A Contrastive Study of Gratitude Speech Act: A Case Study of Algerian and Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how Jordanian and Algerian Arabic speakers express gratitude and compare the differences and similarities in the gratitude speech act between the two varieties of Arabic. The study also aims to determine if there are variations in the strategies used by the participants based on their social status (equal, high, and low) and gender (male and female). The study involved 80 participants from two different universities in Algeria and Jordan, and the data was collected using Oral Discourse Completion Task. Cheng's (2005) framework was used to classify the strategies for expressing gratitude. The findings suggest that thanking and religious formulas are the most used strategies for expressing gratitude. Additionally, Jordanian females express more gratitude than Jordanian males, while Algerian females use more thanking than Algerian males. Furthermore, participants of equal status tend to express more thanking and joking, while those of low to high status tend to use more titles.