaceted reward system of science. Social Science Information 57:2 ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo
Chan, Thomas Hon-Tung
2015. A corpus-based study of the expression of stance in dissertation acknowledgements. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20 ► pp. 176 ff. DOI logo
Cheng, Stephanie W.
2012. A Contrastive Study of Master Thesis Acknowledgements by Taiwanese and North American Students. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 02:01 ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.