Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

The chapter will introduce the object of the present study: how the speech act of

thanking is realized in the acknowledgements section of Ph. D. candidates’

dissertation. Then the researcher explains the need for the study and the significance

of the study.

1.1 Object of the Study

In the present thesis, the researcher is interested in the acknowledgements

sections of Ph.D. graduates’ dissertations. Acknowledgement sections are now

common in academic books and research articles. They appear in almost all

dissertations to offer graduate students an opportunity to convey their genuine

gratitude to supporters and enable them to establish their credibility and repay their

debts. However, the number of studies on acknowledgements is unexpectedly small

and the existing research is mainly carried out to analyze its generic structure. For this

reason, the present paper will concentrate on the pragmatic features or patterns of

gratitude expressions in acknowledgements and tries to figure out how the politeness

principle works in gratitude expressions.

In the past decade, more and more attention has been paid to the research on EAP

(English for Academic Purpose). EAP is generally defined as teaching English with

the aim of facilitating learners’ studies or research in English. Jordan (1997) argues

that EAP is concerned with those communication skills in English which are required

for study purpose in formal education systems. Earlier research studied such features

1

in academic articles as nominalization (Dubois, 1982), voice (Tarone et al., 1981),

tense (Lackstrom et al., 1973; Selinker et al., 1976, 1978; Oster, 1981; Swales, 1981;

Malcolm, 1987).

Performing appropriate speech acts, such as requesting, apologizing,

complimenting and thanking comprises a part of pragmatic competence, which is

essential to successful verbal communication. We know that different cultures have

different ways of realizing certain speech acts. The difference can be attributed to

social rules of speaking (Wolfson, et al., 1989). Although a large number of speech act

studies have been conducted cross-culturally in the past, many languages which have

been studied are non-Asian languages (Yamashita, 1996). And among speech acts that

have been studied, the study of the thanking receives little attention from linguists

(Rintell, 1989).

1.2 Need for the Study

Despite their importance in academic writings, acknowledgements have been

largely neglected in linguistic studies. The literature dealing with acknowledgements

often focus on their explicitly argumentative and persuasive genres in terms of moves

and steps. To those non-native speakers, acknowledgements writing is not a simple

job. In order to make readers fully understand how grateful they are, they have to

express their gratitude or realize their thanking appropriately and correctly in a

pragmatic way. However, instructions on how to write a pragmatically accepted

acknowledgement are rare.

Compared with acknowledgements sections written by Native English Ph. D.

graduates, English acknowledgements written by non-native English speakers are

often not native-like. For example, the following acknowledgement written by an

English major with Chinese background is like a name list of acknowlegees.

Many of my colleagues and friends have helped me in a variety of ways. I should like to put on record my appreciation especially to Mr.Su Xiao-Jun, Ms. Bai Hongai, Mr. Wei Han, Mr. Wang Zhijun, Mr. Wang Quanzhi, Mr. Zheng Shoujiang, Mr. Sun ya, Mr. Yao Lan, and Mr. Liang Xiaobo. The

2

seminars on various topics we held together have always been a source from which I drew inspirations and obtained suggestions.

Apart from namelisting, many other pragmatic faults can also be found in English

Major Ph.D. graduates’ acknowledgement sections and the researcher will discuss

them in the discussion parts.

Furthermore, regarding the studies of thanking speech act, the conceptual

frameworks involved are mainly face theory or politeness principles by Brown and

Levinson and the data on which researchers build their theory are daily conversations

or oral talks. The present paper aims to study thanking speech act in the written

discourse. How can the thanking speech act be realized in academic discourse-

acknowledgements section? The answer to this question will be given in the part of

the discussion and the analysis will be conducted within the latest framework of

politeness principle advanced by Leech in 2005.

1.3 Significance of the Study

As an important section of academic writing, the study of acknowledgements will

enrich the research of academic writing, so it is especially helpful to teachers of

academic writing. In spite of their importance, quite a few journals have mentioned

the section of acknowledgements in their “Guidelines for Authors”. Faced with a

growing demand for advanced communication skills, language teachers and analysts

alike are under pressure to develop effective academic literacy pedagogies

(Berkenkotter et al., 1991) targeting the needs of both native and non-native speakers.

For teachers, the fact that acknowledgements assist learners in both formally

recording gratitude and constructing that a credible and sympathetic identity located

in networks of association, suggests it is worth paying attention to them in class. For

students, the study will be helpful in the way of how to reconcile their individual

achievement with the interpersonal debts incurred in the completing the dissertation

or theses.

Being different from existing studies on thanking, the present one is going to

analyze the speech act of thanking in written discourse. Considering politeness in

3

written discourse is a rarely studied area, the present study will give a further impetus

to speech act research, thanking speech act in particular.

Furthermore, the framework applied in the present study is the latest framework

of politeness principle proposed by Leech in 2005. Comparing with the studies which

have been done on the basis of Leech’s old version of politeness principle, the present

one is more adaptive to the targeted research need and it is also an instructive attempt

to practice Leech’s new modification of politeness principle.

1.4 Overview of the Study

This thesis examines how speech act of thanking is realized in Ph.D. graduates’

acknowledgements. It analyzes 120 PhD dissertation acknowledgements sections

(PhDASs), defined as macro speech act of thanking.

Chapter 1 outlines the objectives of the research and identifies its relevant

theoretical background; it also points out the contribution that the study offers to

linguistics, describes the corpus to be analyzed, and presents a synopsis of the

following chapters.

Chapter 2 reviews previous studies on speech act, academic writing and

acknowledgements. The author defines “thanking” as an academic act, a speech act

and a cultural act. Based on those studies, the author points out what is still needed to

explore to enrich the studies of speech act of thanking in acknowledgements.

Chapter 3 focuses on the speech act nature of thanking in acknowledgements. It

discusses the definition of thanking as a speech act, an academic act and a cultural act.

It reviews the development of politeness principle. Additionally, it defines what

indebtedness is and gives the reader a general description of studies on indebtedness.

Chapter 4 shows the reader the methodology of present study. What is the source

of the data and in what way the data is analyzed are presented in this section.

Chapter 5 examines the corpus from both a pragmatic and linguistic perspective.

All corpus is collected from Internet database of thesis and dissertations.

Acknowledgements included in the study are respectively from native English

speakers, English major graduates and native Chinese graduates. It presents people

4

included in thanking speech act in acknowledgements, reasons why those people are

thanked. And the differences between the three groups are discussed. It explores the

structure and characteristics of the gratitude expressions in PhDASs and reveals the

variety of lexico-grammatical patterns available for the encoding of written

acknowledgements. It also comprises a summary of the strategies for the expression

of acknowledgements in the PhDASs.

Chapter 6 derives the conclusion from the findings of Chapter 4 and evaluates the

study as a whole. It points out the limitations of the study, and offers suggestions for

further research on PhDASs.

5

Chapter Two

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter consists of three sections. This first section introduces theoretical

background of speech act. In this section, the development of speech act theory and its

shortcomings will be pointed out. The second and the third section review

respectively the related studies on speech act of thanking and acknowledgements at

home and abroad.

2.1 Speech Act Theory

Speech acts studies have been based on speech act theory developed by Austin

(1962) and Searle (1969a). Austin claimed that we are using words to perform actions

in life. According to Austin, a speaker produces three acts at the same time he makes

an utterance: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Austin (1962)

defines an illocutionary act as “saying something will often, or even normally,

produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of an

utterance or of the speaker or of other persons ” (P.101). When a speaker says, “Can I

have a glass of water?” there is some locutionary meaning based on the words used

6

and the grammar it involves. In addition, in uttering this, the speaker performs an

illocutionary act, i.e., the act of requesting. The perlocutionary act is achieved if a

hearer brings a glass of water to the speaker after hearing this request.

Building on Austin’s speech act, Searle (1969b) proposed five different categories

of speech acts: representatives, directives, commissives, expressive and declarations.

A representative is a speech act which describes a state or event, such as report, and

assertion, (e.g. “I am sure that Mr. Smith will come by 3 o’clock.”). A directive is

speech act used by a speaker to have a listener do something, such as requesting or

ordering (e.g., “Open the window, please!”). In a commissive, speakers commit

themselves to doing something in the future such as a promise (e.g., “I’ll give you a

call tomorrow.”). A declarative is a speech act which changes the state of affairs, such

as a declaration (e.g., “I now name this ship ‘Blue Ocean.”). This classification should

not be taken as categorical, but rather better should be understood in terms of a

continuum, specifically in cases where a particular speech act may be interpreted as

the result of the interface of two types of illocutionary acts (Edmondson, 1981;

Levinson, 1983; and Mey, 2001).

Though Austin’s and Searle’s speech act theory has played an important part in

functional aspects of pragmatic theory, it has also been the object of criticism. The

first criticism of speech act theory concerns the issue of indirectness. Austin’s and

Searle’s theoretical accounts of speech act theory are restricted to the level of the

utterance. Examples they used come from fabricated data based on their native-

speaker intuitions, and thus, generalizations they drew regarding the way speech acts

function in real communicative interaction at the level of discourse are not that

convincing. It should be observed that the concept of a speech act in Austin’s and

Searle’s theoretical models is restricted to a limited conversational exchange of two

subsequent utterances or strict adjacency pair (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), in the form

of question-answer, greeting-greeting, or request-acceptance.

Following Austin, Searle claimed that there are general norms for realizing

speech acts and that across-cultural differences are not so different. This concept of

7

the universality of speech acts was also supported by Brown and Levinson (1987),

which held that strategies for realizing speech acts are essentially the same across

cultures even though there are cultural specifications and elaborations in any

particular society.

Other scholars have contended that there is considerable variation in the

realization of speech acts across cultures. Blum-Kulka (1989) noted that certain

request strategies are not common across languages, but that insignificant differences

exist between languages. Wierzbicka (1991) point out that most of the speech act

studies were from the perspective of Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism. She claimed that the

actual realization of speech acts is based on cultural norms and should be different in

different cultures. Because the number of studies concerned with non-western

language is quite limited, researchers are encouraged to explore non-western

languages to strike a balance between western and non-western culture studies to

present a full picture of the university or culture-specificity of speech acts.

2.2 Studies on the Speech Act of Thanking

Since the proposal of speech act theory, many scholars have focused their studies

on specific speech acts. Recently, scholars home and abroad have done mass research

on compliments, blessings, complaints, disagreements, invitations, requests,

suggestions, apologies and gratitude. Previous research is mainly carried out from the

perspective of intercultural communications. From the table Table 1—A review of

speech act, we can find that some speech acts are very attractive while some others

are have not paid received enough attention to.

Thanking is one of the most frequently occurring communicative acts in human

interaction. Thanking inappropriately, however, can damage human relations.Yet

thanking has been seldom researched. In speech act theory, the speech act of thanking

is defined as an expression of gratitude and appreciation (Searle, 1969). Significant

interlanguage pragmatic research on thanking, such as Eisenstein and Bodman (1986,

1988, 1993) follow this definition. The research suggests that thanking is a small

8

supportive ritual associated with politeness and its social effect is an

acknowledgement of the benefit one has received.

