Generic structures and linguistic features of TESOL master’s thesis acknowledgements written by Vietnamese postgraduates
Acknowledgements are a widely used genre in academic discourse to express gratitude towards various types of assistance and contribution of individuals and institutions, and they have been reported to be contextually and culturally interwoven. Despite a number of acknowledgement studies in various...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2017
|
| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11289/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11289/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11289/1/15821-54512-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Acknowledgements are a widely used genre in academic discourse to express gratitude towards various types of
assistance and contribution of individuals and institutions, and they have been reported to be contextually and
culturally interwoven. Despite a number of acknowledgement studies in various settings, little is known of how
these texts are composed by EFL writers in Vietnam and whether or not the culture has any influence on the
composition of acknowledgements as reported in previous studies of acknowledgements. Following Hyland’s
(2004) and Hyland and Tse’s (2004) frameworks, this study investigates the generic structures and linguistic
elements of acknowledgements in 202 TESOL master’s theses written by Vietnamese postgraduates. The
findings were compared with those in the literature to explore cross-cultural variations in acknowledgement
writing. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with actual thesis writers. The results revealed that
these writers generally followed Hyland’s (2004) three-tier structure of writing thesis acknowledgements, but
they were frank and less reserved in expressing their gratitude than their Chinese-speaking counterparts.
Moreover, socio-cultural expectations, personal dispositions, and individual writing styles mainly affected their
move constructions, inclusions of acknowledgees and linguistic choices. |
|---|