A Pragmatic Analysis of Thanking Strategies Among Kurdish Speakers of Ilam Based on Gender and Age

Thanking is one of the most commonly used speech act and major instruments which strengthen the bonds between the members of a society. This study attempted to study the most frequently- used thanking strategies in Ilami Kurdish language. To this end, a DCT (discourse completion task) will be applied. DCT represents various scenarios where the participants are asked to write down the terms they use to thank others. The participants involve 117 people from different walks of life, poor or rich, educated or uneducated, young or old, and the like. The analysis of data based on Cheng's (2005) taxonomy of 8 strategies to express gratitude. To analysis the collected data both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized. The results revealed that ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were the most frequently used strategies among subjects of under 30 years respectively and ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were common used strategies among subjects of above 30 years respectively. Regarding the gender of participants ‘thanking’, ‘positive feeling’ and ‘appreciation’ were the most frequently used strategies among male subjects respectively and in responding to thanking strategies ‘thanking’ and ‘positive feeling’ were the general tendency of females participant. EFL learners can be benefited from these findings to develop their pragmatic competence.