ACKNOWLEDGMENT PATTERNS IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN RESEARCH WRITING

Abstract

The paper focuses on the features of acknowledgments in scientific texts written by British and Lithuanian authors in the Humanities. The data comes from a self-compiled corpus of acknowledgments in scientific books written by British and Lithuanian researchers in their native languages, and from doctoral dissertations written by Lithuanian doctoral students in Lithuanian. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis suggest that the British scholars place more importance on acknowledgments as they single out their thanks as separate sections, make them longer and express gratitude for a larger number of individuals and institutions than the Lithuanian scholars. Generally the same moves and steps are employed in the three data sets, but the distribution of some moves and steps is different.