A Comparative Socio-Pragmatic Study of thanking Patterns in English– Arabic Political Texts with Reference to Translation

Abstract

Thanking is a widely used phenomenon for attracting effectiveness and achieving various purposes depending on how and why it is said or written. It is deeply embedded in our language and no one of us ever gets through a day without using it. Actually, thanks refer to response with appreciation effects utilized as a means for issuing gratitude. However, gratitude is not the only motivation for thanking; thanks can have other sociopragmatic political purposes besides, depending on their type, object, condition, and strategy resembled; whereof, thanking meaning is lexically based on various types depending on the purpose employment. Additionally, thanks are intrinsically governed by social determinacies, in which pragmatic choice of thanking expressions is mainly qualified in relation to the influenced social power. Thereupon, miscommunicating the proper pragmatic thanking choice would mainly attribute negative social consequences. The present study aims at defining the socio- pragmatic impact of employing thanking expressions in political speeches based on the socio-cultural specificity of the two languages communities. To conduct such a study, a qualitative method via critical pragmatic analysis is adopted in which (6) texts with their rendition are represented to be the data of the study. The data are withdrawn from BBC news and Al- Jazeera. The conclusions of the study reveal the direct influence of social situations on creating thanking expression in both languages. Furthermore, most of pragmatic renditions of English thanking expressions into Arabic and Arabic thanking expression into English exhibit a case of strategy shift that attributes a case of pragmatic breakdown of the thanking purposes.