An Analysis of Generic Features of Acknowledgments in Academic Writing : Native Speakers of English vs . Non-Native ( Iranian )

The literature on the generic structure of acknowledgment has revealed that, beyond the role it plays in academic gift giving and self-presentation, the textualization of gratitude reveals the effect of disciplinary, sociocultural and contextual variations on shaping this genre (Hyland, 2003; Giannoni, 2002; Yang, 2012). However, there is relatively scant research on the ways that acknowledgements in different genres are characterized by their distinctive communicative purposes. To fill this gap, this study analyzes through two phases the acknowledgment sections of various genres (20 MA & 20 PhD theses, 20 textbooks, and 20 research articles) written by native speakers of English (n=40) and Iranian (n=40) in applied linguistics. The results of move analysis phase which insights was from Swales’ (1990) model, showed that genre of acknowledgment was constituted of a main “Thanking” move framed by two optional “Reflecting” and “Announcing” moves in theses, two optional “Framing” and “Announcing” moves in textbooks, and one optional “Framing” move in research articles. Despite observing the “Thanking move” in acknowledgment sections of all genres, cross-generic differences were also found in the type and frequency of constituent steps used to realize this move and other optional moves. These differences indicate how the contextual, cultural, and institutional forces influence the production and reception of academic genres.


Introduction
Acknowledgments are universal features of academic writing which are commonly used in Theses and books and have increasing presence in research articles (Giannoni, 2002).This genre not only provides a space for writers to signify interpersonal relationship, but reflects their personal identity, socio cultural and contextual or conventional values (Hyland, 2004;Cheng, 2012).In other words, acknowledgments are not entirely personal but can also be context-embedded.For example, how writers position themselves as student, researcher, or book author could affect their expressions of gratitude.That is, distinctive communicative purposes of different genres can influence the shaping of generic structures of acknowledgments.
Previous studies have mainly focused on the expressions of gratitude and their generic structures used by a single ethnic group in one social context across disciplines (Hyland, 2004;Hyland & Tse, 2004;Giannoni, 2006) or the comparisons of acknowledgments written by native speakers of English (NSE) and non-native speakers of English in two different social contexts (Giannoni, 2002;Lasaky, 2011;Al-Ali, 2010;Cheng, 2012).However, there is relatively scant research on comparing acknowledgments of various academic genres (i.e., Textbooks, Research articles, MA & PhD Theses) written by NSE and NNSE.Furthermore, none of the existing research on acknowledgments has applied systemic functional linguistic text analysis to show how "discourse context influences" of each genre determine the author's linguistic and functional choices in two different cultures.Therefore, this study aims to compare and contrast acknowledgments of various genres written by NSE and NNSE (Iranian) to provide a contextual framework of the factors that are thought to be responsible for the possible crossgeneric variations.
The importance of genre knowledge in helping language learners to understand and master academic, professional or educational discourse has been widely acknowledged for over two decades (Swales, 2004).Bhatia defines a genre as a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs.He claims that "by analyzing genre, analysts can understand how a particular genre defines, organizes and finally communicates social reality" (Bhatia, 1993, p. 18).Therefore, genre approaches by developing a socially informed theory of language and an authoritative pedagogy grounded in research of texts and contexts have had an important impact on the ways we see language use and on literacy education around the world (Hyland, 2002).Hyon (1996) identifies three main traditions in contemporary genre studies, which can be seen as complementary, rather than competing approaches: New Rhetoric (e.g., Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995); Australian educational linguistics (e.g., Martin, 1989;Halliday & Martin, 1993); and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (e.g., Swales, 1990;Bhatia, 1993).However, ESP and Australian educational linguistics are more pedagogy oriented while New Rhetoric is more theoretically and research oriented (Coffin, 2001).Hence, ESP scholars have tried to describe texts of different disciplines through analyzing the Moves.Swales defines Move in genre analysis as "a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative function in a written or spoken discourse" (Swales, 2004, p. 29).To relate Moves to their Sub-moves (steps), Nwogu (1997) argues that Moves are conventional schema, consisting of hierarchically ordered knowledge structures and Sub-moves are their constituent elements.
