Generic structure and functional choices of gratitude expressions in the thesis acknowledgment written in English by Indonesian Undergraduate Students

ENGLISH:

The current study is aimed at identifying the generic structure and the functional choices of gratitude expressions of thesis acknowledgment written in English by Indonesian undergraduate students from Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University of Malang (UIN) and Petra University Surabaya. It is divided into two main issues, generic structure and functional choices of gratitude expressions. To examine the generic structure, genre analysis is at work. It reveals that the generic structure of Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University of Malang and Petra comprises introductory move, thanking move, announcing move, and signing off. There are two steps of introductory move; reflection on writing the thesis, and praising God and prophetic saying for UIN; four steps for thanking move; presenting participants, thanking for academic assistance, for moral support, and for resources; and two steps of announcing move; accepting responsibility and hope for contribution. In the second phase, the writer uses Systemic Functional Linguistics. From the ideational, interpersonal, and textual analysis of the gratitude expressions, it is concluded that the different choices of processes, themes, and pronouns are influenced by the sociocultural and interpersonal relation of the writers and the addressees.

From the two analyses, the writer concludes that the generic structure of acknowledgment is a written form of writer’s interpersonal relation with the addressees. The clear and regular pattern of the genre, the complex hierarchy of thanks, and the frequent use of interactant pronouns reveal that acknowledgment is culturally bound with the sociocultural, socio-religious, and institutional background of the writers.

This thesis portrays only few of various phenomena which occur in Indonesian acknowledgments. It is purely corpus-based study that further research which includes the writers’, readers’, and addresses’ personal view is seen significant. Different samples, such as graduate and post graduate students’ thesis acknowledgments, books, journals, and so forth, are also worth researching.