CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.0 Why study acknowledgements p. 1 1.1 Aims p. 2 1.2 Approach p. 3 1.3 Theoretical background p. 4 1.4 Corpus p. 8 1.5 Overview of chapters p. 10 CHAPTER 2. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS 2.0 Introduction p. 11 2.1 Functions p. 11 2.2 Formal features p. 14 2.3 Content p. 15 2.4 Complexity p. 17 2.5 Genre status p. 22 2.6 Context of situation 2.6.1 Field 2.6.2 Tenor 2.6.3 Mode p. p. p. p. 2.7 Conclusion p. 56 42 42 47 52 CHAPTER 3. SPEECH ACT PERSPECTIVE 3.0 Introduction p. 59 3.1 Speech acts and genre exemplars p. 59 3.2 PDAs as acts of thanking 3.2.1 Taxonomic principles 3.2.2 Constitutive conditions 3.2.3 Summary of comparable features p. p. p. p. 3.3 Review of literature 3.3.1 Studies on the speech act of thanking p. 74 p. 75 61 61 70 72 I 3.3.1.1 Impact of contextual variables 3.3.1.2 Encoding of gratitude: form and function 3.3.2 Studies on ASs 3.3.2.1 The professional-social value of ASs 3.3.2.2 Realization patterns of the main notions 3.4 Implications of findings p. p. p. p. p. 75 83 89 89 96 p. 104 CHAPTER 4. ANALYSIS OF TEXTS 4.0 Introduction p. 107 4.1 Basis for the analysis 4.1.1 Sample analyses p. 107 p. 108 4.2 Identification of AMs 4.2.1 Identifiability of a hierarchical structure within AMs p. 114 p. 120 4.3 Size p. 123 4.4 Titles p. 127 4.5 Global structure 4.5.1 Introductory and concluding moves 4.5.1.1 Micro introductory and concluding moves 4.5.2 Order of benefactors 4.5.3 Syntax (and semantics) of AMs 4.5.4 Conclusion p. p. p. p. p. p. 4.6 Benefactor units 4.6.1 Benefactor expansions 4.6.2 Conclusion p. 146 p. 159 p. 165 4.7 Benefit units 4.7.1 Benefit expansions 4.7.2 Conclusion p. 166 p. 176 p. 181 4.8 Gratitude expressions 4.8.1 Expansions of gratitude expressions 4.8.2 Conclusion p. 182 p. 194 p. 199 4.9 An approach to the grammar of thanking p. 200 II 128 128 132 134 139 145 4.9.1 Patterns in gratitude expressions and expansions 4.9.2 Patterns in benefactor units and expansions 4.9.3 Patterns in benefit units and expansions 4.9.4 Global patterns 4.9.4.1 AMs with no gratitude expressions 4.9.4.2 AMs with gratitude expressions 4.9.4.3 Multi-clause AMs 4.9.5 Summary of patterns 4.10 Concluding remarks p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. 203 207 213 218 218 221 225 228 p. 229 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS 5.0 Introduction p. 235 5.1 The nature and value of PDAs p. 235 5.2 Contribution of the analysis and summary of features p. 241 5.3 Future perspectives p. 244 REFERENCES p. 247 III CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0 WHY STUDY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Among academic genres, acknowledgements enjoy a privileged status. From a typographic viewpoint, they occupy a distinct, dedicated textual space, which makes them easily identifiable. From a functional viewpoint, they are characterized by a focused topic and goal, which makes them easily interpretable. Most importantly, from an interactional viewpoint, they bridge the gap between two facets of the writer’s lifeworlds – the public prominence of their scholarly figure and the intimate domain of their private life, which qualifies them as a revealing link between the writer, their work and their readership. Set as they are at the interface between private and public communication, acknowledgements provide an instructive and entertaining glimpse into the context surrounding the coming to life of a textual product. They are instructive because they inform the reader of the circumstances that have accompanied and affected the writing process, which are not otherwise reported in the main text the acknowledgements are relevant to. They are entertaining because their content and wording are light, and while useful to a better appreciation of the larger text they preface, they are not indispensable to its full understanding. These features frame acknowledgements as a relaxing interactional oasis before a more demanding, intensive and prolonged interpretive textual task. Acknowledgements in academic texts are particularly interesting because they hint at the tension underlining the contrasting demands placed on the author by the latter’s multi-faceted interactional role-relationships. On the one hand, acknowledgements offer the scholar a relatively unconstrained opportunity to mention what matters to them: maybe a carefully selected and specially edited representation of their self – their Goffmanian face, to be projected and put at stake in the interaction – meant to portray them as likeable and reliable. In this respect, acknowledgements are the conventionally agreed-upon, liberating textual territory were authors can be themselves, or represent the self they want to appear to be. On the other hand, acknowledgements present authors with the chance to balance out the social debts incurred during, and as a result of, the 1 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology writing process – their deeply felt, or conventionalized, and motivated gratitude – meant to map out their professional allegiance, intellectual affiliation and cultural dependence on others. In this second respect, acknowledgements are a constraining, potentially dangerous interactional space, where benefactors’ feelings can get hurt and where authors can undermine their future academic prospects, if benefactors are not shown “due” deference. There are therefore several reasons why acknowledgements are worth studying. They are spontaneously produced communicative acts: they are planned and revised, but not specially elicited. They exemplify elaborate speech acts: their rich content, composite structure, and focus on relational needs reveals the interpersonal significance they are laden with. They are not formulaic: although conventional in purpose, they are realized through a variety of lexico-grammatical means which leave room for innovative wording. Also, despite their specific, almost obvious goal-oriented nature, they are not straightforward, let alone banal, communicative acts in any way: they present internal contradictions which affect their global organization and linguistic encoding; for instance, they are public documents which contain private information about personal circumstances; they are conceptually separable from, but physically attached to, the larger texts they introduce; their rationale is the expression of gratitude, but their focus is on the description of benefits and benefactors that gratitude is relevant to. Finally, they are virtually ubiquitous in academic writing: acknowledgements can accompany academic books, journals articles, book chapters, proceedings papers; their frequency – and, in the case of books and dissertations, their length too – suggests that their authors consider them professionally and/or personally valuable. What, then, makes acknowledgements valuable? Why do people write them? What is in them for their writers and readers? When are they communicatively effective and interactionally appropriate? What are their official and underlying goals? How can one tell if their goals have been achieved? Do they follow a standard format? Are they predictable in content? What are their recurrent phraseologies? The present work sets out to describe the thematic topics, structural components and encoding patterns in acknowledgements as can be found in PhD dissertations. 1.1 AIMS This book presents a textual analysis of the discursive strategies employed by PhD candidates who publicly acknowledge their benefactors in written texts for help received while writing their dissertations. The broader aim of the study is to 2 Introduction provide a description of the content and structural organization of PhD dissertation acknowledgements (henceforth PDAs) with regard to the relevant contexts of situation and culture. The more specific objectives include: defining PDAs as extended speech acts of thanking; identifying their recurrent functional components; outlining the lexico-grammatical patterns of realization of the main components of their constituent Acknowledgement Moves (henceforth AMs). My analysis focuses on increasingly specific aspects of PDAs. I first examine the genre status of these communicative acts, that is, (the reasons for) their noticeable textual homogeneity as well as their degree of internal variability. Next, I explore their most salient global characteristics (in terms of structure, functions and content). I then motivate a definition of them as macro speech acts of thanking and outline their basic recursive structure; in other words, I show how a PDA writer’s main communicative purpose (i.e. an expressive illocutionary intent) is made relevant to multiple, comparable interactional settings. I proceed to identify the core and supportive functional units of PDAs’ component moves, which reveal the importance of the interpersonal dimension of communication. Finally, I detail their linguistic encoding; that is, I illustrate their lexico-syntactic ways of expressing gratitude, whether conventional and typified or innovative and original. This work is thus meant to contribute to an identification of generic properties as relatable to the situational and cultural contexts in which PDAs are produced, to an understanding of what extended speech acts (of thanking) consist of, and to a description of the lexico-grammar of thanking in writing. 1.2 APPROACH The study combines a qualitative description of the PDA genre, in general, with a quantitative examination of a set of PDAs, in particular. The description includes a definition and characterization of PDAs from a formal and functional point of view. That is, I examine in detail their illocutionary nature (i.e. the expression of a specific reactive psychological state), account for their main properties in relation to their communicative rationale, discuss their communicative complexity and relevance to the interactants’ interpersonal needs, and point out the features worth exploring in PDAs on the basis of findings from studies of comparable kinds of texts. In sum, by outlining their typical context of situation and by drawing on insights from speech act theory and genre studies, I provide a pragmatic account of the interactional role and value of PDAs. To this end, I also include sample detailed descriptions of PDAs 3 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology excerpts meant to reveal how the patterns relevant to the encoding gratitude are actually instantiated in complete texts (see chapters 2, 3 and 4). The complementary, quantitative analysis involves a series of steps: the determination of a text sampling procedure (i.e. the decision of which PDAs to collect: how many, from where, and why); the collection and electronic formatting of the sampled texts; the elaboration of a coding scheme for the analysis of formal and functional properties of the texts; the identification, classification and manual tagging of the PDAs’ moves, move components and their lexico-grammatical encoding options; the identification, classification and manual tagging of the main notions conveyed and of their sequencing patterns in the texts; and the importing of the raw and tagged data into worksheets for the analysis of the frequency and distribution patterns of the above features. The aim of the quantitative analysis is to provide an account of what is typical of the genre (e.g. frequency, distribution, order and encoding of moves and notions) and of its degree of internal variation on the basis of actual textual data (see chapter 4). The combined quantitative-qualitative approach adopted is aimed at describing and accounting for the elaborate linguistic make-up of PDAs, identifying the socially relevant communicative actions performed through them, and assessing their social salience in the cultural context in which they are produced (see chapter 5). 1.3 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The research presented here is relevant to the disciplines of pragmatics, text linguistics, genre studies, and corpus analysis. Pragmatics aims at describing and accounting for co- and con-textualized language use, in particular the relationship between language form and language function (i.e. the addresser’s strategic use of language for the achievement of linguistic and non-linguistic ends), and the relevance of cognitive and sociocultural expectations to the interpretation assigned to and the effects determined by units of speech or writing in specific settings (i.e. the addressee’s participation in the co-construction of meaning). My analysis aims at describing how dissertation writers construct, maintain and shape their relationships with their benefactors, and their readers, by performing exchanges of services through the use of language; it is also meant to account for the typical elaborateness of these texts by referring to the shared and unshared backgrounds of the participants involved in the communicative act; furthermore, it specifically describes PDAs as speech acts of thanking. More 4 Introduction generally, it offers a possible, context-based explanation for PDA authors’ attempts to achieve both communicative effectiveness (as writers of semiofficial documents meant for a public audience) and interpersonal acceptability (as individuals aware of their social obligations and interactional responsibilities). For these reasons, this study lies in the domain of pragmatics. A theoretical approach directly relevant to the intended analysis is offered by the pragmatics of speech act theory as developed by Austin and Searle. According to speech act theory, the basic unit of communication is the speech act, an intentional act that a speaker realizes with words in order to achieve a given purpose in relation to the hearer (Searle 1969: 21). Every speech act can be labelled with a name identifying its communicative essence, is governed by rules (i.e. requires the fulfilment of co- and con-textual conditions), enacts one of a few main types of communicative exchanges, may realize multiple functions, and may be encoded through a number of linguistic means. Similarly, PDAs can be defined in terms of what their authors want to carry out through them in relation to their addressees (i.e. express feelings that help restore the balance of social credits and debts); they can make sense and be effective if certain pre-conditions are met (e.g. their writers must have completed their dissertations and are supposed to feel indebted to their helpers and supporters); they fulfil complementary purposes through their functional components (which may serve to compliment benefactors, explain to the reader the authors’ relationship to the benefactors, and describe benefits received) and also through their reliance on contextual information (i.e. the intention to thank may be implied and recovered from the accompanying units of information). Particularly useful for the study of elaborate communicative acts interpretable as instantiations of speech acts is the contribution of Cohen and Olshtain (1981) and Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) to the analysis of extended speech acts and speech act sets. Their approach consists in paying attention to the specific and variable lexico-grammatical encoding of the gist of the speech act (i.e. the possible strategies for manifesting the relevant illocution) and in examining its immediate co-text (i.e. identifying the type, determining the sequence and classifying the variable realization of its possible complementary functional units and/or corollary speech acts). As carefully planned, originalityoriented, composite texts that contain several units of information and may carry out multiple functions, PDAs lend themselves to an analysis that considers both the variety of linguistic means available for their encoding and the variable organization of their structural components, which can be adapted to everchanging contextual needs. 5 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Text linguistics deals with the classification and description of stretches of speech or writing that function as cohesive, coherent and self-contained units of communication. One of my goals is indeed to describe the formal and functional structure of complete and organic units of language use by relating them, on the one hand, to the interactants’ communicative purposes and strategies, and on the other hand, to the options offered and the constraints imposed by the situational context. The analysis I present considers both macro (i.e. structural, contentrelated) and micro (i.e. stylistic, lexico-syntactic) characteristics of PDAs in an attempt to account for their interpretability (i.e. understandability, unity, completeness, orientation towards a specific goal, and mutual relevance of their component parts). As a result, this study counts as an exercise in text linguistics. An inspiring theoretical approach to a textual examination of PDAs is provided by systemic functional linguistics (e.g. Downing and Locke 2002, Eggins 1994, Halliday 1994, Martin 1992). Its assumptions are that language users’ choices depend, on the one hand, on the options offered and constraints imposed by the linguistic system available to them (e.g. in terms of phonology, lexicon, syntax), and on the other hand, on the contexts of situation and culture in which they produce their texts. Systemic functional linguistics proposes an analysis of the threefold structure of the clauses that make up a stretch of speech or writing (i.e. as representations that encode experience, as exchanges that convey interpersonal meanings, and as messages that build stretches of text) that shows how the lexico-grammatical make-up of a given text (in particular its transitivity, modality and thematic structures) is systematically linked to the kind of interactional event it is part of, the role-relationships between the interactants, and the cohesive and strategic organization of the communicative act itself (technically called the field, tenor and mode of the context of situation, respectively). In short, systemic functional linguistics offers viable guidelines for accounting for the linguistic characteristics of a text by correlating them to relevant properties of the context of situation. Characterizing given texts’ contexts of situation and describing their multifunctional encoding of meanings about reality, relations, and language behaviour (see Halliday 1978) is particularly useful in the case of PDAs. Their writers set the encoding of such meanings as their overt aims: they purposely record professional and personal experiences that constitute the background of their dissertation projects; they enact interactional roles meant to manage at least temporarily unbalanced social relationships; they present carefully planned linguistic products that create expectations about their reception and function in the interaction. As a result, the concepts and descriptive criteria of systemic functional linguistics are particularly relevant to a description of the 6 Introduction interrelationships between their wording, their meanings, and their culturalcontextual relevance of PDAs. Genre studies identify, classify and describe the shared semantic and stylistic properties of communicative acts that can be grouped together due to a common (set of) main purpose(s). My examination of PDAs is in line with these research objectives in three respects: first, it involves determining what linguistic, structural and functional features PDAs share such that they can be considered instantiations of the same kind of communicative act; also, it aims at revealing their degree of internal variation; and finally it is meant to identify their prototypical realization. Precisely because it draws attention to what makes a PDA a PDA (i.e. its communicative purpose and the properties instrumental to it), this work also makes a contribution to genre studies. Genre studies of non-fictional texts as carried out by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) have convincingly described genres as sets of partially or totally linguistic, purpose-oriented, conventionalized communicative acts which provide the members of given discourse communities with the means to successfully engage in recurrent interactional practices. PDAs constitute such a class since they are meant to satisfy a purpose (i.e. expressing a favourable attitude towards the writers’ benefactors) by means of conventional procedures (i.e. describing the benefits received and identifying the relevant benefactors) and through the medium of language (i.e. both stylistically and content-wise, PDAs represent finished linguistic products). The criteria adopted by the above scholars for defining and describing such genres are therefore also applicable to PDAs as goal-oriented conventionalized communicative acts. Corpus analysis of Languages for Specific Purposes (henceforth LSPs) consists in the computer-assisted identification and description of the most frequent and typical patterns of realization of meanings in large samples of texts produced in relation to given specialized activities. My analysis of PDAs includes listing, classifying and quantifying their various lexico-grammatical forms of encoding gratitude and its supportive notions as well as detecting their structural organization by automatically retrieving words, collocations, and appropriately tagged text segments. Because it systematically examines various types of features of a body of texts in electronic format, assembled for linguistic description and representative of the same type of communicative act, this study can also be said to apply the methods of corpus linguistics to text analysis. Corpus linguistic studies have repeatedly shown (e.g. Kennedy 1998) that several aspects of LSPs (e.g. connotations of individual words, typical 7 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology collocations, text-specific syntactic structures) can be revealed by examining numerous examples of similar authentic texts produced within a given discourse community. For example, frequency lists of running words, concordances showing the co-text of given wordforms or expressions, the ratio between word types and tokens, part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization of texts are among the instruments that reveal in what ways and to what extent LSP texts are similar to or differ from Language for General Purposes texts. The texts I consider are in electronic format, manually tagged for various linguistic and textual features, and thus amenable to corpus processing analysis. The automatic retrieval of individual words or text segments and counting of their frequency of occurrence and patterns of co-occurrence provides quantitative evidence of actual language use and reveals the degree of homogeneity or variation among the texts examined. This study draws on the insights and resources of complementary linguistic sub-disciplines. By combining different lines of research into a unified analysis, I provide a co(n)textualized examination of PDAs so as to categorize their content and the forms of its realization, to provide a motivated interpretation of them as macro acts of thanking, and to describe their shared structural, semantic and formal properties in relation to their contexts of production and reception. 1.4 CORPUS The corpus analysed comprises 50 PDAs written by PhD candidates at the University of California (henceforth UC) at Berkeley in the 1990’s. The texts were collected partly manually at the UC Berkeley libraries and partly electronically on the Internet, together with their title pages.1 The paper texts were scanned and proofread, and then all the texts were imported into Text files so as to have the corpus in electronic format, ready for manual and computerassisted analysis. I grouped the texts into ten sets (i.e. one per academic discipline), and within each, I ordered the texts alphabetically by the authors’ last names.2 The PDAs represent ten of the disciplines that UC Berkeley offers doctoral programs in. These are English (henceforth Engl) and Philosophy (henceforth 1 This ensured that I could easily recognize the names of the PhD candidates’ dissertation committee members in case these professors were mentioned in the PDAs without reference to their academic titles and/or roles. 2 Two last names occurred twice, and in such cases I considered also the authors’ first names to order the texts alphabetically. 8 Introduction Phil) for the Humanities; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (henceforth EECS), Physics (henceforth Phys) and Plant and Microbial Biology (henceforth P-Bio) for the Applied and Pure Sciences; Economics (henceforth Econ), Education (henceforth Edu) and Statistics (henceforth Stat) for the Social Sciences; and Architecture (henceforth Arch) and Business Administration (henceforth B-Adm) for the Professionally Oriented Disciplines. The corpus therefore comprises ten sub-corpora, each including five PDAs. As a whole, the corpus consists of 14,459 words,3 and more specifically: 2,052 in Arch, 835 in B-Adm, 1,080 in Econ, 2,054 in Edu, 1,847 in EECS, 2,369 in Engl, 814 in Phil, 935 in Phys, 1,607 in P-Bio and 866 in Stat. The corpus size is thus in keeping with current standards for the compilation of LSP corpora (Bowker and Pearson 2002). The texts examined display both similarities and differences. First of all, they exemplify the same specialized language (academic English as produced by budding experts) in a context where English is the native and official language; also, they instantiate the same genre given that they are motivated by the same communicative rationale (expressing gratitude for help obtained when carrying out one’s dissertation project); they also share elements of the context of situation: they were written within one institution, over the same period of time, in the same language, and by people belonging to the same professional group. On the other hand, those texts were written within ten different discourse subcommunities (as identifiable by the academic disciplines they are relevant to) by authors of both sexes (as can be understood from their names), and differ in length, detail and tone4. As a result of the above similarities and differences, the corpus appears to be quite, but not completely, homogeneous: some of the situational, independent variables (e.g. text type instantiated and main subjects dealt with) are constant, which ensures that the texts are comparable; but in addition, it presents a little internal variation (mainly with regard to its inter-disciplinary sources), which is meant to reduce the possible over- or under-occurrence of certain characteristics possibly typical of only a subset of the genre considered. Therefore, the sample of texts considered can be regarded as a fairly balanced set of PDAs, suitable for 3 The automatic word count used is not, however, totally reliable since it treats uninterrupted strings of all graphic symbols including apostrophes (e.g. father’s, didn’t, 1990’s) as single orthographic words. 4 A reason for this may also be that the Graduate Division does not provide any official guidelines to follow for the writing up of PDAs (cf. Swales and Feak 2000: 198). 9 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology an analysis of the PDA genre. However, given the small size of its sub-corpora, it is not amenable to statistically oriented cross-disciplinary comparisons. 1.5 OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS This dissertation presents a textual analysis of 50 US PDAs. More specifically, it defines those texts as macro speech acts of thanking and examines the patterns of realization of their component functional units. Chapter 1 is the introduction: it outlines the objectives of the research and identifies its relevant theoretical background; in addition, it points out the contribution that the study offers to linguistics, describes the corpus to be analyzed, and presents a synopsis of the following chapters. Chapter 2 defines PDAs from both a functional and a formal point of view, specifies what recurrent themes make up their subject matter, explains the reasons for their communicative complexity, indicates what properties qualify them as a genre, and characterizes their typical context of situation. Chapter 3 focuses on the speech act nature of PDAs. It discusses the comparability between (complex) speech acts and genre exemplars; it offers a motivated description of the PDA as an elaborate act of thanking; it reviews relevant literature on the speech act of thanking and acknowledgment sections (henceforth ASs); and it shows what components and features of acts of thanking in general are also relevant to PDAs in particular. Chapter 4 examines the corpus from both a macro and a micro perspective. It explores the global structure and characteristics of the PDAs and the specific wording of single AMs occurring in them. It includes a qualitative analysis of selected texts and text excerpts, which reveals the variety of lexico-grammatical patterns available for the encoding of written acknowledgments and also shows the partly ambiguous nature of specific textual phenomena, which turn out to be difficult to classify. It also comprises a quantitative summary of the encoding patterns identified in the corpus (i.e. the strategies for the expression of acknowledgments and the structural arrangement of the PDAs), whose occurrence is accounted for with reference to the relevant context of situation. In addition, it systematically outlines the principles adopted to consistently identify and classify the structural and notional components of the PDAs. Chapter 5 derives the conclusion from the findings presented and evaluates the study as a whole. It summarizes the main features of PDAs and offers an interpretation as to why these texts are socially valued. Finally, it points out the value of the contribution made by this study, and offers suggestions for further research on PDAs. 10 CHAPTER 2 MAIN CHARACTERISTICS 2.0 INTRODUCTION PDAs are contextualized units of language use through which dissertation writers create and sustain social ties by producing meanings. In this chapter I present a functional and a formal definition of such texts: the former highlights their interactional properties, which derive from their role as a type of social exchange; the latter reveals their main global characteristics, which are relatable to their typical context of situation. I also explain why PDAs are likely to be elaborate, rather than formulaic, texts. In addition, I motivate a definition of them as a genre, that is, I indicate why they count as a specific kind of communicative acts with shared properties. Finally, I provide an overview of the typical context of situation in which PDAs are used. Illustrative examples from the corpus are provided throughout. 2.1 FUNCTIONS From a functional point of view, a PDA is a transactional-communicative act set in a larger, staged interaction. It is a means through which the dissertation writer both acknowledges her1 participation in various interactional events and maintains her interpersonal contact with her interlocutors. Adopting terms and concepts from systemic-functional linguistics (Tsui 1989), a PDA can be defined as a delayed, supporting, responding move relevant to several exchanges, where move is to be intended as an act of participation in the interaction and exchange as a set of logically ordered interactional acts which interlocutors take turns uttering. A PDA is an interactional move, albeit an extended one, because, like a turn in a conversation, it constitutes one utterance through which the dissertation writer takes part in a multi-phase speech event with her interlocutors. Organized 1 From now on, when making reference to the dissertation/PDA writer in the singular, I will employ feminine personal pronouns and possessives. In parallel, when referring to the dissertation reader in the singular, I will employ masculine third person pronouns and possessives. 11 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology as a self-contained unit of language use, which develops around one main notion and is delimited by clear typographic boundaries, the PDA enables its writer to make one meaningful contribution to an interaction consisting of a series of moves (see the sample analyses of PDAs in section 4.1.1). These moves include: (a) the author’s (possibly indirect and possibly recurrent) request for help, (b) her benefactors’ (possibly repeated) offer or provision of help, and (c) a final exchange of information between the author and her readers (and possibly her benefactors) about those requests and offers in the form of a monologic, written communication act. Thus, PDAs are instances of typified located actions, set in and constrained by a diachronically ordered network of intertextual, dialogic communicative acts, which form interrelated systems of genres (Bazerman 1994: 97-98; cf. Räisänen 1999).2 A PDA is also a responding move because it presupposes and reacts to previous interactional contributions (cf. Coulmas 1981: 71), more specifically offers of information and/or goods-and-services3, that is, benefits; e.g.: (1) “[…] has not only been a supportive mentor but a good friend as well. We have had many personal conversations which I did not imagine possible with an advisor, and she has given many [sic] invaluable advice on my personal life” (EECS1;4 reference to offers of information)5 (2) “The project could not have been brought to its present completion without the support and contribution of many people” (Edu5; reference to offers of services) (3) “I would like to thank […] for their valuable suggestions, comments and time” (B-Adm1; reference to offers of information and services). A PDA is a delayed response because it is removed in time and place from the solicitations of interaction it refers to. That is, it is produced after the writer has benefited from her interlocutors’ offers (see Giannoni 1998: 61) or presented as such (see Swales and Feak 1994/2004: 204). This is apparent from the use of past tenses and the occasional reference to non-recent past events; e.g.: 2 On a similar note, Ben-Ari (1987: 68) points out that ASs are perceivable as parts of ongoing relationships. 3 The speech function of offers is described in Halliday (1994: 69-71). 4 Here and elsewhere, the number following the abbreviated name of the discipline/sub-corpus identifies the specific text the excerpt is taken from. 5 In this and other examples, emphasis is added, unless otherwise specified. 12 Main characteristics (4) “[…] originally suggested to me the idea of working on […]. […]’s acute criticism saved me from many mistakes. […] gave me the opportunity to read […]” (Phil1; use of past tenses in relation to benefits) (5) “I am very grateful to many professors and colleagues for interesting discussions and for guidance during the last few years” (B-Adm1; reference to the non-recent past in which benefits were provided) (6) “I am particularly indebted to the architect […], who spent many long hours working with me on the […] as I began my research” (Arch3; use of the past tense and reference to non-recent past events in relation to benefits). A PDA is also a supporting move because it fulfils the interactional expectation of the offers of help it responds to: through the PDA, the writer expresses acceptance of – and thus sustains – the manifestations of support received from various helpers; e.g.: (7) “Many individuals provided excellent guidance and inspiration for this research” (Arch1; reference to the author’s high number of helpers) (8) “I am deeply grateful to my family and my professors for their unwavering support of this degree” (Edu2; reference to two categories of benefactors). Finally, a PDA is relevant to several exchanges because it refers to and rounds off previous transactions in which the writer was involved as a receiver of goods, services and/or information: the PDA author manifests acceptance of the benefits received, confirms the validity and common relevance of those transactions to specific academic goals, and brings closure to this multi-stage interaction by verbally re-enacting the role of a beneficiary; e.g.: (9) “My work has benefited from conversations with colleagues, former teachers, and new acquaintances” (Phil2; referring to the author’s past role as a receiver of benefits) (10) “I was fortunate to work with many many wonderful and knowledgeable individuals throughout my Ph.D. study. This research and its presentation today was [sic] only possible because of the quiet dedication and insight of many friends and colleagues” (P-Bio3; recognizing the validity of benefits received) (11) “For many forms of support – emotional, financial, intellectual, and culinary – I thank the aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, siblings, and nephews […]” (Econ1; combined reference to the author’s benefactors and to the similar nature of their benefits) 13 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (12) “[…] but it is one of the great pleasures of my life as a writer finally to record the acknowledgements I have been impatiently saving up all these years” (Engl3; re-manifesting gratitude for benefits). 2.2 FORMAL FEATURES From a formal point of view, a PDA is a communicative act distinct from its surrounding co-text and separate from the context it originated in. In Ehlich’s (1983, 1984) terms, it is a text, i.e. an independent unit of language use. For one thing, a PDA is characterized by marked typographic boundaries, a homogeneous layout, and a focus on one main topic. This stresses the PDA’s internal coherence and unity (see the sample analyses in section 4.1.1). Its selfcontained nature may be highlighted by the use of cohesive ties; e.g.: (13) “First, I would like to thank the students who participated in these design studies. […]. Also, I was fortunate to be in close collaboration with their teacher […]. Particularly, […] helped me truly comprehend the numerous hats involved with being an educational researcher. […]. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee, […]. Additionally, […] provided valuable feedback in early aspects of this work. Generally, I thank the […] faculty for creating an interesting place for hybrids to spend some time. Also, this endeavor would not have been nearly as pleasant nor [sic] as productive if not for my close collaborator and dear friend […]. And, I have also appreciated the hours of enjoyment shared with […]. […]. Most of all, I am indebted to my wife and graduate school partner […]” (Edu3; cohesive linkers stressing textual coherence). Secondly, a PDA is easily and conveniently identified as a distinct communicative act through its label, Acknowledgements. This title – found in all the PDAs except Engl5 – encapsulates its communicative salience (i.e. its orientation towards the writer’s helpers’ accomplishments and merits) and thus signals its conceptual separability from the dissertation it is attached to (whose focus is on the writer’s abilities and independently achieved results). In addition, a PDA makes explicit its links with the previous relevant co-text, whose most salient content is reproduced or summarized through unambiguous reference to the author’s benefactors and benefits. Such notions would not otherwise be easily accessible to the reader – who may or may not be one of the writer’s benefactors – given that the PDA is relevant to various interactions developed in a number of contexts (see section 2.4; cf. Hyland 2003: 250-251). Here is a typical thanking statement that clarifies a PDA’s connection with its previous, relevant co-text: 14 Main characteristics (14) “Finally, for listening, understanding, and providing emotional support, I gratefully acknowledge my partner […] and friend […]” (Edu5; identification of the benefactor and list of specific benefits). Less typical are thanking statements that are somewhat cryptic; e.g.: (15) “Last but not least, I cannot forget my intramural basketball buddies […] and […]” (EECS3; leaving the nature of the benefit unmentioned) (16) “I also thank Martin for giving me the opportunity to live in Lausanne for half a year” (EECS1; leaving the type of relationship between the benefactor and the beneficiary to be inferred). Finally, as an attachment to a text meant for the “general” public (i.e. the dissertation), a PDA recontextualizes its deictic frame by selecting the dissertation reader as its official addressee. Thus the PDA realizes its responding function indirectly, by referring to the writer’s benefactors as part of the subject matter, rather than addressing them as members of the readership (cf. Hyland 2004: 320); e.g.: (17) “I thank my wife, Marcia, for her love and unconditional support” (Phys4; reference to the benefactor in the third person) (18) “I would like express my sincere gratitude to my advisors […] for their guidance, help and support […]” (Phys1; reference to the benefactors in the third person). The use of address terms or second person pronouns and verb forms applied to benefactors is attested, but infrequent; e.g.: (19) “This thesis is partly for you too, Mom and Dad. Thank you” (EECS3; use of second person personal pronoun and address terms) (20) “Job well done, Brother!” (EECS2; use of address term)6. 2.3 CONTENT In terms of content, a PDA may be oriented towards its writer’ and/or her helpers, more specifically, towards the complementary roles played by these individuals in previous interactions – as supposedly generous providers and satisfied receiver, respectively, of services and support. Indeed, the PDA writer can focus on the roles that others played in the realization of her project, namely the trouble they went to, which had a beneficial bearing on the final result she 6 Only in Engl3 is the reader referred to rather than addressed: “I can do no more than to refer the gentle reader to my dedication.” 15 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology achieved and which determined her current indebtedness. At the same time, she can focus on the effect that those kind actions had on her attitude towards the benefactors, namely the change in her feelings due to the benefits received (i.e. her appreciation of the benefactors’ generous behaviour).7 In the former case, the writer fails to satisfy her desire not to be impeded upon, thus threatening her negative face; this is because the help received she refers to draws attention to a limitation on her freedom of action – however welcome – which influenced and directed her behaviour.8 With the latter option, on the other hand, she is able to satisfy the benefactors’ desire to be liked and approved of, thus sustaining their positive face (Brown and Levinson 1987); this is because reference to the writer’s cognitive-emotional state helps reveal her perception of her benefactors as agreeable companions she is happy to be around. The following excerpts show how a PDA-initial statement, or even a micro introductory move (see section 4.5.1.1), may openly address either interpersonal aspect of the interaction between the beneficiary and her benefactors: (21) “To my dissertation committee, I give great thanks” (Edu1; focus on the expression of grateful feelings) (22) “I would never have been able to complete this study, were it not for the persistent encouragement and the support of my professors, friends, and relatives” (Arch5; focus on the manifestation of indebtedness) (23) “The joy I feel in having completed this dissertation is accompanied by a deep sense of gratitude. Traces of the hard work and insight of professors, friends, and colleagues are legible to me on every page” (Engl4; focus on the manifestation of gratitude and indebtedness). The public expression of the author’s feelings motivates the writing up of the PDA, while the description of the circumstances that caused her indebtedness justify those feelings to the reader (see sections 2.1 and 2.4.). Together, the reference to these situational variables – (a) the pleased acceptance (b) of 7 Similarly, in a study on Japanese, Kumatoridani (1999) shows how thanks (for the benefit received) and apologies (for the trouble caused) can co-occur or alternate within responses to offers that have been accepted or requests that have been satisfied (see section 3.3.1.2). 8 Her current manifestation of gratitude, too, is determined by the benefactors’ previous interactional behaviour. More generally, a beneficiary can react indifferently or resentfully, rather than gratefully, to a benefactor; however, assuming she is abiding by the cooperative principle, her (verbal) response will always be relevant to, and actually pre-selected by, the benefactor’s previous interactional move. 16 Main characteristics previous offers (c) from previous interlocutors – gives rise to the basic structure of the text’s main strategic move. 2.4 COMPLEXITY A PDA is a multi-faceted text. First, it is both a public document and a private communicative act (cf. Giannoni 1998: 64). On the one hand, it publicly and officially recognizes others’ professional merits, as its title Acknowledgements suggests; on the other hand, it informs the reader about personal circumstances, which are nevertheless made public (see Cronin, McKenzie, Stiffler 1992: 108);9 e.g.: (24) “I would especially like to thank my advisor […] for his guidance and insight. His support and patience were very much appreciated” (Phys2; focus on the public acknowledgement of benefits)” (25) “I would like to express my most heartfelt appreciation to my research advisor, Professor […], for his support, guidance, and encouragement throughout my doctoral program. His no-nonsense style and persistent work ethic has always given me something to strive for in my own daily pursuits – both inside and outside academic circles” (EECS2; focus on the public acknowledgement of benefits and merits) (26) “Not only of academia is [sic] possible to survive. Many friends at Berkeley helped me to conclude. […] These friends and their family provided the conditions for my family and me to spend unforgettable moments at Berkeley. My love and gratitude to them all” (Arch2; focus on the memory of private circumstances) (27) “[…], the most devoted, selfless and supportive friend one could ask for, has listened to my cries of joy and pain through times of thick and thin. […] is also a walking encyclopedia from whom I can always gather lots of technical information, career advice, stock insights, and, more recently, HP gossips” (EECS1; focus on academic and personal circumstances). In addition, a PDA fulfils a twofold interactional function: on the one hand, as a delayed move that globally refers to previous (non)-verbal exchanges similarly oriented towards a common purpose, it completes a larger interaction, bringing it to an end; on the other hand, as an independent communicative act, it internally clarifies its connection with the relevant co-text, and creates and 9 Compare also Meier (1989: 34) about private acts of thanking appearing in the press. 17 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology completes a distinct interactional event. A PDA is thus both a complementary and an autonomous unit of communication; e.g.: (28) “Many people have helped me in the writing of this dissertation. […] I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; focus on bringing a larger interaction to an end: a discontinuous, introductory-and-concluding AM) (29) “It has been a long journey and there have been so many people who were encouraging and helpful along the way. […] Mom, Dad – I finished!” (EECS1; focus on bringing a larger interaction to an end: text-initial introductory move and text-final concluding move) (30) “The writing of a dissertation is a long and sometimes lonely task, and it is hard to recognize everybody who contributed to this work. However, some people stand out” (Stat1; introductory move stressing the self-contained nature of the PDA) (31) “My work has benefited from conversations with colleagues, former teachers, and new acquaintances. For their generous help, I am grateful to […]” (Phil2; clarifying the connection of the PDA with its relevant co-text) (32) “I am further indebted to Mr. […] for carefully reviewing the draft of this dissertation, and for his invaluable comments on both technical contents and English writing” (EECS4; clarifying the connection between the PDA and the relevant co-text). It therefore appears that a PDA establishes a one-to-many relationship with previous discourse. Although it is one self-contained text realizing a distinct act of communication, it is oriented towards several previous interactional events. This accounts for its cyclical internal arrangement, that is, the recursiveness of its basic functional component, the AM (see section 2.6.1); in this respect, the PDA can be viewed as an integrated collection of mini-texts; e.g.: (33) “[#1] I would like to thank my doctoral advisor […] for financial support and for his guidance during the completion of the research project. [#2] I am indebted also to […] for their advice and their insightful comments on the manuscript. [#3] Thanks also to […] for their friendship, for many discussions early on in the project, and for always being willing to help me find an answer to my questions. [#4] I am grateful to my colleagues at the […] for many interesting scientific discussions, and especially for their encouragement and support when things went wrong. [#5] Thank you very much to my father […] for all the encouragement and for teaching me that there were no limits to what I could be. [#6] Thank you to […] my friend 18 Main characteristics and first real science teacher, for always being close in spite of the distance. [#7] Finally, special thanks to […] for introducing me to the world of photosynthesis, for his continuous support and countless discussions on the experimental part of the project, and for sharing with me his never-ending enthusiasm for science” (P-Bio1; a 7-AM long PDA)10 (34) “[#1] I’d like to thank my advisor […] for his guiding hand and help over the last two years. “THANKS!” [#2] Thanks also to my fellow graduate students, particularly […] for listening to my musings, rhetorical questions and other types of ‘thinking aloud’. [#3] Finally I’d like to gratuitously [sic] acknowledge the […] for accepting a softball novice into the fold. [//] [#4] The research in this thesis was partially supported by […] grants […].” (Stat3; a 4-AM-long PDA).11 The connection between a PDA and its co-textual dissertation, is also complex, but in a different way. On the one hand, a PDA is concretely bound to its dissertation and partly relevant to it content-wise (i.e. it concerns the writer’s work seen as an on-going process and related as in a narrative); also, it partly adopts the dissertation’s deictic frame, by identifying the you of the message (i.e. the intended recipients of the text) in the readers of the dissertation, while the benefactors become part of the subject matter (this way, the PDA is partly anchored to a contextual property of the dissertation; cf. Hyland 2003: 244; see section 2.2); e.g.: (35) “I thank the members of my committee […] I have learned much from each of them, and I admire their wisdom and enthusiasm. They have done their best to share both with me” (Econ1; third person plural personal pronouns and possessive referring to a group of benefactors) (36) “Finally, I want to thank […] for her support, patience and love […]” (BAdm2; a third person singular possessive referring to a single benefactor) (37) “[…] was one of these persons to be remembered forever. He was a member of my doctoral exams and a member of my dissertation committee. I knew […] through his work with the community and with minorities. I was invited to his Design Studio class to comment on the work of his students. From then on we developed a relationship which helped me to understand better the struggles of the peoples of the USA. He taught me a 10 Here and elsewhere, the symbol [#] signals the beginning of a new AM. For the criterion adopted for the identification of AMs, see section 4.2. 11 Here and elsewhere, double slashes signal the beginning of a new paragraph. 19 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology great deal […]” (Arch2; third person singular personal pronouns and possessives referring to a single benefactor). At the same time, a PDA is conceptually removable from its dissertation, given its distinct communicative purpose – showing deference to the benefactors and/or enthusiasm for the benefits rather than reporting and discussing the author’s independent achievement of academic results. Also, content-wise, a PDA is highly relevant to the author herself as a social individual in a network of personal and professional relationships. As a result, the PDA partly contradicts the dissertation it accompanies – it reveals the author’s dependence on others with regard to a project requiring (and a report stressing) the author’s confidence and self-reliance (see Giannoni 1998: 76-77). Therefore, the PDA is simultaneously and ambiguously inward- as well as outward-oriented (see BenAri 1987: 63; Hyland 2003: 244; Hyland 2004: 305), that is, relevant both to the individual research project reported in the dissertation – carried out by the author on her own – and to the circumstances of the project reported in the PDA itself – which involved others’ help; e.g.: (38) “I wish to thank […] for all of their help with confocal microscopes” (PBio2; focus on the author’s dependence on others) (39) “I feel lucky to be able to work in the […] Center and the Department of Plant Biology in UC Berkeley, which are two of the most dynamic and stimulating environments in the field of plant biology. […] I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the […] Foundation and the International House in UC Berkeley, which provided me with the support to continue my graduate studies. […] Above all, endless love and thanks to my parents, all my sisters and my brother for their encouragement, unconditional support and love. Their love is the source of power that keeps me going throughout the years” (P-Bio3; focus on the author’s network of professional and personal relationships) (40) “My fellow students, especially […], and the […], have been of invaluable help during my struggles, have provided many stimulating arguments and discussions, and have filled any excess time with fun” (Stat2; focus on the author’s network of relationships and dependence on others). Also, given that a PDA is a delayed manifestation of thanks – its relevant cotext consists of spatio-temporally remote interactional events – the gratitude it expresses may be worded in such a way that it has a primary, but not necessarily absolute, performative value. That is to say, AMs in a PDA do realize a conclusive series of current acts of thanking through expressions of thanks 20 Main characteristics relevant to the present (and, much more rarely, to the future); however, they may also refer to previous ones (e.g. when thanking expressions mention the writer’s past cognitive-emotional state towards her benefactors and/or benefits; see Giannoni 1998: 73); e.g.: (41) “First, I thank my qualifying committee […]” (Phys2; realization of a current act of thanking) (42) “I would like to thank my advisor […] for his support and for his boundless enthusiasm. He introduced me to the exciting and beautiful world of cell biology, and for that, I will be eternally grateful” (P-Bio2; realization of a current act of thanking and reference to a future one) (43) “As a foreign student in America, I was blessed to make many remarkable friends in the I-House who helped me to learn about the American culture and society. I cannot imagine a better start in a strange land than the IHouse” (P-Bio3; reference to the author’s positive perception of her past beneficial state in relation to her benefactors and/or benefits) (44) “It was a great pleasure to work with so many undergraduate assistants” (P-Bio5; reference to the author’s previous positive cognitive-emotional state towards her benefactors) (45) “I have been blessed with a family which values higher education” (Engl3; reference to the author’s positive cognitive-emotional state experienced in a span of time extending from the past into the present). Furthermore, a PDA deals with the notion of ‘exchange’ in two complementary ways: as a topic to be discussed and a function to be realized. On the one hand, the PDA author talks about benefactors’ past acts of giving to her (i.e. offers of goods, services and/or information); on the other, she carries out an act of giving to the readers (and non-informed benefactors), that is, she offers information about previous exchanges she was involved in and her feelings in response to those exchanges. For this reason, a PDA enacts a role reversal in the interaction; e.g.: (46) “The University of California, Berkeley, and the Bay Area more generally, have given me ample intellectual community” (Engl3; giving information to the reader about a service received from benefactors) (47) “and the Center for the Health Professions for the hospital data” (Econ1; giving information to the reader about a service received from benefactors). Finally, although the expression of the writer’s grateful attitude towards her benefactors is the communicative goal that defines the essence of the PDA as a 21 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology global act of thanking, this does not necessarily mean that gratitude is the most prominent notion in the text. Indeed, the writer’s need to make her text understandable to a readership potentially wider than her helpers may lead her to focus on a description of her benefactors and benefits, and to marginalize or even omit the expression of thanks. Therefore, the textual means to the end of thanking may highlight the subsidiary meanings, not the primary concept, of the PDA. It is precisely the rich description of benefactors and benefits, rather than feelings, attested in the corpus (see sections 4.2.1, 4.6 and 4.7), that may turn an act of thanking into an extended speech act or even a speech act set (Cohen and Olshtain 1981); e.g.: (48) “[…] has not only been a supportive mentor but a good friend as well. We have had many personal conversations which I did not imagine possible with an advisor, and she has given many [sic] invaluable advice on my personal life” (EECS1; focus on benefits) (49) “I have made many special friends […] who have made grad school such a unique and exciting learning experience. You know who you are, so I will not list your names here because, well, it’s just not my style. Being in Berkeley or Lausanne has been a transient period for many of us, and some of you have already left, and so have I. Fortunately, since most of us are engineers, it is likely that we either stay in or converge to the Silicon Valley, so there will be lots more chances to take trips or hit the bar scenes together” (EECS1; focus on background information and opinions) (50) “First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisor Professor Chenming Hu for his guidance and support given to me throughout my study in Berkeley. His keen insights, stimulating advice, and incredible patience toward my research have shown me what a top professor should be. It has been a special privilege to be his student. This unique experience will be a source of long lasting inspiration to me” (EECS4; focus on benefactors and benefits). 2.5 GENRE STATUS After Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993), I consider a non-fictional genre a set of spoken or written utterances that are produced in and shaped by habitual interactional events recognizable by members of a given socio-linguistic community. These units of communication answer recurrent interpersonal and/or instrumental needs through a partial or exclusive use of language; in the former case, they may accompany given interactional events (e.g. minidialogues in service encounters), while in the latter case, they constitute the 22 Main characteristics interaction itself (e.g. e-mail exchanges of news). The fact that they are similarly function-oriented and ratified within a specific cultural group leads to the establishment of conventional procedures for their production, distribution, and use as well as to the development of their shared characteristics (i.e. in structure, content, and style). Indeed, they can be called a genre (i.e. a kind of kind) precisely because it is possible to identify and abstract from them a group of shared properties and generalize them into a category or type. That is, they are recognized as repeated occurrences of the “same” communicative situation or as repeated communicative situations perceived to be similar. PDAs conform to the above-mentioned properties and thus constitute a genre: they are communicative acts meant to realize a common, basic interactional function which, in turn, shapes their content and form (see sections 2.1 and 2.3). Swales’s (1990) criteria for identifying and describing genres are suitable for characterizing PDAs as well. (I) “A genre is a class of communicative events” (p. 45; original emphasis). PDAs are communicative events in the sense that language plays “both a significant and an indispensable role” in them (p. 45). It is totally through verbal interaction that their authors express their feelings and satisfy their benefactors’ positive face needs (see section 2.3). PDAs also constitute a class of communicative events because they can be easily recognized and labelled within the discourse community in which they are exchanged. The interactional occasion that sets the stage for their production and reception and the role they play for the participants involved are familiar to the members of that community. As a result, their common properties stand out prominently in the professional domain in which they are used. The following PDA illustrates the above observations: it is completely realized through language; it is accompanied by a descriptive label (i.e. its title); it is recognizable by its title (i.e. Acknowledgements) and content (i.e. reference to the benefits the writer received from her helpers and manifestation of the writer’s relevant gratitude); and its content explains why it has been produced: (51) “Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee members […] and […] for invaluable guidance and suggestions. I am also indebted to […] and […] for their many helpful comments. I would also like to extend my appreciation to […] and […] for making my time here so memorable” (BAdm4; an exemplar of the PDA genre; original bolding). 23 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (II) “The principal criterial feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of communicative purposes” (p. 46; original emphasis). PhD candidates write to achieve a communicative goal, namely, the manifestation of a positive attitude towards the supportive people who helped them during the completion of their dissertation projects. This shared purpose both identifies PDAs as a genre and determines their typical content – expression of their writers’ gratitude, description of the benefits received, and reference to the benefactors to be credited for them. However, PDAs may include additional information and/or satisfy related purposes that sustain their main function. That is, they may expand on their basic information units with details that help the reader contextualize – and appreciate the value of – the relationship or interactions between the writer and her helpers. The main act of thanking may thus be supported, for instance, by apologies for disturbing benefactors, compliments on their excellence or offers of repayment for services received; e.g.: (52) “My thanks also go to Kaye Bock who helped me produce this manuscript in its final form” (Arch1; reporting circumstances motivating the writer’s gratitude) (53) “I would like to thank my wife […] for being the unique human being she is and for waiting relatively patiently for me in […] while I spent countless hours working on this dissertation which could have been spent with her instead” (Stat 1; referring to the cost of the benefit to the benefactor) (54) “I owe a profound debt to my dissertation advisors […]. Each of them has provided the right combination of timely encouragement and knowledgeable criticisms which have saved me from many blind alleys. Time and time again I have been amazed by their truly extraordinary dedication and by their incisive readings of Spinoza” (Phil 5; expanding on the qualities of the benefactors) (55) “This is equally true for […], who never lost faith in this dissertation. I am grateful to her for reading every single draft with extraordinarily rigorous attention. I count our (almost daily) exchange about my dissertation précis during the fall of 1996 to be one of the most transformative intellectual events of my graduate career. Indeed, the central arguments for the dissertation emerged out of this exchange. Throughout the writing process – and during that fall especially – I learned from her how to envision whole arguments from seemingly disparate close readings. I will continue to strive to incorporate into my work the lessons I learned from her then. It is hard 24 Main characteristics to imagine how she has the time to do as much for her students as she does, but I hope I will be able to find a similar reserve in guiding my own students through their projects. She will certainly always remain a model of pedagogy for me. I hope that I can bring to my own dissertation students what I have learned from each member of my dissertation committee about the rewards of rigor, the pleasures of scholarship, and the spirit of intellectual community” (Engl4; expressing the will to reciprocate the benefits). (III) “Exemplars or instances of genres vary in their prototypicality” (p. 49; original emphasis). Genre exemplars are not clones of one another: new ones are produced whenever new interactional occasions arise, and even if the interactions in question are of the same kind, they will be distinctly relevant to their specific context. This means that each genre exemplar reproduces its genre differently, and therefore that some communicative acts represent the genre they are members of more typically than others. How typically they instantiate the genre depends on how many privileged vs. marginal features (see Rosch 1973, 1975, 1978) of the genre they exhibit and on whether they align with just one genre or more (see Bhatia 1994 about genre mixing and embedding). The main privileged property of a genre is the communicative purpose shared by its members, which motivates their instantiation and makes them recognizable. Other important properties of the genre exemplars – relatable to a shared communicative purpose – are their form, content and structure, and the audience expectations about them. Marginal properties include the genre members’ length, degree of elaboration, subsidiary topics, instrument of communication and linguistic code. When such features are similarly instantiated across exemplars, they stress the conventionality of the genre. A good genre member thus partly reproduces and partly innovates its genre: on the one hand, it instantiates its relevant text type and observes the most recurrent conventions of the socio-cultural community in which it is produced (so that it can be easily recognized by the addressee as a token of a given type); on the other, it unambiguously shows its relevance to its specific context of situation (so that it can be appropriately used by all the participants involved). The properties PDAs are expected to share include their authors’ intention of manifesting appreciation for help received (purpose), reference to the authors’ interactions with their benefactors (content), organization in conceptual paragraphs each focusing on one (group of) benefactor(s) (structure), tone typical of a partly public and partly private communicative act, i.e. half way between formal and informal (form), and awareness of the partial overlap 25 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology between the authors’ benefactors and the dissertation readers (audience expectations). A prototypical PDA is characterized by several properties. First, it is recognized as an instantiation of the type of communicative act meant to convey the writer’s positive feelings towards her benefactors with regard to her dissertation project. Also, it is oriented toward the higher-level goal of sustaining temporarily unbalanced social relationships: the benefits exchanged between the dissertation writer and her helpers have turned the former into a debtor and the latter into creditors, but the PDA gives the writer the opportunity to show that she is aware of the situation and to start giving something back, namely good feelings. Moreover, it satisfies its readers’ expectations in four respects: it selects as its addressees the readers of the dissertation in which it is included rather than the writer’s helpers; it includes information about the latter that might not be accessible to the former; also, it reveals that the dissertation in question was the result of a joint effort, that is, a project coordinated by the writer, but not entirely carried out by her; finally, it manifests the writer’s sincere good will towards her benefactors as a result of help received. Finally, a PDA shows some creativity “despite” its recognizability: the text’s partly original contribution to the genre both contributes to the latter’s internal variation (i.e. vitality) and provides evidence of the writer’s individual, distinct experience (i.e. relevance to specific interactional circumstances). In sum, a typical PDA gives due prominence to the text type shared with other texts reproducing similar content, reveals its writer’s awareness of her past dependence on and current indebtedness to her benefactors, and provides background information about the writer’s previous interactions so that its readers can make sense of the writer’s manifestation of gratitude; e.g.: (56) “Acknowledgements I would like to thank […] and […] for their valuable suggestions, comments and time. I would also like to thank the […] for providing financial assistance and access to […] data during my fellowship there. The comments and opinions in this dissertation are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the directors, members, or officers of the […]. I am very grateful to many professors and colleagues for interesting discussions and for guidance during the last few years. In particular, I would like to thank […] and […] for helpful conversations and assistance. I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and support from the start. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to 26 Main characteristics the memory of […] who shared his enthusiasm towards investigating new ideas with me” (B-Adm1; a typical PDA; original bolding) (57) “Acknowledgments Thanks are due to the members of my committee: […]. Their comments on this project were unfailingly incisive, thought-provoking, and encouraging; their scholarly works were models and inspirations to me. Thanks, also, to […] whose comments were very helpful to me at different stages of the dissertation. […] was that great teacher who first inspired my interest in and love of eighteenth-century literature. My personal debts are too many to pay off here. Thanks to the friends who helped me through, and especially to […] who kept me smiling this last year. My parents were an unfailing support. And of course, […] makes it all worthwhile” (Engl1; a typical PDA). Atypical instances of the genre could be PDAs having the outer appearance of an acknowledgment, but not written in the true spirit of grateful good will, which would make their genre membership questionable. None of the PDAs examined contradicts its communicative purpose. And indeed, failure to adhere to the genre’s pivotal property is likely to undermine the specific genre member’s communicative effectiveness, “popularity rating” and social success.12 The content of PDAs can be dismissed as unimportant only as long as they reproduce a culturally ratified pattern of communication, in which no participant’s face is deliberately or seriously threatened. Thus, mock offence and irony can be tolerated, and backhanded comments are acceptable, if they reflect well on the benefactor; e.g.: (58) “Their faith – and disbelief about the length of time it was taking to earn my doctorate – alternately inspired and shamed me into finishing the dissertation” (Engl5; tongue-in-cheek remark) 12 A case in point is what happened to Christopher Todd Brown, a UC Santa Barbara M. A. graduate student in materials science, who wrote a Disacknowledgments section for his 1999 master’s thesis, and who was able to obtain his degree only as a result of a lawsuit (www.disacknowledged.org). His text is a stream of invective against people and institutions for their alleged disservice to him. It resembles an ordinary AS in that it starts with an announcement about the gist of the text, it refers to episodes of the writer’s academic career – each conceptual paragraph dealing with one (group of) previous interactant(s) at a time – and it reveals the writer’s attitude towards them. However, the previous interactants are presented as malefactors and the attitude toward them is totally critical. 