When investigating the pragmatics of thanking, Aijmer (1996, pp.35-38)

distinguishes between simple and intensified “thank you”/ “thanks”. In order to be

successful in communicative situations, a speaker must know different variables for

the context of an utterance. Although the number of variables in different contexts are

not easy to identify, she still suggests some situational parameters for thanking, such

as setting (at work, at a person’s house…), participants (social roles as operator-caller

but also personal relations for simple; friends, family members, strangers and so on) and types of thanking (‘minor favor’ for simple thank you/ thanks- ‘major favors’ or

Table1: A review of speech act Literature literature Speech act Empirical research

Request

Blum-Kulka, 1983: Hebrew and English; Fraser et al., House & Kasper, 1981: English and German; House & Kasper, 1987: Danish and German;Rintell, 1981; Takahashi, 1996: Japanese learners of English; Tanner, 1981: English and Greek; Trosborg, 1995: English and Danish;

Apologies

Cohen & Olshtain, 1981 Hebrew speaking learners of English; Fraser et al., 1980; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983; Rintell, 1981; Trosborg, 1987, 1995: Danish Learners of English;

ComplaintOlshtain & Weinbach, 1987: Learners of Hebrew; Trosborg, 1995: Danish Learners of English;

Refusals Beebe et al., 1990: Japanese Learners of English;Chastisements Beebe & Takahashi, 1989: Japanese Learners of English;

Correction Takahashi & Beebe, 1983: Japanese Learners of English;Compliments Saito & Beecken, 1997: American Learners of Japanese;

Thanks Blum-Kulma, 1982, 1983: Hebrew and English; Einstein & Bodman, 1986; Fraser & Norlen, 1981;

Thanking is one of the most frequently occurring communicative acts in human

interaction. Thanking inappropriately, however, can damage human relations.Yet

thanking has been seldom researched. In speech act theory, the speech act of thanking

is defined as an expression of gratitude and appreciation (Searle, 1969). Significant

interlanguage pragmatic research on thanking, such as Eisenstein and Bodman (1986,

1988, 1993) follow this definition. The research suggests that thanking is a small

9

supportive ritual associated with politeness and its social effect is an

acknowledgement of the benefit one has received.

When investigating the pragmatics of thanking, Aijmer (1996, pp.35-38)

distinguishes between simple and intensified “thank you”/ “thanks”. In order to be

successful in communicative situations, a speaker must know different variables for

the context of an utterance. Although the number of variables in different contexts are

not easy to identify, she still suggests some situational parameters for thanking, such

as setting (at work, at a person’s house…), participants (social roles as operator-caller

but also personal relations for simple; friends, family members, strangers and so on)

and types of thanking (‘minor favor’ for simple thank you/ thanks- ‘major favors’ or

‘potential favors’ for intensified). She classified thanking strategies into two groups:

explicit and implicit. Thanking somebody explicitly, expressing gratitude;

acknowledging a debt of gratitude belong to explicit group while expressing

appreciation of the addressee, expressing appreciation of the act, stressing one’s

gratitude, expressing emotion and commenting on one’s role by suppressing one’s

own importance (self-denigration) belong to implicit one.

A research on Chinese thanking speech act by Li Lina (2004) analyzes strategies

Chinese apply to realize thanking and classifies thanking speech act into direct and

indirect thanking. Indirect thanking comprises showing concern, apologizing, paying

compliment, making promise, assuming, blaming, and expressing feelings. The author

finds that Chinese speakers frequently apply mixed type of expressions.

Bi Jiwan (1996) analyzes the differences between Chinese and English gratitude

expression from the perspective of ways of realization and responses. The author

believes that expressions of gratitude involve three different human relations: public

relations, intimate relations and social relations.

Liu Wansheng (2004) carries out a questionnaire to analyze the differences of

gratitude expressions by Native English learner, Native Chinese speakers and Chinese

EFL speakers from the perspective of situations, use of thanking strategies, and

utterances. The author finds that the eight strategies proposed by Aijmer in 1996

10

cannot include all thanking patterns in Chinese. The author puts forward another four

implicit strategies: positive opinion, compliment promise and reward in the future,

apology and showing care. Through the questionnaire, he finds that the differences

existed between Chinese and English gratitude expressions can be attributed to

cultural differences. Social distance plays an important role in expression of gratitude

by Native Chinese. For Chinese EFL learners, pragmatic transfer occurs.

Most empirical research that concern thanking speech act study conversation

routines in oral communication. Questions concerning how gratitude can be expressed

in writing discourse and whether there is any difference between the two ways of

thanking realization need to be answered.

2.3 Studies of Acknowledgements

Academic writings are forms of social action designed to accomplish socially

recognized purposes with hopes of success. The act of writing is embedded in wider

social and discursive practices which carry assumption about participant relationships

and how these should be structured and negotiated (Lemke, 1995). After Swales

(1981) pioneering analysis, great attention has been paid to EAP (English for

Academic Purpose). Previous studies within applied linguistics have provided

functional accounts of linguistic features that frequently occur in academic articles,

such as nominalization (Dubois,1982; West, 1980), voice (Tarone et al., 1981), tense

(Lackstrom et al., 1973; Selinker et al., 1976, 1978; Oster, 1981; Swales, 1981;

Malcolm, 1987) and modality (Smith, 1984). Many of these studies deserve

mentioning in the way that they relate grammatical components to specific rhetorical

functions. They are noteworthy as they show the distribution of those features across

disciplines. Furthermore, research also shows that academic writing is also a social

construct. Studies of features such as hedges (Hyland, 1998; Mayer, 1997), pronouns

(Kuo, 1999) and stance markers (Hyland, 1999) point to the writers’ need to establish

relatively harmonious connections with their addressee. Taking their views, beliefs

11

and expectations into consideration, they apply addressing methods strategically, both

in rhetoric and pragmatic perspective.

Myers (1989) was the first to incorporate Brown &Levinson (1987) politeness

model drawn from conversational data into the study of academic writing. In his

study, Myers listed several different written linguist devices that can be categorized as

either positive or negative or negative strategies. He describes, for example, the use of

personal pronouns as a positive politeness strategy, and frames the use of passive

verbs as a negative one. This innovative study has, in recent years, sparked interest

among researchers to explore previously studied linguistic features from this new

perspective.

Moore (1994 ) found that women were consistently more likely to acknowledge

professional help than men, who in turn, tended more often to list male-only support.

This finding is consistent with the evidence that women use more complimentary

language (Holmes, 1988) and suffer under acknowledgement (Cronin & Overfelt,

1994).

Published acknowledgements seem to have originated from the thanks expressed

to patrons and powerful benefactors in the covering letters accompanying scientific

articles (Atkinson, 1999). Acknowledgements have been common in published

academic texts since the 1960s (Bazerman, 1988), gradually becoming both longer

(Caesar, 1992; Cronin, 1995) and more common, so that they can be found in perhaps

half of all published research articles (Cronin, McKenzie, & Stiffler, 1992) and

virtually all those in the sciences (McCain, 1991).

After gaining its independence, the acknowledgements section has become an

important feature of academic process. It has lost its original purpose but

acknowledges the assistance, and contributions of others is now a well-established

feature of the scholarly communication process. The steps offering thanks are still the

cores of the acknowledgements.

Ken Hyland (2004) discusses the importance of acknowledgements as a genre.

He examines the move structure of the acknowledgements accompanying 240 PhD

12

and MA dissertation written by Non-Native speakers of English. He finds that

thanking move is the core of the acknowledgements and the only move which occurs

in all the texts. The thanking move contains four steps: presenting participants,

thanking for academic assistance, thanking for providing resources, thanking for

moral support.

Davide Simone Giannoni (2002) carries out a contrastive study of

acknowledgements texts in English and Italian research articles. Drawing on a corpus

of 100 acknowledgements in English and Italian Journals, Giannoni examines the

socio-pragmatic construction and texualization of scholarly acknowledgements.

Difference and similarity between corpora and academic cultures are explored with

special attention to such issues as generic complexity and staging, personal

involvement and peer-reference, authorial responsibility and pragmatic appropriacy.

The findings suggest that generic frameworks reverberate across linguistic borders but

also reinforce the national proclivities of the disciplinary communities they serve.

Dissertation Acknowledgements: The anatomy of a Cinderella genre by Ken

Hyland (2003) is an analysis of the acknowledgements accompanying 240 Ph.D. and

M.A. dissertations written by nonnative speakers of English. The analysis suggests

that the texualization of gratitude reveals social and cultural characteristics. The

public display of thanks is shaped by larger forces and interests than simple thanks

and is mediated by disciplinary preferences, personal gratitude, and strategic career

choices.

Studies have found that acknowledgements reflect disciplinary practices, with the

higher rates of acknowledgement in the hard disciplines reflecting scientists’ greater

dependence on institutional and financial support and immersion in the mutual

exchange of materials and pre-prints (Cronin, McKenzie, & Rubio, 1993).

Philosophers are more likely to inhabit dispersed communities with little reliance on

close interaction with others and so have low acknowledgement rates. The

disciplinary differences are also exhibited on structures. Writers in the humanities and

social sciences write more elaborate texts (Giannoni, 2002; Hyland, 2004)

13

Based on analyses of the acknowledgements accompanying 240 Masters and PhD

dissertations in six academic disciplines written by students at five Hong Kong

universities, and on interviews with postgraduate writers, Ken Hyland (2004) explores

the importance of acknowledgements genre and examines the generic structure and

linguistic patterns used to express thanks. As for the patterns of expressing gratitude,

authors categorized all patterns into five groups: nominalization, performative verb,

adjective, passive and bare mention. They also discuss the modified thanking act, but

the discussions do not give an implicit illustration to pragma-linguistic features of

gratitude expressions.

Caesar (1992) sees the acknowledgements as sketching a small society, where

knowledge is set ‘within the warm glow of an intimate conversation’. Giannoni

(2002) found evidence of this in the use of first-person pronouns, which occurred in

60 percent of Acknowledgements expressing gratitude to individuals but in just over

10 percent of those thanking institutions; most individual contributions were

acknowledged with qualifiers stressing their interpersonal value (helpful, valuable,

useful, and excellent accounted 83 percent of choices).

Acknowledgements are much more than a simple catalogue of indebtedness.

Cronin and Overfelt (1994), for example, found that over 50% of their survey of 280

academic generally read acknowledgements when scanning a new paper, often to

make a preliminary relevance assessment of the article. Over 90% of respondents

were aware of having been acknowledged themselves, a few even keeping a formal

record for institutional evaluation. Furthermore, they offer insights into the persona of

the writer, the patterns of engagement that define collaboration and interdependence

among scholars, and the practices of expectation and etiquette that are involved.

For students, the acknowledgements has important role in reconciling their

individual achievement with the interpersonal debts incurred in completing the study.

The widespread of acknowledgements reflects an increasingly collaborative

environment and the acceptance of a community-oriented ethos. Ben-Ari (1987)

claims, “a close reading of acknowledgements written before and after World War II

14

reveals how anthropologists have reacted to shifts in the definitions of personhood

and of proper social relationships within their societies” (Ben-Ari, 1987, p. 153). By

giving credit to contributors, Acknowledgements repay intellectual debts through “

introductions or reintroductions of the acknowledged people’s names into the

community’s conversations and argumentations (p. 68).

Previous studies have studied linguistic features, disciplinary difference, gender

difference and, most of all, generic structure, which are exhibited in the

acknowledgements writing. Researchers also discuss the pragmatic aspect of

acknowledgments. However, all the research has not given a full picture of the small

society in the acknowledgements. The pragmatic aspect of gratitude expressions in the

acknowledgements deserves researchers’ special attention. Acknowledgements

involve complicated interpersonal relations which will reflect writers’ and readers’

social, cultural and ethnical facet. In this way, a systematic pragmatic study of

acknowledgements is expected. The author will concentrate on the pragmatic aspect

of the acknowledgements and discuss the interrelations involved in it within the

framework of Politeness Principle. The author aims to explore how Ph.D. candidate to

express their thanks in a polite way and what politeness strategies they will apply to

achieve politeness. The paper is expected to give a further development to the speech

act and pragmatic study of academic writings.

15

Chapter Three

THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This chapter aims to establish the conceptual framework for the analysis of

thanking speech act in the section of acknowledgements in the following chapter of

discussion. The first part illustrates thanking as a speech act, as an academic act and

as a cultural act. The second section discusses the cultural effects on

acknowledgements writing. The third section is devoted to politeness principle. The

definition of indebtedness and acknowledgements will be discussed in the fourth

section.

3.1 Defining Thanking

3.1.1 Thanking as a speech act

Searle (1969) defines thanking as an illocutionary act performed by a speaker

based on a past act performed by the hearer that was beneficial. From his point of

view, the force of an utterance derives from a set of necessary and sufficient

conditions relating to the particular act. These conditions relate, on the one hand, to

the beliefs and attitudes of speaker and hearer and on the other, to their mutual

understanding of the use of linguistic devices for communication. For thanking as a

speech act to be felicitous, certain conditions must be satisfiedmet, as illustrated in

Table 2:

Table 2. Four Felicity felicity Conditions conditions of the Sspeech Aact of ThankingthankingPropositional content condition Past act A done by H.Preparatory condition A benefits S and S believes A benefits S.Sincerity condition S feels grateful or appreciative for A.Essential condition Counts as an expression of gratitude or appreciation.

