Genre Analysis of Acknowledgement Texts by Pakistani Master Level Theses Writers

This study aims to investigate the lexical, structural and cultural elements in acknowledgement texts written by Pakistani candidates of master of philosophy degrees (18 years of education). For this purpose, a corpus of 100 acknowledgement texts has been developed and analyzed with the help of AntConc 3.4.4.0. Results reveal that Pakistani master level acknowledgement writers use gratitude markers extravagantly to thank their contributors and use high sounding adjectives exaggeratedly to increase the effect of thankfulness and glorify the acknowledged persons. Acknowledgement texts are a blend of different patterns which are the example of their own. Study concludes that Pakistani acknowledgement texts are affected by cultural, social and personal elements with the help of which Pakistani acknowledgers pay gratitude directly, emotionally and warmly using direct, emotional and rhetorical language.