A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF COMPLIMENTS IN HAUSA SOCIAL CONTEXTS
A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF COMPLIMENTS IN HAUSA SOCIAL CONTEXTS
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Date
2013-02
Authors
BRISKA, SOLOMON BARKINDO
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Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate the speech act of complimenting among the Hausa
native speakers. A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to
someone other than the speaker for some “good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc) which is
positively valued by the speaker and the hearer Holmes, 1988:17. The research aims at
examining the basic strategies of compliments along with their responses within the Hausa social
contexts. It also examines how social variables like age, gender, and social relationships affect
the expression of compliments and compliment responses. In any communicative situation,
people grapple with choices as to which form of language to use in a variety of social situations,
therefore making speech a complex human activity. This sociolinguistic complexity can either
make or break social relationship among members of a community. One hundred native speakers
of Hausa language take the two forms of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with 12
scenarios in each, to cover the possibility of different social situations. The speech act data
(compliments) are analysed according to models proposed by Pomerantz (1978), Wolfson and
Manes (1980), Herbert (1989), Ye’s (1995).The data are then tabulated based on frequency and
percentage of occurrence using the Microsoft Excel programme 2007. The study then reveals
three basic compliment expression strategies namely admiration, appreciation, and feeling. These
strategies are realised either explicitly or implicitly by the use of certain semantic carriers like
positive verbs, adjectives and nouns. Also revealed by the study, are the three compliment
response strategies: acceptance, mitigation, and rejection. Like in other speech communities
being studied, this research reveals that compliments are aimed at showing solidarity in order to
consolidate social relationship in the Hausa community, and that they are highly context
sensitive. Accordingly, the study reveals some commonly used compliment structure by the
participants.
Description
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL, AHMADU
BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, NIGERIA; IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF MASTER’S DEGREE IN
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES,
FACULTY OF ARTS
Keywords
PRAGMATIC,, ANALYSIS,, COMPLIMENTS,, HAUSA,, SOCIAL,, CONTEXTS.