Systemic functional genre studies often known as "the Sydney School" of genre studies are based on the work of systemic functional linguists such as Halliday (1994); Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Halliday and Hasan (1985).Halliday's SFL studies the functional and situational organization of language in the social context (Halliday, 1985, p. 11).According to this model, functional bases of grammatical phenomena are divided into three broad areas, called metafuctions: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual.I.The ideational metafunction concerns the representation of the speaker's individual experience, II.The interpersonal metafunction concerns the expression of the speaker's attitudes, III.The textual metafunction concerns the text forming resources of language (Halliday, 1987, pp. 112-113;Morley, 1985, p. 48).In the conversion of semantic metafunctions into structural patterns, three lexicogrammatical systems of Transitivity, Mood and Theme are at work: I. Transitivity involves a ternary configuration of a process, participants and circumstances, II.Mood realizes the speech functions, III.Theme concerns how "information within individual clauses" is embedded in "the larger text" (Martin, Matthiessen, & Painter, 1997, p. 21).
Among academic genres that have been favored by researchers for move analysis the genre of acknowledgment has been relatively neglected (Hyland, 2003) and, as a result, little is known of their structure and expression.Giannoni (2002) was the first genre analyst who studied the difference between English and Italian research article acknowledgements and identified two moves, an optional "introductory move" and an obligatory "credit mapping" move comprising three possible steps; allocating credit to institutions, to individuals, and claiming responsibility.His research concluded that generic structures of acknowledgements in journal articles not only reflect the differences of the various disciplines, but are also affected by the patterns of national disciplinary communities.Following Giannoni (2002), Hyland (2004) explored thanks expressing in the genre of acknowledgements in PhD and MA dissertations written by 240 Hong Kong English speakers from 6 different broad academic disciplines; Electronic engineering, computer science, business studies, biology, applied linguistics, and public administration.He identified three moves in those acknowledgements: a reflecting move, a thanking move and an announcing move.The results of that study demonstrated that acknowledgments not only "play an important role in promoting a competent, even rhetorically skilled, scholarly identity" of the acknowledgers, but also reveal the social and cultural characteristics of acknowledgments in situated settings (Hyland, 2003, p. 266).Giannoni (2006) looked into the genre of acknowledgements in English academic books.Cross-disciplinary differences in the distribution of pragmalinguistic features, such as hyperbole, irony, and emotivity, were found in the hard sciences (mathematics, medicine and biology) and the soft sciences (applied linguistics, economics, and social sciences).Adding to Hyland' (2004) three-move framework, Al-Ali (2010) proposed an eight-move structure to incorporate the socio-cultural components (e.g., religious beliefs, academic and social conventions) of the Arabic acknowledgement practice.He maintains that the choice of language in acknowledgments very much depend on some socio-cultural and religious motivations.For instance, some specific features in Arabic acknowledgements are praising and thanking Allah (God) and invoking and blessing from God's (Allah's) favors upon the thanked addressees.The most recent research on DA has been by Lasaky (2011).He relied on Hyland's (2004) framework to compare acknowledgments in PhD Theses written by native English speakers (NSE) and non-native speakers (Iranian) students (NNSE) majoring in applied linguistics.Similar to Al-Ali (2010), Lasaky also identified the step of Thanking Allah (God) in the NNSE group.
Majority of studies discussed above confirmed that disciplinary conventions and socio-cultural factors affect how an acknowledgment is structured.However, there is relatively scant research on comparing acknowledgments of various academic genres (i.e., Textbooks, Research articles, MA & PhD Theses) written by NSE and NNSE.In order to fill this gap, the present study, based on two approaches of genre analysis in applied linguistics ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics), aims to compare and contrast acknowledgments of various genres written by NSE and NNSE (Iranian) to provide a contextual framework of the factors that are thought to be responsible for the possible cross-generic and cross-cultural variations.In order to do so following research questions are addressed in this study: 1) What moves constitute the generic structures of acknowledgments written by NSE and NNSE (Iranian) authors in various academic genres?
2) How the distribution of minor functions in acknowledgment sections of various genres are a direct reflection of the communicative purposes of each genre?