16

Bach and Harnish (1979) further their analysis of the thanking speech act in the

following synopsis:

In uttering the expression, S thanks H for D if S expresses:

1) gratitude to H for D, and

2) the intention that H believe that S is grateful to H for D, or

3) the intention that his utterance satisfy the social expectation that one express

gratitude at being benefited, and

4) the intention that H takes S’s utterance as satisfying this expectation

In uttering E, S thanks H for D if S expresses:

1) gratitude to H for D, and

2) the intention that H believe that S us grateful to H for D, or

3) the intention that his utterance satisfy the social expectation that one express

gratitude at being benefited, and

4) the intention that H take S’s utterance as satisfying this expectation.

Sincerity of the expressed feelings of gratitude is considered a constitutive

condition of this speech act. According to Leech (1983), thanking falls under his

“convivial” category of speech acts, that is, a speech act which is intrinsically polite

or courteous. It can be modified by using strategies maximizing its illocutionary force

and in this way maximizing its politeness (Leech, 1983). Here, maximizing

politeness, i.e. positive politeness (Leech, 1983, p. 84) is achieved by boosting, using

intensifying adverbs, or by using prosodic devices. Holmes (1984) distinguishes

between negatively affective speech which can be mitigated, and positively affective

speech which can be boosted. A boosted thanking, “thank you very much”, is

possible, whereas a mitigated thanking, “thank you a little”, seems odd. Therefore the

expression “thank you” is a positively affective speech act.

Brown and Levinson categorize expressing thanks a face-threatening act in which

speaker acknowledges a debt to the hearer- thus threatening the speaker’s negative

face. Thanks and acknowledgements share the tendency to produce a debt of gratitude

that the listener must somehow reciprocate.

17

Norrick (1978, p. 285) asserts “the social function of thanking is generally the

acknowledgement of one’s having benefited from the actions of another person”.

Leech (1983) describes the goal of thanking which states appreciation and helps is to

maintain a polite and friendly social atmosphere. Gratitude expression is a complex

act potentially involving both positive as well as negative feelings on the part of

givers and receivers.

3.1.2 Thanking as an academic act

Academic writing is an interactive of accomplishment. The first appearance of

acknowledgements acted as a prerequisite for publication. Writers showed their

benevolence and gratitude to those authorities by thanking them in the section of

acknowledgement. Although the original purpose of acknowledgement is less

emphasized, acknowledgement won a separate space at the beginning of books,

journals or dissertations.

The process of completing a dissertation or thesis is often long, painstaking and

demanding. To acquire the bachelor or doctor degree, graduates have to follow some

certain regulations to finish the thesis or dissertation. In addition to regulations on the

thesis writing, acknowledgements as an important part of academic writing have also

to follow the regulations. Acknowledgements is important not only because it offers

graduates a chance to publicly recognize the role of supervisor, other teachers and

sacrifices of loved ones but also it enables students to convey their genuine gratitude,

to establish their credibility and recognize debts. However, due to different cultural

background, people from different cultures have their own way of making an

appropriate thanking and their background influences even when they write

acknowledgements—written form of thanking. Especially for L2 language learners,

they confront the tough question that how to write a target language speaker’ s

acceptable acknowledgements.

In a study of anthropological ethnographies, Ben-Ari (1987) observes that

acknowledgements are

18

“Formulations that take on an intermediate position between the internal contents of the ethnography and the people and relationships outside it: they are both an introduction to an intellectual product and a reconstruction of the external contributions that have gone towards its realization.” (P.65)

3.1.3 Thanking as a cultural act

Expressing gratitude is considered to be one of the universals of interpersonal

communication, in particular in realization of the politeness principle. However,

studies in cross-cultural pragmatics clearly revealed that there are culture-specific

differences in realization of this speech act (Coulmas, 1981; Wierzbicka, 1991;

Tsurikova, 2002).

Coulmas (1981) views thanking in cross-cultural perspective and underscores the

challenge for speakers of European and Asian language to express thanking

adequately to each other. He posits a useful distinction between thanks that entail

indebtedness to the addressee and thanks that imply no indebtedness.

Native Chinese are used to expressing their thanks in the form of apology. In

their minds, they get their benefits at the cost of the other’s inconvenience and

trouble. So they express their thanks in an apologetic way to convey the information

that they are indebted to the other and in this way to achieve being polite and

recognize the other’s positive face. But the westerners find it difficult to understand

Chinese apologetic way of expressing gratitude. What’s worse, Chinese apologetic

way of thanking may arouse misunderstanding. For example, when Chinese are

invited to be guests of the other’s house, they usually say: “ Sorry to bother you!” It

is a Chinese way of saying “Thank you”. But western hosts will understand it as a

negative approbation of their invitation and feel upset.

3.2 Cultural Effects on Acknowledgements Writing

Grice’s (1975) conversational cooperative principles, Lakeoff’s (1975), Leech’s

(1983), and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness maxims are all generally based

on American or British English data. Theorists maintain that speech acts actually vary

in both conceptualization and realization across language and cultures, and that their

19

modes of performance are mainly motivated by differences in deep-rooted cultural

conventions and assumptions (e.g., Green, 1975; Blum-Kulka, House, Kasper, 1989;

Yu, 1999).

Saying “thank you” is a problem not only for the first but also for the second

language learner who needs to learn when and how to thank in the target culture

(Eisenstein & Bodman 1986, 1988, 1993).

One way to understand culture involves a close examination of how the self is

construed and defined. In Chinese culture, self-conceptions influence a person’s

assumptions, concerns and expectation and these elements in turn govern how one

speaks and relates to others in everyday social interaction. A Chinese “person” is not a

complete entity. Based on Confucianism, self is relational in Chinese culture. That is,

the self is defined by the surrounding relations. Traditionally, the Chinese self

involves multiple layers of relationships with others. A person in this relational

network tends to be sensitive to his or her position as above, below, or equal to others.

The relations often are derived from kinship networks and supported by such cultural

values as filial piety (i.e. obedience to parents and financial support of parents),

loyalty, dignity, and integrity. In Chinese culture, to be aware of one’s relations with

others thus is an integral part of zuo ren (做人)， “conducting oneself”- a Chinese

person’s lifetime goal. In essence, Chinese can never separate themselves from

obligations to others and Chinese self-esteem is connected closely with that of the

collective.

In the process of developing the OTHER-oriented self-concept, Chinese also

learn to make clear distinctions between “Zi ji ren”, “insiders,” and “Wai ren”,

“outsiders”. Family, friends, and established relationships that enjoy the inside status

often are the focus of one’s social relationships and thus are treated differently as

compared to strangers. That is, Chinese may go beyond their means to help an insider,

but an outsider has to follow the rules. Maintaining good relations with insiders is

crucial to the Chinese self-construal. Yang (1987) points out that the importance of

20

others in defining the Chinese self “represents a tendency for a person to act in

accordance with external expectations or social norms, rather than with internal

wishes or personal integrity, so that he or she would be able to protect his or her social

self and function as an integral part of the social network” (p.16).

Ke qi “politeness” also embodies the values of modesty and humbleness in

Chinese culture. To grow up as Chinese, one learns not to take credit for one’s

behavior or be boastful in any situation. To understate one’s ability, expertise,

strength, or competence and to engage in self-effacing/other-enhancing talk are an

integral part of the Chinese socialization process.

The Chinese culture is generally believed to be collectively oriented and the

American individually oriented (Hofstede, 1984). The two societies are extremely

different and therefore it is hypothesized that the relationships between social factors

and strategy selection in refusal discourse must be distinct.

When people compose academic writings, they keep writing regulations in their

minds in order to write native like ones. On the other hand, they cannot avoid being

influenced by their deep-rooted cultural background, especially the writing is similar

to some speech act—thanking speech act in the thesis. As mentioned above, people

from China and English speaking countries have different understanding or

conception of “self” and “other”. Therefore, their ways of expressing gratitude in

acknowledgements differ from each other. To be more specific, their different

understanding of academic world and personal world is not the same. The way of

presenting people they want to thank, reasons for thanking and ways of realizing

thanking are different owing to their cultural backgrounds.

3.3 Politeness Principle

It should be observed that speech act theory is directly related to the issue of

politeness. When making a request, the requester needs to use various politeness

strategies, such as different degrees of directness and external modifications, so the

request will be achieved.

21

In examining the relation between speech acts and politeness, Grice (1975) was

one of the first scholars to document how a successful conversation can occur

between interlocutors. His “Cooperative Principle” emphasized that the clarity of an

utterance is the most important factor for successful communication. He assumed that

his four principles: quantity, quality relative and manner are always observed in any

communication. However, Grice’s CP has its own limitation in that the maxim of

quantity may conflict with the maxim of manner. Lakeoff (1973) approached

politeness issues from a pragmatic perspective. She viewed politeness as a device for

reducing friction in personal interaction and claimed that “to be polite” often

supersedes the other rule, which is “to be clear”, because people usually place more

emphasis on maintaining good social relationships than on giving clear information.

Lakeoff’s emphasis on politeness was further elaborated in her depiction of the three

rules of politeness: (a) don’t impose, (b) give options, and (c) make the other person

feel good. She also argued that mitigation strategies such as hedging are useful for the

sake of politeness.

Leech (1983) based his politeness principle on Lakeoff’s emphasis on

maintaining good social relationships. The PP was analyzed in terms of maxims: tact,

generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy He argued that his six

maxims complement Grice’s CP by exploring “why people are often so indirect in

conveying what they mean” (p. 80). Politeness concerns the relationship between self

and other. In a conversation, self will normally refer to the speaker and other will

typically be identified with the hearer, but other can also be applied to a third party,

present or absent.

Both Grice’s and Leech’s theories have been criticized for neglecting certain

types of verbal interaction. Not all communication is optimally cooperative.

Uncooperativeness and lack of politeness still remain to be explained. Besides, the

outlined number of maxims has also been criticized. Scholars question why there have

to be six sub-maxims of politeness instead of five or seven.

22

In 2005, Leech made some modifications to his framework of PP. He put forward

a new concept: Grand Strategy of politeness. In order to be polite, S expresses or

implies meaning which place a high value on what pertains to O or place a low value

on what pertains to S. There are altogether eight constraints in pursuing the GSP: 1)

Place a high value on O’s wants; 2) Place a low value on S’s wants; 3) Place a high

value on Other’s qualities; 4) Place a low value on Speaker’s qualities; 5) Place a high

value on Speaker’s obligation to Other; 6) Place a low value on Other’s obligation to

Speaker; 7) Place a high value on Other’s feelings; 8) Place a low value on Speaker’s

feelings. Leech further argues that constraints 1), 3), 5), 7) belong to hearer-oriented

group while the rest are speaker-oriented. It is worthwhile noting that the hearer-

oriented constraints are generally powerful than the speaker-oriented ones.

As mentioned above, thanking is a cultural speech act and the act performers are

influenced by their social and cultural background when do thanking speech act.

Different understandings of “politeness” affect act performers’ way of realizing

speech act. Different cultures have different definition of what is an appropriate and

polite thanking. The thesis is carried out within the framework of politeness principle

to explore how native English speakers, native Chinese speakers and Chinese English

majors understand polite thanking and what strategies they apply to achieve politeness

in acknowledgements.

3.4 Some Important Definitions

3.4.1 ‘Indebtedness’

Longman dictionary of contemporary English defines indebtedness to be very

grateful to someone for the help they have given you. According to Online dictionary

of WordReference.com, indebtedness means the state of being in debt, of owing

money or something of value, any form of liability.

Thanking act implying the indebtedness of the recipient of the benefit closely

resembles apologies where the speaker actually recognizes his indebtedness to his

interlocutor (Coulmas, 1981, p.79).

