The Expression of Gratitude in English and Arabic Doctoral Dissertation Acknowledgements

The acknowledgement section of a doctoral dissertation is an established genre, which has received interest from discourse analysts over the last decades. Hyland (2004, p. 305) argues that this genre possesses “a rhetorical sophistication” that makes it a rich resource for linguists and discourse analysts. Research into the acknowledgement section of theses and dissertations examined the structure of this genre. For example, Giannoni (2002) presented a two-tier model that reflects the structure of the acknowledgement genre. Hyland (2004) also showed the organisation of acknowledgements in dissertations and presented a three-tier structure framework of analysis. In other research, Hyland and Tse (2004) presented a model to analyse the patterns used to realise gratitude in the acknowledgement section in dissertations. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies that specifically focus on using gratitude expressions in doctoral dissertations written in Arabic and English. This study aims to fill this gap and provide a unique contribution to pragmatics and discourse analysis. Hyland and Tse (2004, p. 259) argue that “acknowledgements offer students a unique rhetorical space to both convey their genuine gratitude for assistance and to promote a capable academic and social identity.” Students can publicly express their gratitude through thesis acknowledgements in different manners, which are influenced by the students’ socio-cultural notions of generic appropriacy (Cheng, 2012).

Research on the realisation of speech acts in English and Arabic abounds with studies that explored the patterns and use of different speech acts (e.g., Alghazo, Zemmour, Al Salem, & Alrashdan, 2021a; Alghazo, Bekaddour, Jarrah, & Hamouri, 2021b; Alshakhanbeh & Alghazo, 2022; Alshmaseen, Jarrah, & Alghazo, 2023; Benyakoub, Alghazo, Altakhaineh, & Rabab’ah, 2022; Dawood, Alghazo, & Jarrah, 2023). However, the speech act of expressing gratitude – although it is a common area of study in pragmatics and discourse analysis – has not received due attention. Because the expression of gratitude in acknowledgements is heavily influenced by the cultural background of the authors, which subsequently influences the structure and linguistic preferences of the writers, it is essential to examine this speech act cross-linguistically. Although there are some studies that explored the expression of gratitude in some languages, there is no study that compares Arabic and English regarding the construction and the linguistic realisation of gratitude in this genre. In addition, there is a lack of cross-linguistic studies on how Arab and English doctoral students construct gratitude. This study aims to address this gap by analysing the acknowledgement genre in both Arabic and English. Thus, this study aims to analyse the patterns of gratitude expressions in the acknowledgement section of Arabic doctoral dissertations written by Algerian postgraduates and English doctoral dissertations. In addition, this study aims to examine gender differences in the patterns of gratitude during the process of writing the acknowledgement section. The study seeks answers to the following questions:

• What are the similarities and/or differences in the patterns of gratitude expressions in the acknowledgement section of English doctoral dissertations and Arabic doctoral dissertations?

• Does gender affect the patterns of gratitude expressions in the writing of the acknowledgement?

The examination of acknowledgements holds great importance within the realm of discourse analysis due to its indispensable role in the dissertation writing process. The patterns of gratitude expressions in doctoral dissertation acknowledgements have been extensively studied in various languages. However, there is a need to explore the influence of situational factors, such as the author’s gender, on the linguistic patterns used to express gratitude. The choice of gender as a variable is motivated by findings of previous studies, including the study by Hyland and Tse (2004), which found that gratitude expression is influenced by cultural and linguistic differences. Gender roles vary significantly across languages and cultures. Therefore, it is essential to see how gender influences the use of gratitude expressions in academic discourse. In addition, as the study by Alhammadi, Rabab’ah, and Alghazo (2024) shows that women use more emotive and expressive language than men, which obviously affects the expression of gratitude. Thus, exploring gender differences in gratitude expression provides insights into the different language styles used by both genders. Furthermore, there is a lack of research undertaken on the topic of acknowledgements in doctoral dissertations in the Algerian context. This study has the potential to contribute to existing research by examining the influence of factors such as gender on the patterns of gratitude in the acknowledgement section. This study can help students learn how to construct acknowledgements in both languages. In addition, it can be beneficial for educators and learners to master acknowledgement writing by raising their awareness of the patterns of this genre, as well as creating standard and tailored acknowledgements for the goal of teaching English for academic purposes.