Corpus and Procedure
The present study focused on 80 written texts consisting of four sub-corpora written by Native speakers of English (n=40) and Iranian (n=40) authors, respectively.Each of the sub-corpora is composed of 20 research articles, 20 MA theses, 20 PhD theses, and 20 textbooks.
These academic texts were chosen as follow: A. Iranian Theses' acknowledgement texts were chosen randomly out of MA and PhD ones submitted to two universities in Tabriz.The NSE' acknowledgment texts were selected randomly from Proquest.comsite out of many texts from different English speaking country universities.These theses were limited to those presented from 2007 to 2012.The universities in which the theses were collected are detailed in Appendices 1 & 2.
B. Articles' acknowledgment texts were randomly collected from 20 articles, published in the most prestigious Anglo-American and Iranian journals between 2000 and 2012, as detailed in Appendix 4.
C. Textbooks' acknowledgments were chosen randomly from 20 textbooks written by native English and Iranian authors.The textbooks in which acknowledgments were provided are detailed in Appendix 3.

Criteria for the Selection of the Texts
The disciplinary focus of the corpus was limited to applied linguistics as defined by Wilkins (1999).The selection of texts from a single discipline was intended to avoid any overgeneralizations of the results due to possible discipline-specific characteristics.The criterion which was applied for ensuring that the theses were written by NSE was checking authors' name.In selection of textbooks, the major criterion was to include those which are widely used in the syllabuses of applied linguistic courses in our context.Finally, the criterion for selecting journals was the accessibility to the most important publications.Moreover, to make sure about writers' nationality (Native speaker of English) their names and affiliation were checked.

Models of Analysis
Based on two approaches of genre analysis in applied linguistics ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics), this study aims to compare and contrast acknowledgments of various genres written by NSE and NNSE (Iranian) to provide a contextual framework of the factors that are thought to be responsible for the possible cross-generic and cross-cultural variation in two phases.In the move analysis phase which insights was from Swales' (1990) model, the Moves-Sub moves used in the acknowledgments were compared.In the second phase, following SFL tradition , based on the work of Halliday and Matthiesen (2004), three types of metafunctions (Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual) used in Sub-moves were analyzed and then compared in order to provide insights into the meaning and effectiveness of acknowledgment texts.

Data Analysis Procedures
In genre analysis phase, to identify the Moves/Sub-moves, propositions were considered to be the unit of analysis since each proposition can generally have an independent communicative purpose although sometimes a Move or a Sub-move can be as long as one or more paragraphs.Some Moves/Sub-moves had been used more than once in some of acknowledgment sections based on the demands from the subject matters of those texts.However, despite the frequent use of some Moves/Sub-moves in most texts, as the frequency of using/not using a Move/Sub-move was the matter of concentration, only a single use of a particular Move or Sub-move was considered sufficient for any acknowledgment to be included in the frequencies.To ensure that there was a consensus of categorization of moves and steps, this examination was performed by the researcher and one NNS colleague.During the multifunctional analysis phase, a clause which is a product of three kinds of co-existing structures was considered as a unit of analysis.Thus, initially each text was divided into its constituents; that is, its clauses were identified.Then clause constituents were determined in each clause of the acknowledgment texts and a functional label was ascribed to the nodes defined in the clause structure: e.g., the prepositional phrase "in this study" is named as "Adjunct" in the functional labeling process.After clause constituents were given three sets of functional labels, they were classified in terms of the linguistic phenomena they represent in the polyphonic structure of the texts, e.g., the adjunct "in this study" is an indicator of the linguistic phenomena "circumstances adjunct" and is grouped with the other adjunct operators under the relevant category.Finally, the total number of the functional constituents in each category was entered into an Excel spreadsheet.After the frequencies and percentages were calculated for each category by using Excel, tables of frequency were formed out of the input from the sum total of the functional units in each category.

First Phase: Results and Discussion f Move Analysis
The generic structure of acknowledgements revealed the following component moves.The order of their appearance is not a canonical order, it is one that was common in the corpus text.Each individual move and related steps will be described by examples from the corpus.

MA and PhD Thesis Acknowledgments
The result of genre analysis of MA & PhD acknowledgements is similar to the one that described in the previous study by Hyland (2004) except "Thanking God" step.MA & PhD acknowledgment is constituted of a main "Thanking" move framed by two optional "Reflecting" and "Announcing" moves.Reflecting move Hyland (2004) proposes that in Reflective move the authors comment on their experiences while writing their MA and PhD dissertations.As its frequency in corpus data shows, it is very peripheral to the genre's main communicative purpose.The following examples shows the kind of realization available in corpus texts: 1).This project developed in bursts, starting and stopping, then re-starting in a new direction, over many years.(NSEPT5) 2).This thesis was a self-exploratory journey of love and learning which took almost three years in making; the time in which my own identity has been undergoing immense transformation.(IPT3)

Thanking move
This move is the main body of acknowledgments, as confirmed by its presence throughout the thesis acknowledgments.It is realized by six component steps containing the thanks offered to person or groups of people (e.g., supervisors, academics, institutions, friends, and family, etc.).