23

Ikoma (1993) reported that the degree of indebtedness and the interlocutor’s age

and social distance and the power relationship between the speaker and the hearer are

mutually related and constrain the speaker’s choice of speech formula (thanking or

apology) types.

Japanese scholars find that Japan is a debt-sensitive culture and Japanese ‘face’ is

more sensitive to debt and the debt-credit equilibrium than to the threat to freedom of

action. In such a society, acknowledging the speaker’s debt is more important than

reducing imposition to the hearer. For the beneficiary, the state of being in debt and

not repaying the debt is dishonorable, and for the benefactor, claiming that he is a

creditor is seen as arrogant and a social disgrace.

3.4.2 Acknowledgements

Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners defines that

acknowledgements is a statement of thanks to people who have helped. Longman

Dictionary of Contemporary English defines that acknowledgements is a short piece

of writing at the beginning or end of a book in which the writers thanks all the people

who have helped him or her.

The term “acknowledgement” denotes—“the owning of a gift or benefit

received” and “hence, the sensible sign whereby anything is acknowledged” (OED); it

is therefore a form of recognition.

Although the central act performed in the acknowledgement is thanking, we have

to make a difference between thanking and acknowledging. Both the two conception

are complicated. Some previous studies once classified acknowledging into the

category of speech act of admitting. The present study will take no consideration of

the difference between acknowledging and thanking and explore the

acknowledgements from the point view of thanking speech act.

24

Chapter Four

METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researcher will introduce the methods used in this research to

conduct an empirical study on the realization of speech act of thanking in the

acknowledgements section of Ph. D. dissertations to see whether there are any

difference among Native Chinese, English Major and Native English Ph. D.

candidates when they express their gratitude. The research questions will be put

forward at the very beginning of this chapter, followed by the introduction to the

source of data, the ways of collecting the data and methods of analyzing the data.

4.1 Research Questions

To examine how the speech act of thanking is realized in Ph. D. graduates’

acknowledgements, the present study will answer the following questions:

1． To whom do Ph.D. graduate students express their gratitude in the section of

acknowledgements? Who is the first one thanked in doctoral

25

acknowledgements by native Chinese speaker, English major, and native

English speaker respectively? Is there any difference between the three

groups in the ones they thank? If any, what are the possible reasons?

2. What reasons do Ph.D. graduate students specify for expressing their

gratitude? What are the differences, if any, in this respect among the three

groups?

3. How do the three groups express gratitude pragmalinguistically? Are there

any differences among them in the expressions of gratitude? If any, what are

the possible reasons?

4.2 Data Collection

4.2.1 Source of data

The main sources of present study were CNKI (China National Knowledge

Infrastructure), ProQuest Digital Dissertations, and Wanfang data. CNKI and

Wanfang data were two leading Chinese digital resource systems while ProQuest

Digital Dissertations was one of the most authoritative English database which could

list 1.5 million Ph.D. dissertations and M.A. theses which were submitted to over

1,000 universities. So the author chose the three resources to get the raw data—Ph.D.

dissertations by Native Chinese students, Chinese English major students and Native

English students.

4.2.2 Data collection and analysis

The present study examined 120 Ph. D. dissertation acknowledgements. Among

them, 40 were from Native English Speakers’, 40 from English Majors’ and 40 from

Native Chinese’s. All the acknowledgements were written in the years between 2000

and 2004. All the gratitude expressions are numbered. For example, “EM: No. 12:

P1:L1-L2” means that the citation belongs to the group English major and it is the 12th

of the 40 acknowledgements passages and the author chooses the first paragraph and

the first and the second line of the paragraph. NE stands for native English and NC

represents native Chinese. Acknowledgements written by English major were

26

restricted in the disciplinary of English while acknowledgements by Native Chinese

and Native English were from different disciplinary. Anyhow disciplinary difference

was not taken into consideration in this thesis. In order to make sure

acknowledgements were written by native English speakers, the researcher took both

authors’ names and graduate schools into consideration. Of course, this was one of the

shortcomings of the present study.

First, the researcher went over each acknowledgement one by one to underline all

the names mentioned. To answer the first research question, the researcher had to

identify the first person and other participants involved in the academic thesis writing

courses. After the task of identification, the researcher built the categorization on the

Ken Hyland’s classification. According to Hyland, all those mentioned in the

acknowledgements could be divided into six groups: supervisor, other academics,

participants and providers, classmates and colleagues, friends and family members.

All those mentioned in the acknowledgements were ranked according to their

appearance order. Then the author compared the six groups to explore whether there

existed any difference among native English, English Major with Chinese background

and native Chinese. The author also gave explanations to those differences in the part

of discussion.

Second, the researcher specified the reasons why students respectively in the

three groups expressed their gratitude to people mentioned. Hyland once carried

research on acknowledgements section and he classified all reasons why

aknowledgees were thanked into three groups. The researcher based her

categorization on the basis of Hyland’s and examined whether difference existed in

this respect.

Last, all the gratitude expressions from the 120 acknowledgements were

classified into several groups according to their lexico-grammatical form. After the

classification of gratitude expressions, the frequencies of each form were counted and

the distributions of each pattern were also analyzed.

27

Chapter Five

RESULTS and DISCUSSION

Chapter Five presents the results of the current study. The first part categorizes all

participants mentioned in acknowledgements into several groups and the ordering of

each group is analyzed. The first person that appears in the first place of each group is

compared with each other and the difference is also analyzed. The second part

specifies the major reasons why those persons are thanked and all reasons are

categorized into three groups. The last part deals with patterns of thanking speech act.

The pragmatic and linguistic features of these patterns are analyzed.

5.1 Acknowledgees

5.1.1 Presence of acknowledgees

The presence of people who the writer wants to thank to is the first step of the

thanking speech act. People mentioned in acknowledgements are shown in Table 3as

follow:

28

Table 3. Number and Percentage percentage of Acknowlegees acknowlegees in each Category category for Native NE, EM, and NC English Speakers, Chinese English Major and Native Chinese

P and P= participants and providers; C and C= classmates and colleaguesAcknowledgees Native English

(NE)English Majors

(EM)Native Chinese

(NC)1 Supervisor 35 (4.60%) 43 (6.06%) 44 (4.98%)2 Other academics 238 (31.27%) 265 (37.32%) 374 (42.36%)3 P and P 138 (18.13%) 49 (6.90%) 123 (14.04%)4 C and C 85 (11.17%) 54 (7.61%) 154 (17.44%)5 Friends 114 (14.98%) 101 (14.23%) 108 (12.23%)6 Family 151 (19.84%) 97 (13.66%) 80 (9.60%)

Total 761 710 883Note: P and P= participants and providers; C and C= classmates and colleagues

Because of the academic genre of acknowledgements, those who are directly

related to academic process are more often mentioned than those who are not. When

expressing gratitude, the authors think of supervisors, mentors, dissertation

committees, other teachers, classmates first owing to their great contribution to the

accomplishment of dissertation. Among the 120 dissertations, supervisors are always

the first to be acknowledged as supervisors provide immediate supports in academic

writing process.

Besides academic support, dissertation writers are dependent on the cooperation

or direct assistance of those they study or who provide clerical, technical and financial

help (Hyland, 2004). These are typically teachers, members of the student’s

dissertation committee, occasional advisers, senior scholars who may have taught or

advised the author and occasionally even examiners. They have a direct influence on

how the dissertation itself might be received.

1. I thank my dissertation committee—Dr. Phyllis Bridges, Dr. Frank Longoria, and Dr. Guy Litton—for their willingness to serve on my dissertation committee, for their scholarly advice, and for their excellent recommendations for changes. (NE: NO.35: P1: L2-L5)

29

2. I am particularly indebted to the following professors: Professor Chu Xiaoquan, Qu Weiguo, Zeng Daoming and Cheng Qilong. All of them have contributed to producing a better product by reading my draft and giving me many detail constructive comments and valuable suggestions. (EM: NO. 23: P2: L1-L2)

Department heads, professors in neighboring universities, and academics well-

published in the area who may have responded to email enquiries can also be found in

the list of acknowledgees.

3. I would express my special thanks to Doctor Yu Guodong and Wu Yaxin from Shanxi University and Doctor Xu Zhanghong from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies for their expert comments, their friendship, trust, and unfailing support during the writing of this dissertation. (EM: NO.12: P4: L1-L5)

4. I am deeply indebted to earlier editors and critics of Emily Dickinson, particularly to Thomas H. Johnson for his meticulous work with the Dickinson texts. (EM: NO8: P1: L1-L2)

5. 感谢学院，系，研究生部和教研室的领导和老师们的关心和支持。(NC: NO.30: P2: L1 )

Fellow students, colleagues and peers are also recognized.

6. Many of my colleagues and friends have helped me in a variety of ways. (EM: No.20: P 3: L1)

Because of the increasing specialization of both research and funding, an

engineer or scientist anticipating an academic career depends heavily on the

protection and shelter of established figures or authorities for gaining doctoral grants,

a lab to work in, or an initial teaching position. Of course, there are disciplinary and

degree differences regarding who is acknowledged. Mentioning key figures can

therefore gain the writer important credit.

7. My thanks are also due to the anonymous appraisers of this thesis for their encouragement and criticism, and to the authors from whom the citations in the thesis are derived. (EM: NO.18: P 11: L1-L3)

30

8. This work was founded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the Veterans Administration, and the National Library of Medicine. (NE: NO. 26: P2: L1-L2)

9. 感谢 8020 教研室的所有老师和同学，感谢他们创造的良好学术环境和实验条件。(NC: No.34: P3: L3-L4)

Acknowledgements also provided these students with the chance to mention what

they considered to be decisive influences on the processes of completing their

research. These influences mainly come from academic area, but their friends and

family members provide them support when they facing tensions and difficulties in

graduate study. It makes graduates dissertation writing extend beyond the public

world to the private forces. Almost 40 percent of the thanks in the corpus were to

friends and family members.

10. I would like to thank my family, especially my mother, who has sacrificed a lot through the entire period of my education, furthermore, her understanding and patience has always been the source of energy of my research and life. (EM: NO.1: P6: L1-L3)

11. To my dear friends…to Eugene and Natalia Dizenko, to Tim McDonnell and his Assistance Jack and Pierre, to Christel Andino, to Sarah MacMillan, to Susan Seigrist, to Barb Leclerc and the other members of the Ladies’ Dinner: Mary Ann McClure, Aandrea Siegel, Lee Che Leong and Tisha Ulmer. (NE: NO.5: P8: L1-L4)

12. 感谢父母，姐妹多年来对我的关心，支持和帮助。特别感谢我的妻子宋运莲的支持和理解。尤其还要感谢我岳父岳母在我可爱的女儿出生后给予的及时的帮助和支持. (NC: No.2: P8: L1-L2)

In thanks to family and friends, we see these acknowledgements allow writers do

demonstrate their recognition of ethics and ideals shared by the reader, affirming their

commitment to values such as modesty, generosity, and gratitude, which are valued by

academic communities as the public face of their disciplines

31

Being different from native Chinese students and Chinese-background English

major students, native English graduates often express their gratitude to God, church

fellowships and even pets. They are thanked because they give dissertation writers

spiritual relief and emotional sustaining support.

13. My sheepdog, Harry, has taken upon himself the very important job of letting me know when I’ve been working too hard and it’s time to take a break from the computer. (NE: NO.2: P6: L1-L2)

14. I am thankful to God for such a memorable journey. (NE: NO.12: P11: L1-L2)

An interesting finding in the first part of the study is that Chinese Ph.D. graduates

are likely to pre-present their thanks to teachers or scholars who will check their

dissertations.

