Speech Act for Breaking Up a Romantic Relationship in Thai

Abstract

This research has two objectives: (1) to study language strategies to break up a romantic relationship of Thai native speakers and (2) to analyze factors affecting their use of the language strategies concerning gender differences. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was applied and distributed to 40 Thai native speakers: 20 male and 20 female. The data were collected through written responses and interviews. The research results found that the speech act for breaking up the romantic relationship would be found in three situations that were (1) the situation in which the speaker believed that the listener was the offender; (2) the situation in which the speaker admitted that he or she was the wrongdoer; and (3) the situation in which the speaker thought that both the speaker and the listener were wrong. Among these three situations, male speakers were most likely to use the speech act to break up their romantic relationship in the situation 3 while the female speakers were in the situation 1. Besides, there were two patterns of speech act the speakers applied to end their romantic relationship with another person including (1) breakup speech pattern that clearly stated the word “break up” using nine language strategies such as clearly stating an intention to break up, apologizing, self-condemnation and blaming others, and (2) breakup speech pattern that avoided mentioning the word “break up” which was based on eight language strategies that were blessings, apologizing and self-condemnation as examples.