The speech act of congratulation and positive politeness strategies : a study of comments on Facebook posts by Palestinians

Abstract EN

This linguistic study attempts to investigate the realization patterns of the speech act of congratulation, a relatively understudied speech act, as used by Palestinian Facebook users.

to this end, naturally occurring data were gathered from two authentic situations that were posted by the researcher’s friends on their Facebook accounts.

the study aims at eliciting the way Palestinians offer congratulations on two occasions related to marriage and birth of a baby.

data were encoded and analyzed based on the taxonomy of congratulation strategy proposed by Elwood (2004).

furthermore, data were analyzed based on a modified version of positive politeness strategies proposed by brown and levinson (1987).

findings showed that the most frequently used strategies of congratulation were illocutionary force indicating devise (IFID), offer of good wishes, and expression of happiness.

findings revealed that the most frequently used strategies by the participants were giving gift to listener, exaggeration, and in-group identity marker.