15. 最后感谢审阅本论文的专家和学者！ (NC: No.31: P6: L1)

However, according to the four felicitous conditions, examiners should have done

an act and the act benefits the dissertation writer. The writer feels grateful for the act,

so he expresses thanks to them. Actually, in acknowledgements, some writers may

have pre-presented their thanks to examiners out of some practical motivation. They

hope their thanks can make examiners feel pleased that their contributions are

recognized so that their dissertations can be accepted successfully. Thanks expressed

to examiners are only found in native Chinese Ph. D. dissertations but it cannot be

seen as the characteristic of Chinese Ph.D. dissertations just because is did not occur

in the other two groups’ dissertations, at least in the present study. The behavior of

pre-thanking examiners seems to be in conflict with the rule of academic writing. In

other words, expressing thanks to examiners is not advocated and improvements

should be made to guide Chinese students’ academic writing.

5.1.2 Ordering of acknowlegees

32

Ph.D. graduates present their acknowlegeees according to a certain order. The

researcher examines all acknowledgees and does the work of counting. The person

who appears at the first place would get six points. The person who comes to the

second place got five points. And the person appears last got one point. Look at Table

4:

Table 4. Order of Aacknowledgees in Each each Category category for NNE, EM, and NCative English Speakers, Chinese English Major and Native Chinese SpeakersNative English (NE) English Majors (EM) Native Chinese (NC)

1 Other academics Supervisor Supervisor2 Supervisor Other academics Other academics3 Participants and P Family Members Colleagues and C4 Family Members Friends Participants and P5 Friends Colleagues and C Family Members6 Colleagues and C Participants and P Friends

The discrepancy can be attributed to religious and cultural difference. The main

purpose of acknowledgement is to express gratitude to those who help writers sustain

the academic writing process. To westerners who have a faith in Christ, they believe

the God and church fellowship can conduct great forces to them to overcome

difficulties. To Chinese, the spiritual support is mainly from human being, family and

friends, supervisors and others. So genuine gratitude for the sacrifices and support of

loved ones, human or otherwise, is perhaps a gratitude tinged with impression

management as the writer represents him or herself as not only a plausible researcher,

but also as sympathetic human being.

Mentioning these people clearly foregrounds the activities which structure the

student’s intellectual and academic experiences in undertaking the research, but they

also represent strategic choices related to “getting done” with the thesis by crediting

influential academics and favorably representing the writer to get the thesis accepted,

a strategy which becomes more apparent when it is extended to examiners.

Acknowledgements are not simply random checklists of useful people or

institutions. They also allow writers to represent some of the procedures and practices,

33

which have gone into the dissertation and so present a competent professional

identity. Thanks to participants, academics, and other experts help to communicate the

authenticity and plausibility of the research and skill of the writer.

5.1.2.1 The first acknowledgee

As we can see from Table 5, among the three groups, the first person thanked by

Ph. D. graduates is mostly supervisor. As Ph. D. dissertations are academic writings,

those who are directly related to writing course are most mentioned. The Ph.D.

candidates feel obliged to them out of intellectual and emotional obligation. In fact,

Table 5. The Appearance appearance of the first acknowledgee in each Category category for N NE, EM, and NCNative Chinese Speakers, Native English Speakers and Chinese English Major

AcademicFriends Family

Participant and providers

Classmates and colleaguesSupervisor Others

Native English 22 12 0 2 4 0English Major 38 0 0 1 1 0Native Chinese 40 0 0 0 0 0

As we can see from the above table, among the three groups, the first person

thanked by Ph. D. graduates is mostly supervisor. As Ph. D. dissertations are

academic writings, those who are directly related to writing course are most

mentioned. The Ph.D. candidates feel obliged to them out of intellectual and

emotional obligation. In fact, supervisors play an important role in the whole

academic process. At the beginning of the dissertation writing, graduates need

supervisors to help them to select the research topic, determine the methodology and

provide necessary resources. During the writing discourse, supervisor’s role in

supervising the direction of the research, commenting and giving advice in

improvement is crucial. Even when the dissertation is finished, supervisor’s criticism,

proofreading is also helpful in perfecting the work.

16. Primary acknowledgement must be given to my advisor: Professors Michael Cross and Dan Meiron. Their patience, guidance and understanding throughout the course of this work has proved to be unvaluable. (NE: NO.38: P1: L1-L3)

34

17. My heartfelt thanks should first go to my respected supervisor, Professor Zhang Shojie, for his patient guidance and helpful instructions to all aspects of my thesis, and also for his enthusiastic encouragement and rigorous scholarship during my doctoral study and research. (EM: NO. 4: P2-L6)

18. 本文是在导师冯美云教授的悉心指导下，由本人独立完成的。论文从选题，开题，实验到成文的每一步过程，都离不开她的指导，鼓励和关心。在此论文完成之际，特衷心感谢导师对我的谆谆教诲和严格要求。(NC: No.17: P1: L1-L3)

Beside academic support, Ph.D. graduates thank supervisors first also for their

encouragement, care and moral support.

19. My sincere gratitude first goes to Associate Professor Jin Yan, my supervisor, for her immense patience, enlightening advice, precise supervision and unfailing encouragement during my three-year study as a graduate. (EM: NO.7: P1: L1-L3)

Another interesting finding is that while the native Chinese speakers and English

learners with Chinese background thank their supervisors, they also thank

supervisors’ wives. It occurs three times in the forty cases. However, it rarely happens

in Native English speakers’ acknowledgements.

20. I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor He Ziran, and his family. (EM: NO.1: P2: L1)

21. 本论文是在导师刑文华教授悉心指导和严格要求下，由本人独立完成的。在三年的学习期间，导师严谨务实的科研作风和精益求精的治学态度使我终身受益。我将铭记导师的教诲，在论文完成之际，向导师和师母表示表示衷心的感谢！(NC: No.12: P 1: L1-3.)

22.特别感谢我的师母白丰兰女士。(NC: No.20: P2: L1-L4)

35

According to Spencer-Oatey (1993), Chinese Postgraduate students compared

with British postgraduate students, interpret their relation to their tutors differently.

They see their tutors as closer in terms of social distance, but more super ordinate in

terms of the vertical axis than British postgraduate students do. They expect to show

deference to their teachers, and yet to have a close, friendly relation with them--

somewhat like a parent, or uncle. In other words, Chinese postgraduate students

would like to incorporate themselves into their supervisors’ family and become one of

them to keep a close relationship with their supervisors. Supervisors’ wives act like

their family members, some even like mother, and it helps them a lot during the

communication with supervisors.

5.1.3 Analysis of the differences

With regard to supervisors and other academics, the three groups show no great

differences. Supervisors and other academics contribute a lot to the success of

dissertation. To Ph. D. graduates, they feel greatly obliged to them as they benefit a

lot from them. So in acknowledgements, they are all mentioned by the graduates from

the three groups.

As for participants and providers and classmates and colleagues, there exists an

obvious discrepancy in percentage between English major and the rest two groups.

The percentage of participants and providers in the group of English major is lower

than10% (6.9%, to be exact) while 18.13% in the group of native English and

14.04%in the group of native Chinese. It largely owes to discipline limit in the group

of English major. Data of group of native English and the group of native Chinese is

collected from various disciplines: social science, art, mathematics, electronics,

psychology and so on, so supporters involved are more in number and more varied in

kinds of help.

The other difference is the indebtedness graduates show towards family members.

Seen from the above table, the percentage of native Chinese group in this category is

the lowest. Native English group occupies the highest and the English major group is

36

in the middle but leans to the group of native English. The reason can be mostly

attributed to cultural difference. On the one hand, in Chinese culture, the speech act

'thanking' is not often used in family circles, and rarely used by members of ascending

generation to those of descending generation. For example, parents never say 'Thank

you' to their sons and daughters no matter what favor they do for their parents, for

parents take it for granted that their off springs should do favor for them and offspring

consider it their duties or filial piety (xiao) to do whatever favor they can to them.

And on the other hand, family members belong to private world in Chinese’s mind.

They consider acknowledgements as formal writing and they should present those

who directly related to academic writing. Family members who most of time supports

them in daily life and in emotion seem to be indirect in dissertation writing. Some

graduates acknowledge their family members because they offer data or help

proofreading.

23. 感谢我的家人：爱人艾永莲和儿子宗延箫，在本研究过程中，他们给了本人以极大的支持，并且帮助本人搜集了不少误解实例 .

(NC: No.10: P5: L1-L2)

5.2 Reasons for thanking

Table 6. Number and Percentage percentage of Reasons reasons for Thanking thanking for Native N NE, EM, and NCEnglish Speakers, Native Chinese Speakers and Chinese English major

Academic support

Percentage Moral support

Percentage R and F support

Percentage Total sum

Native English

309 34.76% 409 45.67% 171 19.24% 889

English Majors

330 48.25% 211 30.85% 143 20.91% 684

Native Chinese

489 44.01% 377 33.93% 245 22.05% 1111

Note: R stands for “resource”; F stands for “funding”.

5.2.1 Academic Support support

37

Thanking for academic assistance is the core step in the dissertation

acknowledgement and the one can be found in all acknowledgements. It comprises

thanks for a range of support, from providing feedback and critical comments,

discussing approaches, assisting with analyses, and inspiring ideas, to granting

approval for study, inviting conference papers, and so on. Generally, such

acknowledgements are offered to senior academics, not only dissertation supervisors,

but others who had mentored or believed in the writer, taught him or her, provided

intellectual guidance, assisted with conference papers or contributed in other ways.

24. The first person I would like to thank is, of course, my advisor, Eugene Charniak. He introduced me to the field of statistical natural language processing and taught me, bother explicitly and by example, how to do good research. This thesis has benefited greatly from our many, many hours of discussion. He also supplied the parser and some of the statistical data on which this work is based. (NE: NO.2: P1: L1-L3)

25. I own him special thanks for two reasons. Firstly, his invaluable suggestions and insightful comments have contributed greatly to the completion of this thesis. Especially his patience and constructive criticisms have changed me from a naïve baby into a teenager in the world of pragmatics and linguistics in general.(EM: NO.1: P2: L3-L6)

26. 本文是在俞卞章老师细心指导下完成的， 俞老师认真地帮我选择题目， 查找参考资料， 并给我提供了许多有益及时的意见和建议， 在关键问题上给我及时的知道帮助。在此向俞老师表示我诚挚的谢意。(NC: No.1: P1: L1-L2)

5.2.2 Resource an d fFunding

The second reason why dissertation writers express gratitude is due to supporter’s

resource and financial help. Thanking for providing resources includes

acknowledgement for a range of resources which underlie every research project but

are infrequently mentioned within the dissertation itself, such as access to data and

information that might have otherwise have been difficult for the writer to obtain,

clerical assistance, technical help.

38

27. With great appreciation I would like to recognize the unconditional technical support offered to me by Neill Edwards and Dr. Eva de Lourdes Diaz, without their assistance this project would have never been. (NE: NO. 12: P8: L1-L3)

28. Among them I am most grateful to Dr. Stuart Delorme from USA who helped me find some reference, Miss Louise Wood from the Parkstreet Church University, USA, who also collected reference for me, and Prof. William Turnbull from Simon Fraser University, Canada, who generously mailed me most of his recent publications on the speech act of refusal. (EM: NO. 2: P4: L2-L6)

29. 感谢戈革先生。他对于我做惠勒研究非常支持，我这次博士论文的两分重要参考资料，惠勒的文集 At Home in the University 和自传Genons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam 都由戈革先生提供。此外，戈革先生翻译的玻尔文集以及他本人的玻尔研究也是本文的重要参考资料，蒙戈革先生青睐，我总是能很快得到他最新出版的著述。(NC: No.12: P7: L1-L4)

The detailing of prizes, prestigious scholarships, company sponsorships or travel

grants marks the writer out as an individual whose academic talents have been

recognized and who may be deserving of further honors.

30. 本课题地研究工作获得了国家自然科学基金委员会（NSFC）和国家机械工业部机械工业发展基金项目委员会的财力资助，在此深表感谢. (NC: No.28: P6: L1)

31. The Marcia Tilloston Travel Award and the Florence Adams Award supported my travels to conferences where I found receptive audiences for my work. (NE: NO.9: P7: L1-L2)

5.2.3 Moral Supportsupport

Besides from immediate academic support and material assistance, the Ph. D.

students are also likely to recognize the importance of human concern in sustaining

39

their long hours of study and writing—moral support. The category of “moral

support” in the Table includes all expressions of thanks for encouragement,

friendship, sympathy, patience, and care.

