Investigating EFL speakers’ gratitude strategies: Interlanguage pragmatics

Abstract

Gratitude strategies used by EFL speakers have always been the focus of interest by researchers who observed the presence of pragmatic transfer strategies by which speakers express their gratitude. We have seen that several adapted versions of Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) by Eisenstein and Bodman (1986) are constructed based on the original version and largely applied to the participants from various backgrounds. A similar methodology is used in this study and we investigated the gratitude strategies of participants, including 80 EFL learners in Turkey and 70 non-native European speakers of English at tertiary-level. We also interviewed with 44 Turkish speaking participants and used two sampling methodologies to identify the participants that could promote the data obtained from the DCTs. Our research entailed quantitative and qualitative data examined through content analysis. Primary findings indicated strong divergences and weak similarities between both speaker groups who resorted to the speech act of thanking compared to non-native European speakers who also differed in thanking strategies. Finally, we have been provided with valuable indications for the constituent parts of the language teaching that neglect the instructional side on the pragmatic use of language for gratitude and other speech acts.