Thanking God
As Al-Ali (2005) proposes that this step which is only employed by Iranian students reflects Muslims' attitudes towards their religious beliefs.

Presenting participants
The main purpose of this step is to provide a means of introducing the people to be thanked in the following steps.It usually happens at initial position or after the "Thanking God" step.

4). Gratitude and thanks are due to many who made this possible. (NSEMT2)
5).There are many people without whom this study would not have been possible.( IMT5) Thanking for academic assistance Hyland (2003) indicates that through this step writers shows their gratefulness for any kind of intellectual help they received from members in the academic community.It is the only step that has been observed in all texts and can be regarded as an obligatory constituent and the backbone of this genre (Hyland, 2003).NSE writers of this study often tended to address academic members by his/her full name or first name, whereas Iranian thesis writers opted for Title + Full Name.This is perhaps because teachers and students are more or less on equal terms in the American context while in Iranian context teachers are usually considered authorities who demand respect from their students.

Thanking for resources
As Hyland (2003) mentions this step is meant to show that writers are thankful to those participants, experts, and institutions that helped them in providing and analysis of data and also universities or family members that provided grants for conducting the research.According to corpus data, higher proportion of thanks in NSE corpus was for funding and fellowship support while it was more frequently for administrative support in Iranian acknowledgments.This seems to imply that Iranian researchers are often driven by incentives other than those of purely academic inquisition (Shahriari, 2009).

8)
. Special gratitude goes to Goldis language... and its academic and administrative staff ... (IPT1) 9).Finally, I want to express my gratitude to all those who made my grant possible, and for their believing that I could do it.(NSEPT2)

Thanking for moral support
In this step, writers thank family members and close friends for their patience, care and encouragements during writing the theses.As table shows this step was employed in high frequency in corpus texts.

Announcing move
This move occurs with a low frequency in corpus data and includes two constituent steps, accepting responsibility and dedicating the thesis.

Accepting responsibility
Through this step, writers accept responsibility of any flows or shortcomings occurred in their research."On the interpersonal plane, this step emphasized the contrast between collaboration and responsibility" (Giannoni, 2002, p. 22).

Dedicating the thesis
This step is employed by the writers who wish to express their special gratitude toward a certain person as a reward for a unique effort.

14). I lovingly dedicate this dissertation to my mother. (IMT7) 15
).This thesis is dedicated to: my dad Bob, my mom Mary and my sister and brother … (NSEMT1).

Textbook Acknowledgments
The results of the generic structure of textbook acknowledgements revealed that textbook acknowledgments were constituted of a main "Thanking" move framed by two optional "Framing" and "Announcing" moves.

Framing move
This move is collateral to the genre's main communicative purpose (Giannoni, 2002).It contextualizes or frames the information that follows by outlining the book's ancestry, in terms of earlier texts or event from which it developed.Iranian corpus, unlike its English counterpart, oriented to parent text rather than event: holders before publication, this has not been possible in some cases.So s/he will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.This step occurred in only NSE book acknowledgments.

Requiring for feedback
This step was only present in Iranian corpus.In this step, the writer announces valuing any comment and suggestions for the book's future improvement.

Dedicating the book
Textbook writers like those of theses by including this step wish to express their special gratitude toward a certain person as a reward for a unique effort.This step occurred with low frequency only in Iranian corpus.It might be because that writers (NSE and Iranian) usually include this step separately mostly on the first pages of their book.

Research Article Acknowledgments
Genre analysis of Research article acknowledgements revealed that articles' acknowledgments of this study were constituted of a main "Thanking" move framed by one optional "Framing" move.

Framing move
Like framing move in book acknowledgments, it contextualizes or frames the information that follows by outlining the article's ancestry, in terms of earlier texts or event from which it developed.It occurred in only NSE corpus.Giannoni (2002) argues that, in self-promotional use of the opening step when it informs readers of other publications by the same author, commercial pressures are observed.This is in line with fairclough's (1995) claim that academic discourse is being colonized by language of marketing.

