A Socio-pragmatic Study of Thanking in Selected British and American Plays

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of some social variables on the choice of thanking strategies in British and American plays. It particularly investigates the influence of social power, gender, and ethnicity on British and American’s choice of the appropriate strategy of thanking.  The .main objectives of .this. Study .are. described as.follows: (1) investigating .the.influence.of.social power on.the.choice of thanking strategies; (2) finding out how ethnic groups have an impact on the choice of thanking and finding why these choices are made; (3) showing  whether there are significant differences in the way male and female characters utilize thanking and its strategies; (4) finding the type of strategies adopted when performing the speech act of thanking; (5)  identifying the most frequent politeness maxims in both of the plays; (6) Examining whether American English or British English is more influenced by the social variables. For data collection, the study involves two British and American plays. As for data analysis, the study adopts Searle’s (1969) model. Furthermore, the speech act of thanking will be conducted according to the politeness maxims which are suggested by Leech (1983). The results of data analysis have shown that (1) the variable of social power influences the level of directness; (2) the variable of ethnicity also influences the choice of the speech act of thanking strategies; (3) males tend to utilize the speech act of thanking more frequently than females; (4) explicit thanking strategies are more frequent than implicit thanking; and (5) As far as the targeted plays are concerned, the British characters are more polite than the Americans.