A Study of Congratulations‟ Responses in Kurdish with Reference to English

When good fortune befalls an acquaintance, it is common for others to express positively their ideas and feelings about it. It is considered a sign of jealousy if other person who hears the good news doesn‟t show or express his/her pleasure on what has happened to the addressee. In a situation of happy news, speakers mostly try to show their happiness by saying “congratulations”. Failure to do that may pose feelings of resentment and ill will. However, the patterns and expressions they use to express responses may vary in different situations. One of the most important ways to keep harmony and good relationship among people who live together is congratulating each other in different occasions. These occasions may be wedding parties, having newly- born babies in the family, getting a new degree and so on. This study deals with the responses of the speech act of congratulation in Duhok society, when people meet each other face-to-face in special occasions. The study aims at analyzing the congratulations‟ responses strategies made by Kurdish students (males and females, 3rd and 4th stages in English department. It also attempts to show the similarities and differences between males‟ and females‟ responses. The results have been analyzed in terms of the taxonomy proposed by Elwood (2004), representing the basic verbal strategies used by the Kurds in responding to other‟s happy news. Based on the modified version of Browns and Levinson‟s model of politeness (1987), the study examined the positive politeness strategies in congratulation speech act. The data gathered have been descriptively analyzed according to the content and frequency of semantic formulas .In order to arrive at statistical results, the percentage of the most frequently used strategies was counted.