Responding to a Complaint in Thai: A Case Study of Interlocutors with Equal Status
Keywords:
Responding to a complaint, Linguistic strategies, Emancipatory pragmatics, Sociocultural factors, Language and cultureAbstract
The purpose of this research article is to examine the linguistic strategies in responding to a complaint by Thai native speakers with equal status. There were research questions on how Thai native speakers adopt linguistic strategies in responding to a complaint; a case study of interlocutors with equal status; and what factors are Thai native speakers concern with when adopting linguistic strategies in responding to a complaint. The data were collected in the form of Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) and in-depth interviews (200 for the WDCT and 30 for the in-depth interviews).
The linguistic strategies were categorized into four groups, presented with the accompanying percentages of frequency of linguistic strategies in descending order: 1. mitigative linguistic strategies (63.50 %); 2. persuasive linguistic strategies (22.50%); 3. conflict linguistic strategies (10.00%); and 4. sarcastic linguistic strategies (4.00%).
An analysis of the motivational concerns of native speaker reveals that there are three types of motivational concerns, presented with the accompanying percentages of frequency of motivation concerns: 1) motivational concerns relating to the speaker and hearer (63.50 %); 2) motivational concerns relating to the hearer (30.00 %); and 3) motivational concerns relating to the speaker (6.50 %). It was found that Thai speakers place a priority on maintaining a relationship with the interlocutor.
Such linguistic behavior might be motivated by three sociocultural factors: 1) aninterdependent view of self; 2) collectivism andaffiliative society; and 3) the concept of “sanuk” or fun.
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