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

Mohammed Nahar Al-Ali
Abstract

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:
Quick links
A browser-friendly version of this article is not yet available. View PDF
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 25: 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 14: 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 158: 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 14: 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 23: 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 70: 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