32. (my late father, W. Roy Fraser)His love of classical literature and tireless pursuit of excellence instilled in me a passion for philosophy which few can understand. To him and to my mother Gillian, I am immensely grateful. (NE: No.7: P7: L2-L4)

33. I would like first to thank Jaakko Hintikka for his support and encouragement, (EM: No.7: P1: L2 )

34. 感谢我的妻子孟平和女儿魏晨婧对我这段期间学习的鼓励和支持，几年来她们为此牺牲了和忍受了许多，在此深表歉意 . (NC: No. 40:

P7: L1)Sometimes this recognition extends to the encouragement provided by

supervisors and mentors, but friends and family predominate, providing an

opportunity for writers to inject the personal into this public space. Friends and family

members tended to be thanked succinctly, brevity often in stark contrast to the lengthy

tributes offered to supervisors and academics, and to be mentioned after academic

thanks (Hyland, 2004).

35. I thank Christina Chavez (wife), whose faith in me, and in the world, amazes and humbles me. (NE: No. 6: 11: L1-L2)

36. 感谢妻子李明女士多年来的悉心关怀和全力支持 .(NC: No. 38: P5:

L1)37. The special thanks are given to my dear wife, Jin Ling, whose support is

greatly appreciated. (EM: No. 5: P3: L4-L5)

When expressing gratitude to supervisors, graduate often use full name, even the

honorifics to show their sincerity and respect. The author finds that over 90% friends

and nonacademic in each group are also presented by full names, occasionally with an

honorific. Family members too were often mentioned using the full form of their

names.

40

38. Here, a special thanks to Norma Pawley, my friend and confidante…. (NE: No. 8: P7: L4)

39. Particular debts are owed to Professor Joseph Hung and Dr. Wang Junju at the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for their kindness, patience and consideration in helping me consult reference materials in the libraries of that university. (EM: No. 10: P4: L1-4)

40. 感谢我的师兄任立勇博士，韩宏博士，罗光春博士，魏青松博士，周旭博士和师姐吴劲博士。(NC: No.34: P2: L1-L2)

Using full name to refer to family and friends may be related to Ph. D.

dissertation writers’ perception of the formality of the acknowledgements. They want

to make it seem more formal and almost ritually ceremonial to better accepted by

examiners. On the other hand, it is helpful to ensure the recipient that the recipient is

clearly identifiable by a professional readership for the credit owed to him or her.

Ph. D. graduates receive moral support from supervisors, other academics,

classmates, colleagues, friends and family members. But it is not limited to human

sources. Pets, God, church fellowship, favorite places, TV programs can also provide

dissertation writers spiritual support.

41. My thanks to The A-Team (especially TV Land’s Pandemonium Marathon), Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Murder, She Wrote, The Magnificent Seven (even though CBS cancelled it three times), Wild Wild West (the TV show, not the movie), due South, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Diagnosis Murder, Absolutely Fabulous, and La Femme Nikita. Thanks to Bravo for running Twin Peaks and A&E for showing Mannum, P.i. special thanks to Hollywood Video for stocking all my favorites during my movie marathons. Thanks also to the Beatles for Hard Days Night and Help! And the Dixie Chicks for Wide Open Spaces and Fly. (NE: No. 8: P9: L2-L9)

42. Thanks to all my favorite places: the Cornell Catholic Community Lounge, Stella Maris retreat house, Herbie’s passenger seat, Mom’s sofa, any chair at the Pawley house. (NE: No. 8: P8: L1-L3)

5.3 Pragma-linguistic Features of Gratitude

5.3.1 General distribution of each linguistic form

41

There are altogether 1199 thanking speech acts used in the 120

acknowledgements. However, patterns of gratitude expressions can be categorized

into a limited number of groups. All gratitude expressions are either overt or simple

mention of the name of acknowledgees. The overt expressions are realized in four

patterns: nominalization, per formative, adjective and passive, as shown in Table 7.

Table 7. Number of Occurrence occurrences of different Linguistic linguistic Form forms Forms Examples Occurrences

Nominalization “My thanks to…” “My gratitude goes to…” 446Performative verb “I thank…”

“The author appreciates...”488

Adjective “I am grateful to…” “I am thankful for…”

140

Passive “X is thanked for…” “Appreciation is given to…” 31Total 1105

As we can see from the above table, performative verbs and nominalization are

the two most frequently used way of expressing gratitude. Each of them occupies one-

third of all the patterns.

Thanks through adjectives and passives seem much less than nouns and

performative verbs, partly because of the formality of such uses. We can find that the

adjectives used to express thanks are mainly derived from noun and verb base form

and typically ended in –ful, which rarely used in daily conversation. From this point,

it may explain these uses’ formal connotations.

43. I am grateful for the suggestions and support of Ms. Linda S. Goldberg and Ms. Bronwyn Mills at Stevens Institute of Technology. (NE: No.4: P3: L1-L2)

44. I am thankful for all your wise scolding and your realistic approach to my concerns as well as for your sensitive reactions to my realistic ways. (NE: No.20: P18: L1-L3)

45. I am greatly indebted to my wife, my son, and my grandma. (EM: No.4: P4: L1)

42

Similarly, passives, which remove the actor of thanking speech act, provide

writers with the most formal ways of expressing gratitude.

46. …my whole-hearted thanks are also given to these professors. (EM: No.22: P5: L7-L8)

47. My genuine thanks must be given to Professor Huang Mei from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences whose insightful and constructive ideas have been essential to the decision of the angle of this dissertation. (EM: No.19: P3: L1-L3)

General reference ranges from the hyperbolic to matter–of-fact. The patterns

reflect variation in the amount of gratitude, appreciation and indebtedness

communicated to contributors.

48. This thesis would not have been written without the tireless and loving support of my wife Luciana. (NE: No. 1: P13: L1-L2)

49. I do feel from the bottom of my heart that the word “thanks” is not enough to express how grateful I am for his guidance. (EM: No. 3: P2: L8-L9)

50. 没有他的热心，细心和耐心帮助，本文是不可能完成的。(NC:

No.10: P:1: L2-L3 )51. My sister, Sheila Adamus Liotta, and her family, Louis, Nichholas, and

Marissa Liotta, have been particularly helpful, providing me with a home-away –from-home whenever I needed it.(NE: No. 2: P5: L4-L5)

52. The Marcia Tilloston Travel Award and the Florence Adams Award supported my travels to conferences where I found receptive audiences for my work.( (NE: NO.9: P7: L1-L2)

5.3.2 Analysis of the differences

All gratitude expressions displayed by the native English speakers, English major

students and native Chinese students are categorized in the table below, with

comparable lexical-syntactic patterns grouped together and coded across the corpus;

the number of occurrence is given in the following three tables. (The most frequently

occurring group is in bold face and the second frequently occurring one is italicized).

43

Table 8. Number and Percentage percentage of each Linguistic Form form for Native NEEnglish Speakers

Form Occurrences FrequencyNominalization 191 40.21%

Performative Verb 175 36.84%Adjective 67 14.11%Passive 9 1.89%

General reference 33 6.95%Total 475 100%

Table 9. Number and pPercentage of each lLinguistic fForm for Chinese English MajorEMForm Occurrences Frequency

Nominalization 182 46.70%Performative Verb 72 18.27%

Adjective 70 17.77%Passive 22 5.58%

General reference 38 9.64%Total 394 100%

Table 10. Number and Ppercentage of each lLinguistic fForm for NCNative Chinese SpeakersForm Occurrences Frequency

Nominalization 73 22.12%Performative Verb 241 73.03%

Adjective 3 0.9%Passive 0 0%

General reference 13 3.94%Total 330 100%

The distribution of patterns of gratitude is fairly similar across the Native English

and English Major group. Graduates from the two groups relied particularly on

nominalized patterns which include 40% of Native English graduates’ total

expressions and 46.7% of English Major ones’. The use of performatives is quite

remarkable in native Chinese graduates’ gratitude expressions, which occupies

73.94% of all corpus. It may due to the language system of Chinese. Verb is the main

constitute of Chinese.

44

We noticed that in English, degrees of politeness (or at least formality) run hand

in hand with degrees of nounness (Ross, 1972). That is, formality is associated with

the noun end of the continuum. The extensive application of nominalization by Native

English graduates and English Major students reflects their perception of formality of

PhDs dissertation. Especially the English major students, the percentage in this group

occupies nearly half of all expressions.

With regard to adjective and passive, Chinese is blank in such patterns. Chinese,

as the table shows, mainly rely on performative verbs to express gratitude. As to the

rest two groups, English Major students apply adjective and passive more than Native

English counterpart do. On the one hand, the reason can be attributed to the formality

of the two uses. On the other hand, influenced by cultural background, English Major

graduates with Chinese background place more value on their moral obligation to

thank acknowledgees who have helped them.

There is no apparent difference in distribution of “general reference”. But it is

deserved to be noted that Chinese, although use less “general reference”, are inclined

to list a long name of acknowledgees but do not give their specific reason why thank

those people. The phenomenon is quite rare in acknowledgments of Native English

graduates and English Majors.

53. 感谢同窗好友许志勇，劭朝，张健康，于宏毅，彭志威，徐东晖，桑大勇，毛用才，水鹏朗，陈伯孝，李清亮，谷大武，刘宏伟，马长征，魏立梅，王俊，田剑波，颜尧平，沈沛意，陈育兵，陈军，郑东，伊丽江，李昌华，李继红，张正洋，郭键强， 高新波，李建赢，杜文吉，陈彦辉，李汉兵，张良，马昆，梁继明，张玉清等博士以及在读的王彤，欧洋善，尚勇，杨星星，刘卫东，张群，张

45

涛，于根苗，王超，王磊，张丽，李小军，李红培，付强，陈凯等博士生。与他们相处的愉快日子永难忘却。(NC: No.2: P7: L1-L7)

54. 感谢 Wilson. D., 程雨民，徐盛桓，熊学亮，高一虹，李月娥等教授感谢沈家煊研究员；感谢 Yus. F., 陆镜光，吴东英，金立贤，潘予翎，董燕萍，何刚，赵毅，陈新仁，张新红，冉永平等博士，在本文的写作过程中，他们曾以各种方式给以热情指导或帮助。 (NC:

No.10: P3: L1-L4)

5.4 Politeness Strategies

Choice of strategy depends on the speaker’s estimation of risk of face loss. The

seriousness of the imposition, referred to as the weightiness of the imposition is

assessed on the basis of three factors: the relative power relationship between speaker

and hearer, the social distance between the speaker and hearer, and the individual

ranking of the particular imposition in the social context in which it is used (Brown &

Levinson, 1978, p. 81). Acknowledgements section is a small world which reflect the

relations between the writer and people involved in the writing as well as readers.

Bearing those relations in mind, acknowledgements writers have to apply different

politeness strategies according to their acknowlegee’s social status, power, social

distance and so on to achieve politeness. According to Leech (2005), they can choose

either to place a high value on other’s wants, qualities, their obligation to other and

other’s feelings or they place a low value on their own wants, qualities, feelings and

other’s obligation to them. Furthermore, Acknowledgements writers can take more

specific measures or strategies to achieve the two aims.

5.4.1 Placing a high value on self’s obligation to other:

Some uses of modals or mental state verbs reflect the writer’s inclination or

intention to perform the act of thanking as obligation. There seems to be a consensus

46

(Lyons, 1977; Palmer, 1979, 1986; Perkins, 1983) that concepts of possibility and

necessity are central to modality and that the speaker’s stance is inherent in its

expression.