27 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (59) “Nadine was an early supporter of my academic career at Berkeley who saw promise in my academic abilities where others saw none” (Edu4; backhanded comment). Non-typical exemplars could be PDAs that push creativity to the limit by adopting or parodying the conventions and register of other genres (e.g. those that sound like prayers or have the tone of personal letters) or, more simply, those that do not follow the conventional formal practices of the genre; e.g.: (60) “[…] and to those young women […], it was an honor and a privilege to be a part of your lives for one brief semester. Thank you. […] And to my dissertation chair […]: you have taught me to be a teacher, you have taught me to be a learner. You opened up a world of ideas for me, […]! You are my advisor on paper and my mentor in life. You are a dear dear friend. To my partners in crime […], working with you folks has taught me the meaning of collaboration […]. […], of course I owe you a special thanks [sic] for trusting me, and allowing me to put you and your students under the scrutiny of my watchful eye. To the original […], thank you for patiently introducing this renegade psychologist to a much more interesting and challenging species of theory. To […], my dedicated writing partner, your words of encouragement, your honesty, and your sincerity consistently motivated me to keep on keeping on [sic] […] To […] my tai’ji transcriber extraordinaire, thank you for saving my hands and my mind with your skill, wit, and wisdom. [//] To my parents, […], your love and support […] are what have gotten me through these many many years of formal education. […]. To my brother […] you were the first to give me lessons in peace and to protect me from harm’s way, thank you. To my four living sisters […]. I will always look up to your enduring inner strength and beauty. And to my other “brothers” […] your abiding presence is always felt and appreciated in so many ways. [//] To las mujeres en me vida, […] thank you for embracing me with your warmth and affection, […]. And to […]: If I am your biggest fan, you are my hero […]” (Edu1; recurrent instances of you relevant to specific benefactors rather than the dissertation reader: failure to observe conventional formal generic practices) (61) “At UC Berkeley I had the opportunity to meet first […]. He captivated my attention with his excellent sense of humor and his constant challenge, “What is new?” a question he always posed at the start of every class session. […] [//] I knew […] through his work with the community and with minorities. I was invited to his Design Studio class to comment on the work of his students. […] [//] My first encounter with […] was as a student 28 Main characteristics in his classes about the logic that admits conditionals. […] [//] I remember one of his first comments on one of my term papers: Do you blatantly accept the notion of wicked problems?” (Arch2; abundant information not immediately relevant to the dissertation: failure to observe conventional content-related generic practices) (62) “I would also like to congratulate my younger brother, who is getting Ph.D. [sic] in Physics from the renowned […] at about the same time as I do” (EECS2; information not strictly relevant to the dissertation: the deserving individual being referred to is not a benefactor). None of the PDAs in my corpus reproduces the text type or adopts the register of other genres in full. Yet, some are not exempt from marginal forms of generic contamination. For instance, reference to the grants that made the writers’ studies possible is occasionally made in the succinct and impersonal way that is typical of journal article ASs. The same style is infrequently adopted when other units of meaning are to be conveyed; e.g.: (63) “Financial support was provided by the Norwegian Research Council through grant […], by a Fulbright Fellowship under program […] and by the National Science Foundation grant […]” (Stat1; acknowledgment style of journal article ASs).13 (64) “Portions of Chapters 7 and 8 were delivered at Philosophy Department Colloquia […], and the University of […]” (Phil5; impersonal style). Less typical genre members include long PDAs providing over-detailed accounts of previous interactional circumstances or formulaic PDAs which do not motivate the reasons for the writers’ gratitude. Lengthy PDAs look like important texts on a par with the dissertation and thus attract some attention away from the latter. Short PDAs fail to clarify to the reader the importance of the benefits to the beneficiary, the cost of the benefits to the benefactors as well as the non-obviousness of the transactions between the benefactors and the beneficiary; e.g.: 13 Among less typical PDAs that I have collected but not considered in this study are: two that end with invocations to god, which make them partly resemble prayers (i.e. “I thank God it’s over.”; “To God be the glory for the things He has done for me.”; cf. Al-Ali 2006); one that ends with what looks like a stanza: “Like a bird on the wire, [//] like a drunk in a midnight choir, [//] I have tried, in my way, to be free.”; another that is structured like a short academic article, with quotes and footnotes; another that pretends to thank for a “malefit” (i.e. “[name] stole all of my work. Which is okay ‘cause I will get even!”), and another that briefly explains the topic of the dissertation project (i.e. “DNA base-calling is an interdisciplinary problem”). 29 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (65) “Acknowledgments Many people have provided essential help to me in writing this dissertation. In addition to those mentioned below [sic] I would like to give special thanks to [names] and [name]” (Phil3; a 54-word long PDA). With regard to content, less typical PDAs are those that, besides expressing gratitude, also include apparently irrelevant information such as the writer’s reflections on acknowledgment practices, specific episodes of the candidate’s life not relevant to the dissertation project proper or intertextual references typical of scholarly publications; e.g.: (66) “The generic requirements of the acknowledgments page mandate that, like the wine at Cana, the best be saved for last” (Engl3; reflection on the act of thanking and acknowledgment practices) (67) “During the many “holidays” I spent with […] – our pre-MLA December 25th’s – […]” (Engl4; details of graduate school life) (68) “As an institution, the Bennington I knew was purged out of existence in 1993 […]” (Engl3; details of graduate student life) (69) “Coming from the person who co-authored the paper “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” left me astonished” (Arch2; intertextual reference). Finally, unusual PDAs are those that mention benefactors but not the relevant benefits, that are unclear in identifying benefactors or that mention benefactors that have little to do with the writer’s work; e.g.: (70) “Special thanks to the members of the […] program at […] Laboratory […]” (Arch1; mentioning benefactors without benefits) (71) “You know who you are, so I will not list your names here because, well, it’s just not my style” (EECS1; vagueness in identifying benefactors) (72) “[…] and my cousin Patrick for helping me feel younger than I am” (Edu3; benefits not directly relevant to the dissertation). The acceptability of such texts depends of course on a given culture’s overt and/or covert norms for the appropriate public expression of feelings in an academic setting. (IV) “The rationale behind a genre establishes constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their content, positioning and form” (p. 52; original emphasis). That is, the “underlying logic” of a text affects its structure, content 30 Main characteristics and wording, and distinguishes it from texts sharing elements of the context of situation and/or register (pp. 53-54). As for positioning, a PDA is written to publicly express the writer’s gratitude to various people for support obtained in relation to her dissertation project. The focus on the writer as a beneficiary determines that accomplishments she is primarily responsible for (i.e. the results of her research) are presented as consequences of her benefactors’ involvement in her research or life; e.g.: (73) “Finally, but certainly not the least, I would like to thank my brother and my parents for their lifelong support, encouragement, and love, without which this dissertation would not have been possible” (B-Adm3; focus on the writer’s dependence on the benefactor. As for content, the PDA’s expressions of gratitude may be accompanied by complementary acts that contribute to threatening the writer’s face and/or sustaining her benefactors’ (see section 2.3). Thus apologetic statements about the writer’s imposition on or disagreeable behaviour towards her benefactors may alternate with statements of praise or acts of complimenting or even offers to reciprocate the favours received; e.g.: (74) “Melvin Webber is also a stimulating personality” (Arch2; positive evaluating the benefactor) (75) “I will continue to strive to incorporate into my work the lessons I learned from her then” (Engl4; manifesting the will to reciprocate) (76) “Perhaps I have not always been easy to work with, and was at times wayward and spoiled” (EECS1; stressing the cost of the benefit to the benefactor) (77) “I am grateful to Carolyn Porter for remaining supportive through thick and thin […]” (Engl4; praising the benefactor). Also, the goal of manifesting appreciation for help received will involve the writer’s mentioning – almost exclusively – past interactional events seen as beneficial exchanges between her and her helpers; e.g.: (78) “I am very grateful to my brother […], who invited me to […] and […] so that I could see and visit various traditional and contemporary examples of earth-integrated houses” (Arch 5; reference to past beneficial exchanges). With regard to form, the need to refer to the author’s feelings in relation to given benefits leads to the congruent encoding of the former through verbs or adjectives (describing cognitive-emotional states) and of the latter through 31 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology nouns and verbs (identifying goods exchanged and services rendered, respectively; see section 4.9); e.g.: (79) “I thank Rima Kulikauskas for her enormous assistance in both science and life, her talent, her sense of humor and her warm friendship through the years in the lab” (P- Bio3; gratitude expressed through a verb and benefits expressed through nouns) (80) “I am grateful to Brian Osborne who let me screen the Ac/Ds-mutagenized population […]” (P-Bio3; gratitude encoded in an adjective and benefit encoded in a verb phrase). With regard to both content and form, the need to produce official thanks meant to be permanently available to the public will lead the writer, on the one hand, to focus on valuable benefits considered worth remembering, and on the other, to produce an eloquent, original, and pleasant-to-read text; e.g.: (81) “I’m grateful to my advisors and mentors Kam Lau and Richard Muller for their technical guidance and moral support, and for being role models of what can be achieved with a sharp mind and a lot of hard work” (EECS5; reference to an important benefit) (82) “I would like to begin by thanking the people who made this dissertation possible. The families of the preschool children that I interviewed for this dissertation. I have learned that it is not always easy raising preschool age children and I am very grateful for the time and the experiences that parents of disabled children shared with me about themselves and their children” (Edu4; an originally worded AM). With regard to structure, the PDA’s relevance to several benefactors, in relation to a dissertation project, within a single interactional act determines, respectively, its arrangement as a series of AMs, its preference for mentioning first the benefactors directly involved in the dissertation, and its organization as unitary structure (i.e. as one text, possibly including an introductory and a concluding move); e.g.: (83) “I want to thank professors […] for their guidance, friendship, encouragement and support. […]. [//]. Also, I would like to thank my fellow doctoral students, and especially my friend […], for making my staying a [sic] Berkeley a very enjoyable experience. [//]. Finally, I want to thank […] for her support, patience and love, my parents, […] and […], for their guidance, love and unconditional investment in my education, and my brothers, […], […] and […], for their encouragement and support” (BAdm2; example of a typically ordered group of benefactors in a PDA). 32 Main characteristics Finally, the PDA’s connection to a more impressive text determines its moderate length and its concise reference to the circumstances of the dissertation project once this can be assessed with some detachment, and favours its inclusion at the beginning of the dissertation book, as an introductory preface. (V) “A discourse community’s nomenclature for genres is an important source of insight” (p. 54; original emphasis). As a result of their repeated exposure to and participation in interactional events, members of a community recognize the “recurring rhetorical action” (p. 54) provided by classes of communicative events, and label them accordingly. A PDA can be called acknowledgment(s) or acknowledgment(s) section. As revealed by its root (i.e. know), the term acknowledgment identifies the act of recognizing, or the statement through which one shows, concedes or confesses, that something is the case (because knowledge of its existence or validity has been acquired). Alternatively, the term can refer to the act of accepting a given situation (including somebody’s authority), because this is recognized as true, valid or important. An acknowledgment can also be a gesture revealing to someone that they have been recognized (i.e. a type of greeting). Additionally, it can be a statement recognizing the receipt, acceptance and/or ownership of something that has been sent. Finally, it can be a message that recognizes the grateful acceptance of a gift or benefit received or, more generally, a sign (e.g. object or action) that shows the pleased acceptance of something. As a sign of appreciative receipt of something, an acknowledgment may refer to a public act of thanking, that is, an official statement giving due recognition to somebody for their services and manifesting gratitude to them. In a publication, acknowledgements are the textual space where, by default, the writer recognizes and thanks benefactors for contributions to her work. In theory, an acknowledgment does not need to be focused on gratitude. Instead of recognizing others’ accomplishments, it can mention one’s responsibilities or failures. My corpus contains only a few instances of such non-thanking acknowledgments; e.g.: (84) “Mistakes in this study are my own, but the opportunity to do this work, along with many useful contributions, I owe to others” (Arch3; acknowledgment of possible oversights) (85) “Although I have significant disagreements with […]’s interpretation, […]” (Phil5; acknowledgment of disagreement). Most of the time, however, the PDAs fulfil the function of officially giving credit to benefactors for their contribution to the writer’s academic success; this 33 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology is particularly evident when the author stresses her intellectual indebtedness to her benefactors, especially if these are referred to as co-authors of sections of the dissertation;14 e.g.: (86) “In particular, I wish to thank Terry Odean, who introduced me to the field of behavioral finance, and who co-authored the last essay of this dissertation with me” (B-Adm3; reference to the benefactor as a co-author) (87) “Many individuals provided excellent guidance and inspiration for this research, including members of my dissertation committee […]” (Econ3; acknowledgement of intellectual dependence on the benefactors) (88) “As my numerous references to his book on Spinoza will attest, my thinking on Spinoza owes a great deal to […]’s work” (Phil5; acknowledgment of intellectual indebtedness) (89) “[…] and the “Conference on Competition and Development” organized by the […] Business School and […] for their comments on previous drafts” (B-Adm5; acknowledgment of intellectual indebtedness). The title Acknowledgements, therefore, encapsulates the conventional purpose of texts meant to give public recognition and thanks to others for work they have done. This acknowledging function explains why PDAs are addressed to the dissertation readers rather than the author’s benefactors: a grateful statement about help received shows that the dissertation writer is not taking credit for what others have accomplished that was of use to her, and is a precaution against plagiarism. In addition, what appears to matters is not so much that the benefactors know about the AMs relevant to them – it is not typically the case that copies of these text segments are sent to the benefactors (cf. Hyland 2003: 260) – but rather that the content of those AMs is publicly and stably accessible so that the author does not risk being judged unfavourably. The act of giving credit to others stresses the official, overt goal of the PDA, but also instantiates the act of thanking, since the credit publicly recognized was beneficial to the writer and probably engendered positive feelings in her. For this reason, an acknowledgment statement can be associated with (other) verbal manifestations of thanks. Indeed, a PDA not only allows its writer to make claims of authenticity about the authorship of her research report, but also gives her an opportunity to publicly thank all the people she feels indebted to, independently of the role they played, if any, with regard to her dissertation 14 According to Cronin (1991: 228; 1995: 22-24) acknowledgements and citations have the same function, even if they have different currency value; cf. also Giannoni (1998: 65, 77) on the continuum between authorship and AS-status “within the academic reward system”. 34 Main characteristics project. The following examples show that the official acknowledging purpose of PDAs of giving public recognition to benefits received may be accompanied, or superseded, by the manifestation of the writer’s feelings triggered by those benefits: (90) “Financial Support by the Conseil […] is gratefully acknowledged” (BAdm3; reference to a benefactor directly relevant to the dissertation) (91) “I would finally like to thank my friends and family for their patience during these past years” (Arch3; reference to deserving individuals indirectly relevant to the dissertation) (92) “Thanks to my father who has taught me by his example to stand up for things that matter. I wish he had lived to see me graduate” (EECS5; reference to a benefactor not relevant to the author as a dissertation writer) (93) “Most of all, I am indebted to my wife and graduate school partner, Judy, for helping me maintain perspective, for walking with me to get coffee, and for generally making this manuscript possible in so many ways. My feet still dance because of you” (Edu3; reference to a benefactor important to the writer both professionally and personally). Acknowledgements and thanks are not, therefore, different names for the same type of messages.15 Acknowledgments are produced to provide publicly accessible information about different people’s credit and responsibility with regard to a given project. Thanks manifest a beneficiary’s positive feelings towards benefactors for benefits received. When the credits recognized to given collaborators coincide with the benefits received from them, then acknowledgments coincide with thanks, that is, they become public displays of gratitude. When indistinguishable from more general thanks, certain acts of acknowledgment can be associated with other, even non-acknowledging, thanks and ultimately “confused” with them. This is the case with PDAs, which publicly manifest their writers’ indebtedness to benefactors for services they deserve credit for, and are thus instances of grateful acknowledgements (cf. Hyland 2004); e.g.: (94) “I trace the beginnings of this dissertation to […], whose astonishing graduate seminar, […], confirmed my devotion to the poet and her culture. His course, scholarship, and stated faith that I could be an Emily Dickinson 15 Indeed, there are books with separate Acknowledgements and Thanks sections (e.g. Swales 1990: ix-xi) or with sections called Thanks and acknowledgements (e.g. Hess 2001: xi), which signal the distinct illocutionary points of thanking vs. acknowledging. 35 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology scholar have sustained me, and I thank him for being my “preceptor.” I give my immense gratitude to […], and […] for their constant support, for help in reading this work and making suggestions, and for long conversations. […] provided me with friendship, encouragement, and a place to stay when I worked at the […] at […] College. Thank you to my committee, […] and […], for their most helpful comments and stimulating ideas. And for his knowing when to put a hand on my shoulder as I wrote and then leave me alone, for his support, and for his love and fire, I thank my husband […]” (Engl2; an instance of a PDA encoding grateful acknowledgements) (95) “For Chapter 3, I acknowledge and thank Scott Susin for his ideas and encouragement […]” (Econ1; showing awareness of the difference between thanking and acknowledging). Bhatia’s (1993: 13) definition of genre is based on and overlaps with Swales’s, drawing attention to the strong conventional character of genre members and their highly structured internal organization. But unlike Swales’s, it points out that a genre’s internal variability may derive from context-specific circumstances, namely individual authors’ private intentions that combine with the genre’s conventional purpose. According to Bhatia, the conventional procedures that text authors conform to enable them to produce homogeneous classes of communicative acts. Such practices are both an effect of the genre’s communicative purpose (i.e. they reveal the authors’ interpersonal and/or instrumental goals) and a means to the end of communicative efficiency (i.e. they offer partially ready-made resources that one can draw on to competently and smoothly produce a text of a given type, without having to start from scratch). These institutionalized social and linguistic conventions thus constitute reference points for understanding, planning, and participating in recurrent interactions. PDAs conform to ratified practices with regard to structure, content and style, which determine their recognizability as a genre (see Bhatia 1993: 14). This recognizability can be traced to several variables. One is the choice of topics (i.e. the writer’s participation in beneficial exchanges with various interactants), which is a function of the purpose of manifesting gratitude. Another is the selection of the dissertation readers as addressees, which depends on the sub-purpose of publicly showing recognition for benefits received to a general audience. Still another is the choice of Acknowledgements as the identifying label of the PDA and the placement of the PDA at the beginning of 36 Main characteristics the dissertation; this reveals to the reader that the PDA counts as an act of thanking relevant to the circumstances of the dissertation. At the level of text construction, a PDA’s genre membership is recognized by additional standard clues: - the use of conventional expressions conveying positive feelings relatable to the acceptance of generous offers (e.g. thank, appreciate; see section 4.8), which favours the identification and interpretation of a PDA’s component AMs; e.g.: (96) “I owe a special debt of thanks to […] not only for his perceptive comments, but also for his kindness and support during the course of my writing and job seeking” (Phil1; standard expression of thanks) (97) “I am grateful for all the help I obtained from […]” (Phys2; standard expression of thanks) - conformity to a staged realization, that is, the logically ordered combination of tactical functional components (i.e. AMs; see section 4.5.2), which gradually and collectively lead to the achievement of the text’s global purpose (expressing thanks to the author’s most important helpers), and highlight the dynamicity of the genre as a social process (Bhatia 1993: 19, 16); e.g.: (98) “[#1] I would like to express my sincere thanks to Professors […] and […] for their constant support of my research. Without their invaluable guidance and suggestions, this work would have been impossible. [#2] I also gratefully thank Professor […] for making suggestions and reviewing my dissertation manuscript, [#3] and thank the Department of Statistics for financial support throughout my graduate study and research” (Stat5; recursiveness of AMs in a PDA) - adherence to a similar type of content, that is, information relevant to the authors’ dissertations, which throws positive light on their benefactors; e.g.: (99) “I thank Judith Butler, who has been there from the beginning, for seeing me and this project through several personal and professional metamorphoses. She has remained a committed, generous, and involved mentor from the early stages of my graduate study through my introduction into the profession” (Engl4; reference to the benefactor’s intellectual support) (100) “I thank the U. C. Berkeley English Department for three years of fellowship awards that allowed me the time to develop these ideas. The dissertation benefited immeasurably from having the support of my department in these crucial years” (Engl4; reference to the benefactor’s financial support) 37 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (101) “My friends […] went beyond the call of adda to help measure and sketch many of the buildings, and kept me in good humor” (Arch4; reference to the benefactors’ technical and emotional support; original emphasis) - adoption of a conventional style, which, in the case of PDAs, involves displaying a positive attitude towards the writers’ former interlocutors, for instance, deference and respect, praise and consideration, or happiness and enthusiasm; e.g.: (102) “I am very grateful to my research advisor, Professor David Messerschmitt, for his guidance and support throughout my years at Berkeley. Besides the wealth of his technical knowledge, I truly admire his profound business insights and superior management skills” (EECS2; manifestation of deference to a benefactor) (103) “Masoud Khansari, the most devoted, selfless and supportive friend one could ask for, has listened to my cries of joy and pain through times of thick and thin. Masoud is also a walking encyclopedia from whom I can always gather lots of technical information, career advice, stock insights, and, more recently, HP gossips [sic]” (EECS1; actual and tongue-in-cheek praise of a benefactor) (104) “Professor […] always inspired me with his energetic pursuit of knowledge […]” (Arch 5; praise of and consideration for a benefactor) (105) “To Carol Page, you rule! What would I have done without your generous spirit” (Edu1; enthusiasm and happiness in mentioning a benefactor and relevant benefit). However, besides conforming to a type and encoding similar notions in standard ways, Bhatia points out that the individual instantiations of a genre can accommodate specific cultural, contextual, and individual needs. In the case of PDAs, awareness of a discourse community’s distinctive cultural expectations may surface in the reference to favourite types of addressees (e.g. Al-Ali 2006). The PDAs examined are culturally homogeneous, having been produced by people who spent a few years in the same US academic institution. However, the authors’ sometimes different cultural backgrounds is revealed in the occasional use of code-switching; e.g.: (106) “To las mujeres en me vida, particularly […], all the fine women at the dog pound, y mis amigas son de Las Diablitas, […] thank you for teaching 38 Main characteristics me what it means to be a member of a community” (Edu1; code-switching revealing the author’s cultural-linguistic background). Genre exemplars can also reveal their contextual specificity in terms of what they discuss. The PDAs considered are relevant to different disciplinary communities. Their writers’ academic-professional group membership correlates with reference to partly different aspects or phenomena relevant to specific dissertation projects, such as study participants in Edu and Arch, places visited in Arch, lab products, instruments or techniques in P-Bio, data acquisition and processing in Econ (cf. Hyland 2003, 2004); e.g.: (107) “To the students of ED190 Group who allowed me to prod and probe the workings of their classroom, and to those young women who thoughtfully and openly shared their stories with me […]” (Edu1; reference to study participants) (108) “First, I would like to thank the students who participated in these design studies. I appreciated their enthusiasm when science class became something unfamiliar to them and their patience when our new software was revealing “unimplemented features” of various sorts. Also, I was fortunate to be in close collaboration with their teacher, Doug Kirkpatrick, who has always impressed me with his readiness to try out new things in the classroom” (Edu3; reference to study participants) (109) “[…] and also the devotion of Maestro […] of […] who spent three days with me on my tour of […]. Without him I would not have been able to visit those houses built into the hills and interview the local people” (Arch5; reference to places visited in relation to the dissertation) (110) “[…] and to Prof. Robert Fischer who provided the EMS-mutagenized population” (P-Bio3; reference to a lab technique) (111) “Michael Greenstone for his MSA coding procedures” (Econ1; reference to data processing). Other disciplinary peculiarities include the preference for short texts in BAdm, with four out of five texts being less than 200 words long (see section 4.3), and the use of direct address (i.e. second-person pronouns and possessive, and names or address terms as vocatives) in Edu and EECS;16 e.g.: 16 In Edu and EECS you, yours and vocatives occur, respectively, 29 and 7 times, 12 times and once, and once and three times. (An additional PDA contains two ustedes (‘your-formalplural’) and two su (‘your-formal-singular’.) 39 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (112) “To my own ED190 and ED190B students, past and present. I am deeply indebted to you all. I have learned more from you than I could ever hope to teach you” (Edu1; use of direct address to the benefactors). Finally, genre exemplars can be flexible enough to adapt to their authors’ private intentions, which accompany the genre’s default purpose. In the corpus, the specificity of individual PDAs shows up on the following occasions: - when PDA writers manifest their attitude towards their benefactors through original formulas, classifiable as equivalents of gratitude expressions; e.g.: (113) “Furthermore, I would like to recognize all my fellow students […] who took the time and trouble to visit me here in Berkeley, listed in order of appearance: […]” (Stat1; semi-original thanking expression) (114) “I will always remember you, Harry” (P-Bio3; original thanking expression) (115) “Last, but not the least, I would like to pay special respect to my parents and all other members in my family” (EECS4; original thanking expression) (116) “I feel very fortunate to come to know and work with many of them” (EECS2; original thanking expression) - when writers mention unusual benefactors (e.g. clubs, computers, dance partners, in-laws), that is, helpers or deserving individuals not frequently referred to in other genre exemplars (cf. Hyland 2004: 321); e.g.: (117) “Not content with these face-to-face communities, however, I have also sought out virtual camaraderie in the c18-l and SHARP-l listservs, both of which have enriched my work in ways I am currently unable to catalog. Suffice it to say that my work would be bibliographically thinner and my life as a scholar more alienated were it not for the generosity and warmth of the hundreds of subscribers to those lists, most of whom I shall never meet. We too constitute an irrational public sphere” (Engl3; reference to an unusual benefactor: listservs) (118) “And I have been cheered time and time again by my wonderful motherin-law, Mary Morton” (Engl3; reference to an unusual benefactor) - when authors mention benefits that are unusual and/or not directly relevant to the dissertation (e.g. food, complicity, sports activities); e.g.: (119) “thank you for embracing me with your warmth and affection, for feeding me, dancing with me” (Edu1; benefit not relevant to the dissertation) 40 Main characteristics (120) “Betsy Davis, who was always willing to […] and even cover for me out in the classroom when the need arose” (Edu3; benefit revealing complicity) - when writers inform the public of their life outside academia; e.g.: (121) “My life is incalculably sweeter because of my girls; […]” (Engl3; reference to life outside academia) (122) “Lonely is a man who does not have friends upon which he can count on in times of crisis and need…or to chat while the copy machine warms up for that matter. Particular thanks goes [sic] out to […]” (EECS3; reference to life outside academia) - when authors project a positive image of themselves, as people who are fun to be with; e.g.: (123) “thank you for patiently introducing this renegade psychologist to a much more interesting and challenging species of theory […] and for waving that checkered flag and cheering me on at the finish line” (Edu1; mock selfirony and “poetic” image revealing the author’s fun-to-be-withness) (124) “and Randall Tyers for his innate Randallness” (P-Bio4; made-up benefit showing the author’s light-heartedness) - or when writers reflect on the act of writing acknowledgments (i.e. when they engage in metathanking); e.g.: (125) “After all, it would seem that there are only so many ways to express one’s inability adequately to thank a spouse or partner, only so many ways to note that the project at hand has coincided with or paralleled the life of a child or the course of a career. I doubt I can provide much generic innovation […].” (Engl3). The above exemplification reveals in the PDA genre a tendency to conform to situation-specific communicative conventions that result from attempts to reproduce formulas already tested as acceptable, but also the writers’ ability and willingness to adapt these conventions to more private or local needs and goals. This confirms Bhatia’s observations about the conventional and the flexible properties of a genre. The former determine its efficiency and effectiveness and the latter its vitality in adapting to ever-new, context-specific interactional events (cf. Bazerman 1984: 165). In sum, PDAs form a genre because they are a set of communicative acts (i.e. exchanges of information), carried out through language (i.e. as written texts), meant to pursue a shared interpersonal goal (i.e. expressing gratitude so as to sustain partly unbalanced social relationships between moral creditors and 41 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology debtors), which is their rationale. The rationale of the genre shapes the structure of its exemplars (arranged as sequences of AMs) and affects their content (including reference to beneficial exchanges of services and goods) and tone (which is positive). The shared purpose of PDAs and their observance of the same conventional procedures makes them recognizable – by the members of the community in which they are produced and exchanged – as communicative acts of the same kind (i.e. acts of grateful recognition of benefits received), and thus categorizable with the same meaningful descriptive label (Acknowledgements). Although fairly similar to one another because instantiations of the same type of interaction – they have similar structure, content and style – such texts are not identical to one another and thus resemble their prototype to different degrees. In addition, although they are subject to cultural and situational constraints – which actually facilitates their recognizability and reproducibility – they reveal the creative originality or specific group membership of their authors, when these want to achieve additional, situation-specific and/or private purposes. 2.6 CONTEXT OF SITUATION According to functional systemic linguistics, the situational elements affecting the content, structure and wording of discourse are the field, the tenor, and the mode (Halliday 1978). The field is the communicative event: the spatiotemporal setting of the interaction, the topic(s) and function(s) of its discourse, and its participants. The tenor comprises the participants’ interactional roles (e.g. peer, subordinate) and discourse roles (e.g. informer, requester), their relationships with one another (e.g. distance, closeness), and their stable and temporary qualities (e.g. sociability, fear). The mode is the wording and organization of the text; it includes the text’s linguistic code, channel of communication, degree of elaboration, way of encoding notions, degree of conventionality or originality in instantiating its relevant genre, and anticipated and actual effects on its context of production and reception. In the following sections I review salient features of the context of situation of PDAs. 2.6.1 Field A PDA is the conclusive, public verbal display of a PhD candidate’s gratitude to people who were helpful to her in relation to (or relevant to her during the time of) her dissertation project. As a conclusive communicative act, it is relevant to multiple previous beneficial exchanges, and represents a stage in 42 Main characteristics a multi-phase interaction. As a public document, it clarifies to the reader its relevance to the dissertation and its background circumstances (see sections 2.1 and 2.4); e.g.: (126) “Very many people […] have given me the help and encouragement to finish my studies. […] has been unceasingly generous with his time, resources, and expertise as my advisor. Several faculty and fisheries scientists […] have made valuable comments on my work. Our outstanding departmental staff […] have all helped in very many ways. My fellow students […] have taught me a great deal, and have shared the peaks and valleys of graduate school. […]. I thank my family for their constant love and support of my eccentric pursuit […]” (Stat4; reference to several previous interactions) (127) “I wish to express my sincere gratitude to many people whose help, directly or indirectly, made this dissertation possible” (Arch1; indicating relevance of the PDA to the dissertation). A PDA is, or is presented as if, produced within the PhD candidate’s academic institution. The ‘here’ of the text can be identified in the dissertation title page or in the body of the text. Reference to other spatial settings relevant to specific beneficial interactional episodes may also occur; e.g.: (128) “My years at Berkeley have been very rewarding” (Stat2; reference to (the location of) the academic institution in the body of the text) (129) “I am also indebted to Karl Petty and Tetiana Lo for forcing me to go to Hawaii before I graduated” (EECS5; reference to spatial settings in which previous interactional episodes took place). The ‘now’ of the text is to be taken to be the time when the dissertation project has been completed. Indeed, the author refers to events prior to or concurrent with the dissertation project as relevant to the past, and events following the dissertation as relevant to the present or projected into the future; e.g.: (130) “I owe a great debt as well to […], who directed my master’s thesis and influenced my intellectual development in countless ways […]” (Engl5; reference to events preceding the dissertation, in the past) (131) “The vast and impressive array of Development Planning Theory literature still remains something for me to be mastered in order to deliberate […]” (Arch2; reference to an event following the dissertation as projected into the future) 43 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (132) “I would like to thank my advisor […] for his support and for his boundless enthusiasm. […] I will be eternally grateful” (P-Bio2; expressions of gratitude in the present and future). The participants involved in the PDA are the dissertation writer and readers, possibly including the benefactors. The readers self-select as the addressees of the text. The text reveals who the intended recipients of the PDA are in the choice of person deixis: when the benefactors are referred to in the third person, the addressees are the general audience; when direct addressed is used, they only include the benefactors; e.g.: (133) “I thank former postdocs […] for their help and friendship that made my life in the lab so pleasant and memorable. I really miss you all” (P-Bio3; shift in the choice of the text’s addressees from the general dissertation reader to the specific benefactors). A PDA enacts a person- rather than a task-oriented interaction. It focuses on sustaining and enhancing social relationships. It manifests the writer’s emotional responses to benefactors, which includes the elicitation of reciprocal feelings of warmth and solidarity in the interlocutors through reference to their generosity. The main participant’s goal is to obtain the benevolence of benefactors and readers in relation to the completion of her dissertation. Indeed, in expressing gratitude, the author not only cancels her moral debt, but also sustains her benefactors’ positive face, conveys background information about her dissertation and reveals the network of professional and private relationships she is involved in (see sections 2.1 and 2.4; cf. Hyland 2004) e.g.: (134) “I am very grateful […] I would like to thank […]. I would like to thank […]. Lastly I would like to dedicate […] ” (B-Adm 1; repeated manifestation of the writer’s affect) (135) “so many people who were encouraging and helpful along the way. […] my two wonderful advisors […] were often more friends than authoritative figures. […] for giving me the opportunity to live in […] This experience has changed my perspective in life […] has not only been a supportive mentor but a good friend as well. […] [//] All my colleagues throughout grad school have been wonderful” (EECS1; reference to positive events and situations attributed to benefactors) (136) “[…] it is hard to recognize everybody who contributed to this work. […] My advisor […] encouraged and supported me throughout my work and it would have been impossible to complete this dissertation without his generous help. I would like to thank the chair of the Statistics Department 44 Main characteristics […] for sustaining the Department as a unique research environment and a very friendly place and also for his valuable comments and advice. My fellow graduate students deserve recognition for their encouragement and good spirits […]. My best wishes to my office mates […]. Furthermore, I would like to recognize all my fellow students […] who took the time and trouble to visit me here in Berkeley […]. Financial support was provided […]” (Stat1; recurrence of the manifestation of gratitude to and dependence on the benefactors). As a reactive communicative act that acknowledges the pleased acceptance of previous offers, the PDA is also a statement, that is, an informative act, which clarifies to the reader, and thus legitimizes, its communicative purpose and raison d’être. This determines the expression and motivation of the manifestation of gratitude. The manifestation of gratitude to and dependence on helpers involves expressing one or, more often, several acts of dissertation-relevant thanking, that is, AMs. Their verbal encoding comprises three elements, the expression of gratitude, which defines the AM as an act of thanking; the specification of the benefactor(s), through which the AM can be identified (see sections 4.2 and 4.6); and the reference to the benefits, which justifies the writer’s gratitude; e.g.: (137) “I should also like to thank [i.e. expression of gratitude] my friends [i.e. benefactors] who gave me much moral support during the seclusion of my study [i.e. benefit] […]” (Arch5; the three main components of an AM). The AMs are optionally sandwiched in between moves providing conceptual boundaries to the text: an introductory move identifying the text’s purpose and highlighting the interpersonal dimension of the communication, and a concluding move rounding off and ratifying beneficial exchanges similarly relevant to the thanker as a dissertation writer; e.g.: (138) “Many people have provided essential help to me in writing this dissertation” (Phil3; introductory move) (139) “I was fortunate to work with many many wonderful and knowledgeable individuals throughout my Ph.D. study. This research and its presentation today was only possible because of the quiet dedication and insight of many friends and colleagues” (P-Bio3; introductory thanking statement) (140) “I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; concluding move). 45 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology AMs may also include information units which enhance their content, by qualifying the expression of gratitude, describing the benefactor(’s behaviour) and/or expanding on the value of the benefits (see sections 4.6.1, 4.7.1 and 4.8.1). Indeed, the effectiveness of the manifestation of gratitude may be supported by ancillary speech acts, namely compliments to the benefactors for their excellence, apologies to them for the disturbance caused, offers of repayment and/or acknowledgments of responsibility; e.g.: (141) “And to Judith Romero: If I am your biggest fan, you are my hero. […] You are the prize girl!” (Edu1; expansion of the thanking expression: description of the writer’s cognitive-emotional attitude) (142) “And although not de jure a member of my committee, Bernard Williams was an active de facto member […]” (Phil1; expansion of the specification of the benefactor: description of the benefactor; original underlining) (143) “He and Colin Kendall reviewed several versions of my dissertation. I discussed with them many ideas that helped me to understand and admire the English language” (Arch2; expansion of the reference to the benefit: indication of the consequence of the benefit) (144) “For them my everlasting gratitude” (Arch2; reciprocating benefits with feelings) (145) “Kenneth Simmons was one of these persons to be remembered forever” (Arch2; complimenting the benefactor) (146) “my wife […] my sons, accepted, most of the time with serenity, the many absences, first from home, then from the country” (Arch2; apologetic reference to the cost of the writer’s success to his benefactors) (147) “The comments and opinions in this dissertation are my own […]” (BAdm1; acknowledgment of authorial responsibility). In sum, the PDA is thus a written communicative event, which concludes a multi-phase interaction between the author and previous interactants, but which targets a wider audience. Its relevance to previous exchanges is codified in the reference to specific interactional episodes between the PDA writer and other interlocutors, which help the general reader in making sense of the current text. The PDA has the primary goal of manifesting the writer’s gratitude to her benefactors – so as to cancel social debts previously incurred – and the secondary goal of publicly informing the general public of the writer’s awareness of her indebtedness – which turns a macro act of thanking into an acknowledgement. The structure, content and wording of the text is affected by these complementary goals. 46 Main characteristics 2.6.2 Tenor The participants in the communicative event represented by and realized through the PDA are the writer and the reader. They interact through and in a text that is relevant to academic-professional interests and private circumstances, and thus in a personal and public domain, by playing multiple complementary asymmetrical roles. From a communicative viewpoint, the writer is the only active agent officially responsible for the text: she decides what to write about, how and to what extent. She is thus an apparently powerful communicative participant, because she is unilaterally in charge of the content, structure and wording of the text. The reader, instead, cannot directly contribute to the text, as this is a finished communicative product, rather than on-going interactional activity. In addition, his involvement in the communicative contract of the PDA cannot be predetermined: this is due to the fact that the PDA is a potentially useful text, which provides background information on the dissertation, but not necessary to an understanding and appreciation of the dissertation.17 The PDA reader is thus a self-selected addressee, or independently motivated interlocutor. From an interactional point of view, the PDA is pre-determined by the benefactors’ behaviour – it is a reactive counter-offer to initiating moves of offering. The writer thus approaches the writing of her text from a one-down social position, as a debtor of favours to benefactors. Indeed, the PDA writer presents herself as a past beneficiary (receiver of goods), current assessor of advantages gained and acknowledger of others’ credit (which also prevents possible charges of plagiarism). But at the same time, through the PDA, she restores the moral balance of her social relationships by verbally repaying the benefactors with a show of good will; that is, the writer expresses gratitude to benefactors, and refers to events that show them in a good light, signalling the nature of their relationship. In parallel, the helper that the PDA feels indebted to is portrayed as a past benefactor (offerer), current creditor (acknowledgee) and current receiver of reactive good feeling; e.g.: (148) “I am indebted to her for my commitment to scholarship […]” (Engl4; the writer’s self-presentation as a debtor) 17 In his examination of the evolution of spectrographic articles in Physical Review, Bazerman (1984: 182) observes that “acknowledgements sections did not explicitly emerge until 1940 and were not a regular feature until 1960.” 47 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (149) “The Philosophy Departments of […] kindly gave me the opportunity to read parts of the dissertation to them and to benefit from their comments” (Phil1; reference to the benefactors’ initiating moves) (150) “I would like to extend my appreciation to […] whose work and efforts have made my years in the doctoral program all the more enjoyable” (BAdm3; manifestation of the author’s cognitive-emotional state of appreciation and indication of what the benefactors deserve credit for) (151) “I could not have accomplished my research without the assistance of Aditi Sen […]” (Arch4; attribution of credit to the benefactors) Towards her general readership, presumably wider than her circle of supporters and benefactors, the writer assumes the role of an informer of the circumstances of her dissertation project (Hyland 2004: 308-309). As a debtor of explanations to the reader, the writer is motivated to be precise, accurate and reasonably exhaustive in relating her advantageous dissertation-relevant experiences, which can justify her feeling of gratitude. For this reason, while the expression of gratitude itself can be left unmentioned because retrievable from the co-text, the identification of previous benefactors and/or benefits and reference to dissertation-relevant events are necessary to plausibly account for the production of the PDA (cf. Hyland 2003: 250); e.g.: (152) “[…] and the rest of the exemplary administrative staff at the Berkeley Department of Philosophy have helped me more than they realize” (Phil2; omission of the thanking expression, reconstructible from the co-text, and specification of the benefits as a form of reader-friendliness). From the complementary perspective, the reader assumes the role of a receiver of information, or narratee or implied questioner, willing and entitled to be informed about the circumstances of her dissertation project, which may be partly or totally unknown to him. From a strictly academic viewpoint, the writer also introduces herself as a budding specialist ready for future independent quality work, whose intellectual maturity can be appreciated by experts (i.e. colleagues and supervisors) likely to be part of her audience.18 At the same time, as the presenter of a work that needs her supervisors’ approval, she plays the role of an examinee, and thus in her PDA, she acts as a deferential and courteous performer of social competence for the supervisors’ benefit. In parallel, her dissertation committee members, as 18 The roles of acknowledger of others’ credit and self-assured presenter of expert work place conflicting demands on the PDA writer, namely revealing modesty and dependence on others while projecting confidence and self-reliance (cf. Giannoni 1998: 76-77). 48 Main characteristics likely PDA readers, are attributed the roles of examiners of the writer’s professional adequacy and assessors of her communicative competence (i.e. ability to show awareness of and recognition for the help received); e.g.: (153) “I especially appreciate the assistance of Dr. Jan Tarski, who not only proof-read the script meticulously, but also gave me ample perceptive advice” (Arch5; acknowledging the benefactor’s credit) (154) “and to Matthew Spiegel for his invaluable guidance throughout my doctoral degree” (B-Adm3; assessing the benefactor) (155) “Time and time again I have been amazed by their truly extraordinary dedication and by their incisive readings of Spinoza” (Phil5; praising the benefactor). More generally, the PDA is also indirectly shaped by the writer’s need not to antagonize or irritate the potential, self-selected reader. This involves presenting a text that is legible (i.e. graphically decodable), linguistically correct (i.e. interpretable), sensible (i.e. logically organized and relevant to the dissertation) and socially acceptable (i.e. non-threatening for the addressee or the benefactors). In this respect, the writer is a performer of communicative, social and interpersonal skills, while the reader can act as the assessor of the writer’s communicative ability in expressing gratitude, and more generally, of her adequacy as a writer. The PDA reader, of course, can choose to assume to put on multiple interactional hats; for example, he may want to check whether he has been recognized as an important benefactor, evaluate the author’s writing style, find out about her personal and academic background, and learn about her professional connections and network of interpersonal relationships;19 e.g.: (156) “I always read acknowledgment first. […] I want to know who a given scholar’s friends and acquaintances are and how that scholar has dealt with his or her own belatedness in the highly conventionalized genre of the acknowledgments page. After all, it would seem that there are only so many ways to express one’s inability adequately to thank a spouse or partner, only so many ways to note that the project at hand has coincided with or paralleled the life of a child or the course of a career” (Engl3; a PDA writer reflecting on her reactions as a regular PDA reader). 19 Cronin and Overfelt (1994: 180-181) reported that one of the reasons why some scholars are in favour of including acknowledgments in promotion dossiers as evidence of intellectual impact is the possibility of reconstructing intellectual connections. 49 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Besides adopting multiple interactional roles, the PDA author projects an image of her personality, manifests her cognitive-emotional orientation towards the interaction and reveals her expectations about her interlocutors in the very wording of her text. In addition to displaying a general sense of good will to her supporters, the writer may signal her different degree of familiarity with her benefactors in the shaping of her text. For instance, she may hint at her professionally subordinate role when referring to her teachers through their academic titles or mentoring roles, which reveals courteous social distance; also, she may mention only the benefits that cast her in the role of a learner, which stresses the professional nature of their relationship; e.g.: (157) “My deepest thanks are extended to Jean-Pierre Protzan, my academic advisor and dissertation Chairman for all his valuable advice and support […]” (Arch1; reference to the asymmetrical relationship between the beneficiary and the benefactor) (158) “And to my dissertation chair, John Hurst: you have taught me to be a teacher, you have taught me to be a learner. You opened up a world of ideas for me, and together we put them into practice! You are my advisor on paper and my mentor in life. You are a dear dear friend” (Edu1; reference to a benefit casting the writer in the role of a learner). Similarly, when mentioning organizations that have given her financial aid, the author may adopt an impersonal style which highlights the official nature of her involvement with them; e.g.: (159) “This research was supported by funding from […] and the Graduate School of Education […]” (Edu5; adoption of an impersonal style in identifying the benefactor-institution that provided financial support). Instead, when mentioning benefactors she interacted with on an equal footing (i.e. colleagues, friends, family or acquaintances), the PDA writer may feel free to use first names (with no titles) or playful nicknames, to refer to personal circumstances, and more generally, to move away from the public function of officially recognizing others’ credit to the more private one of showing and strengthening personal rapport with previous interactants; e.g.: (160) “My colleagues at Berkeley shared my trials and excitement, particularly the members of the “Dissertators/Dessert-eaters Anonymous” club […]” (Arch4; referring to benefactors through a playful nickname) (161) “We likely wasted a semester just standing about chatting in hallways, but it was the best semester” (Stat4; referring to personal, “trivial” circumstances). 50 Main characteristics Therefore, while benefiting her former benefactors through the same expressive speech act, the writer may choose to manifest her awareness of and consideration for the variable nature of her social relationships, by showing deferential respect to her superiors and/or official institutions, and benevolent closeness to more intimate helpers. The shift from a formal to an informal tone is also due to the semi-public nature of the PDA, which is part of an official document endowed with important academic value, but not subject to strict editorial requirements, as the dissertation is. It also has an effect on the structure of the overall text. Indeed, typically, the AMs in a PDA (see section 4.5.2; cf. Giannoni 1998: 68; Hyland 2003, 2004) first identify professionally important benefactors, then those relevant to the writer both professionally and personally, and finally personally significant ones; e.g.: (162) “I would like to express my most heartfelt appreciation to my research advisor […] for his support, guidance, and encouragement throughout my doctoral program. […]. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee members […] for their comments and suggestions. […] [//] I would like to thank Professor […] for his brief but meaningful tenure […]. I would like to thank my fellow device group colleagues […]. Additional colleagues […] have contributed to my development as a student […]. I cannot forget my intramural basketball buddies […]. I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the support that my parents have given me […]” (EECS3; mentioning professionally relevant benefactors before personally relevant benefactors). The reader’s attitude toward the PDA writer is also subject to variation. According to his specific circumstances, the reader may feel sympathy for the ordeal the writer has gone through (as a colleague), pride for the results she has achieved (as a family member) or satisfaction for the conclusion of her project (as a supervisor). The writer can word her PDA with a view to triggering such reactions in the prospective reader, but these cannot be explicitly encoded in the text itself (see section 2.6.3). In conclusion, the PDA writer and reader engage in a multi-faceted interaction, which leads them to assume several, possibly alternative, sociointeractional and communicative-textual roles, and also to display, or to be sensitized to experience, various cognitive-emotional states toward each other. The communicative contract they subscribe to activates a multiplicity of rolerelationships highlighting the complexity of their interaction. 51 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology 2.6.3 Mode As a finished textual product, the PDA needs to satisfy textual and interactional requirements to be communicatively understandable and socially appropriate. First of all, the PDA is encoded in the linguistic code shared by the interlocutors. This is the official language of the institution where the texts are written, namely English, and more specifically, the scientific variety contextually appropriate in an academic context. The PDA writers are necessarily familiar with this variety, which was instrumental in their education, but need not be the one they are most comfortable with, depending on their linguistic background. However, even familiarity with the appropriate variety does not rule out occasional mistakes, as the PDA is not necessarily scrupulously proofread by the writer, and it does not reach the addressee – a potential external proofreader – until it appears in its final form (cf. Swales and Feak 2000: 198); e.g.: (163) “Funding for this paper was generously provided by the […] Foundations” (B-Adm 5; familiarity with academic English) (164) “the clear, incisive impute [sic] of […] supported this dissertation” (Edu1; spelling oversight) (165) “its [sic] family that really counts” (EECS 4; grammatical oversight). Second, the PDA is expressed in the written medium. This is not only appropriate for a monologic and permanent piece of discourse, but also virtually necessary for a text attached to and prefacing another written text. Finally, as a stable piece of discourse, potentially re-usable in a number of contexts of reception outside the writer’s control, the PDA has to be a communicatively effective and acceptable text (i.e. cohesive, coherent, informative, clear, legible, interpretability, reader-friendly), and an interactionally appropriate communicative act (e.g. focused on the public display of reactive good will and the recognition of others’ likeability and merit, and also convincing in expressing and justifying gratitude; cf. Bazerman 1984: 165); e.g.: (166) “I wish to thank John Rice and Jasper Rine for carefully reading this dissertation” (Stat2; recognizability of the thanking formula) (167) “I really appreciate all of their help and kindness over the years. They made graduate school much more pleasurable” (P-Bio2; motivation for the writer’s gratitude). 52 Main characteristics To achieve communicative effectiveness and social acceptability, the PDA writer may need to work hard on her text. Indeed, the production of a permanent, semi-official and socially loaded document, whose content, structure and wording the writer may be satisfied with, requires planning and editing. The careful elaboration of the text is also motivated by the fact that the PDA establishes a relationship that is removed in time and place from its possible recipients, and concludes a multi-phase interaction (see section 2.4), which does not call for a conventionalized reply from the readers. As these cannot typically provide input to or feedback about the PDA while it is being drafted, care must be taken to curry favour with the reader, or at least to avoid antagonizing them. Given that a PDA is not the kind of text one produces on a regular basis, its writer may turn to models for inspiration. Therefore, the content and form of any PDA may circulate – i.e. be reproduced – across exemplars as a result of PhD candidates consulting others’ dissertations and becoming familiar with their topics and formulas (cf. Cronin 1995). In this sense, a PDA is potentially the result of a collective effort, sharing similarities with other exemplars, especially if from the same discipline. The following excerpts show the recurrence across the PDAS of specific terms denoting benefits (i.e. support), describing benefits or benefactors (invaluable) or expressing a positive, gratitude-oriented attitude towards the benefactors (i.e. privilege): (168) “for his support, guidance, and encouragement” (EECS3) (169) “for their advice and support” (P-Bio3) (170) “it was an honor and a privilege to be a part of your lives for one brief semester” (Edu1) (171) “It has been a special privilege to be his student” (EECS4) (172) “is an invaluable friend” (Arch2) (173) “for invaluable guidance and suggestions” (B-Adm5) (174) “whose insight and experience have been invaluable” (Edu6) (175) “for her […] invaluable philosophical energy and clarity” (Phil4) (176) “the encouragement of my family has been invaluable” (Engl5) (177) “for his invaluable help and friendship” (P-Bio2) (178) “have been of invaluable help during my struggles” (Stat2). The understandability and effectiveness of the text is ensured by the encoding of notions relevant to and supporting its communicative purpose. 53 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology The PDA encodes two main types of concepts, one relevant to its textual structure, the other to its communicative purpose. The former is the title, which ensures the recognizability of its genre membership: it is visually prominent, occurring at the beginning of the PDA, set off from the body of the text, and possibly in a special format. The latter is the manifestation of gratitude relevant to the dissertation. Although one act of is enough to qualify a PDA as such, the PDA often mentions several beneficial exchanges, in connection with multiple benefactors and/or benefits, and thus develops a recursive arrangement, that is, it repeatedly instantiates its textual building block, the AM (see section 4.5.2). An AM typically encodes three notions: the writer’s gratitude, and the relevant benefits and benefactors (see chapter 4 for details). The writer’s gratitude can be expressed through verbs or adjectives (as an experience or state), but also through abstract nouns (as an entity) or combinations of verbs and nouns (as a mini-event). A thanking expression can also encode the deliberate action resulting from the cognitive attitude of gratitude, or alternatively, be expressed from the benefactors’ point of view (i.e. as an event in which they are involved as primary participants); e.g.: (179) “I truly appreciate their help” (Arch5; gratitude expression pivoting on a verb) (180) “I am also indebted to my parents for always having encouraged me […]” (Stat1; gratitude expression pivoting on an adjective) (181) “with a special note to Grandma Althea and Grandpa Bob” (Stat4; gratitude expression encoded as a prepositional phrase) (182) “I have had the great pleasure of regular conversations with a very thoughtful geneticist […]” (Stat2; gratitude expression involving a combination of a verb and a noun phrase) (183) “My best wishes to my office mates […]” (Stat1; representing a counteroffer resulting from the experience of gratitude) (184) “My fellow graduate students deserve recognition for their encouragement and good spirits […]” (Stat1; thanking expression presented from the point of view of the benefactors). When syntactically linked to the expression of thanks, the benefits are typically encoded through for-headed prepositional phrases signalling the causal connection between the writer’s gratitude and the benefits received. Other thanking expressions, though, which encode the benefits as direct objects or 54 Main characteristics subordinate clauses, may present the writer’s attitude as directed at the benefit, or alternatively, present a descriptive statement about the benefactor as the benefit itself. When the gratitude expression is missing, the benefit may be encoded as a verb phrase. Finally, the benefit can also be syntactically separate from the rest of the AM, occurring in an independent sentence; e.g.: (185) “I would like to sincerely thank my dissertation committee members […] for their suggestions and support” (B-Adm3; benefit encoded as a forheaded prepositional phrase) (186) “I appreciate all of the advice and encouragement he has given me” (Stat2; benefits encoded as a noun phrase) (187) “It has been my good fortune to work with the supportive and collaborative individuals in the KIE and CLP research groups at Berkeley” (Edu3; benefit encoded as a non-finite clause) (188) “Tony Long originally suggested to me the idea of working on the Laws and offered valuable comments during my writing” (Phil1; benefits encoded as verb phrases) (189) “I would also like to thank […] my undergraduate research advisor. She was like a mother to me” (P-Bio2; benefit encoded as a separate sentence). The benefactors are typically encoded in such a way that their identity and role-relationship with the writer is explicitly revealed to the general reader: thus their names, titles and/or roles tend to be signalled (cf. Hyland 2004: 316, 320). However, this information may also be left out, for example, if the writer does not consider it particularly salient or if it can be retrieved from the surrounding co-text; e.g.: (190) “I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sheila McCormick, for introducing me to the world of plant development […]” (P-Bio3; benefactor identified through a combination of role-specific label, title and name) (191) “Most of all, I want to thank my wonderful husband Charles […] (PBio2; benefactor identified through a combination of name and rolespecific label) (192) “Discussions with many other faculty have also been helpful […]” (PBio5; benefactor identified through a role-specific label) (193) “Bin Yu for her advice on the problem […] ” (Stat2; non-salience of the benefactor’s role) 55 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (194) “My appreciation is also extended to my friends: [#] Gladys Lopez for her valuable comments and encouragements […]” (Arch1; role-specific label retrievable from the previous AM). With regard to the reception of the PDA, not only is a direct intervention in it impossible on behalf of the reader, but in addition, no standard response is envisaged. This, however, does not stop the recipient of a PDA from reacting to it, both automatically and deliberately. First of all, a reader cannot but react cognitively and emotionally to the PDAs he is exposed to, experiencing such feelings as sympathy, indifference, amusement about the author’s circumstances, and, where applicable, disappointment or satisfaction for her representation of him – or her failure to represent him – in the text. These instinctive responses may trigger further, deliberate reactions, such as thanking back the writer for having been publicly recognized as a benefactor, or complaining to others for having been forgotten. Also, a reader may approach a PDA with specific goals in mind. He may try to size up the author’s personality, and evaluate her communication skills through the content and form of her text so as to form an opinion on the author. Alternatively, he may want to learn about the author’s professional background and see who she is connected with (cf. Ben-Ari 1987: 66-67, 72). He may also want to learn the names of scholars who are experts in a given field, possibly left unmentioned in the dissertation bibliography (see Cronin and Overfelt 1994: 180-181), so as to retrieve their works later on. Finally, he may want to draw on a PDA for inspiration on the writing of his own. Independently of any given reader’s personal goals in approaching a PDA, there may be privileged readers, such as the writer’s friends, colleagues and supervisors, who have access to the PDA as a text in the making, and who thus provide the writer with feedback and advice – either spontaneously or on request – and possibly act as censors and proofreaders of her text before it reaches its final version. In conclusion, a PDA is a textually and linguistically elaborate text, whose realization and elaboration correlates with its multiple envisaged communicative goals and uses. 2.7 CONCLUSION From the discussion and exemplification in this chapter, it appears that PDA expresses the PhD candidate’s public and grateful acknowledgment of help received with regard to her dissertation and/or related circumstances. The manifestation of the writer’s pleased acceptance of her previous interactants’ 56 Main characteristics offers is what motivates her text. This motivating function qualifies the PDA as the realization of an intentional verbal action which involves: the recognition of the beneficial nature of the services received, the expression of gratitude for those benefits, and the manifestation of approval of and indebtedness to the benefactors. Using Searle’s (1976: 12-13) terminology, a PDA constitutes a type of expressive speech act. In the following chapter, I propose a definition and description of the PDA as an expressive speech act of thanking. 