Characteristic features in English acknowledgements written by Thai graduates : indicators for Thai English

Abstract

The Thai educated circle has used English for a broader range of purposes. According to the notion nativization, the English language use in Thailand should plausibly contain features that can be categorized as belonging to Thai society. The study, therefore, aims to prove the existence of Thai English. It used quantitative-based approaches, namely frequency, percentage, Pearsons chi-square values, and Mutual Information scores, and qualitative-based approaches, namely interpretation based on previous literature and inductive logic. The data for analysis are from two purpose-specific corpora of Thai and American acknowledgements, each containing 150 pieces of data. The findings are that Thai graduates ackhowledgements have three qualities in common: fixation on formality, specification and modification. Moreover, when considered from the point of view of their meaning and communicative and textual functions in the acknowledgements discourse, it is also discovered that the graduates tend to use thanking patterns to a great degree, to specify their role and that of their thankees, to describe their thankees ranking, to address them through specification, to intensity and formalize their feeling, and to intensify their thankees deeds. These results can be summarize into two major sociocultural traits belonging to Thai graduates in writing English ackhowledgements, namely ranking recognition and social distance. Accordingly, the hypothesis that Thai and American English acknowledgement are different, supporting the actual existence of Thai English, is thus confirmed.