The Socio-Pragmatics of Greetings in Turkish Folktales

Abstract

Abstract Greetings are linguistic and cultural universals. Every language and culture has a set of formulas or social and ritual acts practiced as greetings. Although cultural practices of greeting