57 CHAPTER 3 SPEECH ACT PERSPECTIVE 3.0 INTRODUCTION In this chapter I describe PDAs as macro speech acts of thanking. I first consider the comparability of non-fictional genre exemplars to speech acts. Next, I point out the similarities between PDAs and acts of thanking. I then proceed to review relevant literature in the field (i.e. on the verbal expression of gratitude and ASs). Finally, I derive the implications from the research findings reported, pointing out the structural, semantic and lexico-grammatical features worth examining in PDAs. 3.1 SPEECH ACTS AND GENRE EXEMPLARS Establishing the genre membership of a communicative act depends on the identification of the main goal that the text achieves through the use of language. This communicative purpose determines the text’s name, and affects other properties such as its strategic organization and wording (see section 2.5). Similarly, determining what speech act an utterance performs depends on the identification of the communicative intent that that utterance is meant to express and realize. This intent, the illocution, constitutes the essential condition of the speech act, and provides a suitable descriptive label for naming the act itself. Therefore, the comparability between members of non-fictional genres and instantiations of speech acts is due to the fact that both kinds of utterances realize intentional interactional acts, which are expressed verbally, and which can be named on the basis of what their locutors want to achieve through them. The functional comparability between genre exemplars and speech acts determines additional similarities between them. (A) Both types of language acts follow conventional procedures ensuring their recognizability, effectiveness and social acceptability. (B) Their identifiability depends on that stretch of speech or writing that manifests and fulfils their communicative goal, which justifies their realization and determines their interpretation. (C) However, in both cases, that central text component may be marginalized or omitted if the co(n)text is explicit and/or if the addressee is familiar with the communicative act. (D) Whether explicitly encoded or an underlying component to be inferred, the 59 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology central element of the speech act or genre exemplar accounts for the content and structural organization of the communicative events (e.g. for the presence of optional components supportive of the central act; see (E) below). (E) Both genre exemplars and speech acts, in addition, may be accompanied by other textual components meant to ensure communicative effectiveness (i.e. understand ability) and interactional success (i.e. the production of certain effects on the addressee and/or the situation at large); these supportive adjuncts may, for instance, help clarify the meaning, highlight the convincingness or justify the production of the utterances. (F) The encoding of the central and optional components of both these types of language acts is subject to nonrandom variation; that is, several lexico-grammatical means can be used to encode both types of utterances, but on the other hand, such variation is partly predictable from the ever-changing context, and partly restricted by the communicative goals of the utterances themselves. (G) Finally, both types of communicative acts can be multi-faceted in content and purpose. Due to their staged realization, adaptability to authors’ specific needs, and flexible, creative instantiation, genre exemplars offer language users the opportunity to pursue multiple goals (see section 2.5). Similarly, the effectiveness of a speech act may be enriched by the co-realization of supportive acts collectively forming a speech act set.1 The systematic correspondences overviewed above depend on the pivotal reason for the similarity between genre exemplars and speech acts, namely their comparable functional identifiability-definability. In the following section I show how this applies to PDAs: I compare and describe their communicative purpose in terms of the illocutionary force of the speech act of thanking. On the basis of Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts, I first set up a functional correspondence between the two types of language acts. Then I consider similarities and differences in their realization patterns. 1 Genre exemplars and speech acts, however, are not identical. Genre exemplars tend to be longer than comparable speech acts (Freedman and Medway 1994: 47; but see also footnote 3 on p. 64); and only speech acts can be ambiguous: if realized indirectly (i.e. with no explicit performatives), they may receive two simultaneous interpretations, one based on textual, the other on contextual information, so that they may be understood as the realization of both a literal and a primary act. 60 Speech act perspective 3.2 PDAs AS ACTS OF THANKING In this section I summarize the main speech act properties of the act of thanking and of the PDA. The discussion is based on Searle (1979) and Searle (1969) and focuses on the features that (a) distinguish acts of thanking from other speech acts and (b) highlight formal and functional similarities between acts of thanking and PDAs. 3.2.1 Taxonomic principles Following Searle’s (1979) taxonomic principles for the description of illocutionary acts,2 PDAs can be grouped into the class of expressives as specific instantiations of the illocutionary act of thanking. The first principle has to do with the purpose of the act. The purpose of a PDA is to manifest to the dissertation reader the writer’s positive cognitiveemotional attitude towards people who had a beneficial impact on her recent academic achievement. Conveying this emotional reactive state is meant to sustain the positive face of previous interactants, and may also bring about a positive effect in the addressee; that is, the reader may develop a positive attitude towards the writer, resulting from a newly-acquired awareness of the latter’s positive affective-psychological state toward her beneficiaries. The second principle regards the relationship between the world being talked about and the words through which the communicative act is expressed. The manifestation of the writer’s cognitive-emotional attitude presupposes that she experiences the psychological state she wants to express (i.e. gratitude) and that she is honest and accurate about the propositional content conveyed (i.e. her glad acceptance of previous offers). Both the events reported and the writer’s feelings and thoughts about them are taken to be unquestionably true. Therefore, the PDA is built neither on a world-to-words fit nor on a words-to-world fit: it is not an attempt to have the world match the words or vice versa. The third principle deals with the addresser’s relevant psychological state. The PDA writer expresses a multi-dimensional psychological state. This 2 According to Searle (1969: 23-25), a speech act comprises an utterance act (i.e. saying or writing words, sentences), a propositional act (i.e. referring, predicating), an illocutionary act (i.e. manifesting and realizing an intention, e.g. stating, questioning, arguing) and a perlocutionary act (i.e. achieving certain effects, e.g. convincing, alarming, influencing others’ behaviour). 61 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology comprises her positive feelings about previous events and the people responsible for them (e.g. happiness, satisfaction, safety, fondness); her positive evaluation of those people’s exceptional qualities and/or appropriate, laudable behaviour; and her aesthetic, appreciative sensitivity to the impact, quality, likeability and/or significance of those situations and/or events and their participants.3 The writer’s grateful attitude, therefore, implies a positive, reactive, motivated feelings and thoughts towards previous interlocutors whose qualities and/or behaviour are positively assessed (i.e. admired and praised). The fourth principle addresses the issue of the strength of the purpose motivating the act. The PDA is not meant to be a formulaic manifestation of feelings: if perceived to be uttered automatically, almost unconsciously, it may be regarded as a non-deeply felt response, inadequate for the magnitude of the benefits received. But it should not be a panegyric, either: an overblown statement may be regarded as insincere. An appropriate manifestation of gratitude, at a moderate level of intensity, may be achieved by creatively enriching standard thanking formulas (to avoid routinization in the manifestation of gratitude), by resorting to original expressions of thanks (to realize a deliberate, non-automatic affective response), and by rationally motivating the feeling of gratitude (to show the connection between the psychological state expressed and a previous event considered its cause). The fifth principle is about the influence of the (relative) status of the interlocutors on the force of the utterance. The expression of the writer’s attitude is affected by (A) her perception (or awareness) of her social identity relative to that of her benefactors, (B) the relative rank of the writer-beneficiary and the benefactors with reference to the current interaction, and (C) the former’s awareness of the general type of relationship sustained with the latter. The PDA writer’s benefactors constitute a heterogeneous group including superiors (well-established academics), peers (colleagues-assistants) and intimates (friends, family). The varying degrees of distance/closeness and of power/solidarity between the writer and the benefactors may determine the manifestation of different levels of deference/rapport and of hesitancy/ enthusiasm in specific expressions of gratitude. When referring to benefactors she feels he is on familiar terms with, the AS writer may freely express her emotional-cognitive state and/or mention information irrelevant to the dissertation (see examples in section 2.4); on the other hand, when referring to 3 These appraisal categories and the relevant notions are from Martin (2000). 62 Speech act perspective benefactors she sustains a formal relationship with, she may remain focused on factual information). The force of the utterance itself, however, may be comparable in both types of situations (cf. examples in sections 2.4 and 2.5 about the use of the notion of ‘appreciation’ in the expression of gratitude to both superiors and peers). Secondly, a strong determinant of the force of the expression of gratitude is the extent to which the writer appears to feel indebted to and/or appreciative of her benefactors. The relationship between the two parties is unbalanced: the writer has received benefits she has not reciprocated yet (see section 2.5). Therefore, the writer may emphatically express her gratitude to all her deserving contributors – independently of their status – because the cost of the benefits to them is similarly perceived to be high (see examples of emphatic thanking to peers and superiors and of conventionally indirect ways of thanking colleagues, intimates and professional superiors in sections 2.1 and 2.2). Finally, the writer and his benefactors’ overall type of relationship also motivates the former’s experience and expression of her social indebtedness to the latter as reasonable and expected. The writer’s superiors’ help – including their competence – was part of their academic and/or professional duties, while her peers’ support was a natural effect of their spontaneously developed attachment to her. As a result, the thankful writer does not represent the benefits received as unnecessary or unexpected (e.g. *You shouldn’t have and *How did you know I needed just that? would be contextually inappropriate). The thanker is thus likely to formulate an expressive act of gratitude of moderate illocutionary force and rationally motivated – neither totally complimentary as in a praise-oriented communicative act nor completely formulaic or token-like as in a routine and low-cost exchange. The sixth principle relates to the interests of the interlocutors. An expression of gratitude manifests the thanker’s favourable disposition towards the thankee, which is to be ascribed to the latter’s earlier helpful behaviour. As a motivated expression of appreciation, it sustains the benefactor’s positive face and relates to his interest (see section 2.3). This also holds true for the PDA, whose often detailed content shows that benefactors are thought highly of, accepted, liked and wanted. The manifestation of gratitude might not reflect well on the thanker, since it shows that her single-authored original piece of research owes a great deal to others (see section 2.4 and the summary of Hamilton’s (1990) article in section 3.3.2.1). However, it serves her long-term interests: manifesting a good, reactive attitude towards her benefactors is likely to engender a positive response from 63 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology them. These may appreciate the thanker’s awareness of her indebtedness, and be willing to interact with and for her precisely for that reason (see this section above about the first principle). The writer may indeed write her text also with a view to achieving given perlocutionary effects in her interest both from her benefactors (e.g. letters of recommendation, technical help in the lab, general professional advice, continued positive affect in his circle of friends) and from her readers (e.g. establishing or increasing her likeability, proving her reliability, constructing a personal-professional identity; see section 2.6.2). Such effects can be achieved if the writer succeeds in convincing the reader that she cares about her benefactors: by producing an originally worded, sincere-sounding, coherent text, she reveals that she has produced a readable and pleasant communicative act worthy of the reader’s attention, and that she deserves the help received, because she has taken the trouble to reciprocate it in writing. The seventh principle is about the relation of the act to the rest of the discourse. An expression of thanks is a reacting move, and as such relevant to the previous discourse and its context.4 When produced simultaneously with the acceptance of the benefit, it may explicitly signal that it is a reply to and consequence of a previous interactional move (e.g. through adverbs, as in: Well, thanks, then!), but it does not need to include reference to the specific content of that move or the person responsible for it, as this is clear from the context (e.g. Well, [Jane], thanks [for the gift], then!). In the PDA, the relation to the previous discourse is typically signalled via reference to the circumstances that have determined the writer’s current gratitude, which are not accessible to the reader (see sections 2.2 and 2.4). Only occasionally is the reactive nature of the text pointed out: the sequential position of the PDA in a series of interactional moves does not have to be made explicit (although it can be made explicit) because both the PDA as a whole and its individual AMs are structured as selfcontained (sub-)texts (see sections 2.4 and 2.5 for relevant examples). The eighth principle deals with the relation between the illocution and the propositional content of the act. Being a reactive act, the propositional content of an act of gratitude is about past acts performed by the addressee, although it can be issued in anticipation of a future act whose realization is taken for granted (e.g. after the interlocutor’s promise to carry it out) or hoped for (e.g. Thank you for not smoking; I thank you in advance for your cooperation). In the PDA, the writer manifests her gratitude to addressees in previous interactions for their 4 See, however, Coulmas (1981), reviewed in section 3.3.1.2, about thanking ex ante. 64 Speech act perspective past actions, as is evident from the use of expressions or structures marked for or presupposing the notion of ‘past’ (see sections 2.1 and 2.2 for examples). In addition, part of the propositional content of the text is focused on the writer’s current psychological state relevant to those past events, and thus encoded in the present (see examples in section 2.4). The ninth principle addresses the issue of the optional or obligatory verbal performance of the act. A speech act may be performed verbally, optionally with an illocutionary force-indicating device, or non-verbally in a sufficiently informative context. In the case of expressive speech acts, a psychological state may be conveyed through gestures, facial expressions or implied in the informative co-text, that is, realized indirectly through reference to the circumstances (e.g. causes, effects) relevant to that state. The choice between alternative ways of carrying out the act may depend on context, including the medium of communication and the relative status of speaker and hearer (e.g. a subordinate speaker may be expected to be explicit, and thus express herself verbally and directly, so as to reduce the hearer’s inferential path). The expression of the psychological state is recurrent in the PDA because the writer needs to refer to various benefactors and benefits (see section 2.4). This expression can only be verbal because the PDA is a communicative act realized completely through language. The overt signalling of the act of thanking reveals the writer’s awareness of her duty to ensure communicative effectiveness, that is, to favour the readers’ and/or benefactors’ understanding and cooperation; it also reveals the writer’s social subordination to one group of benefactors (i.e. her academic advisors) and her interactional subordination to all of them (as a beneficiary) because it highlights her indebtedness to them (i.e. it overtly acknowledges her dependence on them). However, in the PDA too, the writer’s positive reactive attitude may be left understood if the co-text is informative enough about the benefits received. The tenth principle has to do with the potential relevance of extra-linguistic institutions to the performance of the act. Sometimes speech acts can be felicitously performed only if one or more of the participants involved occupy special positions in given extra-linguistic institutions. This is not the case with expressives, which, to be valid, only require the speaker’s obedience to the rules of the language and the sincere experience and manifestation of her internal state for the addressee’s benefit. However, the context of the PDA does presuppose the existence of an extralinguistic institution (i.e. the university the writer has been educated in) and the 65 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology holding of specific circumstances relevant to it (i.e. the writer’s imminent graduation from the university as dependent on the direct involvement of people affiliated with it, namely her supervisors). Thus contextual conditions have to be satisfied so that the production of the text is justified; however, their absence would not prevent the realization or reduce the validity of the core message of the text. Finally, the procedure for thanking does not have to conform to an institutionalized method for it to be valid. Adherence to socio-cultural conventions relevant to given contextual parameters ensure the understandability, likeability and effectiveness of the text, but is not necessary for its performance (but see section 2.5 about Disacknowledgements). The eleventh principle deals with the possible performative use of the illocutionary verb relevant to the act. A speech act may be realized with the relevant illocutionary verb in the first person singular present tense form. It takes immediate effect in the utterance, as is apparent if the adverb hereby is included in the proposition. The speech act of thanking can be realized as a performative utterance when its relevant illocutionary verb, to thank,5 is used in the first person singular present tense (e.g. I thank X for Y (full form); Thank you, X, for Y (reduced form)). However, the act of thanking may also be carried out through a hedged performative, that is, with the illocutionary verb preceded by a modifying expression (e.g. I would like to thank X for Y; I also have to thank X for Y; I cannot thank X enough for Y; I will never thank X enough for Y). Alternatively, the illocutionary verb can be used non-performatively (e.g. I thanked my parents for all they had done for me). Moreover, performative-like, complex expressions may also be formulated, when verbs which occur in the first person singular present tense form are followed by words that convey the notion of gratitude (e.g. I [hereby] give my gratitude to X for Y; I [hereby] extend my thanks to X for Y). Finally, the act of thanking can be carried out with no illocutionary verb, for instance by employing other lexemes which do not serve to carry out, but rather describe or report, the act of thanking (e.g. I am thankful to X for Y; I give my gratitude to; I owe special thanks to). PDAs tend to exemplify gratitude expressions matching their relatively formal nature, and to exclude those employed in everyday interactions (e.g. I 5 Other verbs can also be used in the first person singular of the present tense although this does not guarantee that they are to be interpreted as performatives (see examples in section 2.6.3 and chapter 4). 66 Speech act perspective really appreciate it; Thanks a lot; I owe you one; You shouldn’t have; You’ve saved my life; That’s very kind of you), which are appropriate in “relaxed” contexts relevant to low-cost benefits. Thus, the performative and hedged performative are appropriate syntactic choices in PDAs, but so are other lexical and/or grammatical encoding options stressing the official tone of the text. The twelfth principle regards the style of performance of the act. Verbs having the same illocutionary point and applied to the same propositional content may mark specific ways in which the “same” speech act is performed, adding or highlighting nuances of meaning which qualify the speaker’s intention. In the speech act of thanking, the psychological state of gratitude may be conveyed through various lexical means (see section 4.8), each emphasizing a distinct aspect of the thanker’s cognitive-emotional attitude.6 The default lexeme for expressing gratitude is the illocutionary verb to thank. Deriving from a root *tong- originally meaning ‘to think’, it gradually developed the meaning of ‘entertaining a favourable thought (e.g. good will, consent, approval, positive frame of mind) and experiencing a positive feeling’. It now conventionally signals the experience and manifestation of a positive emotional-cognitive state towards a benefactor (as a result of services received). Morphologically and semantically related expressions include: thanks, originally meaning ‘willingly, of one’s good will’; thank you; thankful, which means a combination of ‘grateful, happy, and relieved’, and the derived noun thankfulness; thankfully, now mostly used as a sentence adverb meaning ‘one is thankful and relieved that’ rather than as an adverb meaning ‘gratefully, with thanks’; and thanks to, originally meaning ‘thanks are to be given or due to’ and now meaning ‘because of (the merit of)’. In general, gratitude expressions containing the stem thank- represent the thanker as a positive thinker; e.g.: (1) “And I wish to thank […], from whose philosophical influence I have greatly benefited as well” (Phil4; gratitude expression with the verb to thank) (2) “Thanks to Melvin Webber I now try to forget less this lesson” (Arch2; gratitude expression with the compound preposition thanks to). Alternative expressions of thanks employ lexemes based on the stem grat- (e.g. grateful, gratefully, gratefulness, gratitude). These derive from Latin gratus meaning ‘pleasing’ – and ultimately from a root *gwer meaning ‘to praise’ – and are related to the noun gratuity meaning ‘favour, gift’. They convey the glad 6 Etymological information about the lexical stems considered below is based on Watkins (1985) and the Oxford English Dictionary (1989). 67 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology acceptance of (or the agreement to accept) an offer perceived as agreeable and welcome, and thus portray the thanker as a perceiver and receiver of something pleasant; e.g.: (3) “My eternal gratitude to these people and institutions” (Arch2; gratitude expression with the lexeme gratitude). Lexemes like debt, indebted, indebtedness (from the Latin verb debere, meaning ‘to owe’, derived from a root *ghabh meaning ‘to give’) and owe ‘to have to pay’ (from a root *e:ik meaning ‘to possess’) indicate an obligation to pay or render something to the addressee. When used in gratitude expressions, they present thankers as debtors and benefactors as creditors of benefits; e.g.: (4) “and I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife […] for the support – intellectual and otherwise – she has given me during the rather unusual process of writing a dissertation. It is to her that I dedicate this work” (Phil5; gratitude expression with the lexemes owe, debt and gratitude). Similar notions can be expressed through other lexemes. For instance, obligation (‘binding agreement, bond, restriction’) and obligated (‘bound, compelled’) – from a root *leigh- meaning ‘to bind, to tie’ – signal the writer’s duty to give something back. Alternatively, credit (‘entitlement to something good, praise for something one is responsible for’) – from Latin credere meaning ‘to believe, to trust’ and the past participle (and noun) creditum meaning ‘(something) entrusted to another, a loan’ – signal the benefactor’s right to receive something back.7 Gratitude-relevant lexemes include words meant to publicly indicate benefactors’ qualities and/or accomplishments: to acknowledge (‘to come to know, to admit as true, to show recognition of, to (gratefully) accept’) and its derived noun acknowledg(e)ment,8 and to recognize (‘to come to know, to confess, to accept and approve of, to show appreciation for something’) and its derived noun recognition. Based on roots meaning ‘to know’, these words present the thanker as a communicator or announcer, who openly reveals her gratitude and the reasons for it; e.g.: (5) “I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary support I have received from the various members of my committee in planning and writing this dissertation” (Engl5; gratitude expression with the verb to acknowledge) 7 These lexemes are not exemplified in the corpus. The twofold sense of ‘giving credit to, paying homage to’ and ‘showing appreciation for’ is also present in Yoruba acknowledgement practices (Abiodun 2000). 8 68 Speech act perspective (6) “My fellow graduate students deserve recognition for their encouragement and good spirits […]” (Stat1; gratitude expression with the noun recognition). The verb to appreciate is also compatible with the encoding of gratitude. From Latin pretium ‘price’ and a root *per- meaning ‘to sell, to distribute’, it originally meant ‘to set a price to’. Now it is used in the sense of ‘to evaluate, to estimate the qualities of, to recognize the qualities in and thus like, to perceive and be grateful for the excellence of’. Gratitude expressions containing this verb or its derived forms appreciation and appreciative express the favourable assessment or understanding of the value of the benefactors’ contributions, and thus represent thankers as appraisers; e.g.: (7) “I am also appreciative of the insightful conversations and relaxing times with the dissertation group: […]. They made the process a smoother, more enjoyable one for me” (Edu3; gratitude with the adjective appreciative). The above lexemes can be combined with one another and with other words in complex expressions which convey a multiplicity of meanings and/or emphasize the sincerity or intensity of the gratitude expressed; for instance: due acknowledgement, deeply indebted, give full credit, grateful acknowledgement/ heart/recognition, much obliged, owe a debt of gratitude, sense/feeling of obligation, show appreciation, token of gratitude; e.g.: (8) “[…] but it is one of the great pleasures of my life as a writer finally to record the acknowledgements I have been impatiently saving up all these years” (Engl3; combination of lexical resources in a gratitude expression). Moreover, genre-specific and/or non-conventionalized ways of encoding a positive, reactive psychological can be made up (see section 4.8), which highlight corollary facets of the notion of gratitude.9 These include, for instance, never forget (comparable to thank because it refers to a(n implicitly positive) cognitive state), be privileged and have the honour to (comparable to grateful and appreciative because they invoke the notions of pleased acceptance and positive evaluation), and dedicate (comparable to gratitude and debt because it invokes the ideas of respectful admiration and loving offer); e.g.: (9) “and other […] researchers whom I had the luxury to work with” (EECS2; gratitude expression with the noun luxury) 9 In the presence of more explicitly encoded thanks, such non-standardized expressions would count as supportive moves or as expansions of gratitude expressions. 69 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (10) “I enjoyed the company of them” (EECS4; expansion of a gratitude expression with the verb to enjoy). Finally, the style in which gratitude is expressed also depends on the register, formal or informal, associated with given contexts of situations. For instance, the following expressions are appropriate as informal, on-the-spot, positive verbal responses to routine acts of kindness in informal or low-cost exchanges of benefits (see this section above about the fourth principle), but none of them occurs in my corpus: I appreciate that; Thanks a lot; Thank you so much!; I owe you one; You shouldn’t have; You’ve saved my life; You’re a life saver!; That’s very kind of you; What would I do without you?; I know I can always count on you. 3.2.2 Constitutive conditions While Searle’s taxonomic principles for classifying illocutionary acts help pinpoint characteristics of acts of gratitude relevant to PDAs, the constitutive conditions of speech acts of thanking (discussed in Searle 1969) reveal under what circumstances these can be successfully performed and highlight their comparability with PDAs. According to the propositional content rule, the illocutionary act of thanking can be felicitously performed if it refers to an act already carried out by the interlocutor; that is, gratitude is a reactive cognitive-emotional state linked to a previous interactional move. This condition also holds for the PDA writer. She is in a position to recognize her indebtedness to others at the end of her dissertation project, that is, when she can assess the roles played by benefactors in relation to it. Even if the act of thanking is uttered or if the PDA is written before the beneficial event(s) it refers to actually take(s) place (e.g. I thank you in advance for your cooperation; Swales and Feak 2000: 204), the relevant text takes that event for granted. However, while in the ordinary act of thanking the person(s) held responsible for the past beneficial act correspond to the current interlocutors, in the PDA the (previous) benefactor/interlocutors(s) do(es) not need to overlap or coincide with the (current) addressee(s): the PDA writer addresses a generic audience, independently of their role-relationships with her (see section 2.4). According to the preparatory rule, the past act referred to in the act of thanking has been performed in the interest of the speaker. The thanker perceives the act not only as beneficial but also as intentionally performed so as to be advantageous to her. (Indeed, the non-accidental nature of the beneficial act can account for such grateful responses as Don’t mention it or Well, I’m glad 70 Speech act perspective it helped, but actually it’s Jane who did everything, which acknowledge or deny, respectively, the interlocutor’s responsibility for the benefit.)10 Similarly, the PDA writer recognizes that the acts carried out by her benefactors were beneficial to her. In addition, the expression of gratitude relates to the interest of the benefactor, since it sustains his positive face (see section 2.3); in the PDA, in particular, it is a motivated, deserved sign of appreciation that portrays benefactors as wanted, liked and accepted individuals (see section 3.2.1 about the sixth principle). According to the third type of rule, the thanker is presumed to experience the positive reactive psychological state of gratitude manifested towards previous interlocutor(s) for their earlier intentional, beneficial behaviour towards her. Similarly, the PDA writer is believed to experience a positive reactive emotion for, and a positive evaluation and appreciation of, her previous interactants’ earlier moves. This presumption of sincerity can be accounted for with reference to contextual circumstances: in general, the thanker is known to be morally indebted to her benefactors for the benefits received; in particular, the PDA writer is unlikely to be in a position to ever adequately cancel her debts or reciprocate those benefits. Finally, the essential condition states that the thanker’s utterance counts as (i.e. constitutes, is recognized as, and is likely to bring about the effects of) an expression of gratitude. That is, the utterance is understandable, potentially effective, and meant and perceived to be a valid ‘verbal manifestation of gratitude’. The recognizability and validity of the act of thanking also depends on the conventional interpretability and contextual appropriateness of the linguistic means through which it is encoded, and this certainly also applies to PDAs. Thus, for instance, pseudo-directives like Let me thank you for X or want statements like I wish to acknowledge Petra Jones for X are easily understandable and socially acceptable thanking formulas; however, *I am your thanker and *You must be aware of my acknowledgment are recognizable as assertives rather than expressives. On the other hand, Let me congratulate you on your success and I truly admire her dedication to work are valid realizations of the expressive speech act of complimenting, because they convey information about the speaker’s positive, reactive frame of mind in relation to the addressee’s admirable qualities or deeds, but they are less easily decodable as 10 For the same reason, utterances like Thank you for being such a wonderful person or Thank you for being you, which refer to benefits that have not been, technically speaking, intentionally provided, are actually to be understood as compliments dressed up as thanks rather than thanks proper. 71 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology original expressions of thanking, because they do not presuppose the speaker’s indebtedness to the addressee for benefits received (see section 4.8). In sum, because of systematic correspondences in the contextual use of PDAs and acts of thanking, the former can be said to count as particular instantiations of the latter. The main points of similarities between the two are summarized in Table 3.1: Table 3.1: Constitutive conditions of ordinary acts of thanking and of macro-acts of thanking in PDAs, based on Searle (1969: 67) Type of rule Propositional content Thanking A past act done by the hearer Preparatory The past act benefits the speaker, and the speaker believes that that past act benefits her The speaker feels grateful for or appreciative of the past act Sincerity Essential The utterance counts as an expression of gratitude or appreciation Thanking in PDAs Past acts done by various benefactors (possibly readers) The past acts have benefited the writer, who is aware of the benefits received The writer has a positive attitude towards her benefactors, has a high regard for their behaviour, and perceives the value of their acts The text counts as a public manifestation of gratitude 3.2.3 Summary of comparable features To conclude the comparison between the speech act of thanking and the PDA, I provide a definition of the former, outline its main discursiveinteractional characteristics, and systematically indicate its relevance to characteristics of the PDA. This descriptive recapitulation draws on the work of Searle (1969, 1979), Coulmas (1981), Kumatoridani (1999) and van Hecke (2003). Definition: the speech act of thanking is a verbal expressive act manifesting the speaker’s/writer’s positive cognitive-emotional reaction to one or more benefactors (typically the addressee) for benefits already or about to be received. 72 Speech act perspective The PDA is a text that expresses the writer’s positive cognitive-emotional reaction to one or more benefactors (who may include the addressees) for benefits already received. Sequential positioning in the larger co-text: the act of thanking may accompany or occur later than the beneficial exchange it is relevant to (thanking ex post, for an actual good or service); alternatively, it may occur before the relevant benefit is provided, in which case it can be re-interpreted as a request (thanking ex ante, for a potential benefit). Also, it may conclude an interactional sequence (as the preferred second in an adjacency pair), or it may trigger an acknowledgment that either recognizes or downplays the (value of) the benefit received (and thus occur within a three-part interactional sequence); however, an acknowledgment is not realized, if the thanks are triggered by compliments or wishes or if they are relevant to non-indebting benefits. The PDA occurs later than the beneficial exchange(s) it is relevant to, and concludes an interactional sequence initiated and maintained by previous offers, with no expectations of further responses. Relevant benefits and interpretation of the larger co-text: the act of thanking may be about benefits spontaneously provided, in which case thanking is part of the act of acceptance that follows an offer; alternatively, it may be about benefits provided after solicitation, in which case thanking complements a request that precedes an offer; finally, it may be about benefits taken for granted, provided by default, as part of a routine interaction, in which case thanking marks the interaction as polite, but does not actually express a feeling of gratitude or indebtedness. In the PDA, various types of benefits may be acknowledged, including spontaneous offers (e.g. of moral support), solicited help (e.g. revision of manuscript by a peer) and advantages gained as part of an expected, conventionalized, structured prolonged interaction (e.g. academic guidance from supervisors). Relevance to previous discourse: the act of thanking may be relevant to one or more beneficial exchanges. In the former case, it consists of one thanking act, possibly subject to repetition; in the latter, it consists of multiple thanking acts. The PDA is necessarily relevant to at least one beneficial exchange, but is more likely to be relevant to several. It therefore consists minimally of one AM, possibly repeated, but typically of multiple AMs. This determines that it may be organized as a mere sequence of moves (set of mini-texts) or possibly as an organic whole (one global text). Perspective and focus: the exchange (of goods or services) the act of thanking is relevant to may be perceived as beneficial to the thanker and/or 73 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology costly to the benefactor, and the content of the act can relate to either or both aspects. Similarly, the PDA may represent the beneficial exchanges it is relevant to as advantageous to the writer and/or as costly to the benefactors. Main types: an act of thanking may be genuine (motivated by feelings of gratitude and/or indebtedness) or perfunctory (i.e. a sign of social courtesy), or alternatively, an interaction-marking device (signalling closure of the interaction). The PDA is supposed to be an instance of genuine, grateful acknowledging behaviour. However, it can be realized only because it is an expected sign of good manners, that is, without being motivated by sincere gratitude (cf. Hyland 2003: 256). It marks the end of a larger interaction (see section 2.1), which does not call for further elaboration on behalf of either the addresser or the addressee. Social-interpersonal significance: the act of thanking sustains the benefactor’s positive face, if reference is made to the thanker’s positive attitude to the benefactor, benefit and/or resulting positive effects. But it sustains the benefactor’s negative face, if (apologetic) reference is made to the thanker’s imposition on the benefactor. If genuine, it may imply indebtedness, which may involve the recognition of the debt incurred (to be compensated for by acknowledging it) or awareness of the debt plus the intention to compensate for it through a tangible counter-gift. If it is perfunctory, it does not imply indebtedness. In either case, it restores the balance of social relationships in which social debts were incurred, at least temporarily. Indeed, in its turn, it may cause the interlocutor to incur similar social debts in the future. The PDA typically sustains the benefactor’s positive face, but can also sustain his negative face, since the benefits referred to may be represented as advantageous to the beneficiary and/or costly or detrimental to the benefactor(s). Even if it not motivated by sincere gratitude, it implies indebtedness, and is meant to restore the balance of social relationships in which social debts were incurred; however, it may cause the interlocutor to incur similar social debts in the future. 3.3 REVIEW OF LITERATURE In this section, I review selected contributions to the study of the verbal expression of gratitude, both in general speech acts of thanking and in ASs in particular, so as to set the stage for the analysis of structural and lexicogrammatical properties of PDAs (see chapter 4). 74 Speech act perspective One strand of research among studies on the expression of gratitude in general focuses on the influence of contextual (i.e. socio-cultural) variables on the linguistic realization of the speech act of thanking. The aim is to detect the principles that determine the variable instantiation of the act. A second group of studies comprises empirical or descriptive works on specific aspects of the verbal manifestation of gratitude. Their aim is to provide suitable accounts of and/or to test the soundness of models of authentic or elicited speech act behaviour. The literature relevant to ASs mostly examines the professional-social significance of ASs within academic circles, although recurrent patterns in the encoding of their main units of meaning are also analysed. 3.3.1 Studies on the speech act of thanking 3.3.1.1 Impact of contextual variables Apte (1974) offered “a sociolinguistic analysis of the usage of gratitude expressions in” Marathi and Hindi compared to that of American society (p. 67). The author observed that while in American society gratitude is a basic concept and gratitude expressions are the norm in most interactions between wellmannered interlocutors, among Marathi and Hindi speakers the verbal manifestation of gratitude is a limited aspect of their polite interactional behaviour, and only appropriate in public and formal settings. Following Hymes’s ethnographic model, Apte analysed the situational variables determining the norms about the appropriate usage and stylistic encoding of expressions of gratitude within the Marathi and Hindi socio-cultural communities. Apte noticed that verbalization of gratitude, realized through formal set phrases addressed to a large audience, was obligatory in official, institutional settings (e.g. public meetings and functions, introductions to books), in which the interlocutors were socially distant and unlikely to engage in a stable relationship. He also observed that verbal gratitude was taboo in more private settings (e.g. interactions with household members and friends, services encounters). It was ruled out by the interactants’ role-relationships, that is, (a) by family members’ awareness of, reliance on and agreement to act in accordance with their complementary, stable and cooperative social roles; (b) by friends’ social-emotional closeness, which involved intimacy-building, concrete reciprocity rather than distancing or insulting verbalization of gratitude; or (c) by servers and customers’ awareness of the transactional nature of the interaction and its beneficial effects on both. Finally, verbal gratitude turned out to be optional, that is, a matter of individual choice in such contexts as service 75 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology encounters in westernized settings; informal gatherings of educated and westernized Marathi or Hindi speakers at educational institutions, clubs, restaurants; social events and ceremonies like marriages; and interactions among white collar employees. Verbal gratitude, therefore, appeared to be favoured in urban environments among participants who frequently used English, and were of similarly high social status, level of education and degree of westernization. Apte observed that interactional norms in private settings were influenced by indigenous cultural values, including (a) the duty to do good deeds without speaking about them and without expecting (verbal) gratitude in return, (b) the perception of verbal formalities as acceptable, if at all, only among or with strangers, (c) the conceptualization of the verbalization of gratitude as an easy way out of one’s obligation to reciprocate, and (d) the acceptability of the nonverbal manifestation of gratitude. The author also showed how local behavioural norms clashing with traditions imported from other cultures were expertly handled by (AS) writers; for example, one book writer had prefaced his public praise of his son for the help offered with an explicit reference to the traditional norm not to thank one’s son; and other writers had intentionally stopped short of thanking their helpers (i.e. they “simply” mentioned or referred to them) so as to remain in bondage to their debt. Apte then contrasted the South Asian cultural environment with the American scene, in which gratitude expressions were said to be pervasive, mechanical, necessary for the smooth handling of interactions, and explicitly and insistently taught to small children. The author ascribed this interactional behaviour to the Americans’ belief that all individuals are equal and that their cooperation or help is not expected as a duty, and thus has to be requested and explicitly acknowledged. He concluded by listing the rules for the appropriate verbal manifestation of gratitude that an American speaker wishing to interact with Marathi or Hindi speakers should internalize. Eisenstein and Bodman (1986) elicited gratitude expressions from native and advanced-level non-native speakers of American English from different linguistic backgrounds. They administered a written questionnaire containing open-ended discourse completion tasks relevant to 14 communicative situations. These represented a range of formal and informal settings and required the expression of gratitude in relation to receiving a gift, favour, reward or service. The native speakers produced phatic, ritualized responses in some situations, short expressions of thanks accompanied by subsidiary language acts (e.g. jokes, questions) in others, and speech act sets (i.e. expressions of gratitude qualified by additional, synergistic functional units such as complimenting, reassuring, 76 Speech act perspective promising to repay) in still others. The lengthier speech act sets correlated with the subjects’ feeling “especially indebted, surprised or overwhelmed” (p. 171); formal situations in which the thanker was subordinate to the thankee, instead, were characterized by more reticence. Non-natives did not always produce linguistically correct or socially appropriate responses, especially in situations that were culturally unfamiliar, perceived as uncomfortable or requiring the knowledge of specialized vocabulary. However, they also performed poorly in familiar situations requiring the fulfilment of multiple language functions, which resulted in the speakers being perceived as ungrateful or bad-mannered. Language specific problems had to do with the use of intensifiers; selection of tenses or prepositions; lexical choices; word order; mixing of idioms. Among the nonnatives, the Russian participants performed the best, as they accurately selected conventionalized expressions and appropriately used various language functions in their responses. Given the non-natives’ problematic divergence from native use in the expressions of thanks on several levels (i.e. lexicon, syntax, idioms, contextappropriateness) despite their otherwise high proficiency in English, the authors argued for the need to introduce language functions into curricula for English as a second language, for example, by giving students models to imitate and by offering “supervised activities in the classroom that promote the use of language functions” (p. 176). Eisenstein and Bodman (1993) examined the rules for expressing gratitude in English by comparing native and non-native speakers’ formally elicited utterances. They collected part of their data from 56 native speakers of English by administering a written questionnaire containing 14 “situations designed to elicit expressions of gratitude” (p. 65). The authors coded each response for its underlying speech act by using (sometimes ad hoc) functional labels for its components. They noticed that four questionnaire items “produced phatic, ritualized responses”, that two items produced short, but creative responses, and that the remaining items produced lengthy and elaborate gratitude expressions (p. 66). These speech act sets consisted of variously ordered semantic formulas, similarly salient and functional to the expression of gratitude, which expressed a small range of conventionalized ideas. The authors then administered the same test to 67 non-native speakers in advanced-level ESL classes and rated their responses using the native speaker data as a baseline. The non-native speakers found it difficult to produce adequate speech act sets, both because they had limited or no familiarity with 77 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology some of the situations described in the questionnaire and because they lacked the necessary lexical, syntactic, prosodic or even non-verbal competence. Eisenstein and Bodman also administered the questionnaire orally to native speakers both by taping their autonomously produced responses and by setting up role-plays. In the latter context, the expression of gratitude was a negotiated, interactive event: the thankee contributed prompts and comments throughout, which gave the thanker cues on how to continue to reassure the benefactor of her gratitude, and which enabled to benefactor to contribute to restoring the social equilibrium by downplaying the importance of the benefit provided or the inconvenience suffered in providing it. Similarly structured role-plays with nonnatives produced shorter and unconvincing gratitude expressions, occasionally embedded in ungrammatical turns; in particular, when two non-natives interacted, conversation tended to break down, since neither participant knew which specific script to follow. In addition, both the data collected and interviews conducted with the subjects revealed intra- and inter-cultural differences in values and customs; for instance, some subjects preferred the opening of a gift to take place in front of the giver “to share the enjoyment”, while others at a later time to avoid embarrassment; Anglo-Americans valued re-entry thanks occurring after the time of giving, especially in writing, while Jewish Americans preferred face-toface interactions (p. 73). The authors observed that thanking is a multi-faceted speech act: it requires the interactants’ cooperation, addresses conflicting face wants, and is accomplished differently in different cultures. They also suggested using speech act role plays in pedagogical situations both as diagnostic tools for teachers and as a practical activity for learners. In a study of compliment responses, Herbert (1986) found that in American English, appreciation tokens (e.g. thank you) optionally followed by comment acceptance (e.g. it’s my favourite too) are the exception rather than the norm – despite etiquette prescriptions to the contrary – while other types of agreements (e.g. comment history, transfers) and non-agreements were frequent. The author attributed the infrequent acceptance of compliments among Americans to their belief in “democratic idealism and human equality”: as compliments are offers of solidarity, compliment responses of non-acceptance reciprocate that solidarity (because the complimenter is made to feel good) and establish equality (because the complimentee avoids self-praise). Herbert’s findings tied in with Apte’s observations that Americans utter thanks all the time, more mechanically than 78 Speech act perspective sincerely: as everybody is equal, reciprocity is expected where a previous act of solidarity has determined a temporary imbalance in the interaction. Hinkel (1994) compared seven native English speakers’ and 36 advanced non-native English speakers’ perception of the act of thanking after having observed that in American English thank you often functioned only as a discourse marker, while its use in other speech communities was governed by considerations of indebtedness, social status, reciprocity, gender or age. The author administered to the subjects a written multiple-choice questionnaire presenting 24 role-play situations containing alternative verbalizations of gratitude: responses with zero thanks, with one thanks and with two thanks. The speakers from the same native language group made similar judgments of politeness, while there was no correlation between their L2 behaviours across language groups. The author thus inferred that subjects probably “transferred their L1 pragmatic competence to L2” (p. 83) and that L2 learners’ perceptions of given thanking situations drew on “L1 rules of politeness acquired at a very early age” (p. 84). Van Hecke (2003) used Wierzbicka’s cultural script model to identify the tacit norms influencing French people’s and Romanian people’s thanking behaviour. The author described the act of thanking as based on the mental states of gratitude (i.e. feeling something good toward the benefactor because of the benefit received) and indebtedness (i.e. awareness of the benefit), and proposed a hierarchy of the uses of thanking formulas: (a) genuine thanking (gratitude- and indebtedness-driven), (b) perfunctory thanking (routine courtesy behaviour satisfying social expectations), (c) mere thanking (an automatically produced social amenity), and (d) punctuation-thanking (formal boundary marking of segments of the interaction). Her data – collected from the internet, databanks, dialogue fragments in literature, and field notes – revealed that thanks occurred more frequently among French than Romanian speakers, especially in functions (b), (c) and (d) above, often as accompaniments to departure greetings, without a well-determined content. The French speakers’ conceived of indebtedness as the recognition of the debt incurred, which could be compensated for by acknowledging it; for the Romanian speakers’, indebtedness also involved the intention to compensate for the debt through a tangible counter-gift. Consequently, the French respondents denied or played down the existence of the debt, for example by using de rien as a reply (p. 241). The Romanian respondents, instead, recognized the existence of the object of gratitude, for example by using the equivalent of ‘[my] pleasure’; 79 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology in addition, they assured their benefactors of their everlasting gratitude, or manifested the intention to reward the benefactors, or when not in a position to do so, they offered them verbal counter-gifts, that is, good wishes (e.g. of good health, success). Thus their expressive acts of thanking often turned into commissive acts of compensating, words for ‘grateful, gratitude, to thank, recognition’ being used to mean ‘to compensate for, to do something in return’. Van Hecke attributed these differing types of thanking behaviour to different attitudes to institutional benefits: in France, public services are efficient and people feel they have a right to receive what they do from institutions; as a result, everybody is expected to want and be able to help others. In Romania, instead, customer service/satisfaction is not taken for granted, and people feel indebted when they do obtain what they have asked for; so in their cultural expectations, people help others only if they can and want to. Aston (1995) adopted a situational approach to the study of thanking – both as a marker of gratitude and as a discourse management device – pointing out that its use and realization is subject to cross-cultural variation (e.g. preferences for conversational management and the assessment of the background situation) and co(n)text-internal constraints (e.g. the requirements and expectations of the moment, the interactants’ negotiations for the development of the discourse (the sequentiality of their moves, their management of floor and topic) and their need to maintain mutual understanding and agreement). Aston analysed the closings of service encounters in English and Italian bookshops. Thanking occurred in over half of the encounters, and was mostly produced by customers. The Italian data had a higher frequency of overall thanking, thanking by assistants, and assistant acknowledgements of customer thanks. In the Italian encounters, when the assistant directed the customer to the till by using a deictic expression (e.g. that way), the exchange did not end with thanks, but when non-deictic referential expressions were used (e.g. at the cash desk), thanks by either party occurred. In the English data, relative references, which identified locations close to the current frame of reference, were not followed by any acknowledgment on the customer’s part, while those that contained absolute descriptions were followed by the customer’s thanks. It thus appeared that directives characterized by relative descriptions relied on the presumed mutual accessibility of the referents to the participants (i.e. a shared physical context), and that absolute descriptions, as potentially problematic for understanding, required confirmation of their accessibility. Thus, thanking by one or other party revealed the participants’ perception of the 80 Speech act perspective accessibility of given referents as problematic, but also showed their alignment to a mutual referential framework, currently under negotiation. Aston also observed that when the customer’s requests could not be satisfied, the assistant’s negative response was accompanied by remedial work (e.g. apologies, suggestions, explanations), which paved the way for the closability of the encounter. In English, remedial work was volunteered by the assistant without any prompting from the customer (who responded by accepting it and thanking for it) or alternatively, the customer prefaced the acceptance of that information with delayed statements as if expecting further elaboration from the interlocutor, while occasional questionings of assistant responses were perceived as challenges. In Italian, instead, co-operative remedy was elicited by the customer’s questionings, while the customer’s silence was filled by the assistant’s confirmation of the negative response, his/her final ‘you’re welcome’ showing that the remedy offered was the best possible that could have been provided and that no further elaboration of it was going to be given. Aston’s data thus showed that thanking was motivated by conversational management needs to ratify referential and/or role alignment, and that the ratification of the latter was carried out differently in English and Italian due to differences in the management of the preceding remedial work. This showed the need for contrastive pragmatics to consider the sequential organization of the discourse, and for foreign language pedagogy to have learners practise communicative activities in the context of an extensive process of negotiation to foster their familiarization with underlying patterns of context-variable regularities in conversational management. Kachru (1995) examined the effect of socio-cultural context on speech acts of thanking by comparing expressions of thanks in the neutral and Englishized varieties of Hindi and the translation equivalents of the relevant speech act verbs in Hindi-English dictionaries. Traditional ways of expressing gratitude in neutral Hindi involved acknowledging one’s good fortune for the benefit received and/or praising the benefactor or beneficial circumstances, while expressing a positive attitude towards the benefactor created distance or formality in familial settings and was interpreted as a sign of arrogance in addressing a superior. In Englishized Hindi, instead, expressions such as thank you or thanks were common both in familial settings and in formal domains, and were accompanied by patterns of interaction typical of English-speaking communities. Neither monolingual nor bilingual Hindi dictionaries acknowledged the use of such expressions as thanks or thank you, but listed expressions that were not exact functional equivalents of the English formulas. 81 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Becker and Smenner (1986) investigated 250 preschoolers’ spontaneous use of thank you in a familiar context in the absence of their parents. Only 37 of the subjects spontaneously said thank you, probably because they considered their parents’ prompts a necessary part of the routine in the exchange. The use of the politeness formula was affected by situational factors; that is, it was higher among girls (for whom the use of thank you was maybe considered more important than for boys), among children from low-income families (who maybe viewed the reward as an exceptional luxury item), and among children interacting with an adult rather than a peer (revealing their sensitivity and adaptability to differences in listener status). Ferguson (1976) offered a grammatical, sociolinguistic and cross-linguistic analysis of ritualized exchanges in which formulas tend to trigger automatic responses, including verbal routines of thanking. The formulaic expressive elements – although taught and acquired as unanalysed chunks – appeared to vary in constituency and intensity in correlation with situational and social dimensions, including the length of time elapsed since the previous encounter, the distance between the interactants, the number of individuals in the relevant groups and the interactants’ relative social status. The formulas often played a role in turn allocation and management, triggering standardized (sequences of) responses, and were characterized by phonetic weakening, archaism, diffusion across language boundaries, limited structural variability and expandability. Greif and Gleason (1980) examined the acquisition of thanking routines by 22 children aged 2 to 5 under experimental conditions. The children’s spontaneous production of thanks was low – probably because it required the identification of relevant environmental cues – but it increased after unambiguous verbal cues, namely parental prompting. This was standardized and the children did not vary or elaborate on it, suggesting that they did not know what the formulas actually meant. Okamoto and Robinson (1997) explored determinants of gratitude expressions in British English. In a field experiment with 228 subjects, they examined participants’ responses to a benefactor who opened the door for them in four situations varying in degree of imposition of the benefit on the giver. The experimenter’s eye-contact with the beneficiary increased the pressure for the explicit acknowledgment of the benefit, and the increasing cost of the benefit triggered more and more elaborate gratitude expressions. In a questionnaire study with 120 subjects, the authors examined participants’ responses to related 82 Speech act perspective situations differing in power relations, degree of imposition, and locus of the responsibility (i.e. the giver, the receiver or neither). Gratitude expressions accompanied by expansions and qualified by modifiers were more often used in high-imposition situations and less frequently in giver-responsible situations with both equal status and higher status givers. Apology-type expressions often occurred in both giver- responsible situations, thus protecting the giver’s positive face, and in receiver-responsible situations, thus showing that the receiver took responsibility for the imposition caused. The findings thus revealed the relationship between the giver and the receiver and the cost of the benefit to the former affected the latter’s gratitude expressions. 3.3.1.2 Encoding of gratitude: form and function Bakalejnikova (1990) examined Russian formulaic (i.e. phrasal) and elaborate (i.e. clausal) expressions of gratitude, specifying their relevance to specific contextual variables. According to the author, in situations of actual gratitude, the speaker experiences the need to thank someone for what he did for her, especially if this required a lot of efforts and/or was not considered a duty of his (e.g. help received in carrying a heavy bag). In situations of courteous etiquette gratitude (etiketnaja blagodarnost’), gratitude is expressed because it is a social requirement (e.g. in low-cost acts of courtesy between strangers, like giving the time). However, most of the time, real and courtesy gratitude coincide, expressions of gratitude both expressing the speaker’s feeling grateful and displaying good manners. The author also discussed how the use, content and elaboration of gratitude expressions in Russian is contextually determined, as is evidenced by their variable lexico-grammatical realizations, with spasibo and blagodarit’ being the most common encoding options. Spasibo ‘thank you’ was defined as the basic means of encoding gratitude, inappropriate only in official, formal situations. When pre-modified by an intensifier like bol’shoe (‘great’), it signals the speaker’s good mood and intention to be perceived as a nice person more than a strong feeling of gratitude. Elaborations on spasibo identifying the addressee-benefactor and/or the object of gratitude, signal a shift from etiquette to real gratitude: the speaker achieves closeness with the addressee and/or stresses that thanks are being given for an actual service rendered that was not part of a routine task. Of the expressions involving the use of blagodarit’ ‘to thank’, ‘blagodarju Vas ‘I thank you-pl/you-sing+polite/formal’ was described as typical of everyday encounters requiring perfunctory, etiquette gratitude, unless expanded by an indication of the reason for thanking or by a specification of the 83 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology magnitude of the speaker’s gratitude (e.g. ot svoevo serdtsa ‘from my heart’). The past participle blagodaren ‘grateful’, instead, was characterised as appropriate in actual gratitude situations, as being frequently accompanied by the intesifier tak ‘so’ conveying a nuance of formality, and as compatible with the expression of varying degrees of emotional involvement according to the order of the sentence constituents. Overall, blagodarit’ ‘to thank’ was found to occur more frequently in written thanks in novelists’ and poets’ private letters, although its high use reduced its perceived formality. Related thanking formulas included spasibochki ‘little thanks’ and blagadarju pokorno ‘I thank obediently’, to be intended ironically; mersi ‘merci’, tysjacha blagodarnostej ‘a thousand thanks’ and net slov ‘there are no words’, typical of everyday speech; and vyrazhat’ blagodarnost’ ‘to express gratitude’, used in official situations in which a superior issues an order to a subordinate, unless preceded by pozvolit’ ‘to allow’, which made it suitable for a subordinate speaker addressing a superior. Finally, the author showed that various modal verbs (e.g. khotet’, ‘to want,’ razreshit’ ‘to permit’) and upgrading formulas could accompany gratitude expressions, and that mentioning the addressee-benefactor reduced the official character and stressed the personal aspect of the gratitude-relevant interaction. Coulmas (1981) discussed typological similarities between thanks and apologies. The author observed that both are reactive acts presupposing a previous or concomitant (non-)verbal intervention calling for an acknowledgment and requiring an appreciative reaction from the interlocutor; that both may imply and express indebtedness of the recipient of the benefit and of the person responsible for the damage caused, respectively, to the point that thanks may be apologetic (e.g. I’m so grateful, how can I ever repay you?); that both may be followed by similarly verbalized reactions (e.g. Not at all); and that both differ with regard to their object of gratitude and regret, respectively. Thanks were classified under several opposing categories: (a) ex ante (i.e. for a potential good or service) vs. ex post (i.e. for a good or service already provided), (b) for material vs. immaterial goods, (c) for a requested vs. nonrequested benefits, and (d) indebting vs. non-indebting. Apologies were classified as (i) predictable (calling for anticipatory apologies) vs. unpredictable (determining ex post apologies), (ii) indebting (involving the speaker’s responsibility) vs. non-indebting (not requiring pardoning), and (iii) relevant to the need to attract attention vs. relevant to the need to express regret. Coulmas observed that responses to both thanks and apologies can either recognize the object of gratitude or regret, thus relieving the interlocutor of its 84 Speech act perspective burden (e.g. You’re welcome), or deny the existence of the object and play it down (e.g. Don’t mention it), but that both choices are not always contextually appropriate: thanks cannot be recognized if originally triggered by compliments (else flattery would be explicitly admitted) or wishes (because the speaker cannot claim credit for them), or if they are relevant to a non-indebting benefit (which has already been paid for); similarly, Coulmas observed that the current speaker’s recognition of the object of regret is out of place if her interlocutor previously used an apologetic formula to simply inform her of an intention of his. A consideration of Japanese speech act behaviour revealed that apology formulas serve not only to apologize but also to give other speech acts an apologetic undertone. Thus, sumimasen meaning ‘it is not finished’ is appropriate as a gratitude or apologetic response because it signals that the matter is not over and the interlocutor has to be repaid (in the case of apologies, because he has been damaged by the locutor, and in the case of thanks, because he has gone to some trouble to help the beneficiary). Similarly, the Japanese equivalent of Don’t mention it is an appropriate response to both thanks and apologies (which recognize the existence of some object of gratitude or regret, respectively), as it denies the previous speaker’s acknowledgment of her indebtedness. In particular, apologetic formulas within thanks draw attention to the beneficiary’s responsibility for the strain caused to the benefactors and stress the beneficiary’s obligation and interpersonal commitment. More generally, the author pointed out that in a culture based on an ethics of indebtedness, gratitude is equated with a feeling of guilt and verbalized through formulaic apologies showing sensitivity to mutual obligations. Finally, in terms of their formal and functional properties, Coulmas observed that Japanese thanks and apologies are typically encoded as declarative sentences, their length co-varying with the degree of politeness they convey; they are typically realized as ritualized single-units – which mark the interaction as inoffensive – and that they can be used as conventionalized greetings, which set the tone of the interaction as based on a network of mutual responsibilities. More generally, the author indicated that ritualized formulas are not considered insincere, hackneyed expressions discrediting the speaker, but rather conventionalized patterns that enable the speaker to mean just the right thing at the right time and ensure the addressee’s understanding of it. Held (1996) contrasted the realization of oral thanks in Italian and French by examining subjects’ verbal responses to a discourse completion task relevant to a situation characterized by power imbalance and distance between the 85 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology interlocutors, and the thanker’s lack of expectation of, and the benefactor’s lack of obligation to offer, a high-cost benefit. On the structural level of politeness, the responses in both languages were characterized by a high frequency of preparatory phases that justified the illocution; head acts consisting of performative introductions followed by thanking formulas intensified by expressions of modality; combinations of compliments to the benefactors and acts of self-denigration; remedial moves stressing the thanker’s indebtedness and/or the intention to reciprocate. The formal level of politeness was characterized by an abundant use of intensifiers in the head acts and supportive moves external to them (e.g. adverbs stressing sincerity, quantifiers underlining emotional involvement), including amplifications of textual argumentation, disroutinization of modal marking and the use of positive politeness devices. Overall, the thanking acts in the two languages were complex because based on the concept of indebtedness, which had to be balanced out or compensated for as if in an economic transaction. However, differences between the French and the Italian data were also observed. The French speakers used more pre-structures and grounders, and were more sensitive to recipient design and personal claims: they demonstrated tact in “conflictive moments of interaction” and spontaneously used positive politeness forms when social conventions called for friendliness. The Italians used more repetitions of the head acts accompanied by routinized supportives, resorted to formal rhetoricity and revealed low affective involvement. On the formal level, equivalent lexical units in the two languages were used with different connotations and in different registers, and different conventions guided the use of words with the same etymological basis (i.e. cognates). Kumatoridani (1999) examined the degree of interchangeability between thanks and apologies in Japanese. The author noticed (a) that where alternation is possible, the apology expression replaces the gratitude expression, but not vice versa; (b) that the choice between one or the other depends on the addressee’s status, the apology expression being preferred with a superior and the gratitude expression when addressing a colleague; and (c) that the two expressions may be used for a single event in a standard sequence, the apology expression preceding the gratitude expression. Kumatoridani also made a number of insightful observations on thanking and apologetic behaviour. Apology and gratitude expressions typically appear to alternate in relation to events interpretable as both pleasing (i.e. beneficial) to the speaker and offensive (i.e. intrusive) to the hearer. The replacement of the gratitude expression with the apology expression is thus possible when the focus 86 Speech act perspective of the evaluation of the event empathically shifts from the speaker’s to the hearer’s viewpoint. This explains why apologetic expressions are considered more polite than thanking expressions: they involve an empathic adoption of the hearer’s perspective in the perception of an originally speaker-focused event. However, an apology cannot replace an offer of thanks when the speaker simply reacts to the interlocutor’s speech act but refuses to accept his offer of substantive action, or when she reacts to the interlocutor’s speech act expressing his psychological state toward her, or when she is operating in a socially fixed role-relationship like clerk-customer (unless it is necessary to tell the addressee he has done more than was required by his role). Gratitude expressions, instead, cannot replace apologies because this would involve perceiving the hearer as responsible for the offending event and presenting the speaker as selfishly concerned with the benefit of the event for her. Finally, the author noticed that a typical Japanese gratitude exchange has a tripartite structure: occurrence of imbalance, repair of imbalance, closure of the exchange; thus the apology expression can be used as a repair device in the second phase, while the gratitude expression can function either as an imbalance-repairing mechanism or as a closing marker of the interaction. According to the author, then, this tripartite structure accounts for the possible co-occurrence of thanks and apologies. Poppe (1978) briefly described gratitude expressions in Mongolian. The author observed that the most common gratitude expression in Script Mongolian, achi qarighul, literally means ‘to return the benefit’, but that its original meaning of the expression was ‘to return what was due, to return what one deserves’, either revenge or a favour, depending on the interlocutor’s previous behaviour, and later specialized into the sense of ‘taking revenge or feeding the retribution’. Equivalent thanking expressions pivoting on the notion of merit or benefit were identified also in spoken Mongolian languages, although they were classified as formal and glossable as ‘to remember the benefit, to repay the benefit, to have merit and fruit’. The author described informal thanking expressions in Mongolian as based on such notions as happiness (‘to be happy, to have rejoiced’; ‘to bring happiness’), friendship (‘to side up with someone, to regard her/him as a friend’); radiance (‘to be radiant with joy’); goodness (‘you are really good’); deference (‘to bow down’); satisfaction (‘to be satiated, to be satisfied, to have enough; to present one’s satisfaction, contentedness’); remembrance (‘not to forget your kindness’); and fortune (‘let there be good fortune, to reach the good deed’). 