As a standard practice in academic writing, students often include an acknowledgement section in their dissertations to show their gratitude for any help they received while working on their research project. In the last two decades, the genre of acknowledgement has gained growing attention from many scholars. It has been studied in different languages. Hyland and Tse (2004) investigated the linguistic patterns of gratitude in the acknowledgement sections of 240 English dissertations at five Hong Kong universities. The linguistic analysis revealed that the gratitude expressions were realised in five lexico-grammatical patterns, namely, nominalisation, performative verbs, adjectives, passive, and bear mention. The study found that there is variation in the linguistic patterns used in master’s theses compared with doctoral dissertations, that the most frequent nominalisation form was the noun, and that the nominalisation and performative verbs were dominant when expressing gratitude for academic and moral support, whereas the adjective, passive, and the bare mention patterns were more frequent when writers offered their thanks for resources. Research also included studies of the expression of gratitude in other languages. Al-Ali (2010) explored the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement sections of 100 Arabic doctoral dissertations in 10 disciplines. The study found that the two most common ways in which Arab writers express their gratitude are through the use of nominalisation and performative verb patterns. The researcher concluded that socio-cultural factors impact and shape the expression of gratitude patterns in the acknowledgement section.

Other studies investigated the use of gratitude expressions in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations by second language (L2) learners. For example, Yang (2012) examined the influence of the discipline variable on the linguistic choices of gratitude expression by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners by analysing the acknowledgement sections of 120 doctoral dissertations written by Taiwanese students in the United States. By using Hyland’s (2004) taxonomy of gratitude expression patterns, the researcher found that there is no apparent difference in the ranking of patterns between the soft and hard sciences. In both fields, the performative verb pattern was the predominant pattern, followed by the bare mention. Nevertheless, students in the soft sciences frequently used bare mention to express gratitude towards family members, while hard science students used it to express gratitude towards other academic instructors. The least used pattern was the passive pattern, which was used nearly twice as often in the hard disciplines, mostly to thank committee members and institutions, while soft science students used it to thank various addressees. The author’s conclusion suggests that variations in discipline have an impact on how authors construct their acknowledgements, including who they choose to thank and the linguistic patterns they employ. Altakhaineh, Younes, and Allawama (2024) examined how master’s students use gratitude expressions to construct academic identity through their MA thesis acknowledgements. They analysed the use of 50 English language acknowledgement sections written by Jordanian master’s students recorded from 2015 to 2023 and thus exposed the students’ pragmalinguistic practices. The findings showed that the expression of gratitude was greatly affected by the students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Gratitude was found to be infused with culturally specific content in the acknowledgement sections, where writing and linguistic abilities were adapted to academic conventions in English. The study also found that the students negotiated their identities as non-native English users in the acknowledgement sections by harmonising their cultural values and the academic norms in English academic writing.

Another study on L2 writers’ use of gratitude expression patterns in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations is Jaroenkitboworn (2014), which analysed the acknowledgement sections of 70 doctoral dissertations authored by Thai learners of English. The analysis of patterns of gratitude expression showed that the performative verb pattern was mostly employed in thanking academics and thanking for financial support, followed by nominalisation, which was employed when thanking for data and documentation and moral support, adjectives, bare mention, and passive patterns. Hussein and Abdulkhaleq (2013) compared the gratitude expression in 80 acknowledgements written by native English speakers and Arabic speakers using Hyland’s (2004) framework. The finding revealed that Arabic writers used more intensifiers than English authors, while native English writers used more hedged nominalisation, performative verbs, and adjectives. In addition, Arabic writers used verbal sentences more than nominal sentences, and passive structures were not used in Arabic and were rarely used in English.

