الفهرس 
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Abstract
This current study investigates the speech act of criticism and responding to
criticism in an institutional Egyptian academic activity: a thesis/ dissertation
defense (English departments). It focuses on the effect of inequality in power
relations (in terms of the academic position and status) on the social distance
between members of the examination board (powerful) and candidates (less
powerful). It mainly extracts instances of direct versus indirect criticism. It
searches for modality markers (downgraders/ mitigation devices versus upgraders/
reinforcement devices) employed in mitigating or reinforcing the speech act of
criticism and responding to it. It also holds a comparison of Swales (2004)’s
structural framework of United State defenses and the structural framework of the
Egyptian defenses.
The sample consists of six long Egyptian defenses that are selected randomly
from three departments in different universities: Cairo University, Sohag
University, and South Valley University. A pragmatic analysis has been carried out
depending on Searle and Vanderveken (1985) and Herbert H. Clark (1979)’s
concepts of direct versus indirect speech acts. It also draws upon House and
Kasper (1981)’s classification of modality markers (downgraders versus
upgraders).
Results have proved that academic discourse is not an objective, faceless, and
impersonal form of interaction. Academic participants pay attention to the
interpersonal dimension of interaction. They employ many discursive as well as
linguistic constructions that could only be interpreted from a pragmatic
perspective. Examiners have used many downgraders in comparison with
upgraders. They tend to create an educational harmonious atmosphere of learning.
They have presented constructive criticism through the use of paired patterns (e.g.
advice- criticism- request). They focus their criticism on future improvement. They
kept their criticism simple, specific and well- grounded. The structural framework
of Egyptian thesis/ dissertation defenses has very minor differences from Swales
(2004)’s identified structural framework of United States thesis/ dissertation
defenses. Candidates play an active role in defending their theses or dissertation.
They employ several strategies in response to instances of criticism identified by
members of a committee such as defending, resigning, giving self- repair,
attributing their mistake or inappropriate actions to external reasons or even
keeping silent. Supervisors play an active role in defense. They directly try to
defend their students and indirectly to defend themselves and save their positive
face. Aside from that, they also try to save an examiner’s positive face in
conducting the speech act of disagreement or the speech act of correction.