Variational pragmatics and responding to thanks – revisited

Abstract

AbstractIn 2005, Klaus P. Schneider published a fascinating article with the title “‘No problem, you’re welcome, anytime’: Responding to thanks in Ireland, England, and the U.S.A.”. Adopting the then emerging and now established framework of variational pragmatics, Schneider’s pioneering paper presents the results of a study on differences between responses to thanks across different varieties of English using experimental discourse completion tasks (DCTs). The paper at hand revisits this cross-varietal analysis and presents the results of an empirical investigation of this same speech act based on natural data collected with the help of Labovian-style fieldwork methodology common in variationist sociolinguistics. The results reveal fundamental differences between the two data types and underline the fact that these different datasets address different research questions. The findings also highlight the existence of regional variation in the use of this speech act in spontaneous real-life interaction. Finally, the paper also puts forward the term