87 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Schauer and Adolphs (2006) contrasted native speakers’ expressions of gratitude in discourse completion task (DCT) data and those in corpus data with a view to discovering the advantages and disadvantages of using both types of data in language-teaching contexts. The DCT, administered to 16 university students, contained eight scenarios involving various types of interactants (i.e. friends, flatmates, strangers and lecturers), which elicited gratitude expressions. The authors then ran concordance searches of those gratitude expressions in a corpus of spoken English. In both the DCT and the corpus, the most frequent gratitude expressions were thanks, thank you and cheers. (In the corpus data, cheers was also used as a responder to a gratitude expression and as a discourse marker signalling the end of a discourse episode.) Only the corpus data, however, revealed the presence of “gratitude clusters”, that is, “sequences and lexical items of gratitude linked and often repeated in a single turn, as well as across turns” (p. 126), and also the use of thank you as a response to a previous interlocutor’s expression of gratitude. Schauer and Adolphs also classified socio-interactional sequences accompanying gratitude expressions in the DCT data into six categories: (i) complimenting the interlocutor, (ii) stating the reason, (iii) confirming the interlocutor’s commitment, (iv) stating the intent to reciprocate, (v) stating the interlocutor’s non-existent obligation, and (vi) refusing, which revealed different preferential connections with the scenarios used in the DCT as well as different lexical associations. The authors then searched a tagged corpus for the relevant part of speech information for the sequences identified in the DCT data. The three most frequently instantiated categories in the DCT data were (i), (ii) and (iii). The only three categories instantiated in the corpus data were (i), only marginally; (ii), quite frequently; and (vi), very frequently. The authors finally observed that while the DCT data provided a wide range of interactional formulaic expressions and sequence categories, the corpus data offered insights into the procedural aspects of expressing gratitude, such as patterns of collaborative negotiations between interlocutors over several conversational turns. 88 Speech act perspective 3.3.2 Studies on ASs11 3.3.2.1 The professional-social value of ASs Ben-Ari (1987) analysed the content and style of 200 ASs in ethnographies, showing how their formulation was tied to their authors’ strategic choices in the management of their career and relationships within their discourse community, in the construction of their professional credibility, and in the presentation of their social self. The ASs served both as introductions to the contents of the ethnographic texts and as reconstructions of the social aspect of those texts’ contexts of production. They were shaped by social and literary constraints, their ritualistic acknowledging practices involving the construction and management of socio-professional meaning within the anthropological profession. The acknowledgments addressed to anthropologists often referred to seniors within the community, made veiled allusions to problematic interpersonal issues, and contextualized the author’s professional identity with the emphatic indication of her originality. The name-dropping practice revealed a complex dynamics of debts and obligations within the professional community. On the one hand, it enabled the thanker to recognize scholars for their intellectual influence on her, to reciprocate them by re-introducing their names into the community’s discourse, to highlight her important professional connections, and ultimately to improve her career chances. On the other, the beneficiary’s verbal repayment to the benefactor put the latter into debt; reference to ties between the beneficiary and the benefactor was a commitment to the same ties in the future, tantamount to incurring a new debt; and the repayment offered by the AS writer (e.g. esteem, loyalty), being different in kind from the benefit received (e.g. guidance, benevolence) could not lead to symmetry and balance in the ongoing relationship. Additionally, the use of politeness formulas, qualifications, and play messages like sarcastic observations were typical of a masked hostility, and revealed a tension between the need to preserve the hierarchical structure of the community (and thus conceal one’s dissatisfaction) and the need to openly voice one’s ideas (and thus release it). Finally, the reference to ties with intellectual ancestors established the author’s intellectual genealogy, showing continuity in intellectual traditions, and revealing the community’s internal integration and solidarity; at the same time, the AS writer’s contribution to creativity and innovation was highlighted and presented as non-hostile. 11 This section does not include a review of my own previous work on PDAs (Gesuato 2004a, 2004b), which I summarise and elaborate on in this very monograph. 89 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology The acknowledgements to benefactors other than anthropologists, instead, revealed the writer’s indebtedness to her informants. Reference to them lent credibility and authority to the ethnographic work by revealing the close ties developed within the community that had been studied. Additionally, reference to people marginally or not at all involved in the writer’s work or the anthropological community served to present ethnographers as social individuals, tied in a network of relationships with their supportive and patient friends and families, whom they appeared to care about and be cared about. In sum, the ASs appeared to be marginal texts, based on suggestiveness and indirectness rather than argumentation and criticism, oriented both towards the social framework in which the ethnographer works and towards the main texts. Chubin (1975) proposed a method for analysing communication patterns in scientific literature that could help detect and measure the relationship of trusted assessorship among scientists. He suggested that the content of ASs could help reveal the types of non-competitive, cooperative relationships held among academics, namely co-authorship (i.e. direct collaboration), apprenticeship (i.e. academic descent), colleagueship (i.e. professional relationship within an institution) and simple communication (i.e. professional contact or exchange). Cronin, McKenzie, Rubio, Weaver-Wozniak (1993) examined acknowledgement behaviour in 10 highly ranked sociology journals over a tenyear period. About 3/4 of the 4200 articles considered included some form of acknowledgement statement, and over half of them referred to peer interactive communication as one of the benefits recognized. Less than 8% of all acknowledged individuals were frequently mentioned, and there was no correlation between frequency of acknowledgement and frequency of citation, or between frequency of acknowledgement and the length of the benefactor’s academic career. However, the authors suggested including acknowledgement data into the context of tenure or promotion evaluation on the grounds that acknowledgements are measurable and categorizable tokens of credit, which sometimes hint at original and substantive intellectual contributions. Cronin, McKenzie and Stiffler (1992) examined about 2,100 ASs in four topranked library and information science journals over a twenty-year period in order to compare the frequency and distribution of their acknowledgements, identify the individuals most frequently mentioned in them, and establish the extent to which highly acknowledged individuals were cited. On average, half of the acknowledgments were for peer interactive communication, and their 90 Speech act perspective distribution was similar to that found in citation analyses of research productivity, with a small number of individuals being frequently acknowledged, and acknowledgement frequency being higher in the journals considered to be more scientific. These homogeneous concentration patterns were attributed to the texts’ shared functions, namely providing contextualization for the work carried out, recording intellectual indebtedness and producing units of symbolic capital. Finally, the top five names mentioned in acknowledgements worked primarily in the area of information retrieval, suggesting a high degree of connectedness and collaboration between the few members of the information retrieval community, lying at the intersection of information science and computer science. Cronin and Overfelt (1994) examined acknowledgement behaviour among scholars in major US universities to determine possible regularities and conventions in the discourse of ASs that could reveal prevailing beliefs and practices about the reward system in the academic community. They surveyed 278 academics from a number of disciplines and at different stages in their careers by means of a questionnaire, and measured agreement and divergence with regard to five acknowledgement practices: expectations (i.e. motivations for ASs and data derivable from them), etiquette (i.e. norms for appropriate acknowledging behaviour), ethics (i.e. sanctions against failure to acknowledge), equity (i.e. difference between co-authorship and acknowledgement status) and evaluation (i.e. value of ASs as indicators of scholarly impact). ASs were seen as an integral aspect of the primary communication system, showing patterns of collaboration and interdependence among scholars, and governed by a shared etiquette about what constitutes acceptable acknowledgement practice and what kinds of contributions warrant acknowledgement. In general, most of the people surveyed agreed on a number of issues: that acknowledgees are intellectual contributors who do not qualify for co-authorship status, although misunderstandings between colleagues may arise due to the ambiguous and unstated nature of the criteria for awarding co-authorship vs. acknowledgement status; that this type of recognition is appropriate in cases of scholarly, technical and professional contributions, which, however, sometimes go unacknowledged or are underacknowledged; that permission to acknowledge is not usually sought in advance; that acknowledgement practices are not adapted to the expectations or character of specific journals; and that formal training in acknowledgement practice is not typically offered to young academics. 91 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology However, there was disagreement or plurivocality on other assumptions; for instance, acknowledgements were often described as gifts to be dispensed voluntarily, which, however, are expected and may annoy a colleague, if not granted; in addition, some viewed them as trivial expressions of courtesy, and others as signals of receipt of substantive support; finally, while some realized that ASs are indicators of intellectual influence, not all academics accepted the idea of using acknowledgment data in sociometric analysis. Davis and Cronin (1993) suggested considering ASs as textual constructs comparable to citations, in which authors recognize their intellectual indebtedness to their peers. They proposed a mathematical model for the analysis of peer interactive communication in ASs from six academic journals. They argued that this statistical technique could be used to estimate individuals’ influence in a field (i.e. to identify who gets acknowledged and how often) as well as determine the cognitive interdependence between disciplines (i.e. to measure similarities in the frequency distributions of acknowledgments in closely related fields). Cronin (1995) reported and discussed the findings of five studies on journal ASs, including a survey of US academics’ acknowledging practices in journal articles. She compared the value and function of acknowledgements with the role of citations as records of scholars’ scientific contributions, the latter being attributed a conventional commodity value in academia. The author observed that ASs vary along several dimensions, such as the richness of their content (detailed or concise), the intensity of the feelings expressed (ritualized or sincere), the number of acknowledgees mentioned in them, the contributions they are relevant to (tangible and non-tangible), the degree of precision with which contributions are mentioned, the writers’ private goals (e.g. claiming associations with given institutions and scholars, cementing relationships). However, the ASs appeared to be similarly encoded in terms of syntax, style and structure, thus pointing to an underlying set of norms governing acknowledging practices. In addition, the survey data identified significant areas of agreement among academics about the role of ASs in scientific communication: the ASs were interpreted as due and expected recognition of special contributions – which, however, do not qualify the contributors for coauthorship – but that should not be used as formal, quantitative indicators of scholarly impact (e.g. in the promotion and tenure process). Also, the survey data revealed considerable commonality of behaviour in producing and reading 92 Speech act perspective ASs: scholars use them to record and retrieve significant intellectual influences, and learn to write them through mentoring and (self-)apprenticeship). Overall, the data from the various studies suggested that ASs are viewed as compulsory forms of gift-giving. Hamilton (1990) ironically commented on the social significance of book ASs, highlighting their internal contradictions. The author pointed out that book ASs combine pretension, hyperbole, and banality: they contain meaningless praise because not balanced against criticism; they refer to ideal cooperative working environments contrasting with the reality of academia typically experienced; they are presented to the public, but often cryptically encoded so that they cannot be fully appreciated by the readers; finally, their authors portray themselves as inept on several grounds, that is, unable to adequately express their gratitude, to produce valuable intellectual work on their own, to spot the faults in their work despite the help received, or to care enough for their loved ones so as to avoid inflicting their writing on them. Hyland (2003) examined the ASs accompanying 240 M.A. and Ph.D. dissertations from six disciplines, with a view to describing their sociopragmatic relevance to the academic and personal sphere of students who need to demonstrate professional/intellectual credibility, awareness of their dependence on the multiple communities they are part of, and willingness to reciprocate benefits received. The texts were coded for benefactor and benefit categories, at first identified intuitively, and then with the help of corpus software, and also for the naming practices employed. In addition, four students from each discipline were interviewed on their views on acknowledgement practices. The ASs were found in 90% of the corpus, with an average length of 160 words. The doctoral ASs tended to be twice as long as those by M.A. students, reflecting the Ph.D. students’ awareness of their longer, deeper and continued involvement in academic life. Indeed, of the 1,400 acts of acknowledgement identified, 70% occurred in the Ph.D. dissertations. About half of the acknowledging acts were made to academics, a quarter to friends and 14% to family members. The nature of the benefits received was specified 95% of the time, and mainly referred to academic assistance (45%) and moral support (30%). Similarly, 96% of the benefactors were identified with their full names and honorifics. Acknowledgement of scholarly support included reference to supervisors, typically mentioned first, and other academic figures (e.g. teachers, examiners, 93 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology colleagues) responsible for influencing the students’ intellectual experiences. Supervisors were most frequently thanked in the Ph.D. texts in biology and engineering – reflecting academics’ greater involvement in graduate students’ research experience in the sciences – and in a variety of forms – ranging from the double-edged, through the formal to the eulogistic. Acknowledging other academics appeared to serve two purposes: ensuring the protection and goodwill of established figures who could further the students’ future academic success, and gaining credit in the public eye by revealing the influential scholars students associate themselves with. About 11% of the ASs referred to technical, clerical and financial support, mostly found in the M.A. dissertations. The texts in the social sciences often referred to access to data or subjects and instrumental assistance, while the science and engineering texts more often mentioned technical and financial help, and also access to materials and unpublished data. The Ph.D. texts often mentioned funding support, including in the form of prizes, scholarships and grants, which gave the AS writers an opportunity to promote themselves as talented academics, possibly worthy of more honours. Additional types of acknowledging acts were found to serve a promotional function, such as thanking conference organizers, article reviewers and project collaborators – revealing the writer’s professional credentials – and thanking study participants – which gave the writers an opportunity to display professional commitment and competence, and intellectual autonomy. About 40% of the texts acknowledged friends and family members for moral support. These benefactors were typically thanked succinctly, but were mostly identified through their full names (90%). Acknowledgements to friends and loved ones were mostly found in the social sciences, revealing the importance of human concern and closeness in sustaining projects often involving prolonged efforts and isolation. These thanking acts enabled the writers to present themselves as likeable social individuals with a life outside academia. In conclusion, the ASs appeared to be complex, interactional textual constructs relevant to the private/personal and public/professional sphere of their writers’ life-worlds. The writers were found to use this textual space to construct an identity for themselves as individuals and academics set in a network of personal and professional relationships. At the same time, the conventions of the genre forced the writers to cope with the demanding and complementary needs of demonstrating intellectual competence and confidence, on the one hand, and gratitude and self-effacement on the other. Therefore, these texts signalled a relationship binding the acknowledgers and the academic acknowledgees in a mechanism of mutual indebtedness over a long term. Finally, both the text 94 Speech act perspective analysis and the interview data revealed disciplinary and degree variation in acknowledging practices. Kassirer and Angell (1991) discussed ambiguous authorship and lengthy acknowledgements in reports of clinical trials, which sometimes involve hundreds of people in multiple institutions. They observed that when many coauthors are mentioned, it is not because they take collective responsibility for the study, but because authorship is offered to them to ensure their cooperation. In addition, they noticed that acknowledgements often list not only people who made significant intellectual or technical contributions to a study, but also all those who merely carried out their jobs in relation it, and finally, that acknowledgees are often listed also as co-authors, which blurs the distinction between authorship and acknowledgement status. In their conclusion, the authors specified the criteria to be met to qualify for authorship status: conception or design of the study; analysis or interpretation of data; drafting or critical revision of the article for important intellectual content; and/or final approval of the version to be published. McCain (1991) interviewed experimental geneticists and examined ASs in genetics publications to reconstruct the scenarios for the exchange of researchrelated information among researchers, exploring the causes and effects of secrecy and openness in scientific communication. The ASs found in 241 articles could be classified into five major categories according to the types of information or service mentioned in them: researchrelated materials and facilities; secondary, unpublished data; specific researchrelated comments or suggestions; general peer communication and collaboration, technical assistance; and clerical support with typing and/or graphics. The two most prominent categories were the third and the first, occurring the in 80% and 60% of the papers examined and relevant to 33% and 30% of the acknowledgees, respectively. The interview data highlighted the high value assigned to intellectual property rights in the geneticists’ community. Geneticists considered it important for the documentation of their contribution to be cited not only as an expectation of reciprocal exchange (i.e. so that thanking could occur), but also so that interested readers could link the materials in question with their origin and retrieve the first relevant publication. Using a written questionnaire in multiple-choice format, Spiegel and KeithSpiegel (1970) examined 746 psychologists’ opinions about appropriate and 95 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology inappropriate credit assignment in collaborative research situations. Most respondents (82%) agreed that determinants of credit assignment should be active involvement in or contribution to a project (i.e. design of the project, statistical analysis of data, writing a section of the paper), that authorship order should reflect the relative significance of the contributions made, and that footnotes should acknowledge and be explicit about only minor contributions (e.g. use of someone else’s research idea; revision of manuscripts; technical assistance). However, the interviewees also observed that credit assignment is usually determined by deference to power or status, or the hope to enhance one’s chances of publication. In their textbook on the teaching of academic writing skills, Swales and Feak (1994/2004: 285) pointed out that ASs in research papers allow their writers to show that they are members of a community, to repay their intellectual debts and to claim responsibility for the content of their work. In the sequel to that textbook, Swales and Feak (2000: 198, 204-205) observed that ASs in theses and dissertations are written at the discretion of the writer in the US, and that they can be long and elaborate due to the need to thank many people. The authors warned the young academic against the danger of inadvertently leaving out acknowledgees, and thus recommended the use of generalized thanks at the beginning of ASs. The authors also pointed out the importance of using a variety of expressions to encode gratitude, so as to avoid repetition: these include primary expressions (with first-person subjects) and secondary ones (with gratitude-encoding words as third-person subjects). Finally, they observed that intensifiers in gratitude expressions should be limited to those cases when special acknowledgees are mentioned. 3.3.2.2 Realization patterns of the main notions Cronin (1991) examined the social function and cognitive salience of 444 ASs from one information science journal over a 20-year period. She classified them into three groups and six categories reflecting the motivations behind ASs: (i) the resource-related acknowledgements were defined a matter of good manners and common sense and included the category paymaster, referring to financial support, and moral support, referring to the possibility to access or use institutional facilities; (ii) the procedure-related acknowledgments were described a matter of basic decency, and included category dogsbody, relevant to secretarial, editorial, data collection or analysis assistance, and technical, relevant to help in (the implementation of) methodology; finally, (iii) the 96 Speech act perspective concept-related acknowledgements revealed networks of influence within a discipline, and comprised the categories prime mover, having to do with intellectual inspiration and/or stimulation, and trusted assessor, relative to intellectual influence. The resource-related, procedure-related, and concept-related acknowledgements occurred, respectively, in over 90%, over 30%, and over 50% of the ASs examined, many of which contained compound acknowledgements. There was a pattern of high concentration in the distribution of acknowledgements, with only a few individuals receiving multiple mentions and over 85% receiving just one mention. Independently of category membership, all the ASs registered valuable social-professional influence, which made them suitable for consideration in the assessment of academic performance. Cronin, McKenzie and Rubio (1993) examined over 5,600 ASs published over a twenty-year period in four academic journals in the disciplines of history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Intensity of acknowledgement was lowest in philosophy, slightly higher in history, stronger in psychology and the strongest in sociology. The most frequent benefit category across disciplines was peer interactive communication (PIC) – considered a record of significant intellectual influence – and the PIC frequency distribution across disciplines was strikingly similar, with only a few individuals being repeatedly mentioned, and a majority seldom acknowledged. There were, instead, distributional differences with regard to the other benefit categories considered (moral support; financial support; access to facilities, data, specimens, samples, documents or materials; clerical support; technical support). Finally, the structure, style and syntax of the ASs examined was homogeneous, allowing little room to the author(s)’ subjectivity. This standardized consistency in acknowledgement practices suggested that academics had a clear idea of who to acknowledge and how. Giannoni (1998) examined the ASs found in 50 UK and US journal articles in biology, economics, mathematics, medicine, linguistics and sociology. By comparing previous studies on the functional structure of ASs and by drawing on insights from politeness theory, genre analysis, and bibliometric studies, Giannoni identified the main communicative purpose of the ASs and described their rhetorical organization. The texts typically consisted of three main moves (establishing ancestry, mapping research credit where it was due, anticipating future interest in the article), although none was essential to the text, and each could include 97 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology subordinate components (the first could make reference to parent texts or events and express gratitude to their authors or agents, respectively; the second could comprise acknowledgment of institutional support and/or support from individuals; the third could specify hypothetical editorial developments and/or the address for correspondence). The sequence of moves in the ASs was held together by recurrent reference to the process of production of the research articles, consistently represented as living organisms that are conceived and given birth to. The conceptual metaphor revealed the scientific community’s self-perception as a nurturing agent, guided by an ethical principle of collaboration, but also stressed the individual academic’s responsibility for the successful “delivery” of each piece of work. The data showed that while institutional acknowledgees were always named, individual acknowledgees remained unnamed 23% of the time; however, individuals were more frequently acknowledged than institutions, and 33% of the individuals acknowledged also appeared in the bibliographical references. The findings also revealed that the most frequently mentioned benefit was peerinteractive support, that explicit gratitude expressions in the first person were rarer in association with benefits of an institutional kind, that occasional discontinuous moves (or subordinate steps) served to avoid unpleasant repeated listings, and that the language and content of the ASs was strongly tied to the sphere of emotions, with frequent reference to highly-prized interpersonal values like modesty, restraint, gratitude and generosity. Finally, the ASs revealed internal contradictions: they could be perceived as acts of boasting, since they recognized access to precious human and financial resources; yet, they reduced the impudence of publication by stressing reliance on other academic actors; also, they could reflect more the courtesy standards within a scientific community and the contributors’ relative status rather than their respective merits; finally, they were meant to acknowledge dependence on others for the success achieved in a competitive environment, but also to stress the author’s self-reliance, credibility, and responsibility for the work produced. Giannoni (2002) conducted a contrastive study of 100 acknowledgements in English and Italian research articles from six humanities and scientific disciplines, with the aim of uncovering socio-pragmatic norms in scholarly communication across disciplinary and linguistic communities. The texts were found to comprise an optional introductory move, ‘Framing’, and a main obligatory move, ‘Credit mapping’. The former consisted of three possible steps: ‘Citing parent texts or events’, ‘Acknowledging those involved’ and/or ‘Asserting commonality/authorship’. The latter possibly included these 98 Speech act perspective steps: ‘Acknowledging institutional support’, ‘Acknowledging individual contributions’ and/or ‘Accepting responsibility’. Each step was found to play a socio-pragmatic role in the communicative contract between the writer and the reader. The step ‘Citing parent texts or events’, on the one hand, could develop a self-promotional function – in conveying detailed information on the author’s publications – while its marginal presence in the sciences revealed scholars’ unwillingness to present findings before publication and/or to recycle earlier articles in their highly competitive field. The step ‘Acknowledging those involved’ was similar, both content-wise and linguistically, to the steps ‘Acknowledging institutions and individuals’, except that it linked an article to the author’s private sphere of personal contact rather than to the public sphere of academic presentations. The step ‘Asserting commonality/authorship’ specified to what extent an article was the product of a collaborative vs. individual effort; it was a functional slot, sometimes required by the publishers, which forced and enabled authors to take responsibility for each co-author’s contribution to the publication. In the ‘Credit mapping’ move, the acknowledgement of deserving individuals and institutions was realized through a performative, typically hedged, or its nominalization (e.g. to thank, thanks), or alternatively through an adjective or its nominalization (e.g. grateful, gratitude). The English ASs displayed greater lexico-semantic variation in the encoding of gratitude, represented also through such notions as indebtedness, recognition, and the avoidance of first-person subjects denoting the thankers. The Italians ASs, on the other hand, switched more freely from an impersonal to a personal style, and more often qualified acknowledgees’ contributions with adjectives highlighting their value. The acknowledgees were often referred to by name and honorific title, signalling consideration for the contributors’ positive face, and deference to the hierarchically organized academic communities. The final step in the ‘Credit mapping’ move, namely ‘Accepting responsibility’ was a disclaimer asserting authorial responsibility for the article, despite the attribution of intellectual credits to others. It occurred mostly in the humanities and in the Italian texts; at the same time, the Italian authors were more prone to admit potential, rather than actual, fault. The ASs in the humanities turned out to be more elaborate (i.e. richer in steps) than those in the sciences, while these concentrated mostly on credit mapping and the acknowledgement of institutional support; also, the Italian ASs were more elaborate in the introductory than in the main move; finally, no single disciplinary or linguistic corpus sample instantiated all the steps identified. 99 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Overall, the ASs appeared to be strategic rhetorical acts meant to convince the readers of the authors’ civility and membership in the scientific community, and to publicly recognize and sustain academia’s highly prized values of cumulative knowledge and intellectual integrity. Also, cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistics differences revealed the existence of both cultural and linguistic loyalties within the larger academic community. Giannoni (2006) examined the content and wording of book ASs, regarded as records of the production process of books and also as introductions into the authors’ public and private networks. The author considered 60 texts from English academic books representing three hard and three soft disciplines, most occurring as textually independent units (i.e. ASs), and others being part of other texts (e.g. prefaces, introductions). The texts ranged from a minimum of 56 to a maximum of 2,159 words; in particular, those in the soft sciences were on average 30% longer than those in the hard sciences, although edited monographs in the latter disciplines were longer than those in the soft disciplines. The number of acknowledgees – and the amount and type of information provided about them – also differed across texts, with ASs in the hard sciences featuring the highest number of acknowledgees, a sign of the high collaborative nature of the work carried out in those disciplinary fields. Giannoni also examined three pragmalinguistic features relevant to the texts’ evaluative function, namely hyperbole, irony and emotivity, all three of which were found to be prevalent in the soft sciences. Hyperbolic expressions comprised “evaluative acts targeting the worthiness of acknowledgees” (p. 158), “the debt incurred by the author/editor” (p. 159) and/or “the acknowledger’s unworthiness” (p. 160). These acts appeared to serve a politeness goal, namely maximising praise of the acknowledgee and maximising self-dispraise. Irony included negative evaluation of self (i.e. downgrading of the writer’s persona and/or their work), of the imposition placed on the acknowledgees (and concomitant praise of their endurance) or of the academic community (which represented a threat to the face of colleagues or superiors who are usually shown deferential respect). Emotivity consisted in the positive evaluation of acknowledgees, their qualities and of the whole research experience. Overall, the ASs in the hard disciplines were compact texts, devoid of hyperbolic, ironic or emotive language, while the opposite held for the ASs in the soft disciplines. This suggested that the presence of such features was “inversely proportional to the size of the academic network involved” (p. 165). The occasional merging of the ASs with other prefatory texts signalled a 100 Speech act perspective possible immaturity of the genre or its hybridisation with others (p. 166). The content of the ASs (focused on the process of research and aspects of the author/editor not available elsewhere) and their wording (less restrained than in the relevant books) showed that they counted as apparently private acts meant to achieve public intentions (e.g. constructing academic and private identities, furthering the writers’ career by making explicit their network of relationships, and building consensus in the community). Hyland (2004) examined the generic structure of ASs found in PhD and MA theses and dissertations written by non-native speakers of English in a variety of disciplines at five Hong Kong universities. ASs were found in 90% of the texts, and displayed a three-part structure consisting of an optional Reflecting Move, an obligatory Thanking Move, and an optional Announcing Move. The Reflecting Move, found in 20% of the texts, and mostly the PDAs, was an introspective comment on the writer’s research experience, focused on the challenges faced and the results achieved, meant to represent the writer as a worthy academic. The Thanking Move, meant to map credit to individuals and institutions, occurred in all texts. It consisted of four steps: Presenting participants, Thanking for academic assistance, Thanking for resources and Thanking for Moral support, typically occurring in this order, but also liable to considerable recursion. Only 20% of the texts contained all four steps, while all contained the second step. The acknowledgees always included the writers’ supervisors, and often their family and friends as well, but also marginal contributors, whose favourable attitude, good will and/or protection would serve the AS writer in the short and long term. The Announcing Move was a statement of responsibility and inspiration. Occurring in 11% of the texts, especially in the soft fields, it enabled the writers to declare their accountability for the content of their work, and to dedicate their work to a deserving individual. Writers in the humanities and social sciences produced more complex ASs than those in the hard sciences and engineering. In particular, two thirds of the Reflecting and Announcing Moves occurred in the soft fields. The ASs’ average length was 160 words, with PDAs and ASs in applied linguistics being around twice as long. The author also discussed the importance of the genre, which provides writers with an opportunity to promote their identity as competent and wellconnected members of a discourse community, who sustain that community’s highly prized values of gratitude and modesty. 101 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Hyland and Tse (2004) examined the generic structure and linguistic patterns of ASs found in 240 Masters and PhD dissertations. The authors found that 90% of the texts contained ASs, which consisted of three moves comprising a number of steps. The 1,400 acts of acknowledgement instantiated in the corpus were realized by a relative restricted range of lexico-grammatical patterns. The PDAs in the soft sciences were found to be quite elaborate and to be characterized by a wide variety of patterns. The generic structure presented was the same as in Hyland (2003) and Hyland (2004). All thanking steps contained either an overt expression of gratitude or mentioned the benefactor without explicit thanks. About one third of the gratitude expressions were encoded as nouns and verbs, which were more dominant when expressing gratitude for academic and moral support. The Masters ASs used a more restricted range of expressions and often resorted to nominalizations. The PDAs, especially in the sciences and engineering, more often used performatives (i.e. to thank and to acknowledge). The use of adjectives or passive verbs in gratitude expressions, as well as simple mentions of benefactors with no gratitude expressions – described as formal and/or lowkey ways of expressing gratitude – were frequent when the writers offered thanks for resource support. About 35% of the acknowledging acts were amplified by a variety of items – especially in the soft sciences – and included adjectival and adverbial intensifiers, but also introductory phrases – comprising modals and/or mental state verbs – which hedged the performatives following them. The Masters ASs were more likely to contain such prefaces, which mitigated the full force of the gratitude “by thematising the writer’s motivation for offering thanks” (p. 269). The ASs frequently encoded the authors in their thanking acts. In particular, I and my occurred in 66% and 6%, respectively, of the acknowledging acts; in addition, 16% contained no subject (often in association with reference to resource assistance), 8% represented non-authorial subjects (often instantiated in thanking acts lacking a gratitude expression, in which the acknowledgees were cast in subject position), while 4% referred to the writers as the author. In sum, the ASs examined were found to instantiate a common coherent structure and to routinely employ homogeneous patterns of expressions. Al-Ali (2006) examined the structure of 100 English PDAs written by Arab non-native speakers of English in humanities and social sciences in order to determine the socio-cultural norms and etiquette governing acknowledging behaviour. 102 Speech act perspective The author applied Hyland’s (2004) move analysis to the corpus, and noticed how the texts were built around a main, obligatory thanking move, optionally preceded by a reflecting move and followed by an announcing move. The reflecting move, found in 8% of the texts, was an introductory comment on the overall experience of going through graduate school and/or producing a dissertation. The thanking move, central to the genre’s communicative purpose, consisted of six steps, which allocated credit or influences to deserving contributors. The first component step was ‘thanking God’, found in 19% of the texts. The second was ‘presenting participants’; occurring in 40% of the PDAs, this step had an organizational function, since it introduced the people to be thanked in later steps. The third step, ‘thanking supervisors and academics’ for intellectual help occurred in all the texts. The fourth step, ‘thanking for data access and clerical and technical support, was instantiated in 70% of the texts. ‘Thanking for financial assistance’ occurred in 40% of the PDAs. ‘Thanking family members for moral support’ was the last step, occurring in 84% of the texts. The announcing move, found in 15% of the corpus, consisted of two steps. ‘Accepting responsibility’ (9%) conveyed the writers’ taking up responsibility for the flaws in their dissertations, while ‘Dedicating the dissertation’ (6%) was a form of symbolic offer to a special addressee as a reward for a unique effort. The analysis showed that the obligatory move, which targeted the sphere of academic and interpersonal relationships – especially the handling of social debts and credits – enabled the authors to cement relationships and to officially claim membership within the academy, and to promote themselves as responsible individuals with a social and academic identity. Although not about ASs, Gifford (1988)’s article on book dedications is relevant to part of the content of ASs, as it explored the identifiability of book writers’ scholarly, socially and personally significant ties in semi-official textual constructs (cf. Cronin 1995: 14). His examination of 557 psychology books revealed that about half of the books contained a dedication; that on average, dedications were made to two dedicatees; that in about a third of the books, the relationship between dedicator and dedicatees was spelled out or discernible; that family members were more likely dedicatees than friends or academics; that academic dedications, which were less frequent than non-academic dedications, were often made to several individuals; that one’s seniors (i.e. parents and teachers) were honoured more often than one’s peers (i.e. spouses and friends) and one’s juniors (i.e. children and students); that male authors more often dedicated their books to their juniors than female authors; that textbook 103 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology dedicatees were more often female and family members, while monograph dedicatees were more often teachers; that only about 1% of the dedications were made to non-persons (i.e. organizations or pets); that as the number of authors rose, so did the number of dedications made by each author; and that as the number of dedications rose, so did the number of dedicatees whose relationship to the author(s) was made clear. 3.4 IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS The above literature overview offers insights into the nature and linguistic encoding of thanks and acknowledgements and suggestions on how to conduct further research in this domain. Studies on the cultural contextualization of acts of thanks have shown that different speech communities follow different, and largely unconscious, norms for the management and encoding of gratitude-oriented interactional events; the implication that follows from this for the current study is that the acknowledgement practices to be found instantiated in my corpus should be regarded as applicable only to the cultural group in which they have been produced and not automatically generalizable to (genre exemplars produced in) other communities without validation from comparable studies. Other such studies have pointed out some specific cultural values of American society, namely the belief in equality among individuals and the preference for thanks expressed after the occasion in which benefits are received; the former triggers the need to acknowledge what cannot be regarded as due or expected, and the need to repay offers with counteroffers so as to re-establish equality in the interaction, while the latter explains the production and exchange of elaborate written thanks as adequate verbal counteroffers for valuable non-verbal benefits. Such observations suggest that aspects of PDAs worth exploring include the representation of the benefactors and the enactment of the writers’ relationships with them, and the degree of elaborateness with which the texts are drafted. The analysis of the former aspect can reveal how benefactors are repaid for their deeds, and whether and to what extent they are treated as interactionally equal to the writers, while the analysis of the latter can show if PDAs are meant to count as messages loaded with social value. Studies focusing on the situational contextualization of acts of thanking have shown that the choice, phrasing and use of gratitude expressions is affected by social dimensions and situational variables such as participants’ sex and relative status, and the degree of imposition on the benefactor. The implication of this for future research is that an analysis of AMs could consider the variable role- 104 Speech act perspective relationships between acknowledgers and acknowledgees, and the variety of benefits exchangeable between them, as these are likely to reveal correlations between the wording of gratitude expressions and the types of benefactors and/or benefits they are relevant to. Studies focusing on the encoding of acts of thanking have shown that these can be elaborate, that is, that they can consist of functional components highlighting different facets of beneficial exchanges of goods and services, and that they can be qualified by modifiers and expanded by supportive moves. This implies that an analysis of AMs has to consider the complementary communicative roles played by its component units of meanings and the range of options available for encoding them. Other studies have revealed the multifarious character of the verbalization of gratitude, which may reflect various cognitive-emotional attitudes to, or types of evaluation of, interactional circumstances. This suggests that it is useful to classify the range of gratituderelated meanings conveyed in thanking expressions. Still other studies have pointed out that not all acts of thanking are alike (some being genuine and others perfunctory, some implying and others not implying the notion of indebtedness, some being relevant to requests and others to offers) and consequently that they are associated with different types of encoding; this implies that it is useful to classify AMs along the dimension of their social significance and to identify possible correlations between the degree of their interactional value and their specific phrasing. Finally, other studies have revealed that thanking addresses conflicting face wants, which indicates the need to establish which range of specific interactional needs are served by the meanings encoded in PDAs, whose perspective is adopted in reporting gratitude-related events, and what possible metamessages underlie specific textual practices. Bibliometric studies specifically focusing on ASs have revealed that conventionalized acknowledgement behaviour may not reflect the actual professional practices of an academic community; this implies that the content of PDAs too may be partly misleading or exaggerated and should not necessarily be taken at face value. Along the same lines, other studies have pointed out the internal contradictions of ASs, which suggests that the content of PDAs should be critically examined. Still other studies have revealed that scholars tend to agree on what counts as appropriate acknowledgement behaviour; this suggests that it may be possible to identify in PDAs recurrent patterns of manifestation of gratitude. Linguistic studies on ASs in books and research articles, and on ASs in Masters theses and PhD dissertations written by non-native speakers, have shown that these texts are structurally organized in a sequence of stages, but that 105 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology their arrangement, content and wording varies across linguistic and disciplinary communities. This suggests that PDAs written in a native-speaking context, too, can vary in the sequencing, prominence, content and phrasing of their functional constituents, which need to identified and labelled. Other studies have revealed that various types of benefits (and sub-benefits) are recognized in ASs in general and in PDAs in particular, that some are more frequently mentioned than others, and that there are distributional differences with regard to some benefit categories across academic disciplines. This suggests that it may be useful to identify benefit categories in PDAs, as well and to assess their frequency of occurrence within single disciplines and their distributional patterns across disciplines, checking whether similar patterns emerge in a native-speaking context. Similarly, other studies have pointed out that several types of acknowledgees are mentioned in ASs/PDAs (or even book dedications), not all with the same frequency, and not all in relation to the same types of benefit categories, which suggests the need to categorize the benefactors mentioned in PDAs presumably produced by native speakers too, and to establish which benefactor categories are more prominently referred to in relation to which benefit categories. In sum, the above findings suggest that PDAs are worth examining with regard to their multi-dimensional socio-cultural significance and semantic elaborateness. The exemplification provided in this and previous chapters (especially in chapter 2) has shown – but only briefly commented on – (a) how exemplars of the genre produced in an English-speaking cultural environment are encoded lexically, morphologically and syntactically; (b) what their main units of meaning are; and (c) what their overall structural organization is like. Chapter 4 presents a thorough analysis of 50 such texts, which examines increasingly specific structural, content-related, semantic and grammatical characteristics of the PDA genre. 106 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF TEXTS 4.0 INTRODUCTION The overall aim of this chapter is to provide a description of the grammar of written gratitude expressions in the PDA genre. I start out by presenting sample analyses of a few texts illustrating the global structure of PDAs, the internal organization of their component moves, and the general wording of their expressions of gratitude. (These analyses offer an overview of the approach adopted to account for ever-specific features of the PDAs which will be taken up in more detail later in the chapter, with reference to the whole corpus). I then proceed to specify how I identify AMs in PDAs, as it is within these text units that gratitude expressions become salient. Next, I describe the tagging procedure and the quantitative analysis of the whole corpus. Finally, I offer a summary of the quantitative data relevant to the corpus; this encompasses, among other things, the length of the texts, the types of moves and move components that make them up, the order in which benefactors are listed in the PDAs, the types of benefits mentioned, and the wording of the expressions of gratitude. The presentation of the quantitative data is accompanied by text segments intended as exemplifications of the corpus’s main characteristics. 4.1 BASIS FOR THE ANALYSIS As instantiations of the same genre, the PDAs examined are necessarily comparable in content and form. Indeed, they all fulfil the main purpose of publicly expressing thanks; also, they all refer to support received in relation to the realization of a dissertation project; their textual building blocks are similarly structured benefactor-specific AMs; finally, being the products of a shared situational-cultural context, they follow similar social norms of interaction; for example, their degree of formality varies across their constituent AMs according to how socially-emotionally close the writers and the benefactors happen to be. At the same time, as members, rather than copies, of a genre, PDAs are not standardized textual clones of each other. They constitute variant realizations of a shared rhetorical text type. Their wording and structure, therefore, may also 107 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology reflect their writers’ personalities, private goals, or restricted discourse community membership. That is, differences may emerge as a result of the infinitely variable situational context of any given genre instantiation. The variable realization of a genre is likely to be particularly evident in an individual-oriented culture like the Anglo-American one, which assumes social equality among interactants. Articulate, tailor-made, original and creative verbal behaviour is taken as a sign of sincerity and consideration towards the interlocutor, especially when dealing with social rights and duties: that is, messages are judged as plausible and appropriate if they can be perceived as having been specially and uniquely elaborated for given addressees, as result of having dedicated time and effort to their production. Finally, as staged realizations of a social value-laden rhetorical act – rather than standardized reproductions of a routine formula – genre members are repeatedly open to multiple differentiations in each of their various components. As is the case with extended speech acts or speech act sets (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989; Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984), made up of complementary components serving the same general illocutionary goal (i.e. a message nucleus and relevant supporting moves and/or corollary speech acts), PDAs are multifunctional and polysemous linguistic units, coherently organized around a common theme. They convey complementary meanings and fulfil multiple functions, which realize one structural whole originating from one basic expressive need. This is repeatedly instantiated through AMs, which consist of three elements (i.e. manifestation of gratitude associated with the benefit and the benefactor information units), each of which is potentially expandable with enriching information. Opportunities for variation therefore abound in the PDA genre. The following section illustrates this variation. 4.1.1 Sample analyses Following are three stylistically different PDAs accompanied by an analysis of their wording and rhetorical arrangement. The first PDA considered, B-Adm4, illustrates the typical content and organization, but not length, of a PDA: (1) “Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee members Richard Stanton, Terry Marsh, and Roger Craine for invaluable guidance and suggestions. I am also indebted to Simon Gervais, Bill Keirstead, and Fernando Zapatero for their many helpful comments. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Cindy Lum, Jessie W. Dog, Michel Côté, 108 Analysis of texts Michael Ross, Stewart Mayhew, Kalee Sprague, and Scott Prudham for making my time here so memorable.” B-Adm4 unambiguously announces its communicative purpose through its title, Acknowledgements, which signals the conceptual unity of the text, built around the main notion of giving thanks. The manifestation of gratitude is the focus of the text, and is indeed realized three times (i.e. “I would like to thank”; “I am also indebted to”; “I would also like to extend my appreciation to”) in one paragraph. On each occasion, the act of thanking is made relevant to new groups of benefactors and benefits (i.e. “for invaluable guidance and suggestions”; “for their many helpful comments”; “for making my time here so memorable”). The association of a gratitude expression with the identification of relevant benefactor(s) and the reference to benefits attributable to their generosity realizes a new AM in the text; B-Adm4 thus comprises three AMs. The order of the AMs reflects the author’s increasing degree of familiarity with her benefactors: the author first mentions the people most relevant to her as a dissertation writer; then she refers to those that were competent and close enough to be able and willing to help (probably, friendly colleagues, i.e. fellow graduate students); finally, she names those that were most important to her on a personal basis (probably, friends and family). The roles played by the three groups of benefactors are partly explicitly signalled, and partly recoverable from the co-text: the first three benefactors are openly identified as the author’s committee, while the role-relationships between the writer and the other groups of benefactors are to be inferred from the benefits attributed to them. Several elements contribute to the cohesion of the PDA. At a global level, cohesion is determined by the presence of multiple AMs, which give the text a recursive structure. Additionally, the formal unity of the text is enhanced by the parallel syntactic-semantic encoding of the AMs: each consists of a one-clause sentence in which the thanker is the subject, the benefactors the direct or indirect objects and the benefits the final complements. Finally, the text hangs together also due to the reiteration of the notion of gratitude, rendered with conventional expressions focusing on different facets of the writer’s mental state. The PDA comprises one paragraph and 71 words long; 18 of these are devoted to the manifestation of gratitude. The text is thus not sufficiently long to allow for an elaboration of its main concepts, with the exception of the indications of benefits, which include adverbial or adjectival modification (i.e. invaluable, helpful, so). In particular, the adjectives invaluable and helpful enable the author to overtly express her evaluation of the situations she was involved in, that is, to qualify the benefits received as worthwhile and valuable. 109 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Other words with a similar appraisal-oriented (Martin 2000) function include: memorability, which expresses the notion of impact of the benefit; guidance, suggestions and comments, which indirectly express the writer’s esteem of, or positive judgments on, the benefactors’ ability to act; and the gratitude-relevant words thank, encoding happiness, and indebted and appreciation, encoding satisfaction, which manifest the author’s affective attitude towards the previous beneficial exchanges. Finally, the tone of the text is halfway between formal and informal: while two of the thanking expressions are suitable to official occasions, the benefactors are informally referred to by their names, not their titles, and one of the benefits is not relevant to the dissertation. This marks the PDA as a semiofficial communicative act, which is associated with an official document (i.e. the dissertation), but also expresses personal emotions and opinions. In sum, B-Adm4 is an effective, although not elaborate PDA. It carries out its communicative purpose (in the title and through the thanking expressions), it motivates its illocutionary intent (by mentioning benefits and benefactors) and it selects a context-appropriate, mildly formal register. It is organized as a series of moves, ordered in a way that highlights the salience of the benefits received to the author’s recent accomplishment. Also, the lexical encoding of the AMs reveals the thanker’s multi-faceted appraisal of those benefits. Finally, the AMs in question only consist of their basic functional elements (i.e. expression of gratitude, identification of benefactors, reference to benefits) and do not provide additional details about the exchanges they are relevant to. The second sample text is EECS2. It displays features of creativity and elaborateness (e.g. expansions of AMs, a global textual organization, a few original expressions of thanks, occasional use of direct address), which lend a distinctive character to its wording: (2) “Acknowledgments I came to Berkeley not because of great enthusiasm in engineering but because I wanted to find out how smart people can be! At Berkeley, I found myself surrounded by top talents not only from the U.S. but also from the rest of the world. It makes me feel smarter by learning, studying, and working with them. While brilliant people are all around and clever ideas are [sic] dime a dozen, I found the brightest scholars to be polite, humble, and open minded. I feel very fortunate to come to know and work with many of them. My graduate education and research would not be possible without their advice and encouragement. 110 Analysis of texts I am very grateful to my research advisor, Professor David Messerschmitt, for his guidance and support throughout my years at Berkeley. Besides the wealth of his technical knowledge, I truly admire his profound business insights and superior management skills. I would also like to thank Professor David Tse for his dedication and patience in advising my wireless project. It has been a privilege to work with him. I would like to thank two great scientists, Professor Stanley Klein and Dr. Thom Carney, for introducing me to the world of vision science. Dr. Carney’s dedication to scientific research is inspiring. I would also like to thank Professor Avideh Zakhor and Professor J. George Shanthikumar for many comments and feedback before, during, and after my qualifying examination. For two years I was supported by an IBM Corporate Fellowship Award. Dr. Marc Willebeek-LeMair was kind to be my mentor to make the award possible. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to him, and other IBM researchers I had the luxury to work with. They include Dr. Zon-Yin Shae, Dr. Dilip Kandlur, and Dr. ChungSheng Li. I feel really lucky to have many wonderful friends at Berkeley. I wish to thank them for the help, encouragement and fun time together. Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my parents, whose care and love supported me throughout my education. Their encouraging letters and phone calls helped me work more diligently toward graduation. I would also like to congratulate my younger brother, who is getting Ph.D [sic] in Physics from the renowned Oxford University at about the same time as I do. Job well done, Brother!” The text opening is striking in several respects. This introductory AM is one paragraph long and syntactically elaborate: it consists of six sentences, variously characterized by coordination (e.g. “to come to know and work”), subordination (“While brilliant people are all around”) and/or embedding (e.g. “I wanted to find out how smart people can be!”). It is also semantically and pragmatically elaborate: on the one hand, it contains two benefits (i.e. “I found myself surrounded by top talents” and “to come to know and work”) and several benefit expansions through which the author also expresses her personal opinions (e.g. “I found the brightest scholars to be polite”); on the other, it has a twofold function in the text: it acts as an AM (the penultimate sentence contains the canonical gratitude expression, identification of benefits and reference to benefactors), but it also sets the context for the overall text by offering a mininarrative of the writer’s relevant academic experience (e.g. the first sentence 111 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology provides background information about the author’s academic ties) in very general terms. Finally, part of the content of the move (which refers to personal events and opinions) and its occasional light tone (see the use of smart in the first and third sentences, the exclamation point in the first sentence, the typo in the fourth sentence) shows that the author wants to achieve a private purpose within the official goal of the text, namely have a chance to talk about herself, even by referring to episodes not directly relevant to her role as an acknowledger. A strategic, personal use of the PDA is confirmed in its last move. From the point of view of structure, it resembles an ordinary AM: it contains an expression of attitude (“I would also like to congratulate”) and its repetitionexpansion (“Job well done”), two text segments identifying the object of that attitude (“my younger brother”, “Brother”), and reference to the event motivating the writer’s attitude (“who is getting Ph.D [sic] in Physics from the renowned Oxford University at about the same time as I do”). However, the move is not motivated by the global goal of the text, in that it is meant neither to thank a benefactor nor to acknowledge something the writer wants to take responsibility for. Rather, it expresses the writer’s positive attitude towards her brother for the latter’s imminent academic achievement. Its content is thus comparable to that of a benefactor expansion: it serves to praise the accomplishments of a person the writer admires, who is not, however, a benefactor.1 Also, its tone is very much like that of the first move (see the typo in the first sentence and the final, informal exclamation). Because of its untypical content and its formal-functional similarity to the first move in the text, this final move constitutes an appropriate final conceptual boundary for the overall PDA. Both the introductory and the concluding move also display characteristics that are exemplified in the other moves of the text, namely the lack of correspondence between their syntactic and semantic boundaries and the occasional (sometimes consequent) repetition or expansion of one of their components. With regard to the first feature, all but three moves consist of more than one sentence: sometimes the main functional components of a move are spread over syntactically separate text segments (e.g. “Dr. Marc WillebeekLeMair was kind to be my mentor to make the award possible. I would like to 1 Indeed, this move resembles others in the text in which benefactors are not only thanked but also positively evaluated; see, for instance, the use of great in the following excerpt: “I would like to thank two great scientists […] for introducing me to the world of vision science” (EECS2). 112 Analysis of texts express my sincere gratitude to him”) or, alternatively, their expansions appear in other sentences (e.g. “I am very grateful to my research advisor, Professor David Messerschmitt, for his guidance and support throughout my years at Berkeley. Besides the wealth of his technical knowledge, I truly admire his profound business insights and superior management skills”). With regard to the second feature, two options are available: the main units of meaning of a move may recur in the move itself via lexical cohesion or anaphora; for instance, in “I would also like to thank Professor David Tse for his dedication and patience in advising my wireless project. It has been a privilege to work with him”, the benefactor is referred to three times (through “Professor David Tse”, “his”, and “him”), while the gratitude expression is given at the beginning (“I would also like to thank”) and expanded upon later on through a less conventionalized manifestation of gratitude (“It has been a privilege”). In addition, the syntactically composite structure of the same move makes it possible to refer to benefits received in two different parts of it (“for his dedication and patience in advising my wireless project” occurs in the first sentence, while “to work with him” in the second). The recurrence of the above features in the PDA signal the elaborateness of its AMs, which consist of semantically rich and originally worded expressions. A final formal-functional peculiarity of the text is to be found in two of its central AMs, which are linked syntactically by the same sentence, although different parts of it are semantically relevant to them: “Dr. Marc WillebeekLeMari was kind to be my mentor to make the award possible. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to him, [#] and other IBM researchers whom I had the luxury to work with. They include […].” In conclusion, EECS2 shows that a PDA can have clearly identifiable textual-conceptual boundaries that re-instantiate the structure of its main building blocks (i.e. the AMs); that its content may be, in part, indirectly relevant to it communicative purpose, when the author chooses to mention episodes, circumstances or people that she considers particularly salient (intellectually and/or emotionally) to her, independently of their association with the dissertation; that its tone may be partly congruent with the official nature of the larger text it is attached to, and partly appropriate to the personal character of the PDA; and finally, that the elaborate content of single AMs may affect their syntactic realization, such that they can stretch over sentence boundaries. Finally, Phil3 provides an example of a partly unsuccessful PDA: 113 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (3) “Acknowledgments Many people have provided essential help to me in writing this dissertation. In addition to those mentioned below I would like to give special thanks to [names] and [name]” Phil3 is not communicatively effective, because it is not informative – benefactors are identified only through names, and this makes it difficult to understand what their role-relationships with the author are or were like; in addition, benefits are not referred to, except generically in the first sentence, which leaves the writer’s gratitude unmotivated. Lastly, the writer fails to mention the group of benefactors announced at the beginning of the second sentence (“In addition to those mentioned below […]”), which reveals forgetfulness or carelessness in the drafting of the text. A different use of punctuation marks – i.e. removing the full stop between “dissertation” and “In” and inserting one between “below” and “I” – would make the PDA understandable. Phil3, therefore, does not serve the purpose it is meant to achieve. What its communicative failure is to be attributed to (e.g. lack of expertise, indifference to the effects of the text on the audience) is, however, a matter of speculation. 4.2 IDENTIFICATION OF AMs The literature on the speech act of thanking does not explain how to recognize the boundaries of individual instantiations of thanking behaviour, and more specifically, of their relevant gratitude expressions. Indeed, this is unlikely to come up as an issue with elicited data, which usually consists of easily separable pieces of discourse, each realising a single interactional episode, or communicative act, under controlled experimental conditions. But the issues does come up with spoken, dialogic data, which may reveal the presence of functional clusters (see Schauer and Adolphs 2006), as well as in elaborate linguistic constructs like PDAs. A PDA consists of recursive “thanking episodes”, or AMs. Each is the realization of a micro-communicative act relevant to and supportive of the global purpose of the PDA in a given text segment, and contributes to the staged realization of the PDA’s communicative goal. In my corpus, the identifiability of AMs can be associated with the recognisability of a new benefactor (or group of benefactors) in any given text. That is, a new AM can be said to be instantiated when a text segment appears to be about either a person or group of people not previously identified by the writer as (a) thankee(s)/acknowledgee(s) or, alternatively, about a person (or group of people) representing a subset of a (larger) group of people already 114 Analysis of texts mentioned and recognized as benefactors, but relevant to a new (implied or overt) benefit. This means that (a) new benefactor(s) may be mentioned alone or accompanied by a relevant gratitude expression and/or reference to a benefit, while a subset of a larger and previously mentioned group of benefactors has to be associated with a new thanking expression and/or benefit, or at least that the latter, even if implicit, has to be co-textually retrievable. This focus on the benefactor as an AM-marking device is in part arbitrary and in part justified. It is arbitrary because each component of an AM is equally salient to the act of thanking from a conceptual point of view, and contributes to defining the AM. However, it is justified, both because the act of thanking manifests an other-directed, or benefactor-oriented, cognitive-emotional state, and because of the three functional components of the AM, the benefactorrelevant unit is the most frequent in the corpus (see section 4.6). The following exemplification shows how AMs can be identified in a PDA: (4) “I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their guidance, encouragement and support: the Chair, […], the other committee members from the Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, as well as the members from the Department of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. [#] I am also grateful for the financial support provided by the American School of Classical Studies […] and the American Academy […]” (Arch3; a PDA excerpt realizing two AMs). The first AM in Arch3 is relevant to a group of benefactors (the writer’s dissertation committee); these are mentioned first collectively (“my dissertation committee”) and then more specifically, as two sub-groups (“the Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology” and “from the Department of Architecture”). The reference to specific members of a previously identified group of benefactors does not count as the instantiation of a new AM, as these group members are all relevant to the same benefit. However, the reference to two funding bodies, later in the text, makes it possible to identify another AM, in which two benefactors are linked by their relevance to the same benefit. The following excerpt from Arch1 shows a sequence of three AMs. The first AM is a generic one, relevant to the writer’s friends, and “underspecified” for the notion of benefit (this, however, could be inferred to be a form of emotionalcognitive support); the second and third are relevant to two specific people, who are members of the set of the writer’s friends previously identified as benefactors (as is clear from the use of the colon after “friends”); both 115 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology benefactors are relevant to distinct benefits (“stimulating comments and encouragements” and “stimulating comments”): (5) “My appreciation is also extended to my friends: [#] Gladys […] for her valuable comments and encouragements, [#] Gilberto […] for his stimulating comments at the beginning of this work” (Arch1; a PDA excerpt realizing three AMs). A single benefactor (or a group of benefactors) may be associated with a given benefit, and may later be mentioned again together with another benefactor (or group of benefactors) in association with a different benefit. In the excerpt below, two AMs can be identified, even if they have one benefactor in common; this is because two (kinds of) benefits are (mentioned as) relevant to different subsets of the author’s acknowledgees, the second of which happens to include the first: (6) “to Arijit […] for reading the preliminary drafts [#] and who along with Vaishali […] helped with the drawings” (Arch4; a PDA excerpt realizing two AMs that share one benefactor). A text segment relevant to a subset of previously identified benefactors signals the beginning of a new AM only if it encodes a new benefit. In the excerpt below, “brilliance as an “anatomist” of American literature and culture” is relative to one of the benefactors previously collectively identified as “the various members of my committee”; since it describes the benefactor, it constitutes an expansion of the text segment identifying that benefactor: (7) “I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary support I have received from the various members of my committee in planning and writing this dissertation. In many ways, because of them Berkeley has been a supremely gratifying place to earn a doctorate. Their scholarly example and interests are reflected in my dissertation’s focus on the West Indies and empire in the new republic: […]’s brilliance as an “anatomist” of American literature and culture” (Engl5; a PDA excerpt realizing one AM containing expansions). In the following excerpt, instead, an expansion of one of the members of the first group of benefactors also introduces a benefit (i.e. “is inspiring”) and thus contributes to identifying a distinct AM: (8) “I would like to thank two great scientists, Professor […] and Dr. […], for introducing me to the world of vision science. [#] Dr. […]’s dedication to scientific research is inspiring” (ECCS2; a PDA excerpt realizing two AMs with a shared benefactor). 116 Analysis of texts Finally, when a previously mentioned benefactor is mentioned again, but in association with a new benefit and/or thanking expression, this signals the continuation of the same AM. In the excerpt below, two thanking expressions are instantiated (“I would like to express my sincere appreciation” and “It has been my privilege”) and two benefits are mentioned (“for his guidance and support given to me throughout my study in Berkeley” and “to be his student”) in relation to the same benefactor, first identified through a combination of title and name and then through pronouns: (9) “First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisor Professor Chenming Hu for his guidance and support given to me throughout my study in Berkeley. His keen insights, stimulating advice, and incredible patience toward my research have shown me what a top professor should be. It has been a special privilege to be his student. This unique experience will be a source of long lasting inspiration to me” (EECS4; reference to one benefactor in association with several benefits). As the above examples show, it is possible to follow a consistent principle, based on functional and content-related considerations, to determine whether a stretch of writing counts as an AM. This is not a guarantee that the author’s original intentions regarding the organization of her text are recognized or validated – and indeed, these may be better revealed by the formal encoding of the text segments. However, the adoption of a motivated practice, based on consistent criteria, makes it possible to approach the analysis of the texts in a systematic and replicable fashion. Table 4.1 shows the total and average number of AMs across the subcorpora, with their average frequency word length values. All the PDAs are longer than a single move, showing their relevance to multiple benefactors. The shortest are two moves long (B-Adm5 and Phil3), and the longest is 24 moves long (Engl4), although most PDAs display intermediate AM length values. Edu has the highest number of moves, namely 80, and B-Adm the lowest, namely 26, although the number of moves varies also from one PDA to another within the same disciplines, with Arch, Edu and Engl being characterized by considerable internal variation. The average number of moves making up the PDAs varies across the sub-corpora: the longest PDAs occur in Edu and Arch, those displaying intermediate values are found in Econ, EECS, Engl, P-Bio and Phys, while the shortest are in B-Adm, Phil and Stat. However, the average wordlength values of the AMs are similar across most disciplines. That is, moves tend to be about 26 words long, except for those in the EECS and Engl subcorpora, which are, on average, about 40 words long. The average word length 117 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology values of the AMs suggest that they are formally elaborate across the subcorpora. Table 4.1a: Distribution of AMs in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Moves and words Total moves Range of moves Average moves Average words per move Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 48 43 60 6-11 6-13 7-18 9.6 8.6 12 38 22 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 46 80 33 4-15 8-20 3-9 9.2 16 6.6 27 23 26 26 Table 4.1b: Distribution of AMs in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Moves and words Total moves Range of moves Average moves Average words per move Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 55 30 3-24 2-11 11 6 43 27 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 73 26 5-22 2-10 14.6 5.2 28 32 Global 494 2-24 9.7 29.2 Overall, the length and number of moves in the sub-corpora tends to correlate with the latter’s size; for instance, the longest PDA, namely Engl4, is found in the longest sub-corpus, while Edu has about twice as many words and moves as EECS. But sometimes the correlation is not perfect or does not hold at all; for example, Engl has almost twice as many moves as Phil, but over seven times as many words; instead, Phil and Stat are almost the same length with regard to moves, but the latter sub-corpus has about four times as many words. These findings suggest that the word length of a PDA is not a reliable predictor of its functional length: much as there are PDAs consisting of the same number of moves and comparable in word-length (e.g. Arch3 and B-Adm2, P-Bio5 and Stat4), there are also others that share the same number of moves but are very different in word length, being characterized by different degrees of elaboration and detail (e.g. Arch1 and Engl3, or Engl1 and P-Bio5). Inter-disciplinary variations are better appreciated in Table 4.2, which shows the distribution of PDAs of different length in moves across the disciplines. Thus B-Adm, Phil and Stat tend to include PDAs with only a few moves; Arch and Edu tend to have PDAs with a relatively high number of moves; EECS and 118 Analysis of texts Phys prefer PDAs of medium move length values, while Econ, Engl and P-Bio are the least predictable from this point of view. Table 4.2a: Distribution of EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat PDAs over ranges of values for number of moves No. of moves 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 10-13 14-17 18-20 20+ Total Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 5 5 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 2 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 5 5 5 Table 4.2b: Distribution of Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and total PDAs over ranges of values for number of moves No. of moves 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 10-13 14-17 18-20 20+ Total Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 0 1 1 0 1 3 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 5 5 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 0 1 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 5 5 Total 2 6 9 7 8 6 6 2 4 50 Table 4.2 also shows, in generic terms, where the various AM length values within a discipline are placed along the continuum whose endpoints are the shortest and longest PDA of that discipline. It appears that within each subcorpus, except Engl and P-Bio, the PDAs tend to cluster together around similar values: for Arch they are 14-17, for B-Adm 2-6, for Econ 10-13, for Edu 18-21, for EECS 9-12, for Phil 2-6, for Phys 6-8, and for Stat 8-9. About half of the PDAs (i.e. 19) are clustered around text length values of 5 to 10 AMs. 119 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Overall, the data thus suggest that, on average, PDAs are texts of considerable length, but also that they are sensitive to discipline-specific preferred size values. 4.2.1 Identifiability of a hierarchical structure within AMs The literature on extended speech acts has repeatedly observed that, typically, it is possible to identify in these elaborate messages a head act, that is, the unit that minimally and most explicitly expresses the illocutionary intent relevant to a given speech act, and one or more optional supportive moves. Studies have also pointed out that, occasionally, the head act can occur without supporting move(s) or vice versa. In the co-text of a PDA, it is difficult to establish what counts as a head act, and whether this unit should be identified on the basis of syntactic, semantic and/or typographic criteria. The following examples illustrate how different classification procedures lead to the identification of different information units. (10) “I also thank Martin for giving me the opportunity to live in Lausanne for half a year” (EECS1; a text segment interpretable as an AM or an AM head act, characterized by internal unity). On the basis of internal criteria, the above excerpt may constitute a complete AM. It comprises a gratitude expression, and reference to a benefactor and a benefit. From a syntactic and typographic point of view, it qualifies as a complete message unit: it is encoded as a one-clause sentence, and its formal, structural boundaries are marked by surrounding punctuation marks. Semantically, it is statement, which represents a process involving two main participants and a relevant circumstance. The excerpt can thus qualify as a unified, self-contained mini-text, but if it were accompanied by additional cotextual information, it could act as the head act to a larger textual unit. (11) “First and foremost, I would like to thank my two wonderful advisors […]. Besides providing invigorating technical discussions, they were often more friends than authoritative figures” (EECS1; a text segment interpretable as an AM or AM head act and consisting of one semantic unit and two syntactic/typographic units). The example above from EECS1, instead, consists of two sentences. The first expresses gratitude and mentions the benefactors, the second refers to two benefits. Semantically, the two sentences together constitute the main move of an AM (or the whole AM, if no extra information is provided), but from the point of view of syntax and punctuation, they constitute two units. 120 Analysis of texts (12) “There have been many people who supported me throughout this endeavor. Friends to whom I am indebted. […] and their extended family” (Edu4; an AM consisting of one syntactic unit but also of three typographic segments). Similarly, the excerpt from Edu4 combines a two-clause sentence with two appositions relevant to the direct object in the first clause; therefore, it realizes one syntactic unit. In terms of punctuation, however, this excerpt consists of three typographic units, marked off by as many full stops. These signal the falling intonation contours that the reader is expected to superimpose onto the excerpt when reading it, and thus are not syntactically motivated. But things can get even more complicated, that is syntactic/typographic units can include both information relevant to the main move and information relevant to its supportives; e.g.: (13) “To my parents, Xavier and Rosalia, your love and support – both financial and emotional – are what have gotten me through these many many years of formal education. Thank you both for being my anchor” (Edu1; an AM in which semantic units of different hierarchical importance are grouped together under syntactic units). In the above example, the first sentence includes reference to the benefactors and the benefit, and a consequence of the benefit. The second sentence contains the gratitude expression together with less explicit reference to both the benefactors and the benefit. Thus the main components of the head act are spread over two syntactic units. Besides the difficulty of identifying stretches of writing that constitute single units -- from the converging perspectives of content, punctuation, and syntax – additional problems show up when considering the other two requirements for the identification of head acts, namely minimality and explicitness. For instance, it is not clear whether the value of minimality is to be established by counting words – including function words? – phrases, clauses or sentences, and whether ellipsis, repetition or embedding of given units of information has also to be taken in consideration. Excerpts from the corpus illustrate the problem. In the following excerpt, the apposition “my academic advisor” can be regarded as part of the head act because it belongs to the sentence in which the other information units of the AM occur; but it could also be excluded from the head act, since it constitutes a syntactically distinct sub-unit within that sentence: 121 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (14) “My deepest thanks are extended to Jean-Pierre Protzan, my academic advisor and dissertation Chairman, for all his valuable advice and support, both academic and personal, since the beginning of this long journey” (Arch1; apposition possibly interpretable as part of the AM head act). The following excerpt, instead, contains two thanking expressions. The first is indirect (due to a hedged performative verb), but conventionally so, and is part of the syntactic unit mentioning the benefactor and the benefit. The other is a direct routinized colloquial formula, but syntactically severed from the other components of the AM, potentially inappropriate (i.e. stylistically informal), and classifiable as a repetition of the expression of gratitude, because it occurs after “I’d like to thank”: (15) “I’d like to thank my advisor Jim Pitman for his guiding hand and help over the last two years. “THANKS!”” (Stat3; repeated manifestations of gratitude in the same AM). Difficulties may also be encountered in trying to evaluate the level of semantic explicitness of the lexical resources through which information units are expressed in an AM. For instance, he following AM contains three thanking expressions characterized by similar semantic transparency: they all conventionally manifest gratitude and realize acts of thanking – despite their different etymological bases (see section 3.2.1) and association with different processes: mental, material and relational, respectively. Also, they display parallel syntactic use, since they correlate with information units about benefits presented as relevant to the same benefactor. Given their comparable explicitness and arrangement, each individually and all together can qualify as an AM: (16) “Finally, I would like to thank Terry for his constant enthusiasm and support. I greatly appreciated his sensitivity on a personal level which was a major source of comfort and inspiration to me. Under his guidance, I have developed my capacities to think widely and deeply. I am extremely grateful for this intellectual stimulation and his patient, constructive and unfailingly positive perspective on my ideas and writings” (P-Bio5; an AM with three explicit thanking expressions). Finally, even when they can be identified, the properties of minimality and explicitness may be ascribable to different stretches of writing. In the following example, the syntactic unit that minimally expresses gratitude is the second sentence, but the one that most explicitly identifies the benefactors is the first. 122 Analysis of texts Thus, the text segments satisfying the criteria of minimality and explicitness consist of syntactically incomplete stretches of discourse: (17) “I feel really lucky to have many wonderful friends at Berkeley. I wish to thank them for the help, encouragement and fun time together” (EECS2; lack of coincidence between minimal and most explicit units of meaning). In sum, the above exemplification shows that different interpretative criteria lead to different choices in the identification of functional segments within an AM, and thus that the identification of the head act of an AM cannot be consistently based on a set of non-competing logical criteria. In order not to give unjustified priority to one of these equally important taxonomic principles, I did not set out to identify head acts in the PDAs. As a consequence, I could not examine the sequencing patterns of the head acts and their supportives in the AMs.2 4.3 SIZE PDAs can be structurally elaborate and semantically rich texts. This may depend, on one hand, on their size – the higher the number of component words, the greater the variety of units of meaning conveyed – and on the other, on their carefully planned elaboration in relation to a partly official communicative context – which is likely to result in an accurate wording and organization of the texts. Table 4.3a: Size of EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat PDAs in number of paragraphs No. of paragraphs Total Mean Minimum Maximum EECS 23 4.6 3 8 Applied / Pure Phys 14 2.8 1 6 P-Bio 18 3.6 1 6 Econ 15 3 1 5 Social Edu 21 4.2 3 6 Stat 9 1.8 1 4 From a formal, typographic point of view, the PDAs examined tend to be quite elaborate (see Tables 4.3 and 4.4). They can consist of one and up to 10 paragraphs, the average value being 3.4 paragraphs. Also, they can include as 2 These could comprise: pre-posed: head act + supportive(s); post-posed: supportive(s) + head act; inter-posed: supportive(s) + head act + supportive(s); circumposed: part of the head act + supportive(s) + part of the head act; alternating: part of the head act interleaved with part of the supportive(s); and zero: no head act, only supportive moves. 123 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology few as 54 and as many as 1,026 words. On average, therefore, they consist of about 289 words, and their paragraphs are about 102 words long. Table 4.3b: Size of Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and total PDAs in number of paragraphs No. of paragraphs Total Mean Minimum Maximum Humanities Engl 22 4.4 1 9 Phil 18 3.6 1 5 Professional Arch 24 4.8 1 10 B-Adm 8 1.6 1 3 Total Average per PDA 172 3.4 Average per sub-corpus 1.4 6.2 Table 4.4a: Size of EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat PDAs in number of words No. of words Total Mean Minimum Maximum EECS 1,847 369.4 326 439 Applied / Pure Phys 935 187 98 258 P-Bio 1,607 321.4 199 571 Econ 1,080 216 90 350 Social Edu 2,054 410.8 174 655 Stat 866 173.2 68 277 Table 4.4b: Size of Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and total PDAs in number of words No. of words Total Mean Minimum Maximum Humanities Engl Phil 2,369 814 473.8 162.8 119 54 1,026 260 Professional Arch B-Adm 2,052 835 410.4 167 139 71 891 295 Total 14,459 Average per PDA 289.1 The above findings show that the length values of the PDAs, in terms of number of words and paragraphs, can vary considerably both within and across disciplines, with B-Adm, Econ, Phys and Stat standing out for their quite short texts. At the same time, the texts’ average paragraph and word length values suggest that the PDAs tend to be at least typographically substantial, that is, longer than formulaic expressions, albeit not exaggeratedly elaborate. The distribution of the length values identified is illustrated in Tables 4.5 and 4.6. 124 Analysis of texts Table 4.5a: Size of EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat PDAs: distribution of paragraph length values No. of paragraphs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10+ Total Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 0 2 2 0 0 0 2 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 5 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 1 0 3 1 0 1 1 2 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 5 Table 4.5b: Size of Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and total PDAs: distribution of paragraph length values No. of paragraphs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10+ Total Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 1 1 2 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 1 3 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 5 Total 14 5 9 8 6 4 0 2 1 1 0 50 The highest number of PDAs associated with a single length value are the one-paragraph long ones (28%), which are also favoured in B-Adm and Stat, the sub-corpora with the shortest PDAs. However, most PDAs (72%) are longer, the largest subset being three-four paragraphs long (34%), which corresponds to the average value for the corpus. Paragraph length values slightly lower or greater than the average are similarly frequent (two-paragraph PDAs are 10% of the 125 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology corpus, while five-paragraph ones account for 12%). Longer PDAs are infrequent: six-paragraph PDAs ones are 8% of the corpus, while eight- to tenparagraph ones make up 10%. Table 4.6a: Size of EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat PDAs: distribution of word length values No. of words 1-100 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 601-700 701-800 801-900 901-1,000 1,001+ Total PDAs Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 0 1 0 0 2 1 0 2 2 4 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 1 0 2 1 1 0 2 1 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 5 5 Table 4.6b: Size of Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and total PDAs: distribution of word length values No. of words 1-100 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 601-700 701-800 801-900 901-1,000 1,001+ Total PDAs 126 Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 0 2 2 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 5 5 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 0 1 1 3 1 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 Total 7 12 15 6 3 3 1 0 2 0 1 50 Analysis of texts Fifty-four percent of the PDAs are between 101 and 300 words long, 26% are either up to 100 words long or between 301 and 400 words long, and another 20% are 401 words long or longer. Quite long PDAs (501 words long or longer), which make up 14% of the corpus, are exemplified only in Arch, Edu, Engl and P-Bio. Sub-corpora favouring relatively low length values (i.e. up to 300 words) are B-Adm, Phil, Phys and Stat. Finally, EECS appears to favour only intermediate values (301-500), which are not exemplified in Edu or Engl, these sub-corpora preferring lower and higher length values. Overall, the PDAs tend to be moderately lengthy, that is, one the one hand, elaborate enough to allow their authors to adequately thank their benefactors (which ensures communicative effectiveness), but on the other not so long that they risk irritating the general reader (which ensures social acceptability). At the same time, both very short and very long PDAs are found in the corpus, suggesting that PDAs are communicative acts whose framework is adaptable to individual authors’ needs and writing styles. Finally, mild cross-disciplinary variation in the frequency and distribution of length values – within a general preference for medium-length PDAs – suggests that writing conventions and norms for the production of PDAs are partly sensitive to discipline-specific trends or preferences. 4.4 TITLES The title of a PDA – Acknowledg(e)ments – indicates where the text begins and what type of text it is, signalling which typographic part of the dissertation tome is not actually a conceptual part of the dissertation text. The title thus contributes to the identifiability and definability of the PDA, but its presence is more a sign of conventionalized reader friendliness than a means to communicative effectiveness: even if it does not occur, the reader can still understand from the content of the PDA and its co-text what the text is about. All but one PDA in the corpus come with a title. It is mostly instantiated in the variants Acknowledgments (54%) and Acknowledgements (41%), with only one PDA exemplifying the singular Acknowledgement. The frequent, conventionalized plural form of the title signals that PDAs typically instantiate more than one act of thanking, each relevant to distinct benefactors. This underlines the composite-repetitive nature of such texts, which recurrently recycle the AM, rather than their functional unity (i.e. their relevance to the background circumstances of the writer’s dissertation). The slight preference for the American spelling variant Acknowledgments is obviously to be attributed to the US context of production of the texts. 127 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology 4.5 GLOBAL STRUCTURE The textual structure of the PDAs can be examined from the point of view of (a) their organization as self-contained texts; (b) the sequence of topics addressed; (c) the order and typology of their moves and sub-moves; and/or (d) the number and length of their typographic building blocks. I approach the analysis of the structure of PDAs by examining their macroorganizational features, namely the occurrence of introductory and concluding moves – relevant either to the whole texts or to parts of them – and then the sequencing patterns of information units mentioning different types of benefactors in the PDAs. 4.5.1 Introductory and concluding moves The PDAs examined occasionally comprise introductory and/or concluding moves that constitute their typographic-conceptual boundaries: they pave the way for or sum up the general circumstances addressed in the body of the text. More specifically, an introduction orientates the reader approaching the text, by announcing its topic and/or communicative purpose; a conclusion helps the reader make global sense of the text just read, and points out the gist or value of the message conveyed. The corpus contains 20 introductory moves and three concluding moves, which are relevant, respectively, to 45% and 3% of the corpus (see Table 4.7). Their infrequent occurrence is motivated by their co-text. Introductory and concluding moves contribute to the communicative effectiveness of the PDAs: they emphasize the texts’ purposive (i.e. acknowledging) function and elaboration (i.e. completeness and unified character). At the same time, they are not essential to the understandability of the overall texts, as long as their constituent AMs are coherent and informative.3 The higher frequency of introductory moves is justifiable considering that PDAs are delayed responding moves. As they realize “thanking ex post” (Held 1996: 378), PDAs re-establish contact with the benefactors and open contact for the first time with the readers. These interaction-initiating acts intrude into the interlocutors’ space; therefore, an elucidatory introduction that explains what the 3 Other optional moves may occur in the central part of the PDA, which provide the thanker with an opportunity to make a general comment about a subset of her thankees or about the possible effect of her text on his readers; for example: (a) “In the end, its [sic] family that really counts” (EECS3); (b) “Lonely is a man who does not have friends upon which [sic] he can count on [sic] in times of crisis and need… or to chat while the copy machine warms up for that matter” (EECS3). 128 Analysis of texts message to be conveyed is all about justifies the author’s decision to take an interactional turn. On the other hand, the non-abrupt conclusion of the message – that is realized in stages through the recurrence of the AM – has no disruptive effect on the interaction or the relationship between the participants, and no repair work is called for; as a result, the text can, but does not have to, be rounded off with a final move. Table 4.7a: Distribution of introductory moves in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Types of introductory moves Thanking Non-thanking Non-initial (Discontinuous) Total EECS 3 0 0 0 3 Applied / Pure Phys P-Bio 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 Econ Social Edu Stat 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 4 3 0 0 0 3 Table 4.7b: Distribution of introductory moves in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Types of introductory moves Thanking Non-thanking Non-initial (Discontinuous) Total Humanities Engl Phil 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 (1) 2 1 or 2 Professional Arch B-Adm 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 Total 18 0 1 (1) 19 or 20 All the introductory moves announce the writer’s intention to thank and/or express her indebtedness to or dependence on former benefactors, that is, they make generic and collective reference to previous beneficial exchanges – which qualifies them as introductions – but also acknowledge help received and/or express the writer’s reactive devotion to her helpers – which also qualifies them as regular AMs. Most introductory moves (i.e. 16) are one sentence long and include only the minimal information necessary to pave the way for the rest of the text; others lack an explicit thanking expression; still others are instead elaborate and contain details about the authors’ feelings, benefits received and/or background circumstances; e.g.: 129 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (18) “I am deeply grateful to my family and my professors for their unwavering support of this degree” (Edu2; a one-sentence-long introductory AM with its three main functional constituents) (19) “There are of course a large number of people who contributed in some way to my work and my sanity” (Phys5; an introductory AM with no thanking expression) (20) “The joy I feel in having completed this dissertation is accompanied by a deep sense of gratitude. Traces of the hard work and insight of professors, friends, and colleagues are legible to me on every page” (Engl4; an introductory AM with an expansion of the gratitude expression) (21) “While in the midst of wrestling with this work, I have often found solace and inspiration in the long list of students, colleagues, family, and friends who have nurtured my work” (Edu1; an introductory AM through which the author reports on past events). Not all kinds of additional information occur with the same frequency; thus, details about benefits and the manifestation of gratitude occur in nine (i.e. 50%) and two moves, respectively, while reference to background circumstances and the expression of personal opinions is limited to four moves and one move, respectively. These data suggest that the focus of the introductory moves is more often on their function as acknowledgements rather than prefaces, their introductory function being realized in a segment of the move rather than throughout. The only exception is Engl3, which is mostly focused on the manifestation of the writer’s opinion about the value of ASs: (22) “I always read acknowledgments first. As perhaps befits my interest in communities of readers, virtual and otherwise, I want to know who a given scholar’s friends and acquaintances are and how that scholar has dealt with his or her own belatedness in the highly conventionalized genre of the acknowledgments page. After all, it would seem that there are only so many ways to express one’s inability adequately to thank a spouse or partner, only so many ways to note that the project at hand has coincided with or paralleled the life of a child or the course of a career. I doubt I can provide much generic innovation, but it is one of the great pleasures of my life as a writer finally to record the acknowledgements I have been impatiently saving up all these years” (Engl3; an introductory AM focused on meta-thanking). The three short concluding moves in the corpus realize different communicative functions. One is an act of exultation, another an act of 130 Analysis of texts congratulating, and the third a generic act of thanking relevant to all the benefactors previously mentioned: (23) “Mom, Dad – I finished!” (EECS1; a concluding AM that expresses exultation) (24) “I would also like to congratulate my younger brother, who is getting Ph.D [sic] in Physics from the renowned Oxford University at about the same time as I do. Job well done, Brother!” (EECS2; a concluding AM that expresses congratulations) (25) “I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; a concluding AM that expresses gratitude). The first two emphasize the completeness of the dissertation project rather than that of the PDA, while the third is more reader-oriented. The former contrast with the rest of the texts in terms of their illocution and content (i.e. they are not linked to the notion of thanking, and end up signalling the end of the acknowledging part of the texts). The latter fulfils a recapitulating function: the notion of gratitude is taken up one last time (see “gratitude”) and presented as a responding act (see “offer” and “in return for”) relevant to previously mentioned (see the anaphoric “this”) benefits (see “help”). Only this one, therefore, is acknowledging in function. From a structural viewpoint, introductory and/or concluding moves may be originally arranged in the text. Indeed, the introductory move in Edu5 appears after a text-initial AM focused on institutional benefactors that provided the author with financial assistance, while Phil1 contains introductory and concluding text segments interpretable as the constituents of a discontinuous, general move: (26) “[# PDA-initial AM] This research was supported by funding from […]. [# introductory AM in second position in the text] The project could not have been brought to its present completion without the support and contributions of many people” (Edu5; an introductory, not text-initial AM) (27) “[# first part of a possibly discontinuous, introductory-and-concluding AM] Many people have helped me in the writing of this dissertation. [# several benefactor-specific AMs] [# second part of a possibly discontinuous, introductory-and-concluding AM] I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; a possibly discontinuous introductory-and-concluding AM; but see section 4.5.3). 131 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology In conclusion, as conventionally useful but not essential to an understanding of the PDAs, the fairly infrequent introductory and concluding moves in the PDAs represent acts of kindness towards the reader more than strategies pursuing communicative effectiveness. Indeed, their content qualifies them more as (generic) AMs than introductory or concluding statements. At the same time, the concluding moves appear to be more confidently used to achieve private intentions within the conventional communicative goal of the texts. From a textorganizing perspective, introductory moves – defined in functional terms – may have to be distinguished from text-initial ones – defined in terms of position (cf. Hyland 2004: 313). Moreover, the first and final parts of a PDA may make up one conceptual move, with both introductory and concluding functions, which logically envelops the whole text. 4.5.1.1 Micro introductory and concluding moves The PDAs may include embedded organizational structures, that is, introductory and/or concluding moves relevant to sections of the texts. Such moves identify text segments relevant to the same general type of benefactors and/or benefits. The following excerpt illustrates how a general AM which applies to a group of benefactors functions as an organizational statement announcing three more specific AMs, relevant to members of that group: (28) “[# micro-introductory move] First, I want to start by thanking all the members of my dissertation committee and qualifying exam. [# series of benefactor-specific moves] My deepest thanks are extended to […] my academic advisor and dissertation Chairman, for all his valuable advice and support, both academic and personal, since the beginning of this long journey. [#] I want to thank […] for his inspiring teachings about daylight and positive encouragement. [#] I thank […] for his valuable comments about energy” (Arch1; a micro-introductory move and three benefactorspecific moves). The following excerpt is the only example of a series of benefactor- and benefit-specific AMs, followed by a more generic one, which functions as a concluding statement. This, indeed, shows to the reader how the benefactors are all similarly relevant to the thanker as a dissertation writer: (29) “[# series of benefactor-specific moves] This research was assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee […] with funds provided by the […] Foundations. [#] Preliminary research was funded by the Center […] and by the […] Program. [# micro concluding move] I thank all three 132 Analysis of texts institutions for their generous support” (Econ5; a series of benefactorspecific AMs followed by a micro concluding one). Table 4.8a: Micro organizational moves in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat (incorporating moves count as single moves) Micro organizational moves Introductory Concluding Incorporating Total Applied / Pure Phys P-Bio EECS 3 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 Econ Social Edu Stat 1 1 0 2 8 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 Table 4.8b: Micro organizational moves in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus (incorporating moves count as single moves) Micro organizational moves Introductory Concluding Incorporating Total Humanities Engl Phil 7 0 0 7 2 0 0 2 Professional Arch B-Adm 6 1 3 10 8 0 0 8 Total 37 12 3 42 The corpus also contains three instances of discontinuous organizational AMs which surround more specific AMs. In the following excerpt, the first two and the last two sentences constitute an acknowledging remark applicable to all the benefactors and benefits included between them. They reinstate, clarify and emphasize the shared characteristics (general group membership and similar beneficial behaviour) that determine in the author a similarly positive attitude. In addition, the fourth AM (i.e. “[…] and […] were also the kind of friends one graciously find [sic] in life” is subsumed under the excerpt-initial micro introduction, and it subsumes the fifth AM; therefore, the fourth AM plays two complementary roles, with relevance to two different parts of the text, while the fifth plays the same function twice, with relevance to two text segments that stand in a hierarchical relation to each other: (30) “[# micro introductory move] Not only of academia is [sic] possible to survive. Many friends at Berkeley helped me to conclude. [#] […] is an invaluable friend. He was always accessible to help my family, and me [sic] [#] so was [sic] his wife and his daughters. [# micro introductory sub- 133 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology move] […] and […] were also the kind of friends one graciously find [sic] in life. [#] […] kindly shared along with my family many of the anxieties and troubles. [#] […]’s friendship is invaluable and unforgetable [sic]. [#] He and […] reviewed several versions of my dissertation. I discussed with them many ideas that helped me to understand and admire the English language. [# micro concluding move] These friends and their family provided the conditions for my family and me to spend unforgettable moments at Berkeley. My love and gratitude to them all” (Arch2; discontinuous micro introductory and micro concluding moves surrounding more specific AMs). Micro introductory moves are much more frequent than micro concluding or micro incorporating moves (see Table 4.8), which confirms a pattern established for macro organizational moves (see section 4.5.1). The reason for their different frequency can be found in the textual roles they play. Micro introductory moves help the reader build expectations about the portions of the text to follow and thus favour their comprehension; micro concluding moves point out the gist of previous portions of the text, which, however, have already been processed and probably understood; as a result, the former are more useful to the reader than the latter. The higher frequency of micro organizational moves as opposed to macro ones can also be easily accounted for. First, there are potentially more (groups of) benefactors to be acknowledged than whole texts in which to acknowledge them. In addition, given that benefactors and benefits are potentially heterogeneous, it may be easier for the author to identify subsets of them that can be conceptually grouped together than to formulate an overall remark applicable to all of them. Indeed, the micro organizational statements identified in the corpus mark the conceptual boundaries of text sections relevant to groups of benefactors that have some characteristic in common (i.e. category membership and/or benefit). This shows that the PDAs are structured not only as sequences of benefactor-specific AMs, but also as larger conceptual units characterized by stronger internal, logical and coherent ties. 4.5.2 Order of benefactors An indication of the structural arrangement of a text comes from an examination of the sequence of topics it presents. This is indicative of the text’s conceptual organization and also provides a clue as to what the author considers important, that is, directly relevant to the topic being discussed – and thus likely 134 Analysis of texts to be mentioned first – or valuable to the author – and thus likely to be mentioned last. In a PDA, the three main recurrent categories of topics mentioned – the author’s feeling of gratitude, the benefactors she interacted with, and the benefits received from them – are presented as relevant to single interactional episodes, and cluster together producing AMs. Thus, recording the sequencing of topics in a PDA reveals a cyclical pattern of arrangement already predictable from the identification of AMs. But in addition to this, an examination of the order in which different kinds of benefactors are listed may help reveal which benefactor categories are regarded as associated with the communicative purpose of the text and which ones are selected to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Benefactor category membership can be assigned on the basis of four textual cues: (a) the labels used by the authors themselves to identify benefactors (e.g. friend, advisor, cousin, individuals); (b) the referents of anaphoric expressions in neighbouring AMs (e.g. these people referring back to a previous friends); (c) the specification of the benefit (e.g. guidance during the doctoral program, love and typing are relevant, respectively, to an academic benefactor; a friend, family member or significant other; and a technical assistant); and (d) the larger co(n)text (e.g. list of professors’ names on the dissertation cover page, reports on past circumstances). AMs may be about two main kinds of benefactors: those relevant to the author as a dissertation writer, and those relevant to her as a private individual. More specific sub-categories, however, can be identified: the author’s university advisors/professors; other academic experts; other providers of intellectual help; individual or institutional providers of financial support; institutions (e.g. universities, foundations or research centres); study participants (e.g. interviewees or subjects); providers of technical/secretarial assistance (e.g. librarians, lab assistants); peers (e.g. fellow graduate students, lab members or co-instructors; typically, both colleagues and friends); friends; the author’s family as a group; specific family members; and the author’s significant other and/or children. In addition, benefactors can be identified through generic terms (e.g. people), referred to too vaguely to be classified, not mentioned at all, or grouped together in a set and named through a label provided by the author; e.g.: (31) “I would like to thank David Modest, Richard Lyons and Roger Craine for their valuable suggestions, comments and time” (B-Adm1; benefactor: author’s professors, identifiable on the basis of the benefit and the professors’ names on the dissertation cover page) 135 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (32) “I wish to express my sincere gratitude to many people whose help, directly or indirectly, made this dissertation possible” (Arch1; benefactor: generic) (33) “I have often found solace and inspiration in the long list of students, colleagues, family, and friends who have nurtured my work” (Edu1; benefactor: group identified through the author’s labels) (34) “During most of my years in grad school, I was generously supported by JNICT Fellowships, Lisbon, awarded under the Ciência and Praxis XXI programs” (Phys3; benefactor: institutional provider of financial help; partly original emphasis) (35) “Lastly, I am grateful beyond words, tables, or figures to my wife Krista Harper” (Econ1; benefactor: significant other) (36) “All my colleagues throughout grad school have been wonderful” (EECS1; benefactor: peers) (37) “I would also like to thank the following people who read and criticized portions of my dissertation […]” (Phil1; benefactor: providers of intellectual assistance) (38) “My personal debts are too many to pay off here” (Engl1; benefactor: not mentioned). I tagged the benefactors in the PDAs according to the specific sub-category memberships listed above, and then recorded the occurrences of the various benefactor tags in discipline-specific tables which show each and every time a new benefactor category is instantiated in each text. Virtually every PDA instantiates a different benefactor sequencing pattern, but the picture can be considerably simplified if attention is focused on the two broad classes of benefactors mentioned in the PDAs, namely, academic helpers and friends and family. Four main sequencing patterns thus appear to emerge: - Standard: mentioning academic benefactors before friends/family - Reverse: mentioning friends/family before academic benefactors - Partial: mentioning only one macro benefactor category - Other: instantiating a sequencing pattern other than those above (e.g. repetition of pattern Standard); e.g.: (39) “[§] I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisors […] for their guidance, help and support. […] I thank my fellow student […] for many wonderful collaborations and discussions. [//] I would also like to thank other members of the Theoretical Physics group […] for useful […]. I am grateful to […] of the Physics department […] for help with administrative work. [§] I am indebted to my roommates and other friends 136 Analysis of texts for making my stay at Berkeley thoroughly enjoyable. I thank my parents and my brother for their support and encouragement” (Phys1: benefactor sequencing pattern: standard)4 (40) “[§] I would especially like to thank my advisor […] for his guidance and insight. […] I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students […]. [//] I thank my qualifying committee […] I am grateful for all the help I obtained from […] at LBL, and from […] on campus. [//] Finally I acknowledge the support from an NSF Graduate Fellowship” (Phys2: benefactor sequencing pattern: partial) (41) “[§] I trace the beginnings of this dissertation to […] His course, scholarship […] have sustained me […] I give my immense gratitude to […] for their constant support, for help in reading this work […]. [§] […] provided me with friendship, encouragement, and a place to stay […]. [§] Thank you to my committee […] for their most helpful comments and stimulating ideas. [§] And for […] his love and fire, I thank my husband […]” (Engl2; benefactor sequencing pattern: other). The Standard pattern is unambiguously instantiated in over 64% of the PDAs across sub-corpora (see Table 4.9). Additionally, the pattern is realized with minor variations in another 7.5% of the corpus, when it recurs more than once in the same PDA (e.g. Edu4). The benefactors tend to be mentioned in order of decreasing relevance to the thanker as a dissertation writer (i.e. as a budding professional/academic figure) and of increasing relevance to her as a social being (i.e. as a person in a network of relationships). That is, the shift from the first to the second benefactor category occurs gradually: first the author mentions the people considered indispensable for her meeting her final PhD requirement (e.g. her advisor, dissertation readers, department) and institutions and/or individuals instrumental in the management of her project (i.e. intellectual and/or technical assistants); then reference tends is made to people considered important both academically and personally, who helped her as a researcher (due to their shared interests and experiences) and who sustained her as understanding, supporting friends, while she was a dissertation writer (i.e. fellow graduate students, colleagues at work, lab members); finally, the author lists individuals increasingly significant to her from an emotional point of view (i.e. friendly acquaintances, best friends, 4 Here and elsewhere, the symbol § signals the beginning of a text segment relevant to a different benefactor category, independently of whether it is relevant to one or more benefactors. 137 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology partners, and members of her nuclear family like her children, parents or spouse). This gradual transition also applies to the PDAs exhibiting the Partial order (e.g. Arch1, which does not have the friends/family benefactor category, mentions superior academic benefactors before peers). Table 4.9a: Sequencing patterns of benefactors in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Benefactor sequencing pattern Standard Reverse Partial Other Total Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 5 0 0 0 5 3 1 1 0 5 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 2 2 1 0 5 2 0 2 1 5 4 0 0 1 5 4 0 1 0 5 Table 4.9b: Sequencing patterns of benefactors in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Benefactor sequencing patterns Standard Reverse Partial Other Total Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 3 0 1 1 5 2 0 3 0 5 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 3 0 1 1 5 4 0 1 0 5 Total 32 3 11 4 50 The preferred order of appearance of the acknowledgees gives a circular structure to the PDA along the dimension of the degree of involvement of these deserving contributors with the dissertation writer. The people mentioned first and last are the author’s most significant academic and personal figures, respectively. Therefore, the further away from the first benefactor(s) a thankee is mentioned, the less salient he is academically (and maybe personally), while the further away from the last benefactor(s) an acknowledgee is mentioned, the less important he is personally (and possibly academically). Consequently, the benefactors mentioned in the middle of the PDA share an intermediate degree of relevance to the dissertation writer on academic and/or personal grounds. The acknowledgee that occupies the most variable position in the PDAs is the institution or individual, if any, providing the writer with financial support (e.g. employment, grants, money). 138 Analysis of texts Certain sub-corpora display preferences for specific benefactor subcategories (Edu for subjects, Phys for lab members, Econ for technical assistants; cf. Hyland 2004: 317), but in general, who to include in the list of thankees is not pre-determined in any fixed way. Although there is a tendency to acknowledge only the benefactors considered either directly helpful in the realization of the dissertation or very close to the dissertation writer, other people may be mentioned as well, for instance because their behaviour or presence during the carrying out of the project, or merely the writer’s memory of them, was perceived as beneficial and pleasant (for a conceptually different explanation, see Giannoni 1998: 68); e.g.: (42) “Without the support of the Statistical Computing Facility, its staff, and the computers bilbo, pooh, and others, this work could not have been done” (Stat2; benefactor: technical assistants and computing resources)” (43) “And I have been cheered time and time again by my wonderful motherin-law […]” (Engl3; benefactor: infrequently mentioned family member). On the one hand, the attested non-random variability in the choice, sequence and/or recyclability of moves reveals the existence of a common textual framework on which PDAs tend to be built, and through which each text instantiates and reproduces a community’s conventional ways of interacting; on the other, this variability shows that situation-specific interactional needs have to be met in the ever-changing constraints and opportunities of partially different contexts of production, which creates new discourse (cf. Giannoni 1998: 62). 4.5.3 Syntax (and semantics) of AMs The sequential organization of the PDA (see section 4.5.2) is due to its relevance to multiple benefactors and heterogeneous benefits. Each AM gives distinctive prominence to individual or groups of benefactors. The degree of prominence assigned to the acknowledgees is revealed in part by the content of the AMs, and in part by their syntactic and semantic encoding, that is, by their level of formal complexity, and by the variety of speech functions that they realize. From the point of view of their overall formal organization, AMs can be realized as variously elaborate syntactic and/or typographic units (i.e. as phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs), identifiable on the basis of the number of their main constituents (clausal and/or phrasal) and their final punctuation marks (e.g. full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, comma, colon). The corpus instantiates AMs of varying degrees of formal complexity. Those containing one or more clauses, starting with an upper-case initial letter and 139 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology ending with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark count as onesentence AMs. Those consisting of just one clause, beginning with an upper- or lower-case letter, and ending with no punctuation mark, or ending with punctuation marks other than a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark, or ending with a full stop in sentence-final position count as one-clause AMs. Clausal AMs characterized by the ellipsis of the predicate and/or subject count as incomplete clause AMs. Those realized single phrases, with optional embedding of additional phrases, count as one-phrase AMs; e.g.: (44) “I am also indebted to […] for their many helpful comments” (B-Adm4: a one-clause, one-sentence AM) (45) “and thank the Department of Statistics for financial support throughout my graduate study and research” (Stat5; a sentence final, one-clause AM ending with a full stop) (46) “Special thanks to the members of the […] program at […]” (Arch1; an incomplete clause AM: ellipsis of the predicate [e.g. “are due”] or of subject and predicate [e.g. “I want to give special thanks to”]) (47) “and Jan Derby and colleagues with the Novato Unified School District” (Edu4; a one-phrase AM with an embedded prepositional phrase). AMs may also consist of two or more syntactic units, whether of the same or different types (i.e. phrases, clauses and/or sentences), may be realized over discontinuous text segments, and/or may occupy more or less than a paragraph; e.g.: (48) “and to Matthew Spiegel for his invaluable guidance throughout my doctoral degree” (B-Adm3; a two-phrase AM) (49) “and I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife, Christine Hayes, for the support – intellectual and otherwise – she has given me during the rather unusual process of writing a dissertation. It is to her that I dedicate this work” (Phil5; a one-clause and one-sentence AM) (50) “and other IBM researchers whom I had the luxury to work with. They include Dr. Zon-Yin Shae, Dr. Dilip Kandlur, and Dr. Chung-Sheng Li” (EECS2; a one-phrase AM with an embedded prepositional phrase and an apposition) (51) “Thanks to Joe Silk for his advice, his support of my work and his generosity. The opportunity to travel was an unexpected and greatly appreciated part of being on the Silk team” (Phys5; an AM consisting of an incomplete clause and a sentence) 140 Analysis of texts (52) “The graduate chair of the English Department once stopped me in the hallway simply to say, “you have a great committee.” Indeed, my dissertation committee is indefatigable. […] I hope that I can bring to my own dissertation students what I have learned from each member of my dissertation committee about the rewards of rigor, the pleasures of scholarship, and the spirit of intellectual community” (Engl4; a twosentence discontinuous AM) (53) “I would also like to thank Professor […] for his dedication and patience in advising my wireless project. It has been a privilege to work with him” (EECS2; a two-sentence AM occupying less than a paragraph) (54) “Finally, and most of all, I thank my best friend, my wife, Sarah Kelsey, for being so very strange and wonderful, and for a love that has withstood even graduate school” (Stat4; a PDA-final, one-sentence, one-paragraph AM) (55) “Most of all, I am indebted to my wife and graduate school partner, Judy, for helping me maintain perspective, for walking with me to get coffee, and for generally making this manuscript possible in so many ways. My feet still dance because of you” (Edu3; a two-sentence AM occupying a whole paragraph). The same syntactic and typographic distinctions apply to the non-thanking/ acknowledging moves occasionally occurring in the corpus; e.g.: (56) “Mom, Dad – I finished!” (a one-clause, one-sentence, one-paragraph nonthanking/acknowledging move). Table 4.10 shows the distribution of syntactically different types of moves across the corpus. About 52% of the moves are realized as single sentences, while about 21% as combinations of sentences. Combinations of phrases and the ‘other’ category account for about 7% of the data each. Single and incomplete clauses are each found in 4% of the data, while combinations of clauses are relevant to 3% of the data. Other move types are infrequently realized. Only about 14% of the moves are one-paragraph long, and most of them (94%) are realized as single or combinations of sentences. The distribution of the moves across syntactic (and typographic) categories shows that the PDA authors tend to prefer moves that are organized as whole syntactic and visual units (sentences, clauses, combinations of sentences and/or clauses, and paragraphs), which allow the expression of complete events and situations, and occasionally their typographic visibility. The preferred syntactic length for an AM is the single sentence; this enables the PDA writers to strike a balance between completeness and efficiency, that is, to express all the 141 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology information necessary to unambiguously characterize a given interactional episode, while avoiding hampering the reader’s decoding efforts. In addition, the more frequent occurrence of one-sentence moves rather than one-clause moves signals the preference for a congruent arrangement of moves as complete units from the points of view of both syntax and punctuation. One-paragraph moves (about 14%) group together text segments about benefactors and/or benefits presented as distinctively prominent in the text. On the other hand, moves realized as syntactically incomplete constructions (13%) are about beneficial exchanges presented as relevant to similar benefactors and/or benefits, and their common elements are emphasized by their being linked together in higher, complete syntactic units. Overall, various syntactic-typographic realizations of the AMs structures are fairly equally distributed across the sub-corpora. Table 4.10a: Syntactic move types in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Move types > Paragraph = Paragraph Phrase Phrases Clause Clauses Incomplete clause Sentence Sentences Other Phrase Phrases Clause Clauses Incomplete clause Sentence Sentences Other Total Discontinuous 142 Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 0 1 0 0 5 6 0 4 0 0 1 6 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 4 3 0 6 1 3 2 4 1 0 4 0 6 4 0 0 2 16 12 5 0 0 0 2 17 3 1 0 0 0 0 24 10 4 0 0 0 0 21 7 0 0 1 0 0 38 10 18 0 0 0 0 15 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 7 1 48 0 4 1 0 43 0 1 5 0 60 0 3 1 0 46 0 4 2 0 80 0 2 1 0 33 0 Analysis of texts Table 4.10b: Syntactic move types in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Move types < Paragraph = Paragraph Total Discontinuous Phrase Phrases Clause Clauses Incomplete clause Sentence Sentences Other Phrase Phrases Clause Clauses Incomplete clauses Sentence Sentences Other Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 1 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 0 0 9 3 6 2 0 0 Total 8 34 18 16 3 2 2 1 20 25 14 1 0 0 0 0 17 0 1 0 0 0 0 39 7 2 0 0 0 0 17 1 0 0 0 0 0 229 70 32 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 7 0 55 1 6 3 0 30 0 2 6 0 73 4 1 1 0 26 0 29 34 1 494 5 The form and speech function of the messages conveyed through AMs can be determined by an examination of their mood structure (imperative, interrogative, subjunctive, declarative) and of their content and expected role in the co-text. The vast majority of the AMs are encoded as declaratives (in clauses), combinations of declaratives (in sentences), ellipted declaratives (in phrases) or combinations thereof. Declaratives are the default syntactic means for encoding statements, that is, for conveying information about states of affairs. Indeed, these AMs consist in messages conveying information.5 This is in line with the communicative function of the PDA, which is to convey information to the reader about the background of the author’s dissertation project, which might not be familiar to the audience otherwise. 5 The three containing interrogatives count as partial statements; see below. 143 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Most statements are non-emphatic, thus conforming to the partially official nature of the PDAs, deriving from its association with the dissertations; however, a few are exclamations (two in Edu, four in EECS, one in Engl and one in P-Bio), thus occasionally revealing the partially informal character of the PDAs, which are texts not subject to strict editorial requirements (cf. Swales and Feak 2000: 198); e.g.: (57) “The two people who served as the outside members of my committee, Professors […] and […], also spent many hours reading and discussing my work with me” (Phil2; a non-emphatic statement) (58) “You are the prize girl!” (Edu1; an exclamation or emphatic statement as part of an AM; marker of emphasis: exclamation mark). In theory, a statement can be responded to with an acknowledgement or contradiction of the stated information. However, in the asynchronous communicative context of the PDA, the author does not expect the reader to provide an explicit reaction to her text, but simply to conventionally accept it as truthful (see section 2.6.2). Only three interrogatives occur in the corpus, and they are segments of larger AMs containing declaratives. Two are from Arch (i.e. “What is new?” and “Do you blatantly accept the notion of wicked problems?”) and represent instances of reported speech. One, lacking a clause-final question mark, is from Edu1 (i.e. “What would I have done without your generous spirit”) and can be interpreted as question or exclamation the author addresses to herself. None of the three interrogatives counts as a question, that is, as a message eliciting a verbal response. In particular, the response-soliciting function of the first two interrogatives is not relevant to the PDA they belong to, but to previous interactions they are quoted from. The interrogative found in Edu, instead, not typographically marked as such, functions as a rhetorical question through which the author reflects on her own about the possible consequences of not receiving her benefactor’s help. Their response-soliciting function, therefore, is only conventionally associated with the interrogatives, but not actually realized. More generally, no other text segment or whole move in the corpus is meant to trigger an answer or disclaimer as a reaction from the addressee. This can be accounted for with the fact that the PDA is a monologic, written text submitted to the reader in its final version, which does not call for a concrete or direct response or other form of verbal contribution from the reader (see section 2.6.2). There is only one instance of an imperative in the corpus, namely “May his soul rest in peace” in P-Bio3. However, the imperative acquires a subjunctive144 Analysis of texts optative nuance thanks to the modal may, and indeed the message expresses a desire-hope rather than an imposition-request. No move in the corpus acts as a command, that is, as a message eliciting a physical, mental or verbal act, whose possible reaction is compliance or refusal. This is in line with the social and interactional role of the PDA authors: on the one hand, these are not in an authoritative position (as they still have to go through their final academic rite of passage); on the other, they are focused on playing the communicative role of thankers, which clashes with the goal of imposing one’s will on others (see section 2.6.2). The AMs can also be considered offers, that is, messages suggesting or accompanying the provision of goods or services, which may trigger acceptance or rejection as possible reactions. Indeed, in expressing positive feelings meant to make the addressee feel good, AMs count as offers of “emotional” services which function as interactional-social lubricants. Some AMs or AM components make their speech function as offers explicit, by directly manifesting the intention to present the addressee with something; others, instead, “only” manifest the intention or inclination to act; e.g.: (59) “I doubt I can provide much generic innovation, but it is one of the great pleasures of my life as a writer finally to record the acknowledgements I have been impatiently saving up all these years” (Engl3: an explicit manifestation of the speech function of offer) (60) “you have taught me more than you will ever know […]. I will always look up to your enduring inner strength and beauty” (Edu1; a statement expressing inclination to act in the future). Overall, the PDAs appear to be focused on the speech functions of statement and offer. The realization of these functions enables PDA writers to satisfy two communicative needs, namely to inform the general reader about the circumstances of their dissertation projects and to courteously reciprocate favours received by their benefactors in the past. The consistent orientation of the texts on these two functions also contributes to their coherence and cohesion. 