A third body of research ventured to explore cross-linguistic differences in the use of gratitude expression patterns in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations. Afip, Ustati, and Dahan (2013), for example, analysed acknowledgements composed by Malay and Chinese postgraduates and found that both Malay and Chinese students employed the following patterns to realise their gratitude: nominalisation, performative verbs, adjectives, and bare mention. The passive pattern did not exist in the analysed corpus. The data uncovered that Chinese employed more bare mention patterns and were, therefore, more reserved while expressing their gratitude, whereas Malay students were more expressive when expressing their gratitude. Similarly, Estaji and Nosrati (2018) compared the use of gratitude expression patterns by Iranian and Non-Persian Speakers in 41 acknowledgement sections and found that to realise their gratitude, both groups preferred to use nominalisation as the preferred pattern followed by adjectives, performative verbs, and bare mention patterns and that there were no instances of the passive pattern in both groups. Cheng (2012) similarly analysed 60 acknowledgement sections written by Taiwanese and North American students in the field of Applied Linguistics. The study found three forms of linguistic realisation the authors employed to perform their explicit gratitude: nouns, verbs, and adjectives, with the preferred forms of expressing gratitude being different. The noun form was more popular among Taiwanese students, whereas the verb form was more common among North American students.

A fourth area of research concerned the influence of gender on the gratitude expression patterns of writers. For example, Tang (2021) investigated how male and female students construct their thanking acts in their MA theses acknowledgements by analysing 100 English acknowledgements written by postgraduates in Taiwan in the field of Linguistics. The researcher found that the strategy of expressing gratitude was formulated using performative verbs, adjectives, or a nominal expression. It was discovered that female students use a greater range of lexical items and modifiers to convey their gratitude. The researcher determined that female postgraduates exhibited greater emotional expressiveness compared to their male counterparts. This difference was attributed to social expectations surrounding gender roles and the practical implications of linguistic behaviour related to expressing gratitude.

Based on the review of the aforementioned studies, it can be concluded that the genre of acknowledgement has been a subject of great interest for researchers in the last two decades. Some of these studies were concerned with the way gratitude in the acknowledgement section is constructed in one language or more, while other studies were contrastive in their endeavour. However, no study has ever attempted to examine how Algerian doctoral postgraduate students construct and realise their gratitude in the acknowledgement sections in Arabic. Based on these remarks, this study aims to bridge this gap by analysing patterns of gratitude in Algerian postgraduates’ acknowledgements in Arabic and comparing them to native English postgraduates’ acknowledgements. Furthermore, this study seeks to compare between males and females to investigate the impact of gender on the realisation of patterns of gratitude.

This research provides insights into the genre of acknowledgement section in Arabic and English by exploring its lexico-grammatical features. More specifically, it looks at the linguistic choices and patterns employed by the authors to express their gratitude. At the level of gratitude expressions, we found that each group has its own ranking of patterns of gratitude proposed by Hyland and Tse (2004), namely, nominalisation, performative verb, adjective, passive, and bare mention, in the English acknowledgements written by native English writers. The performative verb was the dominant pattern, followed by adjectives, nominalisation, bare mention, and passive verbs. In the Arabic acknowledgements, the nominalisation pattern was used more frequently, followed by the performative verb pattern, followed by Bare mention, which was the least used pattern. Searle (1969) described the act of thanking as an expressive illocutionary act where the speaker shows gratitude for the hearer’s beneficial participation in a prior action. The speaker then feels appreciative of that action and expresses his gratitude through speech\utterance. Similarly, Hyland and Tse (2004) described acknowledgements as the space where the writer can show his gratitude for the assistance of others in written expressions. For Hyland and Tse (2004), the main communicative purpose of the acknowledgement section is to express gratitude and recognition\acknowledgement in writing to individuals and institutions that contributed to the completion of the research work\thesis\dissertation. Thus, we can consider the acknowledgement section as a written form of the speech act of thanking.

