The paper presents an in-depth qualitative examination, and a partial quantitative analysis, of 100 US PhD dissertation acknowledgments from seven disciplines. The study includes functional and formal definitions of PhD acknowledgement texts, analyzes both their global textual organization and the structure of their component units, illustrates criteria for the identification and definition of the moves in the texts, presents quantitative data about the frequency of occurrence of the patterns of textual arrangement thus identified in a subset of the corpus, describes the typical wording of the expressions of gratitude in a sample of the texts, and offers a social-rhetorical interpretation of their value as forms of private and public communication.
Acknowledgments in PhD dissertations: The complexity of thanking
GESUATO, SARA
2004
Abstract
The paper presents an in-depth qualitative examination, and a partial quantitative analysis, of 100 US PhD dissertation acknowledgments from seven disciplines. The study includes functional and formal definitions of PhD acknowledgement texts, analyzes both their global textual organization and the structure of their component units, illustrates criteria for the identification and definition of the moves in the texts, presents quantitative data about the frequency of occurrence of the patterns of textual arrangement thus identified in a subset of the corpus, describes the typical wording of the expressions of gratitude in a sample of the texts, and offers a social-rhetorical interpretation of their value as forms of private and public communication.Pubblicazioni consigliate
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