4.5.4 Conclusion An examination of selected global features of the corpus (i.e. the presence of organizational moves, the favourite order of benefactors and the syntacticsemantic encoding of the AMs) has revealed that the corpus is relatively homogeneous across disciplines in macro aspects of its encoding. In the rest of 145 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology the chapter I consider micro facets of the encoding of the PDAs, and more specifically, the organization and content of the AMs. 4.6 BENEFACTOR UNITS Text segments that denote and describe benefactors can be identified and classified on the basis of the type of information they convey. They can further be categorized for their internal arrangement if characterized by the repetition or combination of information units and/or structural discontinuity. Below, I exemplify the classes of benefactor units identified in the corpus, accompanied by exemplifications and clarifications about their assignment to given text segments. Then I outline the problems encountered in identifying and/or classifying given units. Finally, I present a summary of the benefactor-relevant data gathered from the corpus. A benefactor unit is a text segment that mentions or addresses a person, group, institution or other entity conceived of – or presented as – a dissertationrelevant acknowledgee and/or other deserving individual (i.e. a previous interactant emotionally valuable and/or intellectually important to the PDA author). Benefactors can thus be specific individuals, generic or specific groups of people, organizations, but also places, times, objects or events; e.g.: (61) “and Glenn Sweitzer for sharing his views about rules and delighting” (Arch1; benefactor: a specific individual identified through his name) (62) “I wish to express my sincere gratitude to many people whose help, directly or indirectly, made this dissertation possible” (Arch1; benefactor: generic group of people) (63) “Finally I’d like to gratuitously acknowledge the Fighting Sheep for accepting a softball novice into the fold” (Stat3; benefactor: group of people identified through a collective proper name; original emphasis) (64) “Not content with these face-to-face communities, however, I have also sought out virtual camaraderie in the c18-l and SHARP-l listservs, both of which have enriched my work in ways I am currently unable to catalog” (Engl3; benefactor: virtual communities) (65) “The University of California, Berkeley, and the Bay Area more generally, have given me ample intellectual community” (Engl3; benefactor: institution with its location and a place) (66) “All my colleagues throughout grad school have been wonderful” (EECS1; benefactor: academic peers) 146 Analysis of texts (67) “Without the support of […] the computers bilbo, pooh, and others, this work could not have been done” (Stat2; benefactor: computing resources). Benefactors can be represented through various encoding options, such as identifying labels like their names, titles and/or roles; mini-descriptions of their personality and/or behaviour through adjectives, adverbs, phrases, clauses or appositions. Encoding options can also be combined together, and this results in benefactor units that are explicit and informative to the reader; e.g.: (68) “I would like to extend my appreciation to Jan Greenough and June Wong, whose work and efforts have made my years in the doctoral program all the more enjoyable” (B-Adm3; benefactor labels: names of people) (69) “Matt, of course I owe you a special thanks [sic] for trusting me, and allowing me to put you and your students under the scrutiny of my watchful eye” (Edu1; benefactor label: name used as an address term) (70) “I thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Dissertation Fellowship they provided during my final year of study” (Econ2; benefactor label: name of institution) (71) “To my dissertation committee, I give great thanks” (Edu1; benefactor: an academic body identified through its generic title) (72) “Linda and Lester Schwartz were also the kind of friends one graciously find [sic] in life” (Arch2; benefactor labels: names and role specification) (73) “I am very grateful to my research advisor, Professor David Messerschmitt, for his guidance and support throughout my years at Berkeley” (EECS2; benefactor labels: specification of role-relationship with the thanker, title indicating professional category membership, and full name) (74) “He and Colin Kendall reviewed several versions of my dissertation” (Arch2; benefactor labels: combination of pronoun and name) (75) “To the students of ED190 Group who allowed me to prod and probe the workings of their classroom” (Edu1; combination of benefactor labels: mention of professional role and class membership) (76) “First, I would like to thank the students who participated in these design studies” (Edu3; benefactor identified through a combination of a title and a descriptive relative clause) (77) “Jerry Robinson, David Lynaugh, Tim Ryan, and the rest of the exemplary administrative staff at the Berkeley Department of Philosophy have helped me more than they realize” (Phil2; benefactor identified through a 147 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology combination of names, title and description of people, and of name and title of institution) (78) “Dr. Carney’s dedication to scientific research is inspiring” (EECS2; benefactor labels: name and title, and description). From the point of view of their structural arrangement, benefactor units can occasionally be realized over discontinuous text segments, that is, separated by other functional constituents of the AM (the benefit-relevant expression and/or the gratitude expression and/or their expansions); e.g.: (79) “Terry Speed has been unceasingly generous with his time, resources, and expertise as my advisor” (Stat4; benefactor unit: discontinuous; intervening matter: benefit unit) (80) “My fellow graduate students deserve recognition for their encouragement and good spirits, especially Karl Broman and David Levin” (Stat1; benefactor unit: discontinuous; intervening matter: gratitude expression). Alternatively, a benefactor unit may contain repeated reference to the same benefactor(s). This may involve the literal reproduction of the same expression or the use of a series of different terms; e.g.: (81) “I want to thank professors […] for their guidance, friendship, encouragement and support. Throughout the last five years, these professors have helped me to become a better researcher, always providing stimulating and critical thoughts, within and beyond their respective areas of expertise. But more important, with their friendship, these professors have helped me to become a better person” (B-Adm2; repeated reference to the same benefactor through the recycling of the term professor) (82) “I was fortunate to work with many many wonderful and knowledgeable individuals throughout my Ph.D. study. This research and its presentation today was [sic] only possible because of the quiet dedication and insight of many friends and colleagues” (P-Bio3; repeated reference to the same benefactor through different expressions). Occasionally, a benefactor unit may provide less explicit information about the identity of the benefactor than another part of the AM; e.g.: (83) “Portions of Chapters 7 and 8 were delivered at Philosophy Department Colloquia at Brown, Ohio State, and the University of Texas at Austin. I would like to thank the audiences at each department for their warm reception and helpful comments” (Phil5; specific information relevant to 148 Analysis of texts the precise identification of the benefactor occurring in a supportive of the AM before the benefactor unit). Finally, some AMs do not indicate which specific benefactors they are relevant to.6 The lack of a benefactor unit can usually be made up for in the immediate co-text; e.g.: (84) “I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; an AM with no overt benefactor unit). I tagged the benefactor units in the corpus specifying their varied realizations as illustrated above. The specific benefactor unit categories are defined and exemplified below: - ‘Generic’ benefactor units identify benefactors in very general terms; e.g.: (85) “I wish to express my sincere gratitude to many people whose help, directly or indirectly, made this dissertation possible” (Arch1; benefactors identified through a generic label) - ‘Pronoun’ benefactor units, or segments of units, identify benefactors through pronouns; e.g.: (86) “He and Colin Kendall reviewed several versions of my dissertation” (Arch2; combination of benefactors, the first identified through a pronoun) - ‘Name’ benefactor units specify the benefactor’s first, middle and/or last name, and may be preceded by such formal titles as Mr, Ms, Mrs or Miss, which signal courteous respect towards the benefactor, but which do not contribute to narrowing down the possible referents of the relevant benefactor units; e.g.: (87) “I gratefully acknowledge those who willingly participated in the surveys and interviews, including Mr. Rua, Mr. Urbanski, and Ms. Miraux of St Pierre Feric, France […]” (Arch5; benefactors identified also through names and formal titles) - ‘Group’ benefactor units, or segments, refer to groups of benefactors that are identified through their proper names; the benefactors in question do not constitute institutions; e.g.: (88) “Finally I’d like to gratuitously [sic] acknowledge the Fighting Sheep for accepting a softball novice into the fold” (Stat 3; benefactors identified through the name of a group; original emphasis) - ‘Role’ benefactor units do not specify the benefactor’s social or professional role; however, this is recoverable in the immediate co-text of the 6 Of course, non-thanking/acknowledging moves necessarily lack benefactor units too. 149 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology benefactor unit proper (e.g. the benefit unit of the AM, a previous AM or the title page of the dissertation) and may be specified through labels or reference to behavioural traits or events revealing of that role); e.g.: (89) “I have made many special friends, in Berkeley and Lausanne, who have made grad school such a unique and exciting learning experience. You know who you are, […] Fortunately, since most of us are engineers […]” (EECS1; retrievability of the benefactor’s professional role outside the benefactor unit) - ‘Title’ benefactor units explicitly and internally refer to the benefactor’s professional, social, interpersonal role and/or function with regard to the beneficiary; this specification is relevant to (groups of) individuals – rather than bodies or institutions – occurs inside the benefactor unit proper and is informative as to the identity of the benefactors; e.g.: (90) “I am indebted to my roommates and other friends for making my stay at Berkeley thoroughly enjoyable” (Phys1; title specifying the benefactors’ interpersonal/social role) (91) “I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisors, Professor Mahiko Suzuki and Dr. Ian Hinchliffe, for their guidance, help and support” (Phys1; benefactor label: title specifying the benefactors’ professional role and academic achievement) - ‘Institutional title’ benefactor units identify permanent or temporary institutional bodies or organizations; e.g.: (92) “I wish to thank the members of my thesis committee, Lew Feldman and Beth Burnside for all of their useful suggestions” (P-Bio2; a benefactor unit containing a text segment specifying an institutional benefactor) - ‘Name and Role’ benefactor units internally specify the benefactors’ names alone, but their immediate co-text reveals the benefactors’ professional/social titles, role and/or functions; e.g.: (93) “I cannot even begin to adequately thank David Romer for his support, advice, and patience. He will always be my example of the ideal professor, advisor, and economist” (Econ4: benefactor’s name and role, the latter retrievable outside the benefactor unit) - ‘Name and Title’ benefactor units internally specify both the benefactors’ names and their professional/social titles, role and/or functions; e.g.: 150 Analysis of texts (94) “Many individuals provided excellent guidance and inspiration for this research, including members of my dissertation committee – [names] and especially my chairman [name]” (Econ-3; benefactors’ names and titles) - ‘Name and Title’ benefactor units mention the title(s) and name(s) that refer exactly to the same benefactor(s); e.g.: (95) “Furthermore, I would like to recognize all my fellow students from the former Norwegian Institute of Technology (r.i.p.) who took the time and trouble to visit me here in Berkeley, listed in order of appearance: [names]” (Stat1; benefactor unit categories: Name and Title, Name of institution, Description; the same group of benefactors is identified first through a title and then through a series of names) - when benefactor units specify the title or role of a whole group of benefactors but include the names of only a subset of those benefactors, then they qualify both as ‘Title’ benefactor units – referring to the group – and ‘Name and Role’ benefactor units; e.g.: (96) “My fellow graduate students deserve recognition for their encouragement and good spirits, especially Karl Broman and David Levin” (Stat1; benefactor unit categories: Title, Name and Role, Description; the benefactor unit refers to a group of benefactors through a title and to a subset of the group through names) - when given benefactor units can be assigned both the label ‘Name and Role’ and the label ‘Name and Title’ – because benefactor-identifying information both occurs inside the benefactor units and in their co-text, only the label ‘Name and Title’ is used, as the one that more explicitly specifies the benefactor’s social and/or professional identity; e.g.: (97) “My advisor, Professor Rudy Beran, encouraged and supported me” (Stat1; benefactor unit category: Name and Title; unit-internal information takes classificatory priority over move-external information, e.g., the dissertation title page) - ‘Description’ benefactor units contain phrasal or clausal expressions that describe benefactors’ personality traits or behavioural characteristics; therefore, these segments do not narrow down the potential referents of the benefactors by indicating the latter’s category membership; e.g.: (98) “Our outstanding departmental staff, including […] have all helped in very many ways” (Stat4; a benefactor unit containing a descriptive adjective and a categorizing one) 151 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology - ‘Place’ benefactor units are or contain locative adjuncts – that is, prepositional phrases that identify locations – represented as beneficial to the PDA author; these benefactor units, or segments, cannot be better described by more informative or appropriate benefactor-classifying labels, and do not cooccur with other text segments that can count as benefactor units; also, adverbials of place that are adjuncts to the predicate count as parts of the benefit unit rather than the benefactor unit; e.g.: (99) “At the Center for Environmental Studies (CENAMB-UCV) and at the Department of Economic and Social Sciences – where I work as an Assistant Professor – I received the necessary support to conclude this dissertation” (Arch 2; a benefactor unit encoded as a locative and referring to institutions; benefactor unit category: Name of institution) (100) “As a foreign student in America, I was blessed to make many remarkable friends in the I-House who helped me to learn about the American culture and society”(P-Bio3; benefactor unit categories: Title and description; the prepositional phrase encoding a temporal circumstance is part of the benefit unit) - ‘Time’ benefactor units comprise or consist in temporal adjuncts – that is, prepositional phrases that identify temporal circumstances – represented as beneficial to the PDA author; these units or segments cannot be better described by more informative or appropriate benefactor-classifying labels, and are found in the absence of other text segments that can count as benefactor units; also, adverbials of time that are adjuncts to the predicate count as parts of the benefit unit rather than the benefactor unit; e.g.: (101) “I would also like to thank Jen Nelson, who I have enjoyed working with very much during our tenure in the Freeling lab” (P-Bio4; benefactor unit categories: Name and Role; the adjunct specifies a circumstance of the benefit, not a characteristic of the benefactor) (102) “The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the many people who have supported me throughout my life and my graduate career at UC Berkeley” (EECS5; benefactor unit category: general; adverbials of time and place are part of the benefit (expansion) unit)) - ‘Repeated’ benefit unit segments are instances of repeated reference to the same benefactor in the same AM; such segments occur after the first mention of a given benefactor, are not encoded as pronouns (e.g. relative, personal pronouns) or quantifiers, and are not parts or appositions of the text segments in 152 Analysis of texts which the benefactors are first mentioned, unless the appositions are identical to the first mention of the benefactor; e.g.: (103) “I would also like to thank David Brown [first mention of the benefactor] for his endless helpfulness, listening to practice talks, editing, providing technical advice, thanks David [second mention, first repetition of the same benefactor]” (P-Bio4; repeated reference to the same benefactor in the same AM) (104) “First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sheila McCormick [mention of the benefactor], for introducing me to the world of plant development and providing me with the resources which made this project a reality” (P-Bio3; benefactor label: name and title; the apposition “Dr. Sheila McCormick” is part of the first and only mention of the benefactor) - Finally, ‘Discontinuous’ benefactor units are realized over non-adjacent text segments and are separated by a text segment other than an expansion of the benefactor unit; e.g.: (105) “My colleagues at Berkeley shared my trials and excitement, particularly the members of the “Dissertators/Dessert-eaters Anonymous” club: Dianne Harris, William Littmann and Zeynep Kezer” (Arch4; a discontinuous benefactor unit, interrupted by the predicative benefit unit) (106) “Kenneth Simmons was one of these persons to be remembered forever. He was a member of my doctoral exams and a member of my dissertation committee” (Arch2; part of a benefactor unit including repetition of the benefactor; the intervening matter between the first and second mention of the benefactor is an evaluative, predicative expansion of the benefactor unit). Classifying text segments involves imposing an interpretation on them, which has consequences on the understanding, appreciation, and categorization of the remaining units of the whole texts in which they occur. This is especially evident with functionally ambiguous text segments, that is, expressions that are simultaneously compatible with different interpretations. In the PDAs, this applies to relative clauses – both restrictive and non-restrictive – appositions, but also predicates and whole clauses that can be classified either as benefactor units or as benefit units. For example, in this made-up AM: “I wish to thank the people who helped me while I was carrying out my study”, the restrictive relative clause both identifies a group of benefactors – by restricting the potential referents of the people – and refers to the benefit experienced by the thanker – by indicating 153 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology what those referents were responsible for that was advantageous to the writer. The relative clause can thus be interpreted as either a component of the benefactor unit or as the benefit unit of the AM. Similarly ambiguous text segments also occur in the corpus; e.g.: (107) “In addition to spending many hours commenting on drafts of this dissertation, the two internal members of my dissertation committee, Professors Hannah and Ginsborg and Daniel Warren, acted as my mentors throughout my time at Berkeley” (Phil2; text segment interpretable as relevant to the benefactor and/or the benefit) (108) “I have been extremely fortunate to have colleagues whose intellectual rigor is matched by their interest in fun” (Engl4; text segment interpretable as relevant to the benefactor and/or the benefit). To deal with ambiguous text segments, interpretable as either benefactor- or benefit-oriented units, I followed these complementary principles: (a) if the ambiguous text segment was accompanied by reference to something that could be more easily defined as a benefit (i.e. a text segment indicating what the benefactor did rather than what the benefactor was like), then the text segment in question was regarded as (part of) the benefactor unit; otherwise, it was regarded as (part of) the benefit unit; (b) if the ambiguous text segment was accompanied by reference to something or someone that could be more easily defined as a benefactor (i.e. a text segment revealing the benefactor’s identity or role rather than what she was to be given credit for), then the text segment in question was regarded as (part of) the benefit unit; otherwise, it was regarded as (part of) the benefactor unit. The following made-up AMs show the above principles at work. The italicized parts are to be considered benefit units (with possible expansions) and the underlined portions benefactor units (with possible expansions): - “I thank my friends, who made this work possible”: the underlined part only identifies the benefactors, while the italicized one both refers to the benefit and contributes to identifying the subset of the benefactors the thanker wants to thank; the former is the benefactor unit and the latter the benefit unit; - “I thank all those who made this work possible”: the underlined part only identifies the benefactors, while the italicized one both refers to the benefit and contributes to identifying the subset of the benefactors the thanker wants to thank; the former is the benefactor unit and the latter the benefit unit; - “I thank John, who is my best friend”: the underlined part identifies the benefactor, while the italicized one describes him in a positive way; the positive 154 Analysis of texts evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit that most closely resembles a benefit in this AM; this compliment thus constitutes the benefit unit; - “I thank my friends, who made this work possible, for their generosity”: the underlined part identifies the benefactors; the italicized one contributes to identifying the subset of those benefactors the thanker wants to thank, describes their behavioural trait, and also refers to the benefit; the latter is the benefit unit; - “I thank all those who made this work possible for their generosity”: the underlined part generically identifies the benefactors; the italicized one contributes to identifying the subset of the benefactors the thanker wants to thank, describes their behavioural trait, and also refers to the benefit; the latter is the benefit unit; - “I thank John, who is my best friend, for his generosity”: the underlined part identifies and positively describes the benefactor, while the italicized one refers to the behavioural trait the benefactor is to be acknowledged for; the former comprises the benefactor unit and the benefactor expansion; the latter is the benefit unit; - “I thank John. He is my best friend”: the underlined part identifies the benefactor, while the italicized one positively describes him; the positive evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit that most closely resembles a benefit in this AM; this compliment is thus to be classified as the benefit unit; - “I thank John. He is my best friend. He did a lot for me”: the underlined part identifies and positively describes the benefactor; it is a benefactor unit that refers to the benefactor’s name, role, and characteristic; the italicized part specifies what the benefactor did for the thanker, and thus represents the benefit unit; - “My friends made this work possible”: the underlined part only identifies the benefactors, while the italicized one both refers to the benefit and contributes to identifying the subset of the benefactors the thanker wants to thank; the former is the benefactor unit and the latter the benefit unit; - “A lot of people made this work possible”: the underlined part generically identifies the benefactors, while the italicized one both refers to the benefit and more specifically identifies the subset of the benefactors the thanker wants to thank; the former is the benefactor unit and the latter the benefit unit; - “John is my friend. He is wonderful”: the underlined part only identifies the benefactor, while the italicized one describes him in a positive way; the positive evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit most closely resembling a benefit in this AM; this compliment is thus to be classified as the benefit unit; - “John is my friend. He is wonderful and did a lot for me”: the underlined part identifies and positively describes the benefactor; it consists of a benefactor 155 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology unit and a benefactor expansion. (The latter is not merely a descriptive component of the benefactor unit, as it is not embedded under it.) The italicized part specifies what the benefactor did to the thanker’s advantage, and is thus to be regarded as the benefit unit; - “John is my best friend”: the underlined part identifies the benefactor, while the italicized one positively describes him; the positive evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit most closely resembling a benefit in this AM; this compliment is thus to be regarded as the benefit unit; - “John is my best friend. I thank him for his generosity”: the underlined part identifies and positively describes the benefactor, while the italicized one refers to the behavioural trait the benefactor is to be acknowledged for; the former is the benefactor unit, characterized by a descriptive segment; the latter is the benefit unit; - “I thank John, my best friend”: the underlined part identifies the benefactor, while the italicized one positively describes him; the positive evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit that most closely resembles a benefit in this AM; this compliment is thus to be classified as the benefit unit; - “I thank John, my best friend, for always standing by my side”: the underlined text segment identifies and positively describes the benefactor; it is a benefactor unit with a descriptive component, encoded in the apposition; the italicized part specifies what the benefactor did to the benefit of the thanker, and is thus to be regarded as the benefit unit; - “I thank a lot of people for being my closest friends”: the underlined part identifies the benefactors, while the italicized one positively describes them; the positive evaluation of the benefactor is the information unit that most closely resembles a benefit in this AM; this compliment is thus to be classified as the benefit unit; - “I thank a lot of people, very dear friends, for always standing by my side”: the underlined part identifies and positively describes the benefactors; it is a benefactor unit that provides generic, specific and evaluative information about the benefactor; the italicized part specifies what the benefactor did to the thanker’s advantage and is thus to be regarded as the benefit unit. The corpus contains text segments that exemplify very similar arrangements of information units in the AMs; e.g.: (109) “As a foreign student in America, I was blessed to make many remarkable friends in the I-House who helped me to learn about the American culture” (P-Bio3; benefit unit encoded as a relative clause: identification and description of the benefactors) 156 Analysis of texts (110) “All my colleagues throughout grad school have been wonderful” (EECS1; benefit unit: benefactor-oriented evaluative information unit which most closely resembles a benefit) Table 4.11a: Distribution of categories of benefactor units in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Benefactor units Name(s) of person(s) Name(s) of organization(s) Name of group of people Title(s) of person(s) Titles of organization(s) Name(s) and role(s) of person(s) Name(s) and title(s) of person(s) Generic Combination Zero Total Discontinuous Repeated No. of repetitions Address term EECS 5 Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs Phys P-Bio 8 15 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 8 9 2 1 3 3 6 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 4 4 0 8 3 0 0 0 2 1 0 2 2 12 5 12 2 10 8 8 7 13 8 4 19 2 48 3 2 3 0 2 16 0 43 4 0 0 0 0 18 0 60 0 5 7 2 4 14 0 46 6 0 0 0 3 34 0 80 3 3 3 1 2 12 0 33 4 0 0 0 (111) “Catherine Gilhuly, a source of constant phone relief, buoyed me with her humor on a daily basis (Engl4; part of a benefit unit encoded as an apposition: specification of the way in which the benefactor acted as a beneficial agent for the thanker) (112) “I am also grateful for friends who engaged the ideas of this dissertation” (Engl4; benefactor unit, syntactically encoded as if it were a benefit, accompanied by reference to a more explicit benefit) 157 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (113) “I am indebted to all of the friends I was lucky enough to make during my stay at Berkeley (Phys4; benefactor unit encoded as a relative clause embedded under the benefactor unit; no more explicit benefit is mentioned in the AM) (114) “For two years I was supported by an IBM Corporate Fellowship Award” (EECS2; benefactor unit, surrounded by a discontinuous benefit unit) Table 4.11b: Distribution of categories of benefactor units in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Benefactor units Name(s) of person(s) Name(s) of organization(s) Name of group of people Title(s) of person(s) Title(s) of organization(s) Name(s) and role(s) of person(s) Name(s) and title(s) of person(s) Generic Combination Zero Total Discontinuous Repeated No. of repetitions Address term Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 9 7 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 3 5 Total 71 3 1 3 3 26 0 7 0 2 0 7 0 3 1 43 1 0 0 0 4 8 5 17 5 70 8 2 14 4 82 0 17 2 55 3 6 8 0 2 10 1 30 2 1 1 0 2 27 0 73 7 8 11 0 0 6 0 26 0 1 2 0 19 173 5 494 32 26 35 3 (115) “I wholeheartedly thank those who carry out many thankless tasks, the staffs of the Institute of Industrial Relations, the Department of Economics, and the Institute of Business and Economic Research” (Econ1; discontinuous benefactor unit; benefactor unit categories: Generic, Title and Title of institutions). 158 Analysis of texts Table 4.11 shows the frequency values of various types of benefactor units in the corpus and their distribution across the sub-corpora. Only about 1% of the moves do not mention benefactors at all, and less than 3% refer to them in very general terms. Most AMs, instead, specify to some extent the identity of the benefactors (cf. Hyland 2004: 307). There are two main ways of mentioning the benefactors: with direct or indirect reference to their titles or roles (in about 40% of the moves) and through combinations of various types of informative details (in about 35% of the moves). The latter instantiate both benefactor categories that occur on their own (e.g. ‘Name’, ‘Name and Title’, ‘Generic’, ‘Name of institution’) and benefactor categories that only occur in combination with others (e.g. ‘Description’, ‘Place’, ‘Pronoun’, ‘Role’). About 5% of the AMs contain benefactor units that only mention the benefactors’ names. These information units make it possible to precisely identify the intended referents, but not to understand what their rolerelationships with their thankers are, and therefore are not informative to the general reader. Other encoding options (e.g. use of address terms identifying benefactors) are rarely instantiated. Discontinuous benefactor units and repeated reference to the same benefactors characterize, respectively, about 6% and 5% of the moves. However, the number of repeated segments is slightly higher than the number of moves in which repetition occurs (7%). The findings show that most of the time, the PDA authors want to make sure the general reader is aware of their relationships with their benefactors and/or of their benefactors’ social-professional identity. This is achieved by presenting specific identity-relevant data about the benefactors, and often of more than one kind. This focus on the identifiability of the benefactors reveals that the PDAs are texts written for the communicative benefit of the general reader and not only for the social-cognitive benefit of the benefactors (see section 2.4). 4.6.1 Benefactor expansions Benefactor expansions are text segments that contribute to describing the benefactors, although they are external to core benefactor units identifying benefactors. These are, therefore, optional, additional adjuncts or subconstituents of the benefactor units. Benefactor expansions can consist of the following: description of the benefactor’s personality or life; evaluation of the benefactor’s personality traits or behaviour; report of the writer’s opinion on the benefactor other than an explicit evaluation of him; mention of the benefactor’s accomplishments, which 159 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology calls for the expression of compliments; mention of circumstances relevant to the benefactor’s background; and combinations of the above; e.g.: (116) “Enrique Vila, a long lasting friend and colleague provided invaluable criticism to my work and the necessary encouragement. He as a former student of Rittel knew perfectly my struggle with the world of Design Theories and Methods” (Arch2; benefactor expansion: description) (117) “Federico Castillo is an invaluable friend. He was always accessible to help my family” (Arch1; benefit expansion: evaluation) (118) “Time and time again I have been amazed by their truly extraordinary dedication and by their incisive readings of Spinoza […]” (Phil5; benefactor expansion: evaluation) (119) “My largest intellectual debts are, not surprisingly, to my teachers at Berkeley, first and foremost my dissertation committee […] but also […] Stephen Booth (who claims to have taught me nothing) […]” (Engl3; benefactor expansion: opinion) (120) “I wholeheartedly thank those who carry out many thankless tasks, the staffs of the Institute […]” (Econ1; benefactor expansion: accomplishment) (121) “I have benefited from discussions with N. Sochen, with whom I collaborated” (Phys3; benefit expansion: reference to the circumstances relevant to the benefactor) (122) “And to my dissertation chair, John Hurst: you have taught me to be a teacher, you have taught me to be a learner. You opened up a world of ideas for me, and together we put them into practice! You are my advisor on paper and my mentor in life. You are a dear dear friend” (Edu1; benefactor expansion: description and evaluation). Occasionally, moves may contain informative expansions that are relevant to non-benefactors/acknowledgees or that are not classifiable according to the categories listed above; e.g.: (123) “I would also like to congratulate my younger brother, who is getting Ph.D [sic] in Physics from the renowned Oxford University at about the same time as I do. Job well done, Brother!” (EECS2; non-benefactor expansion: description) (124) “I have made many special friends, in Berkeley and Lausanne, who have made grad school such a unique and exciting learning experience. You know who you are, so I will not list your names here […]” (EECS1; part of a benefactor expansion: other). 160 Analysis of texts The distinction between core benefactor units and their expansions may be made difficult by the occurrence of text segments that both identify and describe benefactors. To identify benefactor expansions, I adopted the following semantic and syntactic criteria: - a benefit expansion conveys new, non-identifying information about the benefactor: it is not a repetition or paraphrase of the first mention of the benefactor in the core benefactor unit; rather, it describes, evaluates and/or reports on beneficial qualities and/or acts of the benefactor; e.g.: (125) “I would like to thank my two wonderful advisors, Martin Vetterli and Bin Yu. Besides providing invigorating technical discussions, they were often more friends than authoritative figures” (EECS1; benefactor expansion: evaluation, preceded by a descriptive core benefit unit) - a text segment that provides new, non-identifying information about the benefactor is a benefactor expansion if the AM in which it occurs also makes reference to some “other”, more explicit benefit; else, the text segment in question realizes the core benefit unit or benefit expansion; this also applies to those text segments syntactically encoded as benefits (e.g. as a for-headed prepositional phrase after the verb thank), but whose content characterizes qualities of the benefactors; e.g.: (126) “I would also like to thank Renee Sung, my undergraduate research advisor. She was like a mother to me” (P-Bio2; evaluative description of the benefactor: benefit unit) (127) “I trace the beginnings of this dissertation to Barton Levi St. Armand, whose astonishing graduate seminar, “Emily Dickinson and the Cult of Sentimentality,” confirmed my devotion to the poet and her culture […]” (Engl2; benefactor’s accomplishment: benefit unit) (128) “and Richard Harland for being a great thesis committee member” (PBio4; evaluative description of the benefactor’s traits syntactically encoded as a benefit: benefit unit) (129) “First and foremost I would like to thank my advisor, Korkut Bardakci, for his guidance and constant encouragement, and also for being such a great gentleman” (Phys3; benefit unit comprising evaluation of benefactor) - a text segment that provides new, descriptive-evaluative information about the benefactor is not, however, classifiable as a benefactor expansion, if it is presented as the cause or effect of an event or circumstance that counts as a benefit; e.g.: 161 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (130) “I would like to extend my appreciation to Jan Greenough and June Wong, whose work and efforts have made my years in the doctoral program all the more enjoyable” (B-Adm1; benefit unit reflecting well on the benefactor, interpretable as the cause of an advantageous consequence, and followed by the benefit expansion encoding that consequence) (131) “First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sheila McCormick, for introducing me to the world of plant development […] The breadth of Sheila’s knowledge in the field of biology inspired me a great deal during my study of pollen development and will continue to inspire me throughout my career in science” (P-Bio3; benefit unit reflecting well on the benefactor, interpretable as the cause of a beneficial effect, and followed by the benefit expansion encoding that effect) - a benefactor expansion is realized as a non-embedded syntactic structure, such as a non-defining relative clause, apposition, subject or predicate of a clause, whole clause, sentence or parenthetical remark; thus, a benefactororiented descriptive/evaluative text segment embedded under a benefactoridentifying text segment is part of the core benefactor unit; e.g.: (132) “And although not de jure a member of my committee, Bernard Williams was an active de facto member […]” (Phil1; benefactor expansion: subordinate clause with ellipsis of subject and verb, followed by descriptive core benefactor unit; original underlining) (133) “Dr. Marc Willebeek-LeMair was kind to be my mentor to make the award possible […]” (EECS2; benefactor expansion: predicate) - typically, a benefactor expansion is not realized as an embedding syntactic structure; thus, a sequence of an embedding text segment and an embedded one both focused on the benefactor are components of the core benefactor unit; possible exceptions are instances of repeated reference to the benefactor; that is, text segments that “incorporate” the repeated mention of the benefactor with details about him may realize distinct benefactor expansions, but only if another segment in the same move realizes the core benefit unit; however, no relevant examples are found in the corpus; e.g.: (134) “Lastly, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to the memory of Brian Kennedy” (B-Adm1; benefactor unit: embedding and embedded structures) - a benefactor expansion typically immediately precedes and/or follows the relevant core benefactor unit, but may also be more closely linked to a benefit unit or gratitude expression expansion; e.g.: 162 Analysis of texts (135) “I am very grateful to my research advisor, Professor David Messerschmitt, for his guidance and support throughout my years at Berkeley. Besides the wealth of his technical knowledge, I truly admire his profound business insights and superior management skills” (EECS2; benefactor expansion surrounding the gratitude expression expansion equivalent) - finally, syntactically ambiguous text segments are coded both as benefactor expansions and as core benefit units; e.g.: (136) “Norton Grubb was the epitome of a committee chair and a friend – patient, persistent, encouraging, exacting” (Edu2; evaluation of the benefactor: benefactor expansion and part of benefit unit) (137) “First, I would like to thank the students who participated in these design studies. I appreciated their enthusiasm when science class became something unfamiliar to them and their patience when our new software was revealing “unimplemented features” of various sorts” (Edu3; evaluation of the benefactor: part of benefactor expansion and of benefit unit) Table 4.12a: Distribution of categories of benefactor expansions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Benefactor expansion Description Evaluation Opinion Accomplishment Circumstance Combination Total Discontinuous Also coded as benefit Expansion of non-benefactor Applied / Pure EECS Phys P-Bio 0 0 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 5 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 Econ 0 2 0 1 2 1 6 0 0 Social Edu 1 11 0 0 0 1 13 2 2 Stat 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 163 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Table 4.12b: Distribution of categories of benefactor expansions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Benefactor expansion Description Evaluation Opinion Accomplishment Circumstance Combination Total Discontinuous Also coded as benefit Expansion of non-benefactor Humanities Engl Phil 2 1 4 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 9 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 Professional Arch B-Adm 4 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 Total 9 29 1 1 3 5 48 4 3 1 The corpus contains only 48 benefactor expansions (see Table 4.12), that is, about one per PDA. The low frequency of such supportives is partly due to the application of the criteria outlined above for the classification of information units in the AMs. Indeed, descriptive and/or evaluative information about the benefactors is also found in benefit units and their expansions, where it is presented as connected to the cause or consequence of an act, event or situation advantageous to the thanker and attributable to the benefactor. The largest group of benefactor expansions consists of evaluative segments, and accounts for about 60% of the data. The second most frequent expansion category represented in the corpus is the description of benefactors, relevant to about 19% of all expansions. Combinations of benefactor expansion types characterize about 10% of all expansions. All the evaluative expansions in the corpus convey positive information about the benefactors and qualify them as people responsible for good deeds, endowed with good traits and/or able to deliver creditable performances. The high frequency of these expansions can be related to the communicative purpose of the PDAs: information useful for characterizing acknowledgees as benefactors helps the PDA authors to motivate their gratitude to the general reader. The benefactor expansions are not equally distributed across the sub-corpora, which hints at the discipline-specificity of their content: B-Adm has no benefactor expansion, Phys and P-Bio have only one each, while Phil and Stat have two; Econ and EECS have a few, on average one per PDA; finally, only Arch, Edu, and Engl have about two benefactor expansions per text, on average. 164 Analysis of texts Occasionally, there is a positive correlation between the word length of the subcorpora and the number of benefactor expansion units occurring in them; for example, the longest sub-corpora, Arch, Edu and Engl, also have the highest numbers of benefit expansions; however, the shortest sub-corpus, namely Phil, is not the one which totally lacks such units. This suggests that the frequency of occurrence of such expansions must also depend on the individual authors’ stylistic preferences. Discontinuous expansions are only about 10% of the total, that is, they occur in less than 1% of the moves. This indicates these functional sub-components of the AMs are not typically characterized by formal structural complexity. Only three (i.e. about 6%) of the benefactor expansions are co-coded as core benefit units as well. This suggests that the criteria used for identifying benefactor-relevant units of meaning are appropriate for discriminating the two types of AM components most of the time. Finally, only one of the expansions identified in the otherwise gratitudeoriented PDAs is about an acknowledgee that is not a benefactor. Interestingly, though, this acknowledgee is described with reference what he can be given credit for, that is, to an aspect of his behaviour that he can be said to share with the other acknowledgees who are benefactors. In conclusion, benefactor expansion, as I have identified them, appear to be semantically varied, but quantitatively not very significant components of the corpus. They enrich only about 10% of the AMs by providing information that helps qualify the benefactors being acknowledged. 4.6.2 Conclusion Core benefactor units and their expansions are the functional components of AMs that make individual AM salient to specific benefactors, and the whole PDA in which they occur interpretable to the generic reader: on the one hand, they enable benefactors to recognize themselves in the text as acknowledgees and thus to realize that given acts of thanking have been successfully performed; on the other, they clarify the role-relationships between the dissertation writer and her helpers, and thus make the latter meaningfully relevant to the reader. In the corpus, benefactors are clearly, or fairly clearly, identified in most AMs, often (also) through reference to their professional and/or interpersonal roles – rather than, or in addition to, their names (alone). This renders them recognizable not only to the people acquainted with them, but also to the generic reader as exemplars of given social “types”. The identifiability of the benefactors ensures the understandability and effectiveness of the PDAs – whose manifestations of gratitude are severed from the communicative events 165 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology that they causally related to, and whose addressees do not necessarily coincide with the benefactors – and also qualifies the PDAs as acknowledgements (or public acts of recognition of who the beneficiary feels grateful to) and not simply as thanks (see section 3.2.1 about the verbs to acknowledge and to recognize). The corpus occasionally contains complementary units of meaning enriching the gist the benefactor units. These benefactor expansions describe the benefactors’ qualities and/or report on their behaviour by ascribing merit to them. The positive evaluation of the benefactors that they convey – in the form of praise and/or admiration – stresses the benefactors’ current communicative role as acknowledgees and further motivates and supports the writers’ (manifestation of) gratitude. 4.7 BENEFIT UNITS Benefit-specifying text segments include core benefit units and their expansions, whose content and wording I explore in this and the following section. In particular, I first illustrate the criteria applied for distinguishing benefit units from other functional text segments, list the categories used for classifying benefit units, and present the relevant data about the corpus. Then, in the following section, I describe the categories used for classifying benefit expansions and summarize the results of the application of such classification criteria to the corpus. A core benefit unit is a text segment that refers to a previous interactant’s generous offer of help to the current PDA writer, which the latter interpreted, perceived and represents as advantageous to her. The identification of core benefit units in AMs may occasionally be complicated by the comparability of representations of benefits with manifestations of gratitude on the one hand, and with the depiction of beneficial corollary circumstances, on the other. The conceptual similarity between core benefits and manifestations of gratitude is illustrated by verbs such as benefit or owe, which can be assigned different interpretations according to whether the subjects they co-occur with denote animate or inanimate entities. For example, the formula I benefited in a made-up AM like “I benefited from Paul’s comments” can be considered the gratitude expression equivalent; indeed, it reveals the thanker’s awareness of the advantage received and thus signals her positive reactive attitude to her benefactor and benefit; additionally, it is accompanied by the indication of the benefactor from Joan’s and the benefit comments. However, the verb benefited in this other made-up AM “My dissertation greatly benefited from Paul’s 166 Analysis of texts comments” cannot be considered the expression of a cognitive-emotional state or attitude, because it is associated with an inanimate entity rather than attributed to a sentient being. Rather, the thanker’s attitude is to be (easily) inferred from the use of benefited, and the sentence can be considered an ellipted version of a longer AM lacking a gratitude expression (equivalent), such as “I know my dissertation greatly benefited from Paul’s comments” or “My dissertation greatly benefited from Paul’s comments and I am grateful to her.” Thus, the segment My dissertation benefited is to be understood as a consequence of the benefactor’s generous act, and can be classified as an expansion of the benefit comments. Similar considerations would apply to such AMs as “I owe a lot to Patricia for all her help” vs. “My work owes a lot to Patricia’s help.” Other text segments can be interpreted both as equivalents of gratitude expressions that reveal the authors’ attitude and as benefit expansions that indicate the authors’ intention to reciprocate the favours received by offering counter-benefits. In the following made-up AM “Nancy supported me a lot while I was writing my dissertation. I wish her all the best now that she is going through the same ordeal”, Nancy encodes the benefactor, supported me a lot while I was writing my dissertation encodes the benefit, while I wish her all the best now that she is going through the same ordeal indicates the beneficiary’s positive reactive attitude towards the benefactor, developed as a result of the benefactor’s behaving in a friendly way towards the beneficiary. As an expression of good will, and in the absence of a more conventional gratitude expression, it can be considered a gratitude expression equivalent; on the other hand, as the attitude expressed is oriented towards the present and future (of the benefactor’s luck and happiness) rather than the past (of the beneficiary’s advantages gained), and mentions a consequence of the benefit received, it can be classified as a benefit expansion, with an understood, ellipted gratitude expression. Here is a relevant example from the corpus: (138) “Many thanks to [names] for being not only fellow graduate students with many great and helpful ideas, but also good friends who have made my stay at Berkeley an experience to remember. I know I have benefited from both our technical and social discussions” (EECS5; text segment interpretable as a benefit expansion or a gratitude expression equivalent). Still other text segments can be regarded simultaneously as core benefit units and as benefactor expansions. This is because the events and situations that constitute (or are interpretable as) beneficial experiences and circumstances can 167 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology be verbally represented in more than one way, as illustrated in the made-up AMs below: - in “Albert Jones expertly guided my efforts”, the segment expertly guided my efforts encodes the benefactor’s generous act, that is, what he willingly did to the advantage of the beneficiary; it thus indicates what the benefit consists in; - in “Albert Jones expertly guided my efforts, which improved my dissertation”, the segment expertly guided my efforts refers to the beneficial act consciously carried out by the benefactor which he can be acknowledged for, while which improved my dissertation refers to the beneficial consequence of his act; the representation of the expert guidance offered as a deliberate, chronologically prior event may qualify expertly guided my efforts as the gist of the benefit, while the reference to the improved quality of the beneficiary’s dissertation as a chronologically later event, brought about by the benefactor’s behaviour, may qualify which improved my dissertation as a benefit expansion; at the same time, from the point of view of the beneficiary, what is most relevant as a benefit is what has been gained (i.e. the improved quality of the dissertation) rather than the advantageous circumstance (i.e. the expert benefactor’s commitment) that led to it, and thus which improved my dissertation can be regarded as the gist of the benefit, while expertly guided my efforts is reinterpretable as its expansion; - in “Albert Jones’s expert guidance improved my dissertation”, the benefactor’s contribution to the beneficiary’s success is encoded as if it were an entity (i.e. a participant to an event) through a process of nominalization, while the advantage gained from it is encoded as an event through a verb phrase; as a result, expert guidance obscures the event-like properties of the benefactor’s intervention and appears to be less salient as a benefit (i.e. an element of a beneficial event, but not the event per se), while improved my dissertation acquires more prominence as the benefit that happens; - in “Albert Jones improved my dissertation with his expert guidance”, the segment improved my dissertation can be interpreted as the core benefit unit encoding the main benefit or as the benefit expansion encoding the advantageous consequence of a beneficial act; alternatively, with his expert guidance can be seen as encoding the means through which the main benefit was achieved, and thus interpretable as a benefit expansion, or as the encoding of the main beneficial act attributable to the benefactor, and thus interpretable as the core benefit unit. The syntactic phrasing of the AM (in which the cause of the beneficial consequences is rendered as an adjunct) makes the former interpretation more likely, but the latter is equally logical and relevant; 168 Analysis of texts - in “Laura’s reassuring smile and charming personality increased my selfconfidence”, the segment reassuring smile and charming personality could be seen as the benefit expansion encoding the involuntary positive cause (i.e. the benefactor’s positive characteristics) of a benefit, while increased my selfconfidence could be interpreted as the core unit mentioning the cognitive salient benefit (which is determined by those positive characteristics). Alternatively, reassuring smile and charming personality is interpretable as encoding the gist of the benefit (i.e. the advantageous situation the benefactor has to be given credit for) and increased my self-confidence as encoding an aspect of it (i.e. its advantageous side effect). The former interpretation might be preferred because smile and personality are not actions deliberately carried out by the benefactor, but rather behavioural traits; however, from a syntactic point of view, this AM is parallel to “Albert Jones’s expert guidance improved my dissertation”; - Laura increased my self-confidence with her reassuring smile and charming personality can be interpreted as encoding a benefit (increased my self-confidence) and relevant instrument (with her reassuring smile and charming personality) or as encoding a consequence resulting from a benefit (increased my self-confidence) and the relevant benefit (with her reassuring smile and charming personality). Given that smile and personality encode characteristics rather than actions (cf. “Albert Jones improved my dissertation with her expert guidance”) and that they are embedded under a preposition, the former interpretation may be favoured. Here is a relevant example from the corpus: (139) “To Renee Gladman, my tai’ji transcriber extraordinaire, thank you for saving my hands and my mind with your skill, wit, and wisdom” (Edu1; reference to the consequence and cause of a beneficial circumstance). Very similar observations apply to AMs in which inanimate, concrete entities are mentioned as involved in the beneficial circumstances being reported, which is illustrated in the following made-up AMs: - in “That grant supported my research”, that grant can be regarded as encoding either the benefit or the cause of the benefit, while supported my research can be said to encode either the consequence of the benefit or the benefit itself; - in “My research was supported by that grant”, My research was supported can be regarded as referring to the consequence of the benefit or the benefit itself, while by that grant can be viewed as the indication of the benefit or as the actor responsible for it, the benefactor; 169 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology - in “I thank UC Berkeley for supporting my research through a very generous grant”, for supporting my research can be interpreted as referring to either the benefit or a beneficial consequence of the benefit, while through a very generous grant can be interpreted as referring to the instrument through which the benefit was carried out or to the benefit itself; in either case, UC Berkeley refers to the benefactor, the agent responsible for the benefit; - in “I was supported by UC Berkeley’s generous grant”, I was supported may be interpreted as referring either to the benefit or to the advantageous consequence of a benefit, while generous grant may be interpreted as referring either to the means through which a benefit was brought about or to the benefit itself; here too, UC Berkeley can be said to refer to the benefactor; - in “UC Berkeley generously gave me a grant that enabled me to continue my research”, generously gave me a grant is interpretable as referring to a benefit or the cause of a benefit, and that enabled me to continue my research is interpretable as referring to the consequence of a benefit or a benefit in itself; - in “I received a grant from UC Berkeley so that I could continue my research”, I received a grant could be said to encode the benefit or the cause of a benefit, while so that I could continue my research could be said to encode the consequence of a benefit or the benefit itself; - in “Without that grant I wouldn’t have completed my research”, Without that grant could refer to the benefit or the cause of a benefit or the instrument through which a benefit was brought about, while I wouldn’t have completed my research could refer to the consequence of a benefit or a benefit in itself. Finally, it may be difficult to distinguish between corollary aspects of benefits such as their causes and effects from main benefits, since certain beneficial circumstances constitute unified concepts or events. This is especially evident in the case of benefit units that contain adjectives, as illustrated in the following made-up examples: - “I thank him for his helpful comments” appears to have for his helpful comments as the core and whole benefit unit which both identifies the benefit (i.e. comments) and describes it (as helpful) in one phrase; - in “I thank him for his comments, which were very helpful”, the text segment for his comments, which were very helpful could be regarded as the whole benefit unit, or alternatively, for his comments could be considered the core benefit unit, while which were very helpful could be regarded as its expansion unit encoding the consequence of the benefit; 170 Analysis of texts - in “His comments helped me a lot”, the text segment his comments could be understood as the cause of a benefit or the benefit itself, while helped me a lot could be interpreted as the consequence of the benefit or the benefit itself; - finally, in “His comments were very helpful”, the subject his comments can be described as the unit referring to the benefactor, while the segment were very helpful could be said to refer to the consequence of the benefit; the cause-effect relationship, however, is less evident in this AM than in I thank him for his comments, which were very helpful (see above) because here both text units are main syntactic constituents of the clause encoding the AM (i.e. the subject and the subject complement, respectively, of the clause). Bearing in mind that different interpretative choices, which give priority to syntactic vs. semantic considerations, determine different understandings of the same texts, I identified and classified benefit relevant text segment on the basis of the following criteria: - in general, text segments signalling the type of help PDA authors received count as benefit units, while those denoting beneficial circumstances logically relevant to, or dependent on, the events, situations, phenomena or traits classified as benefits count as benefit expansions, independently of their syntactic encoding; but in addition: - text segments that explicitly encode the beneficial notions of ‘advantage gained’ or ‘dependence on the benefactor’s help’ count as (equivalents of) gratitude expressions, if presented as relevant to people and in the absence of more explicit or conventional gratitude expressions (i.e. as manifestations of the authors’ cognitive-emotional attitude toward the benefactors); however, they count as benefit units or expansions if associated with inanimate entities, even if these can be metonymically related to the benefactors; - text segments referring to beneficial causes of events, whether encoded as subjects or agentive complements, count as benefit units; - text segments referring to beneficial circumstances other than causes of events, for example, instruments or effects of benefits, count as benefit expansions; - beneficial circumstances encoded as predicates or relative clauses count as benefit expansions of core benefit units appearing in the subject constituents of the relevant (main) clause. Here follows an excerpt from the corpus illustrating the application of the above principles: (140) “[name] has been unceasingly generous with his time, resources, and expertise as my advisor” (Stat4; benefit unit describing the benefactor’s 171 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology behaviour: has been unceasingly generous; benefit expansion referring to the means through which the benefactor’s beneficial behaviour was realized: with his time, resources, and expertise as my advisor). The benefits the corpus mentions include various forms of support: generic, intellectual (i.e. academic guidance, critical comments, inspiration), emotional (i.e. encouragement, fun, friendship, love), financial, technical and/or administrative. Benefits also include the benefactors’ outstanding characteristics or accomplishments, which are presented as worthy of praise,7 and their endurance, or the cost suffered in helping out the PDA author. Finally, benefit units can combine reference to two or more types of benefits, denote benefits not classifiable under any of the above categories, or even be missing from given AMs; e.g.: (141) “While in the midst of wrestling with this work, I have often found solace and inspiration in the long list of students, colleagues, family, and friends who have nurtured my work” (Edu1; benefit unit: general help) (142) “I am particularly indebted to […] for reading and commenting on numerous versions of the papers included in this dissertation […]” (BAdm3; benefit unit: reference to intellectual help) (143) “[name], my colleague-mentor during my early years at Berkeley, brought me up to speed with my first project, and was always very pleasant to be around” (EECS1; benefit unit: reference to intellectual support) (144) “I would like to thank [name], for making this last year in Berkeley a wonderful time in my life” (P-Bio3; benefit unit: reference emotional help) (145) “Financial Support by the […] (Award number […]) is gratefully acknowledged” (B-Adm3; benefit unit: reference to financial support) (146) “I wish to thank Frank Lie of Leica, Inc. and Enrique Chang of Carl Zeiss, Inc. for all of their help with confocal microscopes” (P-Bio2; benefit unit: reference to technical help) (147) “I would first like to thank Mike Freeling for his enthusiasm” (P-Bio4; benefit unit: reference to the benefactor’s excellence) (148) “I would like to thank my doctoral advisor, Tasso Melis, for financial support and for his guidance during the completion of the research project” (P-Bio1; benefit unit: combination of benefits (reference to financial and intellectual support)) 7 In terms of content, benefit units realizing such mini-acts of complimenting are comparable to benefactor expansions focused on the positive evaluation of benefactors (see section 4.6.1). 172 Analysis of texts (149) “Arminda, my wife, Juan Pablo and Alfredo, my sons, accepted, most of the time with serenity, the many absences, first from home, then from the country. However, they also shared with me the value of persistence and the cost of success” (Arch2; benefit unit: combination of benefits (reference to the benefactor’s emotional support and endurance)) (150) “Richard Tilly […] at the University of Münster, Germany for his hospitality and for providing me with important data” (Econ-5; benefit unit: combination of benefits (reference to the benefactor’s emotional and technical support)) (151) “My best wishes to my office mates [names]” (Stat1; an AM with no benefit unit) (152) “with a special note to Grandma Althea and Grandpa Bob for having a home on the river, where the salmon spawn” (Stat4; benefit unit: reference to a benefit not classifiable under the categories identified). Structurally, benefit units can be realized as discontinuous text segments; e.g.: (153) “I have also been heartened and tremendously moved by the encouragement and enthusiasm (as well as erudition) of a host of friends, not all of whom are in the academy, much less part of eighteenth-century studies. Both my work and my life would be poorer without the comfort and joy offered up by [names]” (Engl3; discontinuous benefit unit: combination of benefits (emotional support and benefactor’s qualities)) (154) “In addition to spending many hours commenting on drafts of this dissertation, the two internal members of my dissertation committee, Professors Hannah Ginsborg and Daniel Warren acted as my mentors throughout my time at Berkeley” (Phil2; discontinuous benefit unit: combination of benefits (patience and intellectual help)). Table 4.13 shows that about 94% of the moves make reference to the benefits exchanged between the benefactors and the beneficiaries, and 92% of the benefit units specify to some extent the nature of the benefits being acknowledged. The frequent and specific reference to the support to be acknowledged motivates the authors’ manifestation of their gratitude. The types of benefits most frequently mentioned are combined forms of help (32%), intellectual help (21%) and emotional support (16%). This frequency pattern applies both to the corpus as a whole and to the B-Adm, EECS, Engl, Phys and Stat sub-corpora. In the other sub-corpora, the ‘combination of forms of help’ is still the most frequently instantiated benefit category, but either 173 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology ‘emotional help’ is more frequent than ‘intellectual help’, as in Arch, Edu and PBio, or the third most frequent benefit category is not ‘emotional help’, as in Econ and Phil. The next three most frequent benefit categories in the corpus are ‘general support’, ‘financial support’ and ‘technical/administrative support’, which show slightly different relative frequencies in the sub-corpora. Overall, there appears to be a homogeneous distribution of benefit units across disciplines. Table 4.13a: Distribution of categories of benefit units in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Benefit unit General support Emotional support Intellectual support Financial support Technical administrative support Quality accomplishment Endurance Combination Other Zero Total Discontinuous Relevant to nonthanking moves Applied / Pure: No. of PDAS EECS Phys P-Bio 2 3 3 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 1 4 5 6 6 15 4 16 4 9 13 6 13 15 7 1 4 2 5 1 2 0 2 6 5 8 0 1 2 4 1 2 0 0 20 3 4 46 11 0 10 0 3 43 5 0 22 2 0 60 5 2 10 1 4 46 6 1 25 1 7 80 8 0 12 2 1 33 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 Not all the benefit categories are instantiated in each sub-corpus. Thus, ‘endurance’ is exemplified in four sub-corpora, the categories called ‘benefactor’s qualities/accomplishments’ and ‘technical help’ are instantiated in six, while ‘other benefits’ is unattested only in Phil and Phys (cf. Hyland 2004). Overall, the least frequently exemplified benefit categories are ‘endurance,’ ‘benefactor’s qualities/accomplishments,’ ‘technical help,’ ‘financial support’ and ‘other benefits’. 174 Analysis of texts Table 4.13b: Distribution of categories of benefit units in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Benefit unit General support Emotional support Intellectual support Financial support Technical administrative support Quality accomplishment Endurance Combination Other Zero Total Discontinuous Relevant to nonthanking moves Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 3 7 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 9 1 Total (%) 38 (8) 10 1 12 5 79 (16) 13 8 11 10 105 (21) 1 1 4 2 23 (5) 1 0 7 0 29 (6) 4 0 0 0 14 (3) 0 20 1 2 55 10 1 9 0 3 30 2 3 23 1 5 75 12 0 7 1 0 26 0 7 (1) 158 (32) 12 (2) 29 (6) 494 (100) 62 (13) 0 0 0 0 2 The frequency of the two most frequent single benefit categories (i.e. intellectual and emotional support) can be accounted for with the salience of the benefactor categories typically referred to in the AMs, namely academic figures, on the one hand, and friends and family, on the other. At the same time, the rarity of the ‘endurance’ and ‘benefactors’ qualities/accomplishments’ benefit categories can be related to their limited prototypicality as benefits: ‘endurance’ benefit units refer to an aspect of given beneficial circumstances (i.e. the cost to the benefactor of the benefits provided) rather than benefits in themselves, which makes them conceptually comparable to a type of benefit expansions; ‘benefactors’ qualities/accomplishments’ benefit units identify admirable qualities the benefactors are endowed with, rather than acts deliberately performed denoting their generosity, and are thus similar to benefactor expansions that positively describe or praise benefactors. Structurally complex benefit units, realized as discontinuous segments, account for about 13% of the data, and occur in all sub-corpora but B-Adm. The 175 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology occasional presence of discontinuous benefactor units suggests that the PDA authors may need to refer to multiple benefits, or to repeatedly refer to the same benefits, in their AMs; the choice to break down semantically rich functional components into sub-units and intersperse them with text segments of other kinds shows that elaborate units of meaning may be conveyed in stages within single moves. In general, the findings about the benefit units reveal that, most of the time, the PDA authors make the reasons for their gratitude explicit, by specifying the benefactors’ deliberate acts or intrinsic qualities which they benefited from. This is of (communicative) benefit both to the generic reader and to the various benefactors: the former, who does not share the benefactors and beneficiaries’ transactional background, can understand why the authors want to express their gratitude; the latter, who do know in what respects they were helpful to the beneficiaries, can find out which specific benefit(s) in particular the beneficiaries considered it appropriate to acknowledge them for. This way, by explicitly referring to previous interactions as positive exchanges, the thankers can sustain their relationships with the benefactors, that is, they can stress the relevance of their complementary roles of givers and receivers of valuable commodities. 