55. My genuine thanks must be given to Professor Zhang Ziqing of Nanjing Univserity who brought me into this terra of Chinese American Literature and showed me the first glimpse of an inspiring prospect of the study. (EM: No.9: P3: L1-L3)

56. I should like to put on record my appreciation especially to Mr.Su Xiao-Jun, Ms. Bai Hongai, Mr. Wei Han, Mr. Wang Zhijun, Mr. Wang Quanzhi, Mr. Zheng Shoujiang, Mr. Sun ya, Mr. Yao Lan, and Mr. Liang Xiaobo. (EM: No.15: P4: L2-L5)

The result of counting of expression of obligation and expression of indebtedness

is as followshown in Table 11:

Table 11. Number and Percentage percentage of Eexpression of oObligation and eExpression of iIndebtedness for NE, NC and EMative English Speakers, Native Chinese Speakers and Chinese English Major

GroupExpression of

ObligationPercentage Expression of

IndebtednessPercentage

Native English 5 1.05% 34 7.16%

English Major 20 5.07% 80 20.30%

Native Chinese 57 17.27% 57 17.27%(Indebtedness expression: 34)

From the table we can find that English Majors are influenced by their cultural

background and they apply a lot of expressions of obligation or indebtedness. It

reflects a perspective of Chinese culture: gratitude must get repaid or at least get

recognized.

Constructing gratitude expression in this way seems somewhat grudging. It seems

that the writer is somehow required to offer thanks. However, we’d better bear such

idea in our mind as all the obligation modals used by the writers, to a large extent,

47

represented their own personal stance. In other words, those words implied that he or

she considered it necessary or desirable. He or she just was unable to resist the strong

need to thank those supporters. It is out of intrinsic obligation instead of an externally

imposed necessity. This is most evident when thanks are given to friends and family.

57. In particular, I must thank some of my close friends in HYNU who have been generous in providing the necessary help. (EM: No.21: P6: L5-L6 )

58. I should also thank my wife, Associate Professor Di Shujun, who shouldered all our family burdens and without whose support and help in the United States I simply could not finish the draft writing of my dissertation and my monograph. (EM: No.22: P7: L2-L5)

From the data, we can find that only English major Ph. D graduates applies

obligatory modals. While this may be an L2 feature of the corpus, we have no

evidence that native English-speaking students do no use the same forms, at least

from this study.

5.4.2 Placing a low value on self’s want, qualities, feelings:

5.4.2.1 Hedging

A ‘hedge’ is a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership

that it is partial, or true only in certain respects (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 145).

Myers (1989) argues that hedges are part of a wider system of politeness designed to

redress the threat research claim pertain to the ‘face’ of acknowledgees.

Dissertation writers are likely to add an element of formality to the expression of

thanks. Through thematising the writer’s motivation of giving thanks, those elements

prefaced the expression of thanks mitigate the full force of the gratitude and relegate

the importance of the thanks itself at the same time. The result is a hedged

performative or hedged nominalization.

59. I would like to thank Mark Johnson for invaluable discussion, guidance and moral support over the course of my time here at Brown. (NE: No. 1: P1: L1-L2)

60. I also want to thank the rest of my family. (NE: No.2: P5: L1)

48

61. I also wish to extend my gratitude to some international friends whose help is indispensable. (EM: No.2: P4: L1-L2)

62. 我首先要衷心感谢导师朱慧敏研究员，李建平研究员和崔大副研究员在论文工作中的悉心指导，以及在思想和生活上的热情关怀。(NC: No.5: P2: L1-L2)

The distribution of hedged performative and hedged nominalization among the

three groups is presented in the tTable 12 below and each group’s frequency is

counted in the table.:

Table 12. Percentage of Hedging for NE, ative English Speakers, NC, ative Chinese Speakers and Chinese English MajorEM

Native English English Majors Native ChineseHedged nominalization 16.75% 42.86% 36.99%

Hedged performative verb 58.86% 63.89% 15.98%

The desire to hedged gratitude may be related to the relative imbalance between

acknowledger and acknowledgee in these cases and to the desire of students to avoid

imposing a debt of reciprocation it may imply or an imposition of gratitude on those

they thank.

5.4.2.2 “I” avoidance

‘I’ avoidance by referring to himself as ‘the author’, the writer takes the listener’s

viewpoint and distances his own person from acts “ he would rather have attributed to

the duties and rights of the office”(Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 204). As a politeness

strategy, this device communicates dissociation from a particular infringement and

appears the corpus of English Major and Native Chinese. The data of Native Chinese,

however, do not bear the characteristic of “I” avoidance.

63. 感谢曾对笔者有过帮助或启示的每一位同学和老师。 (NC: No. 24:

P5: L1)

49

64. 本人特别感谢何自然教授。(NC: No. 10: P1: L1)

65. The author thanks his wife, Liu Wei, for her extraordinary and unfailing spiritual and financial support during all these years. (EM: No.2: P6: L1-L2)

5.4.3 Placing a high value on other’s qualities

Suitable qualifiers, usually stressing the subjective, interpersonal relevance of the

assistance received, may encode gratitude. Those occurring most often were “helpful”

and “valuable”. Such qualifiers testify to the subjective, interpersonal relevance of the

assistance received, with numerous cases of “hearty”, “warm”, and “heartfelt”, and

once again there was a marked preference for only a few items, with like “special”,

“sincere (ly)”, and “greatly”.

From Table 13, we can find that Native Chinese Ph. D. graduates prefer to use

such words as“由衷”or “衷心”which imply inner state of thankers while Native

English have a preference to degree enhancer like “specially”, “particularly”. The

attribution of intensifier in the group of English major is the middle, but they are

closer to the Native English. The Chinese feel more indebted to their helpers and they

place high value on their obligation to give thanks to their helpers. From the total sum

Table 13. Number and Percentage percentage of Subjective subjective Intensifiers intensifiers for Native English SpeakersE, Native Chinese Speakers, and Chinese English MajorEM

Total

Sincere; Genuine; Heartfelt;

Special; Particular;

Percentage Percentage PercentageNative English 40 5 1 32

12.5% 2.5% 80%English Majors 135 22 15 35

16.3% 11.1% 25.9%Native Chinese 99 24 42 16

24.2% 42.4% 16.2%

50

From the above table, we can find that Native Chinese Ph. D. graduates prefer to

use such words as“由 衷”or “衷 心”which imply inner state of thankers while

Native English have a preference to degree enhancer like “specially”, “particularly”.

The attribution of intensifier in the group of English major is the middle, but they are

closer to the Native English. The Chinese feel more indebted to their helpers and they

place high value on their obligation to give thanks to their helpers. From the total sum

of subjective intensifier use for the three groups, the English major come to the first

but the distribution of each category almost average. The other two groups show great

difference, especially the native English one.

51

Chapter Six

CONCLUSION

This chapter concludes the whole study. It first summarizes who is included in the

Ph.D. graduates’ acknowledgements. Then the reasons why they are thanked are

presented in the second part. The major findings of the study will be given in the third

section. Finally, the researcher will sketch some implications and point out the

directions for further studies.

52

6.1 Summary of the Study

The present thesis examined the speech act of thanking in the acknowledgements

section. The researcher first reviewed some relevant studies in the fields of both

speech act of thanking and academic writing. Based on the latest framework of Leech,

the researcher explored how politeness principle worked in written discourse of

acknowledgements. Within the framework of speech act, the researcher first examined

the four felicitous conditions. The researcher put forward three research questions: To

whom do Ph.D. graduate students express their gratitude in the section of

acknowledgements and in what order? Who is the first one thanked in doctoral

acknowledgements by native Chinese speaker, English major, and native English

speaker respectively? Is there any difference between the three groups in the ones they

want to thank? If any, what are the possible reasons; what reasons do Ph.D. graduate

students specify for expressing their gratitude? What are the differences, if any, in this

respect among the three groups; how do the three groups express gratitude

pragmalinguistically? Are there any differences among them in the expressions of

gratitude? If any, what are the possible reasons?

In order to answer the three questions, the research investigated 120 Ph. D.

dissertations by graduates of Native English, English major and Native Chinese. Each

dissertation was examined carefully to see who is included, reasons why they were

thanked and thanking patterns they were applied in their acknowledgements. The

major findings of the study were presented in the next section.

6.2 Major Findings of the Study

6.2.1 People included in the acknowledgements

Because of the academic genre of acknowledgements, people included in the

sections were mostly directly related to the academic process. They were supervisors,

dissertation committees, other teachers, senior scholars, and professors from other

universities, classmates, friends, family members and so on. Based on the

categorization by Hyland, the researcher classified all people mentioned into six

53

groups: supervisor, other academics, participants and providers, colleagues and

classmates, friends and family. An interesting finding was that the Chinese Ph.D.

graduates were likely to pre-present their thanks to teachers or scholars who would

check dissertations. The act violated the felicitous condition that an act, which

benefited the hearer, should be done before the hearer expressed his or her gratitude.

As a result, the act was not considered appropriate in academic writing and should be

corrected. As for the order of people mentioned, the three groups gave great priority to

supervisors, teachers or classmates who made direct contribution to their dissertation

writing. In addition to academic help, Native English also emphasized spiritual

support and that was why family members and friends in their order came first before

colleagues and classmates in certain group. Native Chinese beard a clear division

between academic world and family world, so the order of family in Chinese group

came to the last place. Generally speaking, the order of English major was much

closer to Native English. They placed high value on people from academic world and

family and friends member who backed up them behind. Participants and providers

fell the last place in the order as a result of disciplinary limit. As to the native Chinese,

they had a clear order of people from academic world to social relations world.

Supervisors always appeared in the first of the order in the acknowledgements.

Another interesting finding here was that the Chinese group also mentioned their

supervisors’ wives when they gave their gratitude to their supervisors. It could be

attributed to cultural influence. As the Chinese saying went “ once be your teacher, be

your father for the rest of your life”, supervisors’ wives, accordingly, became

graduates’ mother.

Reasons specified in the research can be classified into three categories: academic

support, moral support and technical and financial support. Because of the academic

genre of acknowledgement, thanking for academic support prevailed in the three

groups’ acknowledgements. Among the three reasons, academic support in English

major Ph.D. graduates took up 48.25% while Native English 34.76% and Native

Chinese 44.01%. As to resource and financial support, though restricted in the

54

discipline of English, the group of English Major occupied 20.91% among the three

sorts of reasons. Native Chinese occupied 22.05% while Native English 19.24%.

Native English attached much importance to moral support. Among all the reasons

they specified, thanking for moral support was the most frequently mentioned one—

45.67%. English major and Native Chinese were similar in this respect, 30.85% and

33.93% respectively. As to Native English, moral support not only came from family,

friends, teachers and other human beings but also from pet, God, church fellowship

and favorite places and programs.

6.2.2 Thanking patterns used by Ph. D. graduates

Among the 1199 thanking patterns, performative verbs and nominalization were

the two most frequently used way of thanking. Adjectives applied in gratitude

expressions were mainly derived from noun and verb base form to achieve the effect

of formality. Native Chinese never applied passive forms to express gratitude as a

result of the characteristics of the language. English major and Native English seemed

to prefer other patterns because passive patterns sounded too formal and unwilling.

The distribution of general reference was similar among the three groups. The

phenomenon, which deserved mentioning, was that Chinese were likely to give a

namelist of their acknowledgee instead of specifying why thanked those people. In

other words, the Chinese students’ academic writing needed improving. That also

explained the importance of studying acknowledgements from the perspective of

Pragmatics.

In order to achieve the best effect of thanking, students were inclined to make

choice of politeness strategies. Based on Leech’s latest framework of politeness

principle, the researcher summarized the following strategies:

To place a high value on self’s obligation to other, Ph.D. graduates intended to

use modals or mental state verbs which reflected the writer’s inclination or intention

to perform the act of thanking as obligation or indebtedness, for example, “must”,

“should”, “obliged”, “indebted” and so on. To place a low value on self’s want,

55

qualities, feelings, Ph. D. graduates applied hedging and “I” avoidance. To place a

high value on other’s qualities, graduates were likely to use qualifiers such as

“sincerely”, “heartfelt”, “specially”, “very much”, “a thousand” and so on.

