recipient repsonse after imposition of ashes

Responses to thanks are among the speech acts which have been shown to exhibit variety-specific and variety-preferential variation across pluricentric languages. Cross-varietal pragmatic variation across pluricentric varieties is seen in conventions of language use specific to one variety relative to another variety/varieties (variety-specific features) and also in particular conventions of language use preferred in one variety over another (variety-preferential features) (cf. Schneider & Placencia, 2017 for an overview). In recent years, however, there is a heightened awareness that pluricentric varieties also display considerable synchronic pragmatic variation (cf. The study of such variation was long focused on the level of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Pluricentric varieties, such as Irish English (IrE), English English (EngE) and Canadian English (CanE), although sharing a common language, show evidence of synchronic variation. The paper also discusses the methodological challenges of contrasting spoken interactional data for cross-varietal pragmatic speech act analyses and shows some strengths of specialised corpora in this regard. Speakers of Canadian English are suggested to orient more strongly to positive face needs, and speakers of Irish English and English English more strongly towards negative face needs. In contrast, the speakers of Canadian English use an ‘expressing appreciation of the addressee’ strategy to a comparatively larger extent.

While all varieties use a ‘minimising the favour’ strategy extensively, this strategy is employed to a comparatively higher degree in the Irish English and English English data.

Variety-preferential choices are, however, also recorded on a national level, particularly in type and strategy preferences.

Findings point to the broad universality of realisations of responses to thanks across the pluricentric varieties at hand. The analysis centres on the cross-varietal pragmatic choices made in responding to thanks on the level of tokens, types and strategies. Data are taken from the Lueneburg Direction-Giving (LuDiG) corpus, a specialised corpus of spoken direction-giving exchanges across pluricentric varieties constructed using Labovian-style methods. The present study investigates responses to thanks across the varieties of Irish English, English English and Canadian English.

Recipient repsonse after imposition of ashes