4.7.1 Benefit expansions Benefit expansions are text segments that provide additional information about benefits already identified in core benefit units. They describe aspects of beneficial events and situations such as their spatio-temporal setting, the chain of events they are part of, and their relevance to the benefactors and beneficiaries involved in them. More specifically, benefit expansions may identify the contextual circumstances of a benefit (e.g. its time or location, the benefactor’s manner of acting, a concomitant phenomenon); the past, present and/or future advantageous consequence(s) of a given beneficial event to the beneficiary; the negative consequences avoided as a result of the benefactors’ positive behaviour and/or traits; the needs experienced or difficulties encountered by the beneficiary, which were alleviated by the benefactor’s help; the beneficiary’s and/or benefactor’s objective in carrying out a given action; the instrument through which the benefit was provided; the cost of a benefit to the benefactor (e.g. the difficulties experienced or the time spent in trying to bring about a beneficial change); the credit to be attributed to the benefactor for the magnitude or value of her generosity and/or excellence; the beneficiary’s commitment, 176 Analysis of texts hope or desire to act in the future, including the choice to offer something in return for the benefit received;8 e.g.: (155) “Special thanks to B. Morariu for helping so much during my preparation for the quals” (Phys3; benefit expansion: reference to the temporal context of a beneficial event) (156) “I thank Rima Kulikauskas for her enormous assistance in both science and life, her talent, her sense of humor and her warm friendship through the years in the lab” (P-Bio3; benefit expansion: reference to the temporal and spatial context of a beneficial event) (157) “I am thankful for the friendship of many colleagues in the Berkeley Economics Department who have shared this road with me, especially […]” (Econ4; benefit expansion: reference to a beneficial circumstance concomitant with the benefit) (158) “Most of all, I thank my thesis chair […] whose mentorship I will warmly remember for many years to come” (Econ5; benefit expansion: reference to an advantage to be gained as a result of a benefit) (159) “J. Baker and G. Ushomirsky have been more than generous with their time in helping my straiten [sic] out my computer troubles” (Phys5; benefit expansion: reference to the beneficial consequence of a benefit) (160) “It is with great pleasure that I thank my advisor, Hitoshi Murayama, for his wisdom, his patience, his eternal good mood, and for coming up with the most informative and interesting research topics. Were it not for him, none of the work done here would have happened” (Phys4; benefit expansion: problem avoided as a result of a benefit received) (161) “My fellow students, […], have been of invaluable help during my struggles” (Stat2; benefit expansion: reference to problems encountered by the beneficiary) (162) “I am very grateful to my brother […], who invited me to visit Spain and France so that I could see and visit various traditional and contemporary examples of earth-integrated houses” (Arch5; benefit expansion: reference to the goal to be achieved with the provision of a benefit) (163) “And my gratitude goes to the American people for supporting me financially through a fellowship […]” (Phys5; benefit expansion: reference to the instrumental source of a benefit) 8 However, the manifestation of gratitude as projected into the future is to be considered an expression of gratitude. 177 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (164) “Finally, and most of all, I thank my best friend, my wife, Sarah Kelsey, for being so very strange and wonderful, and for a love that has withstood even graduate school” (Stat4; benefit expansion: reference to the difficulties encountered in providing a benefit) (165) “I owe a special thanks to Ivy Schweitzer, my high school English teacher, who first inspired me to pursue literary analysis. It is by her example that I discovered the thrills of close reading” (Engl4; benefit expansion: giving credit to the benefactor for the benefit provided) (166) “I hope that I can bring to my own dissertation students what I have learned from each member of my dissertation committee about the rewards of rigor, the pleasures of scholarship, and the spirit of intellectual community” (Engl4; benefit expansion: reference to the beneficiary’s future hopes and intention to reciprocate by providing others with similar benefits). Elaborate benefit expansions may refer to a number of beneficial circumstances of given benefits (including some not classifiable under any of the above categories, such as opinions or concomitant events) and/or be interspersed with text segments realizing other functional units; e.g.: (167) “First and foremost, I would like to thank my two wonderful advisors, […]. Besides providing invigorating technical discussions, they were often more friends than authoritative figures. It is this humanness that made the working rapport so enjoyable and endearing. Perhaps I have not always been easy to work with, and was at times wayward and spoiled, but I think we all got along pretty well” (EECS1; benefit expansion: reference to various beneficial circumstances of a beneficial event) (168) “I am also grateful to the other members of my committee […] Their comments and advice were invariably correct, and let to great improvements” (Econ2; benefit expansion: reference to two beneficial circumstances of a benefit (‘credit to the benefactor’ and ‘advantage gained by the beneficiary’)) (169) “Very many people over the past six years have given me the help and encouragement to finish my studies. Without their kindness and support, this thesis most likely would not be” (Stat4; discontinuous benefit expansion: reference to various beneficial circumstances of a benefit) (170) “I acknowledge the seminar participants in labor and public sector economics at the University of California-Berkeley whose collegiality has maintained my spirits and whose thoughtful comments have often guided 178 Analysis of texts me” (Econ1: discontinuous benefit expansion: reference to advantages gained) (171) “Many thanks also to […] for introducing me to a problem that will surely be with me for the rest of my life — and for his help and guidance every step of the way” (Phil4; discontinuous benefit expansion) (172) “As my numerous references to his book on Spinoza will attest, my thinking on Spinoza owes a great deal to Jonathan Bennett’s work. Although I have significant disagreements with Bennet’s interpretation, I have found his arguments extremely helpful in articulating many of the central interpretative issues in Spinoza” (Phil5; discontinuous benefit expansion: reference to a combination of beneficial circumstances). Table 4.14a: Distribution of categories of benefit expansions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Benefit expansion Contextual circumstance Advantaged gained by beneficiary Problems avoided by beneficiary Beneficiary’s needs/problems alleviated by benefactor Goal pursued by beneficiary or benefactor Means of benefit Cost incurred by benefactor Credit attributed to benefactor Beneficiary’s future commitment/offer Other Combination Total Discontinuous Applied / Pure EECS Phys P-Bio 5 7 7 Econ 1 Social Edu 7 Stat 2 3 1 6 3 11 2 0 1 2 0 3 2 0 0 2 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 2 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 10 22 8 0 0 10 0 1 8 27 2 1 2 8 4 0 3 31 1 0 3 13 1 179 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Table 4.14b: Distribution of categories of benefit expansions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Benefit expansion Contextual circumstance Advantaged gained by beneficiary Problems avoided by beneficiary Beneficiary’s needs/ problems alleviated by benefactor Goal pursued by beneficiary or benefactor Means of benefit Cost incurred by benefactor Credit attributed to benefactor Beneficiary’s future commitment/offer Other Combination Total Discontinuous Humanities Engl Phil 7 4 Professional Arch B-Adm 11 4 Total (%) 55 (27) 5 3 10 1 45 (22) 1 2 2 2 15 (7) 1 0 0 0 5 (3) 1 0 3 0 8 (4) 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 9 2 (4) (1) 3 1 0 0 9 (4) 1 0 2 0 3 (2) 0 17 37 8 1 2 15 2 0 4 33 3 0 1 8 1 4 (2) 50 (24) 205 (100) 30 (15) As Table 4.14 shows, benefit expansions are fairly frequent, occurring in about 42% of the moves in the corpus (on average, four per PDA). They occur in all sub-corpora, but are more frequent in those with high word length values. The most frequent benefit expansions are those that identify contextual elements of benefits, combinations of beneficial circumstances and advantages gained by the beneficiary, which account, respectively, for 27%, 24% and 22% of the data. The first group are particularly useful to the generic reader, who can form a mental picture of the beneficial events he did not learn about directly; the second group strongly contribute to motivating the writer’s gratitude, providing multiple reasons for her post-dissertation reactive satisfaction; and the third group of expansions show the direct relevance of benefits to the beneficiaries. The next most frequent category is the one referring to damages avoided, accounting for 7% of all the expansions. Conceptually, this is comparable to the ‘advantage gained’ expansion, as it signals how the beneficiary’s circumstances were safeguarded by the benefactors. The other expansions are quite infrequent. 180 Analysis of texts Discontinuous benefit expansions are about 15% of the total, which means that they occur in about 6% of the AMs, on average, and that they are six times as frequent as benefactor expansions. This suggests that information about the circumstances of the benefits is richer in content than information about aspects of the benefactors’ identity and/or value, and that by being conveyed in stages, it expresses the full import of the benefits, which helps motivate the writers’ gratitude. In conclusion, benefit expansions appear to be both semantically varied and quantitatively prominent components of the corpus. They enrich about 42% of the AMs by providing information that helps motivate the authors’ gratitude and make the PDAs more communicatively effective for the reader. 4.7.2 Conclusion Benefit units and their expansions are the functional components of AMs through which the writer can account for her gratitude towards her benefactors and motivate the writing of her PDA. By specifying the reasons why she feels – or wants to be perceived as – indebted and grateful, she lets her previous-current interactants know why they deserve to be recognized as her benefactors; at the same time, she is also able to explain to the general reader why she feels – or claims to feel – the way she does, so that her gratitude can be perceived as sincere. In the corpus, benefits are clearly identified in most AMs, although slightly less frequently than benefactors are (see Tables 4.11 and 4.13). The frequent specification of the types of benefits received answers a need for communicative effectiveness. A PDA represents a form of delayed thanking (which is a reactive type of communicative act), and is addressed to a readership potentially wider than the benefactors; therefore, explicit reference to the benefits that the act of thanking are relevant to helps the reader understand why thanking occurs (i.e. what beneficial events it is a reaction to), even if he was not originally involved in – or a witness to – the original initiating communicative acts. In addition, reference to the benefits “reflects well” on the writer because it shows that she has good reasons to feel grateful, and thus that she can be trusted as a reliable, sincere communicator; at the same time, it helps her sustain her relationship with the benefactors, by stressing the relevance of their complementary roles of givers and receivers of valuable commodities. It is not surprising, then, that the most frequent type of benefits referred to in the corpus consist of combinations of benefits: the more reasons are given for motivating the writer’s gratitude, the more plausible and convincing that gratitude is likely to sound, and the more 181 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology grateful (or aware of her indebtedness) the writer is likely to be perceived by the benefactors. The corpus also contains frequent complementary units of meaning that enhance the content of the core benefit units (on average, they occur in about 45% of the moves). These supportive benefit expansions mostly explain on what grounds given benefits are to be intended as such (i.e. why indeed they count(ed) as beneficial events or situations, while others point out how they were brought about, when or where they took place, and what future beneficial events they may trigger. Together, the benefit units and their expansions specify the nature and stress the magnitude of the benefits received, which motivates the PDA authors’ gratitude. 4.8 GRATITUDE EXPRESSIONS The expression of the thanker’s gratitude is the pivotal communicative goal in a PDA. In the corpus, gratitude expressions are the text segments that directly manifest the writer’s grateful indebtedness to the benefactors by means of conventional lexico-grammatical expressions (I appreciate, I am grateful); in the absence of these, text segments that reveal some other type of positive, reactive cognitive-emotional state experienced by the PDA writer towards the benefactors as a result of benefits received count as gratitude expression equivalents (e.g. I am lucky). Gratitude expression expansions, instead, are those text segments that express positive reactive cognitive-emotional states of the authors’ other than gratitude and in addition to those that more conventionally do convey gratitude in the same AMs. They can thus be encoded through the same lexicogrammatical means as non-conventionalized gratitude expression equivalents (e.g. I am lucky). The gratitude expressions in the corpus are classified according to their surface lexico-morphological encoding, which can later reveal the preferred style of performance of the act of thanking (see section 3.2.1) and help compile a mini-grammar of thanking (see sections 4.9 and 4.9.4). More specifically, gratitude expressions are categorized on the basis of the content words (or word combinations) through which gratitude (or an “equivalent” concept) is conveyed; also, whenever appropriate, they are defined in terms of the part-ofspeech categories of their lexemes expressing gratitude; finally, when gratitude words are verbs, these are classified in terms of voice (active or passive). 182 Analysis of texts However, the classification does not typically specify: the inflectional properties of gratitude words; the occurrence of additional content words conceptually subsidiary to those encoding the notion of gratitude (or its equivalent); the items, if any, encoding the thanker or the thankee(s) (see below for an exception). Gratitude expressions typically consist of a cluster of content and function words built around one or two lexemes conveying the notion of gratitude. This can be expressed through conventionalized, gratitude-oriented verbs such as to thank, to acknowledge, to recognize, to appreciate and to owe, mostly in the active voice and less frequently in the passive voice; e.g.: (173) “I would like to thank […] for their valuable suggestions, comments and time” (B-Adm1; gratitude word: active verb to thank) (174) “I want to thank professors […] and […] for their guidance, friendship, encouragement and support” (B-Adm2; gratitude word: active verb thank) (175) “I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary support I have received from the various members of my committee in planning and writing this dissertation” (Engl5; gratitude word: active verb to acknowledge) (176) “The writing of a dissertation is a long and sometimes lonely task, and it is hard to recognize everybody who contributed to this work” (Stat1; gratitude word: active verb recognize) (177) “Terry Speed has been a constant source of energy and inspiration for me. I appreciate all of the advice and encouragement he has given me” (Stat2; gratitude word: active verb to appreciate) (178) “And to my other “brothers” [name] and [name] – your abiding presence is always felt and appreciated in so many ways” (Edu1; gratitude word: passive verb to be appreciated) (179) “Mistakes in this study are my own, but the opportunity to do this work, along with many useful contributions, I owe to others” (Arch3; gratitude word: active verb to owe). Less conventionalized gratitude-oriented verbs include to benefit, to bless, to captivate, to dedicate, not to forget, not to leave out, to marvel and to offer, mostly occurring in the active voice; e.g.: (180) “I have benefited from discussions with […]” (Phys3; gratitude word: active verb to benefit) (181) “As a foreign student in America, I was blessed to make many remarkable friends in the I-House who helped me to learn about the 183 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology American culture and society” (P-Bio3; gratitude word: passive verb to be blessed) (182) “I have been blessed with a family which values higher education” (Engl3; gratitude word: passive verb to be blessed) (183) “He captivated my attention with his excellent sense of humor […]” (Arch2; gratitude word: active verb captivate) (184) “Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my parents, whose care and love supported me throughout my education” (EECS2; gratitude word: active verb to dedicate) (185) “Last but not least, I cannot forget my intramural basketball buddies […]” (EECS3; gratitude word: negated active verb not to forget) (186) “I cannot leave out my daughter, Suany and my son, Charlie whose moral support has been vital during the long period of my study” (Arch5; gratitude word: negated active verb not to leave out) (187) “I continue to marvel at how many of my interests were formed and anticipated by my undergraduate mentors: [name], [name], and the late [name]” (Engl3; gratitude word: active verb to marvel) (188) “My life is incalculably sweeter because of my girls; my every breath devoted to offering them more-of-the-same” (Engl3; gratitude word: active verb to offer). Gratitude expressions can be built around adjectives conventionally encoding the notion of gratitude, such as appreciative, grateful, indebted or thankful; e.g.: (189) “I am also appreciative of the insightful conversations and relaxing times with the dissertation group: […]” (Edu3; gratitude word: adjective appreciative) (190) “I am very grateful to many professors and colleagues for interesting discussions and for guidance during the last few years” (B-Adm1; gratitude word: adjective grateful) (191) “I am also indebted to my parents for always having encouraged me in my studies” (Stat1; gratitude word: adjective indebted) (192) “I am thankful to the many professors in the physics department whose lectures I attended […]” (Phys3; gratitude word: thankful). Less conventionalized gratitude-oriented adjectives include lucky and fortunate; e.g.: 184 Analysis of texts (193) “I feel lucky to be able to work in the Plant Gene Expression Center and the Department of Plant Biology in UC Berkeley, which are two of the most dynamic and stimulating environments in the field of plant biology” (P-Bio3; gratitude word: adjective lucky) (194) “I was fortunate to work with many many wonderful and knowledgeable individuals throughout my Ph.D. study” (P-Bio3; gratitude word: adjective fortunate). Nouns conventionally conveying the notion of gratitude in gratitude expressions include appreciation, gratitude, debt and thanks; e.g.: (195) “My appreciation is also extended to my friends” (Arch1; gratitude word: noun appreciation) (196) “My eternal gratitude to these people and institutions” (Arch2; gratitude word: noun gratitude) (197) “I owe a special debt to Ingrid Rieger, who taught me to read Kant’s German” (Phil2; gratitude words: verb to owe and noun debt) (198) “In addition to those mentioned below I would like to give special thanks to […]” (Phil3; gratitude words: noun thanks). Other conventionalized gratitude expressions involve the use of the formulas thank you and/or thanks, and of the complex preposition thanks to; e.g.: (199) “I’d like to thank my advisor Jim Pitman for his guiding hand and help over the last two years. “THANKS!”” (Stat3; gratitude words: active verb to thank and formula thanks) (200) “To the original SCS Diaspora […], thank you for patiently introducing this renegade psychologist to a much more interesting and challenging species of theory” (Edu1; gratitude word: formula thank you) (201) “Something I was supposed to know was revealed: I should also question my “certainties.” Thanks to Melvin Webber I now try to forget less this lesson” (Arch2; gratitude word: complex preposition thanks to). Less conventionalized gratitude-oriented lexemes include luxury, note, pleasure and wishes; e.g.: (202) “and other IBM researchers whom I had the luxury to work with […].” (EECS2; gratitude word: noun luxury) (203) “with a special note to Grandma Althea and Grandpa Bob for having a home on the river, where the salmon spawn” (Stat4; gratitude word: noun note) 185 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (204) “I have had the great pleasure of regular conversations with a very thoughtful geneticist, Mark Neff” (Stat2; gratitude word: noun pleasure) (205) “My best wishes to my office mates […] and to my fellow students […]” (Stat1; gratitude word: noun wish). Gratitude expressions can be directly addressed to the benefactors, when followed by a vocative adjunct and/or including a you that applies to the benefactor; e.g.: (206) “It has been my good fortune to work with the supportive and collaborative individuals […]. Thank you all” (Edu3; gratitude expression directly addressed to the benefactors). More elaborate gratitude expressions may contain a combination of lexemes encoding the notion of gratitude or its equivalents; these may be etymologically related, like thanks and thank you, or semantically comparable, such as owe and debt. Also, they may be realized over discontinuous text segments. Finally, AMs may include repeated instantiations of the manifestation of gratitude, encoded as part of distinct syntactic units, and often associated with different benefit units; e.g.: (207) “I owe a special debt of thanks to Alan Code not only for his perceptive comments, but also for his kindness and support during the course of my writing and job seeking” (Phil1; gratitude words: active verb to owe and noun debt) (208) “For Chapter 3, I acknowledge and thank Scott Susin for his ideas and encouragement. I would have been unable to complete my dissertation without the input of this dear friend” (Econ1; gratitude words: active verbs to acknowledge and to thank) (209) “My gratitude and love for my dearest friend and husband, George, has no bounds. In our home, academics and occupations are truly integrated on a daily basis” (Edu2; discontinuous gratitude expression) (210) “I regret that I can offer, in return for all this help, no more impressive evidence of my gratitude” (Phil1; discontinuous gratitude expression) (211) “I would like to thank the students who participated in these design studies. I appreciated their enthusiasm […]” (Edu3; repeated gratitude expressions) (212) “Finally, I would like to thank Terry for his constant enthusiasm and support. I greatly appreciated his sensitivity on a personal level which was a major source of comfort and inspiration to me. Under his guidance, I have 186 Analysis of texts developed my capacities to think widely and deeply. I am extremely grateful for this intellectual stimulation and his patient, constructive and unfailingly positive perspective on my ideas and writings” (P-Bio5; repeated gratitude expressions). AMs containing no explicit gratitude expression or gratitude expression equivalent are also attested; e.g.: (213) “To the students of ED190 Group who allowed me to prod and probe the workings of their classroom” (Edu1; an AM with no gratitude expression (equivalent)). Table 4.15a: Conventional gratitude expressions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Lexico-morphological encoding acknowledge be acknowledged appreciate Verb be appreciated owe recognize thank appreciative grateful Adjective indebted thankful appreciation debt Noun gratitude thanks thank you Formula thanks thanks to Total Applied / Pure EECS Phys P-Bio 0 2 0 Econ 1 Social Edu 1 Stat 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 13 0 3 2 0 2 0 1 4 3 0 0 28 0 0 14 0 4 2 1 0 0 1 5 0 0 0 29 0 0 26 0 4 1 0 1 0 0 3 2 0 0 37 0 0 16 0 6 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 27 0 0 15 1 8 3 0 0 0 0 2 9 0 0 40 0 2 7 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 14 Finally, non-thanking/acknowledging moves, too, may, but do not have to, contain a formula which expresses the PDA author’s cognitive-emotional state, although this is neither gratitude- nor acknowledgement-oriented; e.g.: 187 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (214) “I would also like to congratulate my younger brother, who is getting [sic] Ph.D in Physics from the renowned Oxford University at about the same time as I do. Job well done, Brother!” (EECS2; an expression of the writer’s cognitive-emotional state which is neither gratitude- nor acknowledgement-oriented) (215) “Mom, Dad – I finished!” (EECS1; lack of expression of the writer’s cognitive-emotional state in a non-thanking move). Tables 4.15, 4.16 and 4.17 summarize the data about the distribution of different types of gratitude expressions across the corpus. Table 4.15b: Conventional gratitude expressions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Lexico-morphological encoding acknowledge be acknowledged appreciate Verb be appreciated owe recognize thank appreciative grateful Adjective indebted thankful appreciation debt Noun gratitude thanks thank you Formula thanks thanks to Total Humanities Engl Phil 1 0 Professional Arch B-Adm 0 0 Total 6 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 12 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 0 0 21 0 0 5 0 2 0 0 1 0 1 3 0 0 0 12 1 0 8 0 2 2 0 0 0 4 5 1 0 1 26 0 0 12 0 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 19 1 2 119 1 43 13 2 6 0 9 28 17 0 1 253 Gratitude expressions are variously encoded in the PDAs. First of all, the PDAs writers often manifest their gratitude implicitly: about 36% of the AMs contain no gratitude expression. In fact, gratitude expressions are the least frequent of the main components of the PDAs. However, the writers’ experience 188 Analysis of texts of positive reactive feelings towards the benefactors, and their intention to manifest such feelings, can be inferred from the co(n)text (i.e. the addresser and addressee’s familiarity with the genre, the reference to benefactors and benefits, and the title of the PDA, which clarifies its communicative purpose). The deletability of the overt expression of gratitude does not mean that this may possibly play a marginal role in the AM, but rather that it is a conceptually inalienable part of the text – although obvious enough that it can be understood – and also that the rest of the text can be made sense of with reference to it.9 In addition, not mentioning gratitude does not undermine the functional clarity of an AM, as no other motivating communicative purpose can be attributed to such textual components. The same does not hold for benefits or benefactors; these can be of various types, and thus need to be specified to ensure the reader’s understandability of the text. Table 4.16a: Non-conventional gratitude expressions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Lexico-morphological encoding benefit bless be blessed captivate dedicate Verb be dedicated not forget not leave out marvel offer fortunate Adjective lucky luxury note Noun pleasure wishes Other Total 9 Applied / Pure EECS Phys P-Bio 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 4 2 4 Econ 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 Social Edu 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 Stat 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 3 See Longacre (1992) for a similar phenomenon in hortatory discourse. 189 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology When gratitude is expressed, PDA writers by far prefer to resort to conventional means (51%). In particular, the verb to thank – the lexeme which by default conveys a favourable emotional-psychological attitude towards given benefactors – accounts for 24% of the AMs, and 38% of the gratitude expressions. This pattern applies to the corpus as a whole and the various subcorpora, except Engl, which more frequently instantiates the adjective grateful. Table 4.16b: Non-conventional gratitude expressions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Lexico-morphological encoding benefit bless be blessed captivate dedicate be Verb dedicated not forget not leave out marvel offer fortunate Adjective lucky luxury note Noun pleasure wishes Other Total Humanities Engl Phil 0 0 0 0 Professional Arch B-Adm 0 0 0 0 Total 2 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 24 Less frequent are conventional gratitude expressions containing the adjective grateful (9%) and those containing combinations of lexical resources for encoding gratitude (7%). Despite its different etymological origin, grateful is the adjectival equivalent of to thank, and conveys the notion of ‘reactive good feeling directed towards a benefactor’. Thankful, instead, attested only twice, has developed the more specialized meaning of ‘happy, relieved, (and grateful)’, 190 Analysis of texts which makes it less suitable for the encoding of gratitude. Gratitude expressions made up of combinations of lexical resources stress the thanker’s sincerity and the intensity of her gratitude. Some reinforce a single notion through words of different etymological origin (e.g. to gratefully thank, to owe a great/special debt); others make reference to complementary facets of the notion of gratitude (e.g. gratefully acknowledge, to owe thanks, to owe a special debt of thanks/ gratitude, gratitude and love, thanks are due). Table 4.17a: Global gratitude expressions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Encoding Conventional Non-conventional Combination Zero gratitude Other attitude Zero other attitude Total Direct address Discontinuous Repetition Applied / Pure: No. of PDAs EECS Phys P-Bio 28 29 37 4 2 4 4 3 7 10 9 12 1 0 0 1 0 0 48 43 60 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 6 Social: No. of PDAs Econ Edu Stat 27 40 14 2 1 3 2 6 3 15 33 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 46 80 33 0 11 0 0 1 0 0 4 1 Table 4.17b: Global gratitude expressions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Encoding Conventional Non-conventional Combination Zero gratitude Other attitude Zero other attitude Total Direct address Discontinuous Repetition Humanities: No. of PDAs Engl Phil 21 12 4 0 5 4 25 14 0 0 0 0 55 30 0 0 0 1 1 0 Professional: No. of PDAs Arch B-Adm 26 19 3 1 2 1 42 5 0 0 0 0 73 26 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total (%) 253 (51) 24 (5) 37 (8) 178 (36) 1 (0) 1 (0) 494 (100) 13 (3) 2 (1) 18 (4) 191 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology The next most frequent group of gratitude expressions are those containing the noun thanks and the adjective indebted, together accounting for about 6% of the data. Thanks conveys the same notion as to thank and grateful (i.e. a positive way of thinking about the benefactors), but is a bit more formal; so is indebted, which, however, conveys a different notion, that of obligation. Other conventional lexical resources for expressing grateful acknowledgements (i.e. to acknowledge, to appreciate, to recognize, to owe, appreciative, appreciation, debt, gratitude, the formula thanks and the complex preposition thanks to) are infrequently exemplified, together accounting for less than 9% of the gratitude expressions. Their infrequent occurrence may be related to their relatively formal register. Original expressions of gratitude – involving the use of such lexemes as to benefit, to bless, to captivate, to dedicate, to marvel, to offer, to wish, lucky, fortunate, luxury, note – collectively make up less than 8% of the gratitude expressions, each having at most four instantiations in the corpus. This suggests that gratitude expression equivalents are the result of individual authors’ creativity. The distribution of the above-mentioned lexical resources for the encoding of gratitude varies across the sub-corpora. To the exclusion of implicit gratitude expressions, only those combining various lexical resources and those containing the verb to thank are exemplified in all the sub-corpora (the latter are particularly frequent in P-Bio). The adjective grateful, for instance, is not instantiated in Stat; the adjective indebted is not exemplified in Engl; the noun appreciation does not occur in Edu, Engl or Stat; the noun thanks is not to be found in B-Adm; and the verb to owe and the noun debt are not attested in Econ or Phys. In particular, the use of creative gratitude expressions is limited to only one or two sub-corpora, and more precisely, to one or two PDAs within individual sub-corpora; this is the case, for example, with to offer, to note, to bless, to captivate, to marvel, pleasant and to wish. As to be expected, given that the PDAs are written for the general reader, only less than 3% of the gratitude expressions are directly addressed to the benefactors. They typically involve the use of the formula Thank you and, less frequently, of the adjective indebted. They mostly occur in Edu. Finally, the corpus contains only a limited number of AMs in which the expression of gratitude is repeatedly instantiated (mostly to be found in the PBio, Edu, Phys and EECS sub-corpora), corresponding to less than 4% of the data. Discontinuous gratitude expressions make up less and 0.5% of the data. In conclusion, the expression of thanks are conceptually important functional components of the AMs, because they are units of meaning that qualify the 192 Analysis of texts interpersonal dimension of the interaction between the writers and their benefactors as positive for both, that is, as valuable to the writers, who have received benefits, and to the benefactors, whose moral credit is being recognized. The data summarized in Tables 4.15, 4.16 and 4.17 indicate that explicit expressions of gratitude accompany about 64% of the moves in the corpus, while in the remaining cases they are to be inferred from the co-text. The data show that, on the one hand, the authors tend to conform to conventional formulations of gratitude to manifest their reactive attitude towards the beneficial exchanges they were involved in. Thus, the verb to thank and the adjective grateful, used frequently in the corpus, encode the acceptance of what is offered, perceived as an intrinsically pleasant source of happiness or satisfaction, and the thanker’s reactive, positive attitude to both the benefactor and the benefit resulting from the experience of a previous positive deed. On the other hand, the data show that the writers are aware of, and do use, quite a large number of gratitude expressions; some of these are so creative that they can be interpreted as gratitude expressions only in their co-text. The variable, original encoding of the cognitive-emotional state of gratitude shows the multi-faceted ways in which it can be conceptualized. For example, acknowledge and recognize, which officially give credit to others for the value of their qualities and/or actions that were beneficial to the authors, reveal the compliment-like nature of PDAs, since they express the addressers’ positive opinions of the benefactor(s); (cf. Wolfson 1989: 220). The fact that they occur infrequently may be ascribed to the largely informal tone of the PDAs. Terms such as appreciate and appreciation manifest the realization and positive estimate of the value of the benefit(s) received; they thus convey the notion of a favourable evaluation of the goods exchanged. Words such as debt, indebted owe indicate that the benefits received are still unreciprocated favours, and thus signal the thankers’ awareness of their need to balance their moral budget by at least verbally paying back the benefit received; that is, the benefactors’ provision of benefits corresponds to “making deposits”, or building social credit, which entitles benefactors to claim some “refund”; at the same time, the thankers’ receipt of benefits corresponds to “making withdrawals”, or incurring social debt, which puts thankers under an obligation to reciprocate (see Lakoff 1996: 252). The manifestation of gratitude serves to re-establish the original situation in which credits and debts are balanced out (see section 3.2.2). In addition, it appears that not all the lexical resources available in the English language for expressing gratitude are exploited by the writers. For example, terms such as obligation or oblige, which indicate the binding engagement to undertake a given course of action so as to extinguish one’s debt, 193 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology never occur in the corpus. These terms would focus attention on the thanker’s reduced or lack of freedom of action, and might lead the reader to infer that the thanker is able to return the favour, which is an unlikely event in the relationship between well-established professionals and a fledgling academic. The mismatch between the interactants’ social status may account for the absence of such terms in the PDAs. Several other typical thanking formulas are not attested in the corpus. These include I really appreciate it; Thanks a lot; I owe you one; You shouldn’t have; That’s very kind of you; Thank you so much!; You’ve saved my life; You’re a life saver!; What would I do without you?; I know I can always count on you (see section 3.2.1). They are ruled out for several reasons: they are appropriate in routine exchanges in which token gratitude is expressed as a form of interactional lubricant; they are produced on the spot in relation to events and situations that are costly to the benefactor and valuable to the beneficiary only to a limited extent; they are typical of an informal register; they are fit for short, single-turn utterances in a series of multiple exchanges in which discourse is jointly constructed by the participants; they are ready-made expressions produced automatically. PDAs, on the other hand, require “tailor-made”, monologic, extended, original expressions of gratitude through which the writer is able to show their benefactors how special and unique what she feels is, and how special and unique she perceives her interlocutors to be. The above examples and summarized data show that the lexico-syntactic encoding of gratitude is often partly connoted for formality, which emphasizes the public value and non-extemporaneous creation of the texts. As reactive, delayed responses, PDAs allow for the opportunity to carefully think about what to write in anticipation of the specific, intended effects on the audience; therefore, expressions can be selected and formulated which lend a semi-official tone to socially important texts. 4.8.1 Expansions of gratitude expressions Core gratitude expressions may be accompanied by supporting sub-moves that specify aspects of or provide additional details about the writer’s experience of gratitude. These may restate the notion (and experience) of gratitude – already expressed in the core gratitude expressions – from another perspective (e.g. It has been a privilege to work with her), refer to the causes or consequences of gratitude (e.g. He has always impressed me; I will always look up to him), or express feelings associated with the experience of gratitude (e.g. I miss them; I am happy I have completed this project with their help). 194 Analysis of texts Given that the content and encoding of gratitude expansions can be quite similar to that of core gratitude expressions (see examples below), the two types of text segments can be discriminated on the basis of functional principles. In the corpus, expansions of gratitude expressions are text segments that support core gratitude expressions in one of three ways: (a) they express the notion of gratitude in a lexically original way and accompany a more conventional gratitude expression in the same move (i.e. creative repetitions of the notion of gratitude);10 (b) they express a positive attitude of the writer’s towards her benefactors, benefits or situation at large other than gratitude (e.g. admiration, happiness), and co-occur with gratitude expressions in the same AM; or (c) they express the writer’s reflections on the notion or experience of gratitude. Gratitude expansions can express the writers’ feelings of admiration towards and/or positive evaluative opinions of the benefactors’ qualities or achievements; e.g.: (216) “First and foremost, I thank the members of my committee, Professors […]. I have learned much from each of them, and I admire their wisdom and enthusiasm. They have done their best to share both with me, and I have at least absorbed the enthusiasm” (Econ1; gratitude expansion; verb to admire) (217) “Time and time again I have been amazed by their truly extraordinary dedication and by their incisive readings of Spinoza” (Phil5; gratitude expansion; verb to amaze) (218) “I will always look up to your enduring inner strength and beauty” (Edu1; gratitude expansion; verb to look up to) (219) “with their teacher, Doug Kirkpatrick, who has always impressed me with his readiness to try out new things in the classroom” (Edu3; gratitude expansion; verb to impress) (220) “If I am your biggest fan, you are my hero” (Edu1; gratitude expansion; noun fan) (221) “His writings are as challenging as his lectures and I still find myself wondering what is new” (Arch2; gratitude expansion; verb to wonder) 10 Thus the same originally worded expressions of positive reactive feelings count as core gratitude expressions if not accompanied by more conventional verbal manifestations of gratitude in the same moves. For this reason, “I was fortunate” counts as core gratitude expression in P-Bio3, while “I have been extremely fortunate” counts as an expansion of a core gratitude expression in Engl4. 195 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Gratitude expansions can also encode the writers’ experience of well-being tied to the presence and/or behaviour of given benefactors; e.g.: (222) “I enjoyed the company of them […]” (EECS4; gratitude expansion; verb to enjoy) (223) “your abiding presence is always felt” (Edu1; gratitude expansion; verb to feel) (224) “[…] for their help and friendship […] I really miss you all” (P-Bio3; gratitude expansion; verb to miss; direct address to the benefactors) (225) “Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father, James Russell Cyrus, who died during my second year in grad school. He never graduated from college, and he wept with pride when I was admitted to Berkeley; I only wish he had lived to see me finish” (Econ4; gratitude expansion; verb to wish) (226) “I will always remember you, Harry” (P-Bio3; gratitude expansion; verb to remember) (227) “It is with great pleasure that I thank my advisor, Hitoshi Murayama, for his wisdom, his patience, his eternal good mood, and for coming up with the most informative and interesting research topics. Were it not for him, none of the work done here would have happened” (Phys4; gratitude expansion; noun pleasure) (228) “Thanks to […] for his advice, his support of my work and his generosity. The opportunity to travel was an unexpected and greatly appreciated part of being on the Silk team” (Phys5; gratitude expansion; adjective unexpected). Alternatively, gratitude expansions can focus on the writers’ awareness of beneficial effects experienced thanks to the benefactors; e.g.: (229) “I know I have benefited from both our technical and social discussions” (EECS5; gratitude expansion; verb to benefit) (230) “I have been extremely fortunate to have colleagues whose intellectual rigor is matched by their interest in fun” (Engl4; gratitude expansion; adjective fortunate) (231) “It has been my good fortune to work with the supportive and collaborative individuals […]” (Edu3, gratitude expansion; noun fortune) (232) “it was an honor and a privilege to be a part of your lives for one brief semester” (Edu1; gratitude expansion; nouns honor and privilege) 196 Analysis of texts (233) “It has been a privilege to work with him” (EECS2; gratitude expansion; noun privilege) (234) “It has been a special privilege to be his student” (EECS4; gratitude expansion; noun privilege) (235) “I feel really lucky to have many wonderful friends at Berkeley” (EECS2; gratitude expansion; adjective lucky). Gratitude expansions may also express the intention to reciprocate resulting from the awareness of benefits received; e.g.: (236) “It is to her that I dedicate this work” (Phil 5; gratitude expansion; verb to dedicate) (237) “This thesis is partly for you too […]” (EECS3; gratitude expansion; preposition for). Finally, gratitude expansions can realize acts of meta-thanking; e.g.: (238) “I doubt I can provide much generic innovation, but it is one of the great pleasures of my life as a writer finally to record the acknowledgements […]” (Engl3; gratitude expansion; verb to provide and noun innovation). Like other functional units, gratitude expansions too can be realized over discontinuous text segments; e.g.: (239) “The joy I feel in having completed this dissertation is accompanied by a deep sense of gratitude” (Engl4; discontinuous gratitude expansion). The corpus also contains the expansion of a text segment that is not gratitude-oriented (and occurs in a non-thanking move), but still expresses the writer’s attitude; e.g.: (240) “Job well done, Brother!” (EECS2; expansion of an expression manifesting the thanker’s cognitive-emotional state other than gratitude or acknowledgement). Table 4.18a: Distribution of categories of gratitude expansions in EECS, Phys, P-Bio, Econ, Edu and Stat Gratitude expansion Admiration Well-being Awareness of benefits Reciprocation Metathanking Applied / Pure EECS Phys P-Bio 1 0 0 1 2 1 4 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 Econ 2 1 0 0 0 Social Edu 3 2 2 0 0 Stat 0 0 0 0 0 197 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Other Total Discontinuous Not about gratitude/acknowledgement 0 7 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 1 4 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 Table 4.18b: Distribution of categories of gratitude expansions in Engl, Phil, Arch, B-Adm and the whole corpus Gratitude expansion Admiration Well-being Awareness of benefits Reciprocation Metathanking Other Total Discontinuous Not about gratitude/acknowledgement Humanities Engl Phil 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 3 2 1 0 0 0 Professional Arch B-Adm 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 Total 8 8 7 2 1 1 27 1 1 Table 4.18 shows that gratitude expansions occur infrequently in the corpus, that is, in about 5% of the moves and 9% of the gratitude expressions. They are thus the least frequent functional sub-units expanding on the content of the core components of the AMs. In addition, these functional units are not equally distributed across the sub-corpora: B-Adm and Stat, the shortest sub-corpora, have none; Edu and EECS (respectively, the second and third longest subcorpora) have seven (i.e. each about 26% of all gratitude expansions); the rest have only a few. The gratitude expansions manifest the writers’ perception of the value of past experiences, but also their attitude towards the benefactors and benefits, and, less frequently, their intention to act in or expectations about the future. More specifically, they represent three main notions: admiration for the benefactors, emotional experiences triggered by the benefactors, and awareness of the benefits received. The lexical encoding of the gratitude expansions is quite varied, revealing the PDA authors’ individual preferences. Therefore, shared lexemes are quite limited; for example, only three gratitude expansions contain the noun privilege, and only two employ the verb to miss. About 41% of the gratitude expansions are built around verbs (about 41%), and about 26% around nouns. In general, 198 Analysis of texts such expansions are not very elaborate or detailed, their function being to stress or restate the writers’ positive feelings or opinions about benefit-relevant interactional situations. 4.8.2 Conclusion Gratitude expressions and their expansions are conceptually important components of the AMs, as they help define and identify the latter’s communicative function. They make explicit, by mentioning and/or describing it, the thanker’s positive cognitive-emotional state resulting from her participation in previous beneficial events as a receiver. However, gratitude expressions and their sub-moves are the least frequent functional components of the AMs. This suggests that in acknowledgement-oriented texts, the manifestation of gratitude may be taken for granted – maybe to avoid redundancy – while providing information relevant to the background circumstances that have led to the experience of gratitude is deemed more useful to the reader, who may not know why the writers experience gratitude. The encoding of the expressions of thanks examined reveals that gratitude is a multi-faceted notion and that thankers may choose to encode it by focusing on one or more aspects of it; for example, they may express pleased acceptance of the services or goods provided; publicly recognize the benefactors’ kindness, generosity, qualities, and accomplishments; favourably evaluate the importance of the benefactors’ contributions to their academic success; express respect, admiration and/or love to the benefactors; reveal their indebtedness to the benefactors; and finally, although quite rarely, reflect on their own act(s) of thanking (i.e. metathanking). All of these notions tend to be conveyed with conventionalized expressions The most frequent gratitude expressions are also the most conventionalized and conform to a few general patterns. The writers appear to be aware of the partly formal nature of the texts they write, given that, apart from the occasional Thanks, they do not use the formulaic thanking expressions that are typical of routine, low-cost exchanges uttered on the spot to manifest social courtesy. At the same time, they occasionally resort to formal expressions – with reference to financial/technical support, for instance – but this is not a systematic choice. Original thanking formulas, peculiar to individual PDAs, also occur, which reveals the thankers’ flexible creativity in the encoding of the notion of gratitude. However, it is the gratitude expansions that are, by comparison, relatively more varied in content and wording than the core gratitude expressions. Among other things, they reveal the peculiarity of the thanking 199 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology episodes they are relevant to and contribute to the original wording of the texts. However, being infrequent, they constitute a marginal component of the corpus. In general, the rich variety of supportives (of benefactor units, benefit units, and gratitude expressions) found in the AMs makes these texts extended and staged acts of thanking. Their presence signals that the PDAs are meant not only to fulfil interactional expectations, but also to express the writers’ social closeness to their benefactors: the elaborate, lengthy language units the authors produce enable them to prolong their involvement with the benefactors and thus to sustain a positive relationship with them (see Wolfson’s (1989: 224) Bulge Theory). In the following sections, I examine the specific lexico-syntactic wording of the main and supportive components of the AMs with a view to compiling a mini-grammar of the semantics of thanking. 4.9 AN APPROACH TO THE GRAMMAR OF THANKING After having exemplified the lexico-grammatical encoding of acknowledging acts in PDAs, I present a global outline of the lexical, syntactic and semantic patterns instantiated in the functional (sub-)components of the AMs. To do so, I follow Hunston and Francis’s (2000) Pattern Grammar approach. Hunston and Francis’s approach is meant to represent and account for the interdependence between phraseologies and individual (senses of) words. Grammar is understood as a non-random series of selective co-distribution patterns that combine individual words (including function words), or wordforms, with other words, structures, and meanings – both senses of individual words and meanings of word sequences – in interdependent and inextricably intertwined phraseologies. Grammar description involves showing the mutually relevant surface associations between (groups of) words and structures, and tracing their mappings onto meaning units. In Hunston and Francis’s approach, the co-occurrences of meanings, frameworks and words are represented linearly, as sets of elements – words, phrases and clauses; classes of words, phrases and clauses; and meaning units and whole messages. More specifically, words are strung together in the order attested in actual language use; accompanying labels specify the part-of-speech membership of individual words and/or heads of phrases, and also the type of clause in which they occur; finally, the meaning units (i.e. participants, processes, circumstances) making up the semantic content of the messages (i.e. representation of events) are associated with the relevant phraseological components of discourse. This form of representation is supposed to reveal the 200 Analysis of texts surface formal relationships between neighbouring words or groups of words, and their meaning-making role in actual language use. The representation conventions are quite straightforward. “The element that represents the word being exemplified is shown in capital letters, other elements are in lower-case letters. Actual words are shown in italics, group [i.e. phrase] and clause types are shown in roman script” (Hunston and Francis 2000: 33). Thus, for instance, N that means ‘noun followed by a that-clause’ (e.g. “The fact that”), verb about n-/ing means ‘verb followed by a prepositional phrase beginning with about’ (e.g. “I fantasized about writing music”), v-link ADJ means ‘adjective preceded by a copula verb’ (e.g. “is asleep”), it V n to-inf means ‘a verb preceded by it and followed by a noun (phrase) and a to-infinite clause’ (e.g. “It hurts me to think of that”), it v-link N to-inf means ‘a noun (phrase) preceded by it and a link-verb, and followed by a to-infinitive clause’ (e.g. “It would be a shame to lose touch”). The assignment of meanings to phraseologies depends on the lexemes and structures involved. For example, the following text segments (Hunston and Francis 2000: 134-135) illustrate two of the phraseological contexts that a word expressing the notion of evaluation occurs in, and the correspondences between the lexico-syntactic patterns and the semantic notions conveyed: “It ’s vlink Evaluated entity “The most difficult the ADJ Evaluative category quite difficult ADJ for us for n to do” to-inf Evaluative category Affected Entity Evaluation limiter thing is General noun Evaluation carrier v-link to score a goal” to-inf Evaluated entity Finally, patterns can combine together in flow or string configurations to produce texts. In the former case, a pattern occurs as part of the pattern of another word that has a pattern of its own; in the latter, a pattern follows from one another without overlapping; e.g.: 201 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (241) “I am not very good V .................. adj (242) “A friend of mine N ….. of ...... n at this sort of thing” ADJ at ........ n N ...... of .… n. told me this amazing story” |V ….. n .......................... n. In sum, pattern grammar can account for the surface lexico-grammatical encoding of texts by revealing which sequences of words co-occur often enough that local grammatical generalizations can be abstracted from them, thus showing how instances of language use construe the system of the language itself (Hunston and Francis 2000: 16-17). In the following sections, I apply the principles and method of Pattern Grammar to describe how the main notions of AMs (gratitude, the benefit and the benefactor) are lexico-grammatically encoded, and how they are combined together. That is, the goal is to reveal the associations between grammatical structures and meaning units, by taking the boundaries of the patterns to be the same as the boundaries of the functional (sub-)units in AMs. The patterns are presented as relevant to the main lexemes through which the notions of gratitude, benefit and benefactor are conveyed. No attempt is made, however, to describe the flow or string configurations of the patterns identified or to refer to the frequency of occurrence of given patterns. These can be retrieved from the previous sections showing the distribution of lexical and semantic resources for the encoding of gratitude, beneficial events and beneficial agents. The examination of the encoding of the functional components of AMs “only” considers their lexico-syntactic realizations, while the analysis of whole AMs also describes the mappings between structures and meanings. In the following sections, to simplify the grammatical representation of the text units, I use grammatical labels, which begin with, or consist of, upper-case letters, specifying the word class of the heads of given phrases, independently of whether these consist of single or groups of words (e.g. V: ‘head of verb phrase’). The labels used are the standard ones marking the part of speech of words and/or easily interpretable (e.g. Conj for ‘conjunction’); in addition, Cl stands for ‘clause’ and Compl for ‘complement’. Also, §, Ø and + signal, respectively, clause boundaries, lack of an AM component in a given clause, and combination of syntactic structures. Furthermore, a double plus sign (i.e. ++) marks the presence of a punctuation mark, a single slash (i.e. /) signals the alternation between given words or structures, and the underscore (i.e. __) 202 Analysis of texts visually separates neighbouring grammatical slots in a given structure. Finally, parentheses mark optional elements. 4.9.1 Patterns in gratitude expressions and expansions The notion of gratitude – or its equivalents – is lexically conveyed through verbs, nouns or adjectives, and thus core gratitude expressions and their expansions are syntactically realized as structures built around these classes of lexemes. The thanking formulas and their supportives also tend to include the encoding of the thanker, typically in the form of a pronoun or possessive adjective. Occasionally, gratitude expressions and expansions may include reference to benefactors, if these are encoded as pronouns (see section 4.6 for explanations and 4.8 for examples); however, here only the patterns are described which are relevant to the manifestation of gratitude. Thanking formulas built around verbs reveal that these are typically preceded by a noun phrase encoding the thanker, may be preceded by (semi-)auxiliaries and followed by complements, thus instantiating the general pattern N V. Occasionally, thanking formulas are used in the passive voice, and thus may occur with or without the element encoding the thanker, depending on the lexeme employed (patterns: N V and V). Finally, syntactic elaborations on conventional thanking formulas as well as the use of original thanking formulas may determine the co-occurrence of post-verbal nominal or prepositional phrases; e.g.: (243) “I owe” (Arch3) (244) “I especially appreciate” (Arch5) (245) “I cannot forget” (EECS3) (246) “I would like to begin by thanking” (Edu4) (247) “I have been blessed” (Engl3) (248) “are acknowledged” (Econ3) (249) “were very much appreciated” (Phys2) (250) “captivated my attention” (Arch2) (251) “I dedicate this dissertation” (Engl4). Nouns expressing gratitude are often expanded by possessives encoding the thanker and/or by adjectives qualifying the grateful feeling. They are often part of noun/prepositional phrases, and may be combined with preceding or following verb phrases. The syntactic patterns instantiated are thus N, P, V N, and N V; e.g.: 203 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (252) “Thanks” (Phys5) (253) “My best wishes” (Stat1) (254) “by a deep sense of gratitude” (Engl4) (255) “with a special note” (Stat4) (256) “I give my immense gratitude” (Engl2) (257) “I would like to express my sincere gratitude” (Phys1) (258) “I have had the great pleasure” (Stat2) (259) “Many thanks go” (P-Bio2) (260) “My appreciation is also extended” (Arch1) (261) “my gratitude goes” (Phys5). Adjectives encoding gratitude occur after linking verbs and thus appear as part of N V Adj patterns; e.g.: (262) “I am also appreciative” (Edu3) (263) “I am indebted” (Phys1) (264) “I feel lucky” (P-Bio3) (265) “I will be eternally grateful” (P-Bio2). Gratitude expressions that comprise two or more lexemes encoding gratitude are structurally elaborate because they typically combine words belonging to different word classes, and some of these words, indeed, never occur on their own, but only in combination with others (e.g. gratefully, acknowledge, pleasure). Patterns instantiated in the corpus include: N Conj N, V Conj V, Adv V, V N (P), and N V Adj; e.g.: (266) “I acknowledge and thank” (Econ1) (267) “is gratefully acknowledged” (B-Adm3) (268) “My love and gratitude” (Arch2) (269) “I owe a profound debt” (Phil5) (270) “I owe a special debt of thanks” (Phil1) (271) “deserve recognition” (Stat2). The syntactic patterns of gratitude expressions, therefore, reveal the same structures as identified by Giannoni (2002) and Hyland and Tse (2004). 204 Analysis of texts Gratitude expansions are lexically and morphologically varied. The writers’ attitudes, experiences or acts relevant to and supportive of the manifestation of gratitude are encoded mostly through verbs, but also nouns or adjectives. The gratitude expansions built around verbs mainly realize the (N) V syntactic pattern, occasionally enriched with complement phrases (e.g. N V N or N V P) or clausal structures (e.g. N V N V (N); N V N V Adj P); e.g.: (272) “I enjoyed” (EECS4) (273) “I admire” (Econ1) (274) “I really miss” (P-Bio3) (275) “[who] has always impressed me” (Edu3) (276) “is always felt” (Edu1) (277) “I know I have benefited” (EECS5) (278) “hope that I have been equal to their challenge” (Econ1) (279) “[It is to her] that I dedicate this work” (Phil5). The gratitude expansions built around nouns, less numerous, are structured as incomplete clauses. The gratitude-oriented lexeme, typically occurring after a linking verb, and often preceded by a qualifying adjective, usually denotes the thanker’s conceptualization of the benefit received, although it may also identify the thanker as the experiencer of a cognitive-emotional state. The relevant syntactic patterns are N V N and N V P; e.g.: (280) “It has been a special privilege” (EECS2) (281) “It has been my good fortune” (Edu3) (282) “It is with great pleasure” (Phys4) (283) “If I am your biggest fan” (Edu1). The gratitude expansions pivoting on adjectives, quite infrequent, also realize a clausal structure, namely N V Adj: a noun phrase denoting the thanker is followed by a linking verb which introduces the adjective; this, preceded by an intensifying adverb, reveals the thanker’s self-perception as a beneficiary. Only once does the adjective occur before the noun identifying the benefit to qualify that benefit; e.g.: (284) “I feel really lucky” (EECS2) (285) “an unexpected” (Phys5). The patterns exemplified above reveal some similarities in the encoding strategies of the gratitude expressions and their expansions. Most gratitude 205 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology expressions occupy the beginning parts of clausal messages and consist of personal pronouns (in subject form) denoting the thankers and verb phrases denoting the thankers’ internal states, characteristics or behaviour. The verb phrases are mostly encoded in the simple present tense – although the simple past, the present perfect, and the will future are also instantiated – in the indicative mood – but the conditional is attested, too – and in the active voice. The main verbs tend to be qualified by modals (infrequently), verbs having a modal-like meaning (e.g. to wish, to want, to continue, to start; more frequently) or adverbs (quite frequently), which have a sequencing or intensifying function (e.g. further, really). The verb phrases in the core gratitude expressions that are followed by noun phrases mostly express acts of saying, thus signalling the intention to communicate (e.g. to express), while the post-verbal noun phrases encode the content of what is being said (e.g. gratitude); these noun phrases typically include adjectival modification which emphasizes the meaning of the referents of the nouns, and optionally comprise possessives that refer to the thankers; in the expansions, post-verbal noun phrases frequently refer to the benefactors. In core gratitude expressions, verbs of the linking type are typically followed by adjectives describing characteristics of the thankers’ grateful behaviour or attitude; the meaning of these adjectives tends to be emphasized by adverbs (e.g. deeply, most); in gratitude expansions, instead, linking verbs are frequently preceded by cataphoric tokens of it and followed by noun groups in which adjectives pre-modify abstract nouns. Verbless gratitude expressions contain noun groups that refer to the notion of gratitude; these too tend to be qualified by adjectives, quantifiers and/or adverbs; alternatively, they may be combined with other nouns referring to other emotional states (e.g. love). Other patterns (e.g. verb phrases in the passive voice, pre-verbal noun phrases not referring to the thankers, post-verbal pronouns in the object form referring to the thankers, introductory clauses preceding the gist of the manifestation of gratitude) are also attested, but not very common. In general, the gratitude expressions and their expansions are encoded as incomplete messages, or “truncated” clauses, that is, they tend to realize the first part of clauses including other pieces of information (i.e. the Benefit and/or the Benefactor), and typically comprise the text segments identifying the thankers and those expressing the notion of gratitude. 206 Analysis of texts 4.9.2 Patterns in benefactor units and expansions The encoding of benefactor units is quite varied in the corpus: several types of lexemes and structures identifying and describing benefactors are combined together, and these text segments are often enhanced with internal syntactic expansions. Benefactor units can be distinguished into broad categories on the basis of whether they employ only one vs. two or more main lexical resources for the identification of benefactors (e.g. proper names vs. nouns vs. proper names and nouns) and whether they refer to one vs. two or more (groups of) benefactors.11 Finer distinctions can be made by considering the syntactic resources employed to enrich benefactor units (e.g. noun phrases vs. verb phrases vs. clauses). The first major group of benefactor units consists of text segments that contain the names of benefactors, both individuals and institutions, even in abbreviated form, optionally (a) accompanied by non-professional titles, (b) embedded under prepositions or (c) linked by conjunctions. The relevant patterns are therefore N, N’s, N ++ N, N Conj N, P and P Conj N; e.g.: (286) “Laura” (Arch2) (287) “Sheila’s” (P-Bio3) (288) “Andy Rose” (Econ4) (289) “the New York Stock Exchange” (B-Adm1) (290) “the Center for the Health Professions” (Econ1) (291) “to Elaine” (Engl1) (292) “with the Bay Area Eighteenth-Century Studies Group” (Engl3) (293) “by UC Berkeley” (Stat3) (294) “Professors Michael Reich, Clair Brown, and Lloyd Ulman” (Econ1) (295) “especially Mr. and Mrs. Soon Hong” (Arch5) (296) “by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and the American Academy in Rome” (Arch3). Another group of benefactor units identify benefactors through nouns or noun combinations referring to the benefactors’ class or group membership. The nouns are often accompanied by some form of determiner (e.g. possessive, article, demonstrative, quantifier) and/or combined with other nouns so as to 11 The number of benefactors being referred to in a given benefactor unit can be identified by taking into consideration the number of noun phrases included in the unit and whether these repeatedly refer to the same benefactors or not. 207 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology form compounds. Multi-word noun groups often contain one or more determiners and occasionally attributive adjectives. These noun phrases may also be followed by post-modification in the form of prepositional phrases or relative clauses indicating spatial and/or temporal circumstances. Also, they may be embedded under prepositions or occur in clauses beginning with presentative constructions. Finally, benefactor units pivoting on nouns may also be realized as clauses, whose verbs exemplify relational processes. The relevant patterns are N, P, N P and N Cl, which can also be combined together in a chain when two or more benefactors are mentioned in the same benefactor unit; e.g.: (297) “my very dear family” (Edu2) (298) “Friends” (Edu4) (299) “The lab group” (P-Bio5) (300) “all of the preschool teachers” (Edu4) (301) “the members of my committee” (Phil1) (302) “my colleagues at Berkeley” (Arch4) (303) “the children who participated in the study” (Edu5) (304) “to Adam Chess” (Phil1) (305) “from these musicians” (Engl4) (306) “to my parents” (Phys5) (307) “to the parents of nondisabled children who served as comparison families” (Edu4) (308) “He was a member of my doctoral exams and a member of my dissertation committee” (Arch2) (309) “his wife and his daughters” (Arch2) (310) “to my roommates and other friends” (Phys1) (311) “The faculty, staff and students here” (Stat2) (312) “Many are the professors, colleagues, friends, and family” (Arch2) A very large group of benefactor units contain both proper names and nouns, the former specifying the benefactors’ identity, the latter clarifying their rolerelationships with the thankers. These benefactor units reproduce the same varied encoding patterns as those containing only nouns, but in addition, they are characterized by a form of internal expansion, namely the apposition. Single-benefactor, name-and-noun benefactor units may be encoded as noun phrases, prepositional phrases or clauses. In phrasal benefactor units, the proper 208 Analysis of texts names and the nouns are typically separated by punctuation marks – in an unpredictable order – and are sometimes post-modified by relative clauses. Clausal benefactor units typically involve the use of relational process verbs. Occasionally, benefactor units can contain (also or exclusively) nouns not referring to the benefactors themselves, but to entities relevant to them (e.g. characteristics or products of their work) or alternatively to other benefactors mentioned in embedded expressions post-modifying the main benefactors. The relevant patterns are: N, N N, P, P P (P), N _ (++) N _(N), P _ (++) N, P _ (++) P and Cl; e.g.: (313) “Carmen, my mother” (Arch2) (314) “my close collaborator and dear friend Betsy Davis” (Edu3) (315) “Harry Koga Who [sic] was the greatest graduate student assistant ever” (P-Bio3) (316) “to Prof. Robert Fischer” (P-Bio3) (317) “to Ivy Schweitzer, my high school English teacher” (Engl4) (318) “Bin has not only been a supportive mentor but a good friend as well” (EECS1) (319) “Ernest Adams guided my minor in Philosophy of Science and was a member of my dissertation committee” (Arch2) (320) “to my friends at the Ninth Street House in Boulder” (Edu3) (321) “Robert Post’s role as third reader” (Engl4) (322) “to Jonathan Bennett’s work” (Phil5). Name-and-noun benefactor units identifying two or more benefactors are less numerous than those identifying single benefactors, but similarly structured. Most combine phrases containing names and phrases containing nouns juxtaposed to one another, and these phrases are typically linked by punctuation marks or conjunctions. The order of the segments may vary: name text segments may completely precede, complete follow, or alternate with noun text segments. Internal expansions (i.e. adjectival pre-modification, post-modification by means of prepositional phrases or relative clauses) occur, but infrequently. The patterns are the same as before, except that they are combined together in longer syntactic chains: N _ (++) N Conj N, P Conj P, N _ (++) N, P _ (++) P, P _ N (Conj N); e.g.: (323) “to Grandma Althea and Grandpa Bob” (Stat5) (324) “My daughters, Breneth and Antonia” (Edu2) 209 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (325) “with the dissertation group: Lydia Tien, Dawn Rickey, Christina Schwarz, and Betsy” (Edu3) (326) “John Brewer and Felicia Berkman Brewer, my brother and sister-in-law” (Engl3) (327) “the members of my committee, Professors George Akerlof, David Card, and Paul Gertler” (Econ1) (328) “to Professor to Professor Nathan Cheung, Professor Jan M. Rabbi, Professor P. Warwick Millar, and Professor John Rice” (EECS4) (329) “Arminda, my wife, Juan Pablo and Alfredo, my sons” (Arch2). A fourth, albeit marginal, set of benefactor units combine names of individuals with names of institutions in sequences of noun phrases followed by prepositional phrases. Names of institutions may occur embedded under noun phrases, and thus post-modify names identifying benefactors, or as independent noun phrases. The typical patterns are N (N) P (P) and N P Conj/++ N P; e.g.: (330) “Don Shapiro from New York Law School” (Edu4) (331) “Frank Lie of Leica, Inc. and Enrique Chang of Carl Zeiss, Inc.” (P-Bio2) (332) “Hans Holtan, Lorraine Sohlberg, and Denise Schichnes in The Center for Biological Imaging” (P-Bio2). Combinations of nouns and names of institutions are not very frequent in benefactor units, but more frequent than combinations of personal names and names of institutions. The benefactor units that contain them are typically encoded as noun phrases and prepositional phrases, or noun phrases with embedded prepositional phrases, occasionally including adjectival premodification; juxtaposed structures are also instantiated. Nouns and names of institutions may occur as part of co-ordinated, appositional structures, or alternatively, they can combine to form internally elaborate noun or prepositional phrases. The syntactic patterns are: N ++ N and P (P); e.g.: (333) “As an institution, the Bennington” (Engl3) (334) “with the supportive and collaborative individuals in the KIE and CLP research groups at Berkeley” (Edu3) (335) “from past and present participants of the Chapin lab” (P-Bio5). The final main group of benefactor units consists of text segments that include all three main types of lexical resources, namely names, names of institutions, and common nouns. Given that they contain multiple units of 210 Analysis of texts information, they are structurally elaborate, combining together in long strings the syntactic structures already exemplified. However, they are not very frequent in the corpus; e.g.: (336) “the chair of the Statistics Department, Professor Peter Bickel” (Stat1) (337) “Mary Crittenden and colleagues at UCSF-Medical Center” (Edu4) (338) “to the many professors in the physics department […] but in particular Professors S. Mandelstam, B. Zumino, O. Alvarez and D.