A Comparative Study Of MA Thesis Acknowledgements By Native And Non-native Speakers Of English

An acknowledgement plays an important role in MA theses: it is not only an indispensable section in theses which shows the postgraduates’ genuine gratitude for the assistance and support they received upon the completion of their research, but also a real record of the developing track of their research. As a written form of thanking speech act(Cheng 2012), an acknowledgement in theses not only serves to maintain interpersonal relationship, but also reflects the writers’ socio-cultural values and norms as well as their identities in academic communities.Due to the importance of acknowledgements in theses and their communicative function, the present research conducted a comparative study on MA thesis acknowledgements by native and non-native English speakers in an attempt to find out the pragma-linguistic features of MA thesis acknowledgements in relation to social-cultural backgrounds.The data in the present study consists of 200 English MA thesis acknowledgements, among which 100 are written by native speakers of English majoring in Applied Linguistics(EAL), and the other 100 samples are written by Chinese learners of English majoring in Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics(CFLAL). There are 3 research questions in the present study:(1) What are the categories and ordering of the thanked addressees in thesis acknowledgements by native and non-native speakers of English?(2) What are the thanking forms and lexico-grammatical features of the thanking expressions in the two groups of thesis acknowledgements?(3) What are the similarities and differences in the categories and ordering of the thanked addressees as well as the thanking forms and lexico-grammatical features of the thanking expressions in the two groups of thesis acknowledgements?The analysis of data reveals the following findings:(1) The categories of the thanked addressees including supervisors, other professors and teachers as well as participants in the study are thanked most in both groups. And most native students like to thank thesis committee members, while non-native students rarely give thanks to this category of thanked addressee. Besides, non-native students like to show their gratitude to classmates, friends and family members, while native speakers like to give thanks to God, churches, their pets, even their favorite television programs and places. Students in both groups prefer to arrange the thanked addressees based on how much academic assistance a specific addressee provided. But compared to native students, non-native students tend to arrange their thanked addressees in a more regular and strict way.(2) Students in both groups use more explicit thanking, especially the simple forms, rather than the implicit one. Students tend to choose thanking forms based on their views on the nature and importance of the offers and favor the certain addressees have provided. In addition, nominalization and performative verbs are often used in the two groups. And non-native students use more nominalization in their thanking expressions than the native students and they also like to use humble words and modal verbs of obligation.(3) The similarities of the two groups of writings are that: in both groups, the addressees who provided academic supports are thanked more than others; the thanked addressees are ordered according to the directness of academic assistance that they has provided; explicit thanking, especially the simple forms, are preferred by both groups; nominalization and perfomative verbs are commonly used in both groups. The differences found are: native speakers sometimes give thanks to inanimate objects, while non-native speakers only thank human beings, and friends and family members are thanked more by non-native speakers; the thanked addressees are ordered in a more regular and strict way in non-native group; complex thanking forms, especially thanking to supervisors, are used more by non-native students; and normalization, humble words, modal verbs of obligation are preferred by non-native students.An acknowledgement, as a formal academic genre, has its own writing rules and principles. This may explain the similarities in the two groups of writings. However, the differences in cultural values and different concepts about interpersonal politeness, power, social distance and weight of imposition, etc. may contribute to the differences in the two groups of theses. It is hoped that the present research can provide more references to the current pragmatic studies on thesis acknowledgements from a cross-cultural perspective. And hopefully, it can offer some help for Chinese learners of English in composing English acknowledgements more accurately and appropriately.