Thanking Move
This move is used to allocate credit to organizations or individuals whose help was crucial to the article's completion.Acknowledgments are classified according to the type of help received and are reflected in two separate steps: Acknowledging institutional support which includes acknowledgements of administrative and financial support and acknowledging individual contribution.
There was considerable variation in the amount of gratitude communicated to institutions between two corpora; ranging from the hyperbolic ("without which this research would not have been possible") in Iranian corpus to descriptions devoid of appreciation in NSE corpus.Giannoni argues that "blank acknowledgments are associated with the recognition of support from public bodies, while private organizations are often thanked explicitly" (Giannoni, 2002, p. 20).

23).
We gratefully acknowledge the project reported here was supported by a grant-in-aid of research From Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in 2011 (contract code: 17407) without which this research would not have been possible.(IA6)

24). The research was also funded in part by the Portland State University President's Council on Diversity. (NSEA3)
Although thanking for individual contributions step was present in 90% of Iranian and 100% of NSE corpus, differences were found regarding the number of acknowledged people.In contrast to NSE writers, Iranian acknowledged few people.This is probably because that Iranian use more thanking expressions for a big favor compared to situations representing small favor.Furthermore, the low number of acknowledgees in Iranian corpus probably implies more competitive rather than collaborative environment of our academic discourse.Andrews,Ron Carter,Viv Ellis,Amanda Godley,John Hardcastle,Alexandra Jaffe,Ben Rampton,Brian Street,Melinda Whong,Andrew Wright. … (NSEA6) According to Move analysis phase results, despite observing the "Thanking move" in acknowledgments of all genres, some noticeable cross-generic differences were found regarding which participants were acknowledged.As it is mentioned, the presence of academics, providers, and friends is almost an unvarying tradition of theses acknowledgments, but there was another participant (peer collages) involved in textbooks.The reason for this might be that, the main motivation from textbook writers' point of view is to gain recognition and prestige among the other expert members of the discourse community .Thus, thick acknowledging of these peers are taken into account by the textbook writer.This demand for enhancing the authorial credibility and professional identity of writers can also be observed in research articles.But despite this similarity, the clear separation of contributing individuals and institutions and more importantly descriptions devoid of appreciation in gratitude communicated to institutions in articles were not observed in theses and textbooks acknowledgment texts.Giannoni argues that these" blank acknowledgments are associated with the recognition of support from public bodies, while private organizations are often thanked explicitly" (Giannoni, 2002, p. 20).

25). I am grateful to Richard
Another considerable cross-generic difference was observing the "Framing move" in article and textbook's acknowledgments.Giannoni (2002) argues that, in self-promotional use of the opening step when it informs readers of other publications by the same author, commercial pressures are observed.This is in line with fairclough's (1995) claim that academic discourse is being colonized by language of marketing.

Ideational Metafunction
The ideational analysis of the clause as representation deals with the exploration of the Transitivity patterns.Transitivity as a major component in experiential function of the clause deals with the transmission of ideas "representing 'processes' or 'experiences': actions, events, processes of consciousness and relations" (Halliday, 1985, p. 53).

Process Choice
Process refers to a semantic verb and anything that it expresses like event, relation, physical, mental or emotional state when sorted in the semantic system of the clause is classified into material, relational, mental, verbal, behavioral, and existential processes (Halliday, 1976, p. 159).The following figures provide the percentages of processes employed in all of the identified sub-moves of the acknowledgment texts in four corpora.

26). Morle
In contrast the doings TR step as

27). I wou research in
Another g with the re highly use

42). We gr Ferdowsi U
As figure i

43). First a
The analys were highe article ack     for I-avoidance in research article acknowledgements, where writers made extensive use of the author, a more impersonal form which serves to distance writers from their thanks.In addition to these cross-generic differences, the results of this study also revealed cross-cultural differences both in genre analysis and multifunctional analysis.Therefore, it can be concluded that, the analysis of the genre continuum designed for the purpose of this study reflects how the contextual, cultural, and institutional forces influence the production and reception of academic genres.
Since the data examined in this study comprised 80 acknowledgment texts of academic writing.In order to claim valid generalizability of the results the corpus examined in future studies can be enriched by adding data.

Table 1 .
Percentage of move components for MA & PhD thesis acknowledgements

Table 2 .
Percentage of move components for textbook acknowledgements

Table 3 .
Percentage of move components for article acknowledgement Also w