The Speech Act of Congratulation and Positive Politeness Strategies: A Study of Comments on Facebook Posts by Palestinians
Abstract
Abstract
This linguistic study attempts to investigate the realization patterns of the speech act of congratulation, a relatively understudied speech act, as used by Palestinian Facebook users. To this end, naturally occurring data were gathered from two authentic situations that were posted by the researcher’s friends on their Facebook accounts. The study aims at eliciting the way Palestinians offer congratulations on two occasions related to marriage and birth of a baby. Data were encoded and analyzed based on the taxonomy of congratulation strategy proposed by Elwood (2004). Furthermore, data were analyzed based on a modified version of positive politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). Findings showed that the most frequently used strategies of congratulation were illocutionary force indicating devise (IFID), offer of good wishes, and expression of happiness. Findings revealed that the most frequently used strategies by the participants were giving gift to listener, exaggeration, and in-group identity marker.
فعل القول الخاص بالتهنئة واستراتيجيات التأدب الإيجابية:
دراسة حول تعليقات الفلسطينيين على منشورات الفيسبوك
ملخص
تحاول هذه الدراسة اللغوية إلى التعرف على أنماط تحقيق فعل القول الخاص بالتهنئة، وهو فعل تمت دراسته بشكل قليل نسبيا، كما يستخدمه مستخدمو الفيسبوك الفلسطينون. ولهذه الغاية، تم جمع البيانات التي تحدث بشكل طبيعي من حالتين ضمن سياقاتها الأصلية التي نشرت عن طريق أصدقاء الباحث على حسابات الفيسبوك الخاصة بهم. تهدف الدراسة إلى كشف الطريقة التي يقدم بها الفلسطينيون التهاني في مناسبتين تتعلقان بالزواج وولادة الطفل. تم تصنيف البيانات وتحليلها بناء على تصنيف إستراتيجيات التهاني التي اقترحها إلوود (2004). بالإضافة إلى ذلك، تم تحليل البيانات على أساس نسخة معدلة من استراتيجيات التأدب الإيجابية التي اقترحها براون وليفنسون (1987). وأظهرت النتائج أن الاستراتيجيات الأكثر استخداما في التهنئة كانت التهاني المباشرة (IFID)، عرض التمنيات الطيبة، والتعبير عن السعادة. كشفت النتائج أن الاستراتيجيات الأكثر استخدامًا من قبل المشاركين كانت تقديم هدية للمستمع والمبالغة ومؤشر الهوية داخل المجموعة.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
References:
Akram, M. (2008). A contrastive study of speech acts in Urdu and English. Asian EFL journal, 10, (4), 148-172.
Al‐Khatib, M. (1997) Congratulation and thank you announcements in Jordanian newspapers: Cultural and communicative functions. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 10 (2), 156-170. DOI: 10.1080/07908319709525248
Allami, H. & Nekouzadeh, M. (2011). Congratulation and positive politeness strategies in iranian context. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(11), 1607-1613.
Aryani, M. A. P. (2011). Congratulating utterances of the engagement of the prince of England (a socio-pragmatics approach. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta.
Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon press.
Barthes, R. (2006). The language of fashion. London: Bloomsbury.
Brown, P. & Levinson S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Esther N. Goody (ed.) Questions and politeness, (pp. 56–289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P. & Levinson S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Can, H. (2011). A Cross-Cultural Study of the Speech Act of Congratulation in British English and Turkish Using a Corpus Approach. (Unpublished MA thesis) Middle East Technical University.
Cohen, A. (1996). Speech act. In S. L. Mckay, & N. H. Horeberger (Eds.). Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 393-420). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Dastrjerdi, H. & Nasri. N. (2013). A cross-cultural study of speech acts: situational as-pects of congratulations in English, Persian and Arabic. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, (1), 15-22.
Elwood, K. (2004). ‘“Congratulations!”: A cross-cultural analysis of responses to another’s happy news’. The Cultural Review, Waseda Commercial Studies Association, (25), [Retrieved July 25, 2017, from http://dspace.wul.waseda.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2065/6097]
Emery, P. (2000). Greeting, congratulation and commiserating in Oman Arabic. Language, Culture and Curriculum.13, 2, 196-216.
Ghaemi, F. & Ebrahimi, F. (2014). Speech act of congratulation among Persian speakers. ELT Voice, 4 (6), 98-112.
Isaacs, E. & Clark, H. (1990). Ostensible invitations. Language in society, 19, 493-509.
Jahangard, A & b Khanlarzade, et al., (2016) Do Iranians and Americans Congratulate their Friends Differently on their Birthdays on Facebook? A Case for Intercultural Studies. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 18, 123-143.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
Mahzari. M. (2017). A Sociopragmatic Study of the Congratulation Strategies of Saudi Facebook Users. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Arizona State University.
Makri-Tsilipakou, M. (2001). Congratulation and bravo! In A. Bayraktaroglu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish, pp.137-176.
Matheson, D. (2005). Media discourses. UK: MacGraw-Hill Education.
Mey, J. (1993). Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Morrow, John A. (ed) (2006). Arabic, Islam and the Allah lexicon: How language shapes our conception of God. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Nasri,N.; Vahid Dastjerdy, H. & Ghadiri, M. (2013). Congratulations Across Cultures: English Versus Armenian and Persian Speakers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 67-73.
Qurik, R. Greenbaum, S. Leech. G., and Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1979). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of the Speech Act. Cambridge: CUP.
Searle, J. & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tomaszczyk, Lewandowska B. (1989). Praising and Complimenting. In Contrastive Pragmatics. Oleksy, W. (ed). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.: 73-100. [http://www.write express. Com/govern 03-html]
Trujillo, V. (2011). Sociopragmatic study of politeness in speech acts congratulating in Colombian Spanish (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Arizona State University.
Venderveken, D. (1999). Success, Satisfaction and Truth in the Logic of Speech Acts and Formal Semantics. In Daivs, S., and Gillan, B.(eds).
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.35682/777
Published by
MUTAH UNIVERSITY