Gratitude Expressions in Spoken Discourse of Filipino Speakers of English: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

Based on Wong's (2010) types of thanking strategies, this corpus-based research explored how Filipino speakers of English express their gratitude and respond to the speech act of thanking. The Antconc software was utilized to search, extract, and examine instances of such expressions from the Philippine component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-PHI). The 279 occurrences of gratitude expressions found in the corpus showed that the interlocutors employed these ten different thanking strategies in varying degrees and frequencies with thanking + alerter as the most commonly used strategy. The data also revealed that they utilized thanking + alerters + stating a reason and thanking + stating beneficiary's feeling . It is hoped that the study's findings may inform language learners, teachers, and instructional materials developers.