a contrastive study of master thesis acknowledgements by taiwanese and north american students 英语学位论文.docVIP

Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 2012. Vol.2, No.1, 8-17 Published Online March 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ojml) /10.4236/ojml.2012.21002 A Contrastive Study of Master Thesis Acknowledgements by Taiwanese and North American Students Stephanie W. Cheng Graduate Institute of TESOL, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Chinese Taipei Email: scheng@.tw Received January 2 , 2012; revised February 17 , 2012; accepted February 26 , 2012 nd th th Thesis acknowledgements are a written part genre in which graduate students express their gratitude to- wards a number of addressees upon completion of theses. Previous studies on thesis acknowledgements have focused on the expressions of gratitude or their generic structure. However, socio-cultural values and norms can shape the ways people express thanks and influence the rhetorical structure of a genre like the- sis acknowledgements. The present study compares and contrasts the use of thanking strategies in 60 the- sis acknowledgements written in English by Taiwanese and North American master students. Results show that Taiwanese students (TS) use more thanking strategies than North American students (NAS); specifically, they employ more explicit thanking strategies but less implicit thanking strategies than NAS. They also use more complex thanking strategies but less simple thanking strategies than NAS. Interest- ingly, the two groups vary in the arrangement of addressees and the choice of strategies for various ad- dressees, reflecting different cultural perceptions of expressing gratitude. For example, NAS appear to make a more flexible arrangement of advisors and family members than TS. These subtle differences be- tween TS and NAS thesis acknowledgements reveal Taiwanese and North American students’ em