6.3 Implication of the Research

Non-native English speakers are facing a great pressure to write a native-speaker

like acknowledgements, but the problem is whether they can get professional training

on acknowledgement writing. Non-native speakers, Chinese in the thesis, are deeply

affected by their native language both in language patterns and in thanking

expressions. It is self-evident that the goal of teaching grammar in a second/foreign

language classroom is to help a learner acquire the correct target grammar. However,

when it comes to teaching L2 pragmatics, there is a debate over whether or not we

should teach and have a learner use exactly the same L2 pragmatics as a native

speaker of the L2 does. In this respect, I would like to share the position taken by

Thomas (1993); that is L2 pragmalinguistic use should be taught and errors in this

area should be corrected straightforwardly, whereas L2 sociopragmatic use ought to

be pointed out and discussed, but errors in this area should not be corrected, because

the latter “is in part culture-specific, a reflection of the students’ system of values and

beliefs” (p.109).

When teaching and practicing thanking in English with Chinese English learners,

for instance, the instructor should correct the learners’ use of inappropriate thanking

expressions because it is pragma-linguistic convention of the L2. However, if they

produce “account” statements excessively (from the Japanese speaker’s perspective),

the instructor should point out their deviation from the L2 norm and discuss its

possible negative consequences together with the student, but should not instruct the

student to correct it, because their providing an account frequently in a thanking is

presumably related to American’s emphasis on rationality.

6.4 Limitation of the Study

56

The present research is a tentative comparative study of native Chinese and native

English way of realizing speech act of thanking in Ph.D. graduates’

acknowledgements. English major is the control group here and differences between

three groups are analyzed. However, there are some limitations in the study.

Limited by the relatively small sample of resource data, the characteristics of

realization of speech act of thanking in written discourse have not been thoroughly

explored. As restricted by its discipline—English and required forms of

acknowledgement writing in some universities, English majors’ acknowledgements

are small in number and less varied in forms. The frequency and distribution of

thanking patterns of the three groups would become different if a larger sample of

acknowledgements were chosen.

Secondly, the selection of resource of data is also limited. All data are collected

from two main websites—Wanfang resource data and Proquest. Some information

about the author is missing. For example, the researcher had to judge whether the

author was a native English or not from his or her name. It is too subjective, so some

of data the researcher included in her study may not be written by the native English,

which consequently decreased the credibility and validity of the final conclusion.

Thirdly, the present study examined the realization of thanking in English and

Chinese. The researcher found some differences between the three groups’ way of

expressing gratitude could be attributed to language difference and cultural effect. But

as to how these factors influenced Ph. D. graduates’ way of thanking are not deeply

explored. The researcher only presented a general picture of language difference

between English and Chinese.

6.5 Directions for Further Research

In spite of the various limitation of the present study, it may still shed some light

on future research.

First, although the research applied empirical method to examine the difference

between the three groups’ thanking speech act, further study will be more convincing

if they apply questionnaires or interview to examine the graduates’ inner mind.

57

Second, such studies as examining the differences between the three groups’

gratitude expressions in written discourse should be based on larger corpora in order

to better generalize the findings.

Third, as to the cultural influence of thanking, different scholars can attribute

differences to different cultural factors. The researcher analyzed the differences from

the perspective of “self” conceptualization in Chinese and English mind. Further

study can be carried out from a new perspective.

Finally, is it possible that such factors as genre, age, proficiency of English and so

on can also exert an influence on the ways of realizing thanking speech act in

acknowledgements? Future research may take these factors into consideration to

further to the study of the thanking speech act in acknowledgements.

REFERENCES

Aijmer, K. (1996). Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity. London: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.

Atkinson, D. (1999). Scientific discourse in sociohistorical context: The philosophicaltransactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

58

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bach, K. & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, MS: MIT Progress.

Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Ben-Ari, E. (1987). On acknowledgements in ethnographies. Journal of Anthropological Research, 43.1, 63-84.

Berkenkotter, C., Huckin, T. N., & Ackerman, J. (1991). Social context and socially constructed texts: The initiation of a graduate student into writing research community in Bazerman, C. & Paradis, J. (Eds.), Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 191-215.

Bi Jiwan. [毕继万], 1996, 汉英感谢语的差异 [J]. 语文建设（7）：38－40。Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural Pragmatics:

Requests and Apologies. Norwood: Ablex.Brown, P., & Levinson, S.C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Caesar, T. (1992). On acknowledgements. New Orleans Review 19.1, 85-94.

Coulmas, F. (1981). “Poison to your soul”: Thanks and apologies contrastively viewed. In Coulmas, F. (Eds.), Conversational Routine: explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech. The Hague: Mouton.

Cronin, B. (1995). The scholar’s courtesy: The role of acknowledgements in the primary communication process. London: Taylor Graham.

Cronin, B., McKenzie, G., & Stiffler, M. (1992). Patterns of acknowledgement. Journal of Documentation 48.2, 227-239.

Cronin, B., McKenzie, G., & Rubio, L. (1993). The norms of acknowledgement in four humanities and social sciences disciplines. Journal of Documentation 49.1, 29-43.

Cronin, B and Overfelt, K. (1994). The scholar’s courtesy: a survey of acknowledgement behavior. Journal of Documentation 50.3, 165-196.

Dubois, B.L. (1982). The construction of noun phrase in biomedical articles. In Hoedt, J. L. Lundquist, Picht, H. & Qvistgoard, J. (Eds.), Pragmatics and LSP (pp.199-216). Copenhagen: School of Economics.

Edmondson, W. (1981). Spoken Discourse. London: London.Eisenstein, M., & Bodman, J. (1986). I very appreciate: Expressions of gratitude by

native and non-native speakers of American English. Applied Linguistics 7.2:167-185.

Eisenstein, M. & Bodman, J. (1988). May God increase your bounty: The expression of gratitude in English by native and non-native speakers. Cross Currents 15.1:1-21.

59

Eisenstein, M., & Bodman, J. (1993). Expressing Gratitude in American English. G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka, (Eds.), Interlanguage Pragmatics (pp. 64-81). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Giannoni, D. S. (2002). Worlds of gratitude: a contrastive study of acknowledgement texts in English and Italian research articles. Applied Linguistics 23.1, 1-31.

Green, G. (1975). How to get people to do thing with words. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: speech acts (pp.107-142). New York: Academic Press.

Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and Conversation in Syntax and Semantics, In P. Cole & J. Morgan, (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: speech acts (pp.41-58). New York: Academic Press.

Hofstede, G., & Bond, M. (1984). Hofstede’s culture dimensions: An independent validation using Rokeach’s value survey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15, 417-433.

Holmes, J. (1984). Hedging your bests and sitting on the fence: some evidence for hedges as support structures. Te Reo 27, 47-62.

Holmes, J. (1988). Paying compliments: a sex-preferential politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 445-65.

House, J., & Kasper, G. (1987). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requesting in a foreign language. In W. Lorscher & R. Schulze (Eds.), Perspectives on language in performance, vol.2 (pp. 1250-1288). Tubingen: Narr.

Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hyland, K. (1999). Disciplinary discourse: writer stance in research articles. In: N. Candlin & K. Hyland (Eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices. (pp.99-121). London/ New York: Longman.

Hyland, K. (2002). Authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics 34.8, 1091-112.

Hyland, K. (2003). Second Language Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hyland, K. (2004). Graduates’ gratitude: the generic structure of dissertation acknowledgements. English for Specific Purpose, 23, 303-324.

Ikoma, T., & Shimura, A. (1993). Eigo Kara Nihongo e no pragmatic transfer: Kotowari toiu hatsuwa kooi ni tsuite [Pragmatics transfer from English to Japanese: the speech act of refusals]. Nihongo Kyoiku [Japanese Language Education], 79, 41-52.

Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for Academic Purposes, A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self-Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.

Kuo, Sai-hua. (1992). Conflict and its management in Chinese verbal interactions: casual conversations and parliamentary interpellations. Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University.

60

Lackstrom, J., Selinker, L. & Trimble, L. (1973). Technical rhetorical principles and grammatical choice. TESOL Quarterly 7: 127-136.

Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness, or, minding your p’s and q’s. Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago.

Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. Harper Torch Books.

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

Leech, G. N. (2005). Politeness: Is There an East-West Divide? Journal of Foreign Languages, 6, 3-31.

Lemke, J. (1995). Textual Politics: Discourse and Social dynamics. London: Taylor and Francis.

Levinson, S.C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Li, L. N. [李丽娜] ，2004，汉语感谢言语行为研究. 湖北社会科学(9)：93－95。Liu W. S. [刘万生] ， 2004， 汉英感谢语比较与中国 EFL 学习者感谢语语用迁

移. 南通职业大学学报 (18)：97-100。Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malcolm, L. (1987). What rules govern tense usage in scientific articles? AppliedLinguistics, 6, 31-44.

Mayer, P. G. (1997). Hedging strategies in written academic discourse: strengthening the argument by weakening the claim. In R. Markkannen & H. Schroder (Eds.), Hedging and Discourse-Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berline /New York: Walter de Gruyter.

McCain, K.W. (1991). Communication, competition and secrecy: the production and dissemination of research-related information in genetics. Science, Technology and Human Values, 16, 491-516.

McKenzie. G & Stiffler. M. (1992). Patterns of acknowledgement. Journal of Documentation, 48, 107-122.

Mey, J.L. (2001). Pragmatics. An Introduction. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Moore, Z. T. (1994). The portfolio and testing culture. In C.R. Hancock (Eds.), Teaching, testing and assessment: Making the connection (pp.163-182). Northeast Conference Reports. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook.

Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10, 1-35.

Norrick，N. R. (1978) Expressive illocutionary acts. Journal of Pragmatics，2, 277-

291.

61

Oster, S. (1981). The use of tense in reporting past literature in EST. Applied Linguistics, 13, 55-76.

Palmer, F. (1979). Modality and the English Modals. London: Longman.

Palmer, F. (1986). Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Perkins, M. (1983). Modal Expressions in English. London: Frances Pinter.

Rintell, E., & Mitchell, C.J. (1989). Studying requests and apologies: An inquiry into methods. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 248-273). Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Ross, J. (1972). The category squish: Endstation Hauptwort. CLS 8, 316-382. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purpose, 13, 149-169.

Salager-Mayer, F. (1998). Language is not a physical object. English for Specific Purpose 17, 295-301.

Schegloff, E. & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening and Closing. Semiotica, 7-8, 289-327. Searle, J. R. (1969a). Speech Acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Searle, J. R. (1969b). Speech Act: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Selinker, H. (1978). Implications of a multiple critical periods hypothesis for second

language learning. In W. Ritchie (Eds.), Second Language Acquisition Research. New York: Academic Press.

Spencer-Oatey, H. (1992) Cross-cultural Politeness: British and Chinese Conceptions of the Tutor-student Relationship. Lancaster University.

Swales, J. M. (1981). Aspects of article introductions. In Aston ESP Research Project No. 1, Birmingham: Language Studies Unit, University of Aston.

Swales, J. and Feak, C. (2000) English in today’s research world: a writing guide. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Tarone, E. S., Gillette, D. S. & Icke, V. (1981). On the use of the passive in two astrophysics journal papers. ESP Journal 1, 123-40. Reprinted in J. Swales (1985) (ed.), Episodes in ESP, (pp. 191-205).Oxford: Pergamon.

Thomas, A. (1993). Kulturvergleichende Psychologie—Eine Einfuhrung. Gottingen: Hogrefe.

Tsurikova L.V. (2002). Problema estestvennosti diskursa v mezhkul’turnoi kommunikatsii. Voronezh: Voronezh University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. Mouton de Gruyter.

Wolfson, N., Marmor, T., & Jones, S. (1989). Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures. In S. Blum-Kulka, J, House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, pp.174-96. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

62

Yamashita, S. (1996). Six measures of JSL Pragmatics. Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Yang, K. S., & Cheng, B. S. (1987). Confucianized vaules, Individual modernity, and organizational behavior: An empirical test of the post-Confucian hypothesis [in Chinese]. Bulletin of the Institute of EthologyEthnology, Academia Sinica (Taiwan) 64, 1-49.

Yu, Ming-chung. (1999). Cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics: Developing communicative competence in a second language. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.

63