Investigating Thanking Speech Act in Ilami Kurdish

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the speech act of condolence in Ilami Kurdish in the light of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) speech acts theories. A discourse completion test (DCT) was developed to collect the data. It included 20 scenarios in which people usually express appreciation. The DCT was then completed by 240 Ilami speakers. The results illustrated 20 appreciation strategies out of which “simple thanking”, “recognition of imposition”,and “repayment or promise to compensate” were respectively the most frequently used strategies. Also, 14 strategies were found to be unique for the Iranian or Islamic contexts, nine of which were different prayers (30.7%) such as “prayers for blessing increase”, “being safe from predicaments” and “health”. The other five strategies were more associated with ethical issues and focused on the complimenting the person and mentioning the favor they have done. Further, the results indicated that there is not a meaningful difference between males and females, and also between individuals in different age groups, education levels and occupations with regards to the use of thanking strategies.

Keywords

• speech act
• thanking
• iranian-islamic culture
• context of iran
• ilami kurdish