Dr. Mohammed Nasser
Wasit University, Iraq
The research analyzes acknowledgement in master theses. Yang (2012) investigated dissertation acknowledgement in MA and PhD university dissertations authored by Taiwanese students. Farnia and Suleiman (2009) researched gratitude as expressed by Iranian EFL learners and compared this function with that expressed by native speakers of English; learners and speakers. The data is based on a random sample of master theses defended in two universities, Baghdad University/Iraq and London University, UK. Fifty master theses (25 master theses from Baghdad University and 25 master theses from London University), defended through the academic year 2016-2017, have been randomly picked for analysis. Acknowledgements were analyzed at three key levels; technical (such as font), morpho-syntactic (such as lexis), and pragmatic (such as, implications). The results show:
- Acknowledgement sections in Arabic-authored master theses use a lot of gratitude and thanking than those sections in English-authored master theses.
- The layering of thanking in both samples almost follow the same process of acknowledgement; supervisor→ faculty → colleagues and/or fellow candidates → family.
- In Arabic-authored master theses, acknowledgements tend to be lengthy. In English-authored master theses, there is a tendency to use short phrases.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