Nominalisation, performative verb, adjective, passive, and bare mention are five patterns of gratitude that Hyland and Tse (2004) proposed as the realisation of gratitude in written English acknowledgements. All these patterns were found in our two corpora. However, differences were found in the type and frequency of pattern used to realise gratitude among the two corpora. In the acknowledgements written by native speakers of English, we found that the performative verb pattern was the most prevalent pattern, followed by adjective, nominalisation, bare mention, and passive. In the Arabic acknowledgements, writers used the nominalisation pattern most frequently, followed by the performative verb pattern, and then the bare mention. In the first group, writers produced more gratitude expressions than the other group. The most frequent pattern of gratitude used by native English authors was the performative verb. In particular, they preferred the verb form “I thank,” which was heavily used in their texts. Other forms were also found, namely, appreciated, acknowledged, expressed gratitude appreciation, extended (my) thanks appreciation, owe thanks gratitude, recognised, gave thanks appreciation, and paid tribute.

The adjective pattern was the second common pattern employed by native writers. They preferred to use the adjective “grateful.” Other adjectives were also employed, namely, indebted, thankful, and appreciative, but at a low frequency. On the other hand, the pattern of nominalisation ranked third. The noun “thanks” was the dominant form alongside the nouns “my\gratitude,” “my appreciation,” and “thanks and appreciation” that were rarely used. Moreover, bare mention ranked fourth in the order of patterns employed by natives to express their gratitude. In addition, compared to the other group, native English writers commonly used more bare mention patterns. The passive pattern was the least used pattern by native speakers in their acknowledgements.

In the second group, the Arabic acknowledgements, writers preferred to use the nominalisation pattern; the noun Ɂaʃ-ʃukr “al-shoukr” “thanks” was the dominant form in the Arabic acknowledgements followed by the performative verb pattern. The simple verb Ɂaʃkuru “ashkourou” “I thank” was the most frequent verb form, and one rare instance of the form نثني “naθni” “we praise” was found. In their study, Hussein and AbdulKhaleq (2013) confirmed that in Arabic, a sentence is categorised as either nominal or verbal. A nominal sentence indicates a permanent activity, whereas a verbal statement suggests a temporary action. Our results showed that in Arabic acknowledgement sections, writers’ gratitude is meant to be permanent. There was a tendency to use a combination of two or more synonymous nouns الشكر والإمتنان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “thanks and gratitude”الشكر والعرفان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan “thanks and recognition” الشكر والتقدير Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂat-taqdiir “thanks and appreciation” التقدير Ɂat-taqdiir “al-taqdiir” “appreciation” الثناء Ɂaθ-θanaaɁ “al-θanaaɁ” “praise” شكر وتقدير وعرفان ʃukr wa taqdiir wa Ɂirfaan “thanks and appreciation and recognition” إمتنان وعرفان Ɂimtinaan wa Ɂirfaan “gratitude and recognition” عرفان بالحق Ɂirfaan bi-Ɂalhaq “recognition” شكر وتقدير وإمتنان ʃukr wa taqdiir wa Ɂimtinaan “thanks and appreciation and gratitude” الشكر والثناء Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂaθ-θanaaɁ “thanks and praise” الإمتنان Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “gratitude” تقدير وعرفان taqdiir wa Ɂirfaan “appreciation and recognition” ثناء وإمتنان θanaaɁ wa Ɂimtinaan “praise and gratitude” الشكر والتقدير والإمتنان والعرفان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂat-taqdiir wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan “thanks and appreciation and gratitude and recognition.” The third pattern, “bare mention” in Arabic acknowledgements, was employed to realise gratitude expressed to academics, friends, and colleagues. As suggested by Hyland and Tse (2004), this pattern reflects reluctance on the part of the writer to give explicit thanks. However, our finding contradicts Hyland and Tse’s (2004) finding that this pattern was employed only when offering gratitude for resources, notably from institutions, and specifically for financial support. All that has been discussed earlier concerning the lexical realisation of gratitude in the acknowledgement section is in line with Cheng’s (2012) finding that while expressing their gratitude, acknowledgers’ cultural beliefs and ideas about\understandings of gratitude could influence the ways they choose to communicate their thanks, the strategies they employ, and the words\language they use.