-H. Lee” (Phys3). The above patterns and exemplification of core benefactor units show that the identification of benefactors in the PDA is both lexically and structurally elaborate: proper names and common nouns that serve to identify individuals, groups, and institutions are used as part of noun phrases, prepositional phrases, verb phrases, and clauses to enable the reader to identify benefactors. Such basic lexical resources are often used in combinations characterized by juxtaposition, with names of individuals typically co-occurring with nouns. Benefactoridentifying nouns are sometimes accompanied by pre-modification (in the form of attributive adjectives) and/or post-modification (in the form of embedded prepositional groups), which increases their informativity. The words and word combinations available to refer to benefactors thus appear to be structurally flexible enough to allow PDA writers to variously define their benefactors. The encoding of benefactor expansions is varied and fragmented: almost every syntactic structure pattern is instantiated in only one or a few text segments. The expansions can be realized as adjectival phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial adjuncts, verb phrases, and clauses. The last two structures are the only frequent ones, and often include relational verbs. Each expansion is a unified conceptual construct, providing information on all the benefactors identified in the relevant core benefit unit. There is one instance of an adjectival expansion realized as an adjectival apposition after the subject complement (pattern: Adj ++ Adj ++ Adj ++ Adj). Expansions realized as noun phrases and prepositional phrases specify the benefactors’ professional roles, benefactors’ qualities and accomplishments, and may be qualified by adjectival pre-modification, their patterns being N (++ N Conj N), P N and P P. Those realized as adverbial adjuncts function as miniintroductions to core benefit and/or benefactor units; they specify the roles played by the benefactors that had a bearing on the benefits experienced by the thankers; their pattern is Adv N. Finally, those encoded as verb phrases realize the rhemes of clauses whose themes identify benefactors; they consist of linking 211 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology verbs followed by nouns and/or adjectives that describe positive qualities of the benefactors; the relevant patterns are V N and V Adj; e.g.: (339) “patient, persistent, encouraging, exacting” (Edu2) (340) “their wisdom and enthusiasm” (Econ1) (341) “to your enduring inner strength and beauty” (Edu1) (342) “as Associate Dean” (Arch5) (343) “is indefatigable” (Engl4). Benefactor expansions can be encoded as mini-messages that describe whole events or situations, that is, as clauses. Occasionally, they are realized as incomplete clauses, that is, without a noun phrase subject or a finite verb. More often, they are encoded as non-restrictive relative clauses. Benefactor expansions may also be realized as “independent” messages, that is, as coordinated clauses that are part of larger sentences or as one-clause sentences. Most of these single clauses start with pronouns followed by linking verbs; these in turn are followed by noun groups, optionally modified by adjectives, describing the roles played or the characteristics exhibited by given benefactors. The patterns are N V, V (N/P) and Cl; e.g.: (344) “the “pecking order” being: … [Me, fourth from the bottom]” (Engl5) (345) “who saw promise in my academic abilities where others saw none” (Edu4) (346) “with whom I collaborated” (Phys3) (347) “which are two of the most dynamic and stimulating environments in the field of plant biology” (P-Bio3) (348) “They have become bright, capable women in the process” (Edu2) (349) “some people stand out” (Stat1) (350) “He will always be my example of the ideal professor, advisor, and economist” (Econ4) (351) “It is hard to imagine how she has the time to do as much for her students as she does […] She will certainly always remain a model of pedagogy for me” (Engl4). In conclusion, benefactor expansions are lexically varied and syntactically flexible. They may consist of noun or verb phrases that are part of larger (clausal) messages or they can be structurally autonomous, parenthetical units severable from the rest of the text. Because they are realized mostly as parts of 212 Analysis of texts clauses or as single clauses, they reveal a moderate level of internal elaboration; this is mainly evident in the adjectival modification of the nouns. When the benefactor expansions are realized as verb phrases or clauses, they tend to include linking verbs, which are suitable for introducing mini-descriptions of the benefactors’ characteristics (through nouns and adjectives), rather than accomplishments. Only occasionally are the benefactors’ actions actually reported. The most prominent syntactic components of such text units are the nouns and the adjectives, through which the benefactors’ positive qualities are identified and commented on. 4.9.3 Patterns in benefit units and expansions Benefit units and their expansions can be realized as noun phrases, prepositional phrases or verb phrases; alternatively, they can consist of parts of clauses (i.e. subject + predicate); finally, they can be encoded as whole clauses or comprise combinations of these resources. These syntactic structures may occur more than once if reference is being made to more than one benefit (or beneficial circumstance)12 and may be characterized by variable forms of internal expansions; in addition, the lexical resources of these text units is quite varied. In the text units realized as noun phrases or prepositional phrases, the nouns are often pre-modified by adjectives; some of these narrow down the referents of the nouns; others, instead, qualify them. They can also co-occur with articles, possessives, relative pronouns, demonstratives and/or quantifiers, which can be variously combined (the combinations of articles or possessive with adjectives are especially frequent). Post-modification is also instantiated, especially in 12 The number of benefits (or beneficial circumstances) relevant to a given text unit is determined on the basis of the number of the “main” structural components included in the unit itself which denote entities, circumstances or events classifiable as beneficial (e.g. nouns in noun phrases and prepositional phrases, verbs in verb phrases, non-embedded clauses in clause complexes) and on the nature of the referents identified, which can be always the same benefits (or beneficial circumstances) or different ones at every new mention. Thus, the occurrence of pre- or post-modification, whether in the form of embedding or subordination, does not signal the identification of new benefits (or beneficial circumstances). A form of premodification is the presence of a main clause introducing a declarative and having a modalizing function (e.g. I think that). Examples: “(for) her (constant and) generous) support(, which kept me going)” encodes one benefit; “gave me her love and her support” encodes one benefit; “have helped me to conclude and put up with my foul mood” encodes two benefits; “they supported me, encouraged me, and helped me keep my sanity” encodes three benefits. 213 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology prepositional phrases; it is realized in the form of embedded prepositional phrases, with their own modifications, and, much less frequently, in the form of relative clauses with optional adjectival appositions. In prepositional phrases, prepositions may be followed not only by nouns, but also by verbs in the V-ing form; linking verbs may be followed by nouns, adjectives of adverbs; nonlinking verbs, which are more frequent, are typically followed by noun phrases. The patterns relevant to noun phrases are N, N ++/Conj N and N ++ N Conj N; e.g.: (352) “whose mentorship” (Econ5) (353) “Generous material support” (Engl3) (354) “all of their help and kindness” (P-Bio2) (355) “your words of encouragement, your honesty, and your sincerity” (Edu1). Patterns relevant to benefit units encoded as prepositional phrases are P, P Conj N, and P (++ P) Conj P; e.g.: (356) “without their sweat and muscle” (Econ1) (357) “for being there for me” (P-Bio3) (358) “for enthusiastic encouragement” (Econ4) (359) “of the insightful conversations and relaxing times” (Edu3) (360) “for carefully reviewing the draft of this dissertation, and for his invaluable comments on both technical contents and English writing” (EECS3) (361) “for making my stay at Berkeley thoroughly enjoyable” (Phys1) (362) “for their constant support, for help in reading this work and making suggestions, and for long conversations” (Engl2). When realized as verb phrases, benefit units may include linking verbs followed by adjectival or noun phrases, or non-linking verbs followed by noun phrases and/or prepositional phrases (the latter optionally embedded under the former) or by non-finite clauses. Relevant syntactic patterns include V Adj/N/P (V-inf) and V N P (Conj V N P); e.g.: (363) “were an unfailing support” (Engl1) (364) “have encouraged me” (Arch4) (365) “provided excellent guidance and inspiration for this research” (Econ3) (366) “have been more than generous with their time” (Phys5) (367) “shared weekly dinners with me” (Engl4) 214 Analysis of texts (368) “have asked smart questions and provided a splendid place to stay in New York” (Engl3). Clauses encoding benefits can be of various types: incomplete (i.e. whose post-verbal complementation is part of another functional component of the AM), infinitival, relative and full clauses (with either linking or non-linking verbs). Patterns relevant to this group comprise V-inf N, N V, P V, N V N/Adj, N V N (V-inf/V-ing); e.g.: (369) “to be my mentor” (EECS2) (370) “at how many of my interests were formed and anticipated” (Engl3) (371) “Some of the early ideas […] were shaped” (Arch4) (372) “who engaged the ideas of this dissertation” (Engl4) (373) “who has taught me […] to stand up […]” (EECS5) (374) “who kept me smiling” (Engl1) (375) “who support, and show an interest in, all of my efforts” (Stat2) (376) “Meeting him was the best thing” (P-Bio2) (377) “I have made many special friends” (EECS1). Combinations of clauses (pattern: Cl Cl) are attested, but not frequent, while combinations of encoding options of different types are much more frequent, instantiating such patterns as N Cl, P N and Cl P; e.g.: (378) “we developed a relationship […]. He taught me a great deal about what cannot be learned exclusively at the university” (Arch2) (379) “Something I was supposed to know was revealed: I should also question my “certainties”” (Arch2) (380) “for their guidance, help and support […] the freedom they gave me in choosing research topics” (Phys1) (381) “who oversaw the harmonious completion of more than my dissertation. […] and without her vigilance” (Engl4) (382) “for all the trust and confidence they always put upon me, and who back home have been eagerly waiting for this day” (Phys3). Benefit expansions can refer to one or more beneficial circumstances: of time, place, means and/or manner. They can be syntactically realized as noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbials or combinations thereof. Their structural patterns include P, P Conj N, P ++ P ++ P, V Adj, V N (Adj/P/V-inf) and V P, possibly repeated in sequences; e.g.: 215 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (383) “without much complaint” (Phil1) (384) “in discussions” (Arch4) (385) “through a fellowship” (Phys5) (386) “during the course of my writing and job seeking” (Phil1) (387) “Throughout the last five years, […] within and beyond their respective areas of expertise. […] with their friendship” (B-Adm2) (388) “has been invaluable” (Phil5) (389) “made the joint effort possible” (Econ1) (390) “contributed significantly to the development of this dissertation” (Engl4) (391) “have made my years in the doctoral program all the more enjoyable” (BAdm3) (392) “often forced me to rethink my analysis” (Phil1) (393) “supported me throughout my education. […] helped me work more diligently toward graduation” (EECS2). Other benefit expansions are realized as clauses: incomplete (i.e. lacking an argument, which occurs elsewhere in the AM), non-finite, relative and full clauses, both subordinate and main. Their patterns include: N V, N V N, V-ing N, (P) V-inf N Adj/P, Adv N V Adj, Adv N V N and N V Adj/ /N/P; e.g.: (394) “This work was supported” (P-Bio4) (395) “I have often found solace and inspiration” (EECS5) (396) “I hope that I can bring to my own dissertation students” (Engl4) (397) “thus promoting deeper levels of understanding” (Edu5) (398) “for my family and me to spend unforgettable moments at Berkeley” (Arch2) (399) “to make the award possible” (EECS2) (400) “that propelled me forward” (Edu5) (401) “when things went wrong” (P-Bio1) (402) “so I could finish my project” (EECS5) (403) “I will never be the same” (EECS5) (404) “My feet still dance because of you” (Edu3) (405) “I probably would not have been a scientist” (P-Bio4) (406) “What I sought in these close readings was a kind of harmony” (Engl4) 216 Analysis of texts (407) “I now try to forget less this lesson” (Arch2) (408) “as I slowly learned guitar” (Econ1) (409) “to meet with us and to teach us about their experience” (Edu5) (410) “I have learned much from each of them […] and I have at least absorbed the enthusiasm” (Econ1) (411) “Were it not for him, none of the work done here would have happened” (Phys1). Finally, various types of encoding options can be combined together, which determines the integration of several syntactic patterns; e.g.: (412) “in Norway while I spent countless hours working on this dissertation which could have been spent with her instead” (Stat1) (413) “in graduate school. He makes it all worthwhile” (P-Bio2) (414) “that allowed me the time to develop these ideas. […] from having the support of my department in these crucial years” (Engl4) (415) “over the past six years […] to finish my studies. […] this thesis most likely would not be” (Stat4). In conclusion, benefit units and their expansions tend to be structurally complex. When encoded as noun phrases or prepositional phrases, they are characterized by various forms of internal elaboration: attributive adjectives, embedded prepositional phrases, embedded relative clauses and/or subordinate non-finite clauses often accompany the head nouns denoting the benefits. These forms of elaboration, on the one hand, precisely locate the benefits the writers have in mind (i.e. they have an identifying and classificatory function); on the other, they specify the characteristics that make those benefits valuable to the thankers (i.e. they have a descriptive and evaluative function). When encoded as non-embedded clauses, the benefit units and their expansions comprise main constituents that can display the same type of internal syntactic elaboration as phrasal units or expansions. There is, however, an important semantic difference. In clauses, benefits and their circumstances are represented as processes, while the beneficiaries and the benefactors are represented as entities involved in them. The various encoding options available to the writers can be freely combined to produce benefit units and expansions relevant to multiple benefits or beneficial circumstances. However, most of the time, when multiple benefits or beneficial circumstances are being referred to, they are encoded through the same types of syntactic structures. 217 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Core benefit units are more numerous, and their encoding more varied, than their expansions; this is especially evident in clausal text segments and in text units referring to multiple benefits (or beneficial circumstances) and employing different types of encoding formulas. Both types of text segments, though, appear to be flexible enough to enable authors to unambiguously refer to and positively describe the various aspects of the beneficial exchanges they want to report on. 4.9.4 Global patterns In the previous sections, I have illustrated how the main and supportive components of the AMs are syntactically encoded as separate formal and conceptual units. In this section I provide a more general description of the structure and content of whole AMs by considering their core components. The examples provided show how the encoding patterns of the main functional units of the AMs combine into larger structures to represent whole events, that is, they reveal the global syntactic patterns instantiated in the AMs, the notions conveyed through them and the sequences in which they are combined. In the exemplification provided, syntactic labels specify the head of (sequences) of (internally elaborate) phrases, corresponding to whole syntacticsemantic units, which identify participants involved in events, circumstances or processes, independently of whether they are characterized by forms of expansions (e.g. embedding, coordination). Thus, for instance, text segments like (a) her kindness, (b) her kindness and love, (c) her kindness, support and love, (d) Bob and (e) Bob, my best friend are represented by the symbol N, while (f) I thank, (g) I sincerely thank, (h) I begin by thanking, and (i) I would like to thank are represented as N V. The abbreviation Complem stands for ‘complementation required by verb’s argument structure’ (e.g. Adj, P, N, Adv). I illustrate the global semantic-syntactic patterns of AMs in order of increasing complexity. I first consider the AMs not containing gratitude expressions. Then I describe the patterns of the AMs in which gratitude is encoded. Finally, I examine the AMs containing more than one expression of gratitude and/or consisting of text units belonging to different sentences. 4.9.4.1 AMs with no gratitude expressions Sub-clausal AMs comprising one meaning unit are realized as noun phrases identifying the benefactor or the benefit; e.g.: 218 Analysis of texts Benefactor (416) N “Carolyn Hartsough my training director at Berkeley” (Edu4) “my daughter, Andréa” (Phys4) Benefit (417) N “My personal debts” (Engl1) Sub-clausal AMs comprising two meaning units identify the benefactor and the benefit, typically in this order. The former is frequently encoded as a noun phrase with optional genitive marking or as a prepositional phrase, and the latter as a prepositional phrase, noun phrase or clause; e.g.: (418) Benefactor Benefit N “Michael Greenstone P/Cl/N (V) for his MSA coding procedures” (Econ1) who were encouraging […]” (EECS1) a source of constant phone relief, buoyed me” (Engl4) “so many people “Catherine Gilhuly (419) Benefactor N’s “Peter Winship’s (420) Benefit N friendship” (Arch2) Benefactor Benefit P “to Christina Romer and Martha Olney “without the many people “To Erica Wadner, my dedicated writing partner, P/Cl/N for enthusiastic encouragement” (Econ4) who have supported me” (EECS5) your words of encouragement […]” (Edu1) 219 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (421) Benefit Benefactor N/P “the encouragement “by grants P of my family” (Phil5) from the National Institute of Health […]” (P-Bio4) In clausal AMs, the benefactor unit often precedes the benefit unit. They may be part of the same clause or be realized as distinct clauses, and either may occupy discontinuous text segments; e.g.: (422) Benefactor Benefit N “Denise V Complem (Cl) was especially kind, giving me advice […]” (P-Bio2) have created a warm […] environment” (Stat2) have been more than generous with their time” (Phys5) provided excellent guidance and inspiration for this research” (Econ3) “The faculty, staff and students here “J. Baker and G. Ushomirsky “Many individuals (423) (424) 220 Benefactor Benefit P “with Mauri Skinfill […] Cl I learned much […]” (Engl4) Benefactor Benefit Cl “Richard Kroll was that great teacher “Bernard Williams was an active de facto member N/Cl who first inspired my interest […]” (Engl1) whose philosophical […] comments” (Phil1; original emphasis) Analysis of texts Benefit Benefactor Cl/N V “were it not for […] the support “I have made many special friends “I have been cheered P/Cl of my professors, friends, and relatives” (Arch5) You know who you are” (EECS1) (425) by my wonderful mother-in-law […]” (Engl3) by the Institute for Business and Economic Research […]” (Econ3) through my friends” (Econ4) “Financial support was provided “I have experienced love, support, and care (426) (427) (428) Benefactor Benefit Benefactor N(’s) N/P “My abiding friends […] “Benjamin Widiss’ [sic] V Complem+Conj V/N+N provided inspiration […] as did shrewd insights […] those Benefit Benefactor Benefit P “without the deep understanding […] P of my wife Youngwoo, Cl who constantly encouraged me” (Arch5) Susana Aguayo […]” (Engl4) of the other members of my vital dissertation group […]” (Engl4) Benefactor Benefit Benefactor Benefit P “to Arijit Sen P for reading the preliminary drafts N+P who along with Vaishali Wagh V Complem helped with the drawings” (Arch4) 4.9.4.2 AMs with gratitude expressions The structure of AMs expressing gratitude depends on the word class of the main lexeme encoding this notion. 221 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology With verbs, the notion of gratitude is realized as an incomplete clause, the benefactor unit as a noun phrase or clause, and the benefit unit as a prepositional phrase or, less frequently, a noun phrase or clause; e.g.: (429) (430) Benefit Gratitude Benefactor P “for his knowing when to put a hand on my shoulder […] NV I thank N my husband […]” (Engl2) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit NV “I cannot even begin to adequately thank “I would also like to thank “I thank N David Romer Jerry White […] “I would like to thank […] the preschool teachers P/(Conj) N/Cl for his support, advice, and patience” (Econ4) without whom […]” (P-Bio4) and whose constant support […]” (Arch4) who donated their time” (Edu4) Lily Mirels, With nouns, the gratitude expression is typically realized as an incomplete clause or noun phrase, the benefactor unit as a prepositional phrase, and the benefit unit as a noun/prepositional/verb phrase or relative clause; e.g.: (431) 222 Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N (V (Complem)) P Cl/N/P “I would like to express my deepest appreciation “I wish to express my sincere gratitude “I want to give a [sic] special thanks “My deepest thanks are extended to the Rotary Foundation […] to many people which provided me with the support […]” (P-Bio3) whose help” (Arch1) to my best friend […] to […] my academic advisor […] for being there for me” (P-Bio3) for all his valuable advice […]” (Arch1) Analysis of texts (432) (433) (434) (435) (436) “Many thanks also to Barry Stroud for introducing me to a problem […]” (Phil4) whose comments” (Engl1) for helping so much” (Phys3) “Thanks, also “Special thanks to Jeffrey Knapp […] to B. Morariu Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N “Thanks also P to the friendly and helpful N staff both at the lab and department […]” (Phys3) Gratitude Benefactor N “Special thanks P to the members of the […] program […]” (Arch1) Benefit Gratitude Benefactor P/N “for listening, understanding […] “the opportunity to do this work […] NV I gratefully acknowledge I owe N/P my partner […]” (Edu5) to others” (Arch3) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N V Complem “I owe a special debt of thanks “I owe a special debt P to Alan Code P/Cl not only for his perceptive comments […]” (Phil1) who taught me to read Kant’s German” (Phil2) to Ingrid Rieger Benefactor Gratitude Benefit N “Matt, Cl […] I owe you a special thanks P for trusting me […]” (Edu1) 223 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology (437) Benefactor Benefit Gratitude N “Other individuals VNP provided very helpful comments on earlier drafts V and are acknowledged” (Econ4) With adjectives, gratitude is expressed as an incomplete clause, the benefactor unit as a prepositional phrase, and the benefit unit as a prepositional phrase or, occasionally, a clause; e.g.: (438) (439) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N V Complem “I am very grateful “I am also indebted P to many professors and colleagues to my parents “I am particularly indebted “I am deeply grateful “I am thankful to the architect […] N/P/Cl for interesting discussions […]” (B-Adm1) for always having encouraged me […]” (Stat1) who spent many long hours working […]” (Arch3) Gratitude N V Complem “I am also grateful (440) 224 to Professor Thomas Kane to the many professors Benefit P for the keen editorial advice whose great insights” (Econ1) whose lectures […]” (Phys3) Benefactor P of my fellow graduate students” (Engl4) Benefit Gratitude Benefactor P “For their generous help N V Complem I am grateful P to Henry Alison […]” (Phil2) Analysis of texts (441) Benefit Benefactor Gratitude N “Financial support […] P by the Conseil de recherches […] V is gratefully acknowledged” (B-Adm3) 4.9.4.3 Multi-clause AMs Multi-clause AMs are characterized by the frequent encoding of the benefit and benefactor units as noun phrases or clauses; e.g.: (442) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N V Complem “I am especially grateful “I am also grateful P to my mother […] N/Cl Their faith […]” (Engl5) Their comments and advice” (Econ2) Each of them has provided the right combination […]” (Phil5) “I owe a profound debt (443) (444) to the other members of my committee […] to my dissertation advisors […] Gratitude Benefit Benefactor P “by a deep sense of gratitude. N Traces of the hard work and insight P of professors, friends […]” (Engl4) Benefactor Benefit Gratitude N “Professors Michael Reich, Clair Brown, and Lloyd Ulman VP introduced me to the proud tradition of institutional labor economics. Cl I thank them” (Econ1) 225 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Benefactor (445) Benefit N § Cl § Ø § Ø “Kenneth Simmons He was […] a member of my dissertation committee. Ø Ø (446) (447) 226 Ø § Ø § Cl § Cl Ø Ø we developed a relationship He taught me a great deal about […]” (Arch2) Gratitude Benefit Benefactor N V Complem § Ø “I was fortunate V-inf § P P§P to work Ø because of the quiet dedication and insight with […] knowledgeable individuals […] of many friends […]” (P-Bio3) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit N V § Interj “I’d like to thank Thanks!” NV§Ø§Ø§N V Compl “I thank N§Ø my advisor […] Ø N § Ø § N’s § P P§Ø for his guiding hand […] Ø” (Stat3) Cl+P § Cl § N § P+P Judith Butler Ø Ø Ø I am indebted Jill Boulder’s to her who has been there […], for seeing me […] I have gained immeasurable inspiration […] by discussions she directed charisma, humor […] for my commitment to scholarship, […] without her” (Engl4) Analysis of texts (448) Benefactor Benefit Gratitude Cl § Cl § Ø “Many are the professors, colleagues, friends, and family These were the people Cl § Cl § Ø who helped me set myself to finish this endeavor. who provided the stimulating academic environment Ø Ø § Ø § Cl-inc Ø Ø (449) (451) To all of them my enduring gratitude” (Arch2) Benefactor Benefit N§Ø “Very many people V Complem § P have given me the help and encouragement Without their kindness and support” (Stat4) Ø (450) Ø Gratitude Benefit Benefactor Gratitude Benefactor NV§Ø “I have also appreciated Ø N§Ø the hours of enjoyment shared Ø P§Ø with […] the book club members Ø Ø § Interj Ø Ø § Quant Ø Thank you All” (Edu3) Gratitude Benefactor Benefit Benefactor NV§Ø “I would also like to thank N§Ø all the friends N Cl § P whose company I very much enjoyed […] and with whom in many cases, lasting friendships were made. Ø § Cl 227 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology Ø (452) Ø And for all the difference they made, they were: Lorin, Oleg […]” (Phys3) Benefactor Benefit Gratitude Benefit N§Ø V Compl § Ø Ø§N/P “Professor […] and my colleagues Ø helped me to conduct the second survey Ø Ø § N V / Conj Cl Ø “My mom has prodded me along in emotional and financial ways Ø I truly appreciate Ø their help.” (Arch5) Ø and I thank her for being there” (Econ4) Ø Ø 4.9.5 Summary of patterns The AMs examined have a preferred textual organization, with an optional gratitude expression followed by the benefactor unit and then the benefit unit. Thus, where applicable, gratitude is made more prominent in the discourse than the benefactor, and the latter tends to be more cognitively salient than the benefit. Independently of their syntactic realization, AMs can always include all three of their main constituents, but syntactically elaborate, especially, multiclausal, AMs tend also to be textually complex. Indeed, variation in the typical organization of the AMs is due to the occasional thematization of a component, its repeated instantiation and/or alternation with others, which is made possible by the combination of various syntactic constituents. In clausal AMs, gratitude is typically represented as a process (encoded as a verb phrase), the benefactor as an entity (encoded as a noun phrase) and the benefit as a circumstance (encoded as a prepositional phrase), but alternative options are also instantiated, especially in AMs spread over discontinuous stretches of text (e.g. the benefactor as a noun phrase, and the benefit as a verb phrase or clause). 228 Analysis of texts Syntactically, the AMs are variously encoded as (series of) phrases (5%), clauses (6%), sentences (75%) or combinations thereof (7%). Their surface realization depends on the choice of lexical resources for expressing gratitude. In clausal AMs containing no gratitude expressions, the benefactor and the benefit can be encoded, respectively, in one of the following main pattern combinations: as a noun phrase vs. verb or prepositional phrase; as a prepositional phrase vs. a noun/prepositional phrase or relative clause; and as an incomplete clause vs. a prepositional phrase. AMs containing gratitude expressions tend to be syntactically organized in the way required by the argument structure of the main lexical resources for expressing gratitude. If these are adjectives, they tend to be used after linking verbs and followed by prepositional phrases; if they are verbs, optionally modified by adverbs, they are preceded by noun phrases functioning as subjects and frequently followed by noun and prepositional phrases functioning as objects and indirect objects, respectively; and if they are nouns, optionally modified by adjectives, they can occur in absolute constructions or in pre- or post-verbal position. Expressions of thanks, often conventional and formal, highlight complementary aspects of gratitude: benefactors’ merits (e.g. acknowledge), evaluation of benefactors’ contributions (e.g. appreciate), moral budgeting (e.g. debt, owe), pleased acceptance of offers (e.g. grateful, liked, will always remember, have benefited, has been a pleasure and honor), favourable feelings (e.g. thank you) or combinations of the above (e.g. gratefully acknowledge). In conclusion, the AMs analysed appear to be elaborate mini-texts, favouring a few conventional lexico-grammatical and structural patterns, but flexible enough to allow the combination of various lexico-syntactic resources, and thus the original encoding of manifestations of gratitude. 4.10 CONCLUDING REMARKS This chapter has presented an examination of macro and micro textual aspects of the organization and lexico-grammatical encoding of (AMs in) PDAs. The qualitative analysis of three PDAs has illustrated the possible organization of whole texts and their moves, as well as the wording of expressions of gratitude. But it has also shown how the structure and phrasing of genre exemplars may be adapted to suit and reflect the individual writers’ personalities, private goals and/or specific discourse community membership. Indeed, PDAs vary in terms of their length, communicative effectiveness, structural elaborateness, informativity and formality. 229 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology A consideration of global textual characteristics of the PDAs has shown that these are moderately elaborate from a typographic point of view, on average consisting of three-four paragraphs, each about 100 words long. However, the corpus also contains very long PDAs (e.g. in B-Adm, Stat) and very short ones (in EECS, Edu and Engl). In addition, it has turned out that the title Acknowled(e)gment(s) – mainly in its plural variant – accompanies virtually all the PDAs, both as a sign of conventionalized reader friendliness and as a means to ensure communicative effectiveness. It identifies the PDAs – by showing their initial textual boundaries – and defines them as acts of grateful recognition of deserving peoples’ behaviour, qualities and achievements. The functional building blocks of the PDAs, the AMs, have been identified mainly by applying a semantic criterion (i.e. the noticeability or mention of new benefactors), and by resorting to corollary formal sub-criteria when dealing with ambiguous text segments. The identification of the AMs has then made it possible to describe the arrangement of the whole PDAs and of their functional components and sub-components. Occasionally, the PDAs comprise introductory and concluding moves that constitute their conceptual boundaries and stress their unified, self-contained textual nature. The introductions, more frequent, announce the main topic of the PDAs and help the reader in approaching them; the conclusions, not characterized by a common content or function, express the writers’ cognitiveemotional states. More frequently, the PDAs include micro introductory and/or concluding moves that apply to portions of their texts; these micro moves are about sets of benefactors associated with the same type of benefits or that are presented as holding a similar type of role-relationship with the writers. The various categories of benefactors mentioned in the PDAs tend to appear in a typical sequence. Benefactors relevant to the writers from the academic point of view are mentioned before colleagues (i.e. fellow graduate students), and these are mentioned before friends and family members. Not all the PDAs include all three benefactor categories. In addition, not all acknowledgees appear to have been benefactors. Finally, not all of the writers’ helpers are recognized, but only those represented as having made considerable contributions to the authors’ success and well-being. The PDA writers thus appear to represent themselves as set in a network of select professional and personal relationships. All the PDAs consist of two or more moves. On average, they comprise 10 AMs, which are about 30 words long. The moves tend to be realized as whole syntactic-typographic units (e.g. as single sentences, clauses and paragraphs), to be encoded as declaratives, and to be focused on the speech functions of statement and offer, which enables the writers to inform the general reader about 230 Analysis of texts the circumstances of their dissertation projects and courteously reciprocate favours received by their benefactors in the past. The analysis of micro aspects of the PDAs has considered the functional components and sub-components of their AMs: benefactor units, benefit units, gratitude expressions, and their optional expansions. These have been identified and classified on the basis of semantic and syntactic criteria, which has sometimes required a detailed examination of the wording of the texts. The vast majority of the AMs include information useful for the identification of the benefactors in three respects: as specific individuals (whose names are mentioned), as social figures playing given roles (whose professionalfamilial identities are revealed), and/or as previous interlocutors of the writers’ (whose interactional relevance to the writers is specified); combinations of different means of referring to benefactors are also quite frequent. The writers’ concern about the identifiability of benefactors suggests that PDAs are written for the communicative benefit of the general reader, who may not know who certain benefactors are or what kinds of relationships hold between them and the thankers. Benefactor expansions (on average, one per PDA), are used to describe and evaluate benefactors: they convey positive information about the acknowledgees, representing them as people who performed well and/or kindly in certain circumstances and/or who are endowed with good qualities. The benefit units, very frequent in the corpus, specify the nature of the benefits provided by the benefactors, which motivates the writers’ gratitude. The two most frequently mentioned kinds of help are intellectual and emotional, relatable to the two most salient categories of benefactors referred to in the AMs, namely academic figures and friends-and-family. The benefit expansions (on average, four per PDA) provide additional, descriptive-evaluative information about the benefits, for example, their temporal and/or spatial circumstances, their causes and/or effects, and their relevance to the benefactors and beneficiaries involved in them. The three most frequent types of such text units refer to advantageous aspects of the benefits, from the beneficiaries’ point of view, situational circumstances of the beneficial exchanges, or combinations of various types of information. Gratitude expressions – and gratitude expression equivalents, which encode other types of positive, reactive cognitive-emotional attitudes experienced by the thankers towards the benefactors as a result of benefits received – are instantiated in about 64% of the PDAs. Thus, although they are pivotal to the communicative definability of the PDAs, they are the least frequently instantiated of the three functional components of AMs. This suggests that their 231 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology contribution to the overall meaning of the texts can be retrieved elsewhere in the co(n)text. Among the main lexical resources employed for conveying the notion of gratitude are to thank (used much more frequently than the rest), grateful, owe debts, gratitude, thank you, thanks, to acknowledge, showing that the authors tend to conform to conventional, and relatively formal, expressions of gratitude, and that these are relatively formal. Indeed, apart from the occasional interjection thanks, no other formulaic or colloquial gratitude expression, maybe typical of oral interaction, occurs in the corpus. However, the PDAs also exemplify varied and original lexical resources for expressing gratitude, such as to appreciate, to bless, to dedicate, lucky, luxury, to owe, to recognize and to wish, which are less frequently instantiated. The expansions of gratitude expressions occur in about 5% of the moves and 9% of the gratitude expressions. Characterized by varied lexical encoding, they may be used to restate the notion of gratitude, to refer to the causes or consequences of gratitude, or to express feelings associated with the experience of gratitude. The analysis of the lexico-syntactic wording of the PDAs has described the surface, linear patterns characterizing first the main and supportive functional components of the AMs, and then the AMs as whole mini-texts, with a view to compiling a mini-grammar of the semantics of thanking. The gratitude expressions and their expansions tend to be encoded as the first parts of clauses, that is, as noun phrases and verb phrases. The former are realized as personal pronouns referring to the thankers, and the latter as verb phrases describing the thankers’ internal states, characteristics or behaviour. The verbs tend to occur in the present tense, in the active voice, accompanied by words having a modalizing function, and are typically followed by nouns premodified by adjectives or adjectives pre-modified by adverbs. Benefactor units are structurally varied: they may be realized as noun phrases, prepositional phrases, verb phrases, and clauses, and most contain both proper names and common nouns. Pre-modification, by means of attributive adjectives, and post-modification, by means of embedded prepositional phrases are quite frequent. Benefactor expansions may be realized as noun phrases or verb phrases that are part of clausal messages, or alternatively as parenthetical or appositional units. Their most prominent components are nouns and adjectives (part of pre-verbal noun phrases or following linking verbs), through which the authors provide mini-descriptions of the benefactors. Benefit units and their expansions, too, are structurally elaborate. When encoded as noun phrases or prepositional phrases, these may comprise attributive adjectives, embedded prepositional phrases, embedded relative 232 Analysis of texts clauses and/or subordinate non-finite clauses. When encoded as non-embedded clauses, their main constituents display the same type of internal elaboration as outlined above. These syntactic structures, which may also be combined, for instance, when referring to multiple benefits, enable writers to encode benefits as entities involved in events, as circumstances characterizing events, or as events in themselves, in which thankers and benefactors play the roles of the main participants. Given the different frequency of occurrence of the above-mentioned information units, the AMs can vary in their number and type of their functional and syntactic constituents, and in their global arrangement. For instance, the AMs can contain no, one or more gratitude expressions, and their component text segments can be realized as constituents of clauses, entire clauses or sentences, which can also be combined in various ways. In AMs containing all three main functional components, gratitude expressions tend to precede benefactor units, and these in turn tend to precede benefit units. In clausal AMs, gratitude expressions tend to be realized as verb phrases, while benefit units and benefactor units as noun phrases and prepositional phrases (i.e. “satellites” of the gratitude expressions). However, AMs may be textually organized in complex ways: functional constituents may be encoded in discontinuous text segments that surround other constituents; also, in multi-sentence AMs, they may be instantiated more than once or interleaved with other constituents. In general, the PDA writers tend to structure their AMs according to a few common organizational patterns, but they can expertly combine a variety of lexico-syntactic resources to produce originally worded AMs set apart from those of other writers. In sum, the PDAs and their component AMs are lexically, semantically, syntactically and pragmatically elaborate textual products. They tend to conform to conventionalized patterns for the encoding of gratitude and its concomitant notions (i.e. ‘benefactor’ and ‘benefit’), but these patterns are flexible enough to allow authors to appropriately fit their texts to the specific needs of their communicative circumstances. The PDAs thus appear to be exemplars of the same genre, which they instantiate, however, to different degrees of prototypicality. 233 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS 5.0 INTRODUCTION In this chapter I draw some conclusions from the analysis carried out in chapter 4. I first recapitulate the main features of PDAs and account for their social value. Then I summarize the findings of the study, pointing out the strengths and limitations of the analysis carried out. Finally, I present suggestions for further research on PDAs. 5.1 THE NATURE AND VALUE OF PDAs A PDA is an attachment to a dissertation, which reports on the latter’s background: it provides professional, technical, and personal information about a research project, the researcher mainly responsible for it, and the writing up of the research findings itself. This information helps the reader understand how the dissertation was accomplished, but is not crucial to a full appreciation of the contents of that study. Indeed, the PDA is less relevant to the dissertation than the dissertation writer, who is presented as an interactant involved in a multi-phase exchange with several people. The focus of the text is on the management of social relationships: the PDA comments on the benefactors’ previous role as givers of goods and/or services beneficial to the dissertation writer; it also helps the beneficiary enact the current and/or future role of a giver of comparably valuable goods or services to the benefactors (or possibly to other future beneficiaries of hers). The transactions involving the dissertation writer and her helpers, which are reported and partly realized in the PDA, point out the double-edged quality of the interactants’ role-relationship. On the one hand, the dissertation writer benefits in the short and long run from the benefactors’ help: she gets to meet an important academic requirement, a chance to apply and possibly land a wellpaid job, and more generally to get on with her life. At the same time, these benefits place short- and long-term restrictions on her freedom of action: the beneficiary is expected to accept the benefits offered to her, show a welldisposed attitude towards the benefactors, recognize the benefits received, and 235 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology show willingness to reciprocate. In addition, the author is morally obligated to give something in return (or destined to remain indebted; see Lakoff 1996: 253). The PDA partly satisfies such social requirements: manifesting pleased acceptance of benefits, and admitting indebtedness through thanking is the first kind of giving back. Starting to pay off one’s debt is what the AM is for. This building block of the PDA serves to perform the action of thanking. Typically and minimally, it expresses (1) the PDA writer’s gratitude (2) to given benefactors (3) for certain benefits. But each of its semantic components may be elaborated upon with relevant details about the benefactors’ merits, the beneficiary’s attitude to the benefactors, the hurdles jointly overcome and/or the value and effects of the benefits on the beneficiary. These details can be expressed (a) internally, e.g. through adjectives or prepositional phrases as part of the core acknowledgement unit or (b) externally, i.e. through supportives, which accompany it. Such additional, enriching details serve a twofold purpose: (i) they ensure that the dissertation reader, who is not familiar with the general circumstances of the dissertation project, understands why thanking occurs; and (ii) they enhance the value of the AM as a gift meant to pay the benefactor back, which is possibly the only form of repayment the thanker can offer. The semantic richness of the AM (which clusters relevant concepts around each benefactor’s act of kindness) shows that the writer remembers, values, and likes what she has received and who she has received it from; also, its original and accurate encoding shows that the PDA is not considered a mere formality, but that time and attention are devoted to it so that it can be tailored to a unique (set of) individuals; this way, articulate and elaborate AMs signal that the dissertation writer not only fulfils interactional expectations, but also expresses social involvement with her benefactors (see Wolfson’s (1989: 224) Bulge Theory). As new benefactors are mentioned, new AMs are realized; this determines the cyclical arrangement of the PDA. On the other hand, a sequential arrangement of the content of the PDA can be detected when one considers the preferred order in which acknowledgees tend to appear: first, the helpers that were the most relevant academically; next, those that were somewhat relevant both academically and personally; and finally those holding a very important place in the authors’ affections. This sequence is partly flexible: occasionally, extra benefactors are mentioned or, conversely, expected acknowledgees are not referred to; at other times, discipline-specific acknowledgees are named. Such variations, however, do not tend to disrupt the typical order in which benefactors are listed. 236 Conclusions Besides AMs, which are its main constituents, a PDA may contain optional moves which constitute its conceptual boundaries: an introductory move provides the opportunity to mention the purpose of the text, reflect on thanking, and voice opinions, while a concluding move provides the opportunity to present a final, important and memorable remark applicable to the whole text. The recurrence of AMs in a PDA necessarily determines the recurrence of expressions of thanks. These can be encoded through the repetition of certain lexemes and/or the combination of near synonyms; either choice creates cohesion in the text; on the other hand, original, genre-specific forms of encoding gratitude are also possible, which innovate the genre, but occasionally make it difficult to distinguish the core of an AM from its supportives. These alternative ways of expressing gratitude hint at the specific communicative essence of PDAs. The title itself, Acknowledg(e)ments, gives insight into the nature of PDAs (cf. Swales 1990: 54): it encapsulates the conventional purpose of PDAs, which is to give credit to others for work they have done. In fact, authors sometimes refer to certain benefactors as co-authors of specific parts of the dissertation, and/or stress their intellectual indebtedness to them.1 This helps explain why PDAs are addressed to the general public rather than the author’s benefactors: the dissertation writer may be judged unfavourably if she takes credit for what somebody else has accomplished and that was useful to her. This also explains why the benefactor does not have to know about the AM relevant to her (and indeed a copy of it is not usually sent to him) as long as this is publicly accessible (so that anybody can check that precautions have been taken against plagiarism and, more generally, against ingratitude). The act of giving credit both emphasizes the official goal of the PDA and constitutes one form of thanking – especially when that credit is beneficial to the addresser – and can thus be associated with other acts of thanking. Indeed, the PDA provides the writer with the opportunity to publicly thank all the people she feels indebted to for help received in addition to the opportunity to make claims of authenticity about the authorship of her dissertation. Notwithstanding their functional similarity, due to a common motivating rationale, PDAs may exhibit intertextual variation for at least two reasons: on a general level, discourse patterns (i.e. choices about content and style) tend to vary across different research communities, but also to be shared within the 1 Indeed, Cronin (1991: 228; 1995: 22-24) attributes the same function, but different currency value, to acknowledgements and citations; Also, Giannoni (1998: 65, 77) comments on the continuum between authorship and PDA-status “within the academic reward system”. 237 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology same research community. (The corpus bears this out: for example, structurally and stylistically similar PDA beginnings are to be found only within the same discipline; at the same time, PDAs from different disciplines do not share exactly the same types of benefits and/or benefactors.) On a specific level, the PDA is not subject to strict editorial requirements (except for, e.g., its position in the dissertation, spacing or margins; see Swales and Feak 2000: 198); thus this text may be used to achieve private intentions within an officially public act (cf. Bhatia 1993: 19), such as voice opinions, manifest feelings, allude to problematic relationships (see Ben-Ari 1987: 70) and/or more generally freely reveal the writer’s non-academic self. PDAs may thus display variable prototypicality in their instantiation of the genre: the topics (e.g. graduate school, trips, research topic) and style (e.g. journalistic, ironic) of any given PDA are not totally predictable from contextual elements probably common to all PDAs. It is thus now possible to reconsider the issues of why PDAs come about and of how effective are they in conveying gratitude. First, not every dissertation author writes a PDA, which reveals that this is a socially useful, but neither compulsory nor necessary, text. Second, the real reason(s) for writing a PDA may actually be inaccessible to the dissertation reader,2 since the official reasons may be incomplete or insincere. For example, the dissertation writer may (un)consciously want to please academically powerful benefactors (see Hyland 2004: 316), show connections with important people (see Ben-Ari 1987), let the public know that she has a life outside academia or convince the reader that she is fun to be with (see Ben-Ari 1987, Hyland 2003). Third, thanking in a PDA is selective. For example, some benefactors never appear to be thanked (e.g. the personnel at the copy centre who may have done a rush job, thus enabling the author to file her dissertation by a given deadline; the researcher who will check out the writer’s dissertation and considers it worth reading; an emotionally supportive former companion). Conversely, some acknowledgees may be mentioned and praised more for political reasons than because they have helped (professors, friends, family members; cf. Hyland’s (2004: 316) interview data on the perceived need to make up reasons for thanking superior academics). This may be the case when the author is planning to (or needs to) to ask favours of them in future or simply does not want to be 2 However, Giannoni (1998: 64) discusses readers’ shrewd perception of journal ASs and the motives behind them. Similarly, Hyland (2003: 259) mentions academic readers’ likely reactions to PDA writers’ reference to their previous achievements. 238 Conclusions ostracized (cf. Giannoni (1998: 61, 64) about the AS author’s need not to endanger her scholarly or personal reputation and about the possible interference between contributors’ relative status and actual merits; cf. Ben-Ari (1987: 6871) about the dynamics of debts and obligations and about the tension between hostility/rebellion and integration/solidarity in ethnographic ASs; and cf. Hyland (2004: 314-315) about acknowledging superior academics as a career strategy). Fourth, thanking in a PDA may be ineffective unless the intended acknowledgees are also thanked in person. For instance, benefactors may not know if they are mentioned in PDAs (e.g. a grandparent living far away, a study participant unable to read the language the dissertation is written in or a colleague who read the first drafts of the dissertation and is not willing to re-read it in its final version). Despite such drawbacks, the PDA accomplishes two socially useful goals, and thus has interactional appeal: (A) as a public text, the PDA makes thanking official, permanent, and thus important: (i) as a document available to the public and not subject to changes, the PDA is valuable as a social and “stable” communicative act: its content is considered worth encoding, preserving, and conveying to others (see Ehlich 1984); (ii) as delayed, re-entry thanks, the PDA shows that the benefits received by the writer were too valuable to be appropriately recognized only on the spot through an immediate reaction. The fact that the PDA is encoded as a written text reveals the beneficiary’s reflection on the value of the benefit, her awareness of her considerable indebtedness, and her consideration for the benefactors; briefly put, the PDA counts as a gift, a tangible act of thanking (see Ben-Ari 1987: 76). (B) The PDA also sustains and balances social relationships: (i) it classifies given interactions as concretely beneficial exchanges between mutually well-disposed individuals (represented as willing both to give and to accept); (ii) it manifests strong cognitive and/or emotional ties between the interactants (both current ties and commitment to ties in future); (iii) it signals a (temporary) disruption of the social equilibrium (the benefits have created creditors and a debtor); (iv) it serves to start restoring the balance of social relationships: showing appropriate and sufficient appreciation (e.g. eloquently encoded love and respect) does not even things up, but at least shows that the benefactor is perceived as special, and that his generous behaviour needs to be reciprocated (even if by simply manifesting good feelings and/or willingness to repay). 239 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology This means that the PDA is meant to convey gratitude, but is typically reserved for benefactors who have not yet been adequately repaid, because the beneficiary still feels responsible for imposing on them (see Coulmas 1981). It includes selective acts of thanking. These are instrumental in the management of non-perfectly balanced interactions within either symmetrical or asymmetrical relationships that the dissertation writer values so much that she does not want to risk undermining. Therefore, the PDA may be effective in expressing depth of gratitude, but not necessarily in covering the whole breadth of its possible applicability. In sum, a PDA is a delayed, reactive, verbal, reactive manifestation of appreciation and indebtedness, through which the writer sustains her relationship with deserving individuals. It is thus strongly focused on relational needs (Al-Ali 2006; Ben-Ari 1987; Giannoni 1998, 2002, 2006; Hyland 2003, 2004; Hyland and Tse 2004; Swales and Feak 1994/2004). The writer’s communicative goals comprise expressing her positive cognitive-emotional attitude towards assistance received and the people generous with it, reciprocating benefactors for the benefits received, and motivating her gratitude to the general reader by informing him of background circumstances. The instantiation of multiple, fairly explicit public acts of thanking, that is, various overt and intentional manifestations of pleased acceptance of support received on previous occasions, enables the writer both to inform readers of and to reciprocate benefactors for benefits received. PDAs tend to be elaborate texts because they serve multiple purposes. Through PDAs writers can thank several benefactors; show awareness of the high value of the benefits mentioned; sustain unbalanced social relationships with their moral creditors; recognize interlocutors as social equals through reciprocation (Herbert 1986); convince readers/benefactors of their sincerity; originally tailor thanks to specific benefactors; make acknowledgements accessible to a general audience; produce permanent, semi-official and public texts to be perceived as understandable and acceptable (Hyland 2003); and verbally represent and project a public persona for readers to believe in and appreciate. The elaborateness of PDAs is visible not only in the text as a whole (i.e. its composite and cyclical arrangement), but also in its building blocks, the AMs. These combine a gratitude expression with the identification of the benefactor and the reference to the benefit. Each of these constituents of the AM can be enhanced by expansions, which qualify the expression of gratitude, illustrate the value of the benefits and/or describe the benefactor’s behaviour. These optional supportive components may develop an AM into an extended speech act or 240 Conclusions speech act set (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989): a nucleus manifesting the illocution (gratitude) and its complements (benefactors and benefits), and corollary speech acts (e.g. apologies for trouble caused, compliments on benefactors’ excellence, offers of repayment, acknowledgements of responsibility). The recursive arrangement of PDAs and the tripartite structure and detailed content of their component AMs affects their lexico-syntactic encoding, which has been examined in a corpus of 50 such texts. 5.2. CONTRIBUTION OF THE ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY OF FEATURES The analysis of 50 PDAs representative of ten disciplines within a single institution has illustrated the content and structure, and revealed the (encoding of) acknowledging practices of the genre in a professional and cultural environment in which English is used as a first language. The PDAs have been defined as delayed, genuine thanks, which are relevant to multiple exchanges in which benefits were provided partly spontaneously, partly after solicitation, which sustain the benefactors’ positive and negative faces, and which imply the writers’ indebtedness. The study has tackled multiple dimensions of the PDAs taken into consideration, namely their structural, functional, pragmatic, semantic, and lexico-grammatical features. The goal was to account for and categorize their constituent AMs and their overall arrangement and content by drawing on insights from the fields of text analysis, speech act theory and genre studies. The main issue systematically addressed in this study has been a methodological one, having to do with the definition, identification and classification of the content and form of AMs and their sub-components. Indeed, the main contribution of this study lies in its presentation of a testable, replicable procedure for delimiting and categorizing the building blocks of the whole texts and of their constituent AMs. The recognition in the texts of reference to either new benefactors or to previously mentioned benefactors associated with new benefits has provided the tools for discriminating between new acts of thanking from repetitions or expansions of previously instantiated acts of thanking. The consistent adoption of this heuristic criterion, in turn, has made it possible to describe the global arrangement of the PDAs – both as self-contained texts (with optional introductions and conclusions) and in terms of the sequencing of the topics mentioned or discussed (i.e. the professional and social roles played by the 241 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology benefactors and the relevant benefits) – and ultimately to make sense of the internal arrangement, and content, of the AMs – which provide information relevant to the identification of benefactors virtually all of the time. The AMs have been found to instantiate a tripartite structure (i.e. to combine gratitude expressions with information units mentioning benefactors and referring to benefits). The text segments identifying benefactors have been classified according to the type of benefactor-beneficiary role-relationships mentioned in them. Those describing benefits have been categorized on the basis of the nature of the benefactors’ contribution provided. Those offering thanks have been described in terms of notions relevant to the manifestation of gratitude (i.e. cognitive-emotional states experienced and/or actions performed by the thankers). The supportives of the core components of the AMs, instead, have been identified and classified in terms of their content, syntactic encoding and logical relation with the main functional units of the AMs, but once more, by applying consistent classification criteria. The analysis has also considered the surface syntactic encoding of the AMs and their constituents and sub-constituents, and the mapping of these with their meaning units. This has revealed the elaborate, and sometimes discontinuous, realization of the acts of thanking, characterized by the repeated encoding and structural interleaving of its component notions. The examination carried out has shown that the PDA writers’ linguisticinteractional behaviour is varied, but not randomly so, because it is similarly affected by shared situational and contextual configurations (see sections 2.6.1, 2.6.2 and 2.6.3), which include the constraints imposed and the options offered by the linguistic system of English; the complex nature of the communicative event; and the culture-specific conceptualization of gratitude. The PDAs examined consist of a series of textual building blocks, the AMs, through which the writers’ communicative purposes are gradually achieved. The corpus contains a total of 494 AMs, and thus on average, 10 per texts. This signals the writers’ need to repeatedly offer thanks in relation to several benefactors and benefits, and determines the recursive arrangement of the texts. The AMs, identified through their reference to benefactors, manifest the writers’ gratitude to the benefactors and refer to the benefits received from them. Gratitude is expressed in 64% of the AMs, and is often encoded through conventional lexical resources conveying the positive opinion of the benefits, their glad acceptance, their favourable evaluation and/or the need to reciprocate them. Benefits are mentioned in 95% of the AMs, and comprise various types of support: intellectual, emotional, financial and technical. Benefactors are mentioned in 99% of the AMs, with an indication of their social-professional 242 Conclusions identity and their relationships with the beneficiaries. These functional components are the means through which the writers both express and motivate their gratitude. Typically, in an AM consisting of all three functional elements, and especially if it syntactically realized as a clause, gratitude is expressed first (represented as a process and encoded as a verb phrase), followed by reference to the benefactor (represented as an entity and encoded as a noun phrase) and then to the benefit (represented as a circumstance and encoded as a prepositional phrase). However, alternative options are also instantiated, especially in AMs spread over discontinuous stretches of text. The analysis offered has considered macro and micro linguistic aspects of PDAs, which have been described from multiple, complementary perspectives. The data collected provides support for previous findings relevant to comparable genres, namely ASs in journal articles and books, on the one hand, and in Masters theses and PhD dissertations in non-native speaking contexts, on the other. The same kinds of features have been detected, although not always with comparable frequencies of occurrence or with identical patterns of internal variation across disciplines (cf. Hyland 2004, Hyland and Tse 2004). This may be a result of the slightly different procedures used in the various studies for identifying and classifying functional units in ASs, but it may also be partly related to the different linguistic-cultural backgrounds that the ASs in all these studies represent. Also, slightly different terms have been used in my study and previous ones to describe similar functional text segments: I have called acknowledging acts moves. Other authors, instead, have preferred to define them as steps in a larger thanking move. As verbal actions relevant to the PDA’s overall communicative goal of offering thanks, and through which that goal is gradually achieved, I think that acknowledging acts can indeed qualify as moves, even if they are all alike in kind (i.e. they are all acknowledging acts), so that their recurrence in a PDA makes this a functionally repetitive text. On the other hand, as complementary units of meaning that make up the global meaning of AMs, the constituents of AMs can be compared to textual steps. In sum, the study has shown that PDAs are elaborate messages, whose variable, yet homogeneous, content and encoding can be thoroughly described from a number of textual perspectives, which collectively give insights into how language users make and convey meanings suitable to their contextually conditioned communicative purposes. 243 Acknowledgments: structure and phraseology 5.3. FUTURE PERSPECTIVES PDAs instantiate elaborate grateful acknowledgements through their content, structure and lexico-grammatical encoding. That is, their communicative rationale shapes the linguistic, textual and organizational features of the whole texts, and of their core and supportive components. The description offered in this work of 50 PDAs has revealed budding academic writers’ acknowledging strategies, including their various conceptualizations of the notion of gratitude, their representations of their rolerelationships with their benefactors, their preferences in highlighting benefits received, and their recurrent linguistic-textual choices. A deeper understanding of the corpus examined could be achieved by exploring possible patterns of internal variation, by adopting complementary analytical approaches and/or by examining aspects of the texts not taken into consideration here. For instance, gender identity has been shown to correlate with different acknowledging practices (including reactions to and interpretation of ASs; Cronin 1995) in journal article ASs. By first determining the PDA authors’ gender identity, it would be interesting to check whether there are gender-linked differences in self-presentation, argumentative strategies, and expressive behaviour between female and male PhD candidates. Also, the lexico-grammatical and semantic peculiarities of the PDAs could be better investigated by using software for corpus analysis. Thus, for example, one could trace a comparative semantic profile of the various lexemes encoding the notion of gratitude by examining their collocations in my corpus and in a larger, general reference corpus. Similarly, one could examine what correlations, if any, hold between the different ways of wording gratitude and the types of benefits mentioned in the same AMs (cf. Hyland and Tse 2004). Finally, one could compare and contrast recurrent phraseologies – extracted with concordancing tools – in the PDAs and exemplars of genres with similar communicative purposes: gratitude-oriented texts like pre-printed thank-you cards and thank-you letters; communicative acts focused on a positive description of the behaviour and characteristics of people that the speaker or writer interacts with (such as acts of congratulating, praising, complimenting or dedications); texts performing an acknowledging function (e.g. apologies, admissions, confessions); and more generally, written extended speech acts of thanking. Furthermore, one could examine such characteristics of the PDAs as the use of upgraders and downgraders in the gratitude expressions, the employment of 244 Conclusions evaluative strategies in benefactor units and benefit units (see Gesuato 2004b), the text segments that provide anecdotal, background information on the writer’s academic lives (see Gesuato 2004b) and the representation of the thankers in the AMs (cf. Hyland and Tse 2004). More generally, a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the functions, value, and effectiveness of the PDA genre can be achieved if members of the community of practice in which they are produced are interviewed (cf. Hyland 2003, 2004; Cronin 2005). Both authors and readers can provide insights into (reactions to) acknowledging practices and the values and expectations attached to them. Interview data could help reveal which type of realization of which combinations of textual features determines the acceptability and effectiveness of genre members. Additionally, a higher number of PDAs could be examined so as to make more reliable generalizations about the genre, better characterize its prototypical exemplars and carry out systematic cross-disciplinary comparisons of acknowledgement practices (cf. Cronin 1995 and Hyland 2003, 2004). The studies on PDAs carried out so far, including this one, suggest that these are sophisticated texts, linking the personal and private domains of graduate students’ lives. Although not (yet) directly meant to establish academic reputations, they play an important role in the scientific community as a form of social repayment (or reciprocal gift giving). They place several demands on the writers: showing social-academic competence, displaying awareness of subordinate academic status, and manifesting gratitude in an articulate and plausible way for help received on a work carried out mostly by themselves. At the same time, they offer writers an opportunity to publicly promote themselves to the (non-)academic community as competent scholars and likeable individuals, whose identities are in large part shaped by the vast network of professional and personal relationships in which they interact. PDAs thus serve several purposes: they enable graduate students to manifest their gratitude to the people who helped them intellectually and/or personally, to display modesty and self-effacement (as expected of them as subordinate participants in their community of practice), and to reveal their disciplinary membership by mentioning which academics they are associated with. 245 REFERENCES ABIODUN M. A. 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