Genre Analysis of Dissertation Acknowledgements: A Comparative Study across Contexts

In contrast to those in its Chinese-speaking counterparts, namely China and Hong Kong, the generic structures of acknowledgements in dissertations in Taiwan are understudied. To address this gap, this study examined 120 MA and PhD dissertation acknowledgements written by Taiwanese Chinese-speaking writers in terms of their generic structure and linguistic features in order to investigate whether differences exist within a common culture, and to explore the possible causes of any differences. The results suggest that the authors generally followed the same three-tier structure of writing dissertation acknowledgements as is used by Chinese and Hong Kong writers. However, contextual factors such as academic, socio-cultural or geographical differences among the three settings also affected their construction of moves and choices of linguistic elements. It was found that the rhetorical language in our corpus was relatively direct, emotional, and definite. Moreover, a new step called Making a Confession , which was not reported in the other two settings, was identified in this study. Suggestions for further investigations as well as pedagogical implications are offered.