As for gender differences, the present study explores the potential effect of gender on the production of postgraduate doctoral acknowledgement in English and Arabic. More specifically, we examine the extent to which the gender of the authors may affect their choice of linguistic\patterns of gratitude expressions in their acknowledgement sections. The analysis has shown that there are some differences in the use of linguistic features by both genders in the acknowledgement section among the two groups. The results showed that Hyland and Tse (2004) patterns were used in the male and female texts, namely, nominalisation, performative verb, adjective, passive, and bare mention. However, differences were found in the type and frequency of patterns used to express gratitude in acknowledgement sections. Our findings oppose those reported by Tang (2021). Tang (2021, p. 529) found that female postgraduates are more emotionally expressive than their male counterparts in academic written discourse. Our results, conversely, suggested that male postgraduates are more expressive than female postgraduates by producing more gratitude expressions. In the first group, native English writers, male writers produced more gratitude expressions than their female counterparts. The most frequent pattern of gratitude used by native English authors was the Performative verb; both females and males preferred using the verb form “I thank.” Moreover, it was noticed that the females used bare mention as the second common pattern, followed by the adjective pattern. The adjective “grateful” was more frequent than other adjective options found in the female acknowledgement. The other adjectives employed by females are indebted and thankful. The nominalisation pattern ranked fourth; the noun “thanks” was the most used form among other nouns, namely, my gratitude, my appreciation, thanks, and appreciation. On the other hand, males used nominalisation as the second most common pattern. The noun “thanks” was the dominant form alongside with the noun “gratitude” that was rarely used. The adjective pattern was the third pattern employed by male writers. Like females, males preferred to use the adjective “grateful.” Males also employed other adjectives, namely, indebted, thankful, and appreciative. Bare mention ranked fourth in the order of patterns employed by male writers to express their gratitude. In addition, the passive pattern was the least used pattern by both genders.

In the second group, Arabic acknowledgements, both genders produced an equal number of gratitude expressions. Both male and female writers preferred to use the nominalisation pattern; the noun Ɂal-ʃukr “al-shoukr” “thanks” was the dominant form used by both genders in the Arabic acknowledgements. In addition, males used a wide range of nouns including الشكر والإمتنانɁaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “thanks and gratitude” الشكر والتقدير Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂat-taqdiir “thanks and appreciation” الشكر والعرفان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan “thanks and recognition” الثناء Ɂaθ-θanaaɁ “praise” التقدير Ɂat-taqdiir “al-taqdiir” “appreciation” تقدير وعرفان taqdiir wa Ɂirfaan “appreciation and recognition” امتنان وعرفان Ɂimtinaan wa Ɂirfaan “gratitude and recognition” الشكر والثناء Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂaθ-θanaaɁ “thanks and praise” شكر تقدر وعرفان ʃukr wa taqdiir wa Ɂirfaan “thanks and appreciation and recognition” شكر وتقدير وإمتنان ʃukr wa taqdiir wa Ɂimtinaan “thanks and appreciation and gratitude” الشكر والتقدير والإمتنان والعرفان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂat-taqdiir wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan “thanks and appreciation and gratitude and recognition.” Where females included the following nouns: الشكروالعرفان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan “thanks and recognition” الشكر والتقدير Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂat-taqdiir “thanks and appreciation” الشكر والإمتنان Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “thanks and gratitude” تقديري taqdiir “appreciation” الشكر والعرفان والتقدير Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂal-Ɂirfaan wa Ɂat-taqdiir “thanks and recognition and appreciation” عرفانا بالحق Ɂirfaan bi-Ɂalhaq “recognition” الإمتنان Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “gratitude” العرفان والإمتنان Ɂal- Ɂirfaan wa Ɂal-Ɂimtinaan “recognition and gratitude” ثناء وإمتنان θanaaɁ wa Ɂimtinaan “praise and gratitude” الشكر والثناء Ɂaʃ-ʃukr wa Ɂaθ-θanaaɁ “thanks and praise” followed by the Performative verb pattern, the simple verb Ɂaʃkuru “ashkourou” “I thank” was the most frequent form used by both genders. Yet, males marked a rare use of the verb form “نثني” “naθni” “we praise” concerning the pattern “Bare mention,” females were more likely to employ this type of implicit thanking strategy. Our findings contradict the study by Hussein and Abdulkhaleq’s (2013) on the influence of the writer’s gender on the pragmatic performance of the speech act of thanking in theses acknowledgements, which concluded that females are more grateful than males.

This article comparatively analysed expressions of gratitude within the acknowledgement sections of English- and Arabic-written doctoral dissertations to examine the nature of such social communicative acts in both cultures and languages. Of interest is the clear difference noted in the expression of gratitude between English and Arabic dissertations. The study found direct ways of using performative verbs and adjectives in the expression of gratitude in English acknowledgements, thus portraying characteristics of Western academic discourse. On the other hand, Arabic acknowledgements used nominalisation for the greatest part, with heavy preferential use for expressions that would reflect the continuous state of being grateful, which reflected an Arabic culture that was interested in maintaining its constant relationships and honour. Moreover, English and Arabic linguistic corpora exhibited distinguished gender differences. The female, speaking in English, preferred to bare mention with no qualification and the use of performative verbs. Perhaps this signalled that she was more personal and direct in her way of thanking. The male author seemed to use more nominalisation, probably indicating the nature of the thanking as formal and, in a way, distanced. These visible differences in Arabic existed where male writers showed a very high frequency of nominalisation. However, this showed that there is a clear trend for male communication to be more formal and to show permanent expressions of gratitude that, in some cases, may reflect some social expectations about male communication in the academic environment or even in the professional world.

Though it provides very enlightening insights into the cultural and gender differences related to the expression and receipt of gratitude within academic contexts, some limitations are to be noted in this study. First, limiting its scope to only the English and Arabic languages means that the study never becomes a representation of the global diversity in acknowledgement in dissertations worldwide. Expansion of the research to other languages helps understand linguistic and cultural variation. Second, the study method, through some highly strict dividing acknowledgements by language and sex, is likely to overlook the effects of other highly important factors, like the interdisciplinary character of the author, the kind of research that was conducted, or the general kind and preference of the author in giving thanks. The study primarily relied on a qualitative analysis of written acknowledgements. The broader methodological approaches of, for instance, interviews with authors regarding the intentions and perceptions of the cultural and gender differences when making the choice of expressions of gratitude would be, to that extent, recommended, perhaps granting some of the deeper insights into the motives behind these. Third, heavy reliance on the frameworks developed mostly for the English case may not capture the subtleties in Arabic well; hence, it may bias the analysis made on Arabic texts. This requires a more culturally sensitive framework of analysis to guide better understanding and interpretation of the acknowledgements written in Arabic. Finally, only 80 dissertations constituted the sample in the study. An increase in the number of dissertations and a wider range of universities and countries would enhance the generalizability of the results.

This opens up further research in quite a good number of areas. Future studies may make use of languages and cultural backgrounds far and wide to paint a better picture of how the expression of gratitude is constructed in multiple academic communities around the world. The area that has yet to see such a venture would be the impact of disciplinary differences, which in turn could be possibly very fruitful, perhaps even further, with the help of any comparative studies between different academic disciplines. These same researchers would be well used to help with qualitative methods, such as interviews or focus groups with writers, in an attempt to explore further why such expressions are used and what personal feelings or reasons lie behind the choice. That would make a more detailed, clear picture of the interplay of individual agency and cultural norms within the given field of academic writing. Another aspect of the role and impact of gratitude markers in academic papers might include a further study of how these acknowledgements are actually received by the respective audiences. What do peers, mentors, and academic communities perceive from different expressions of gratitude in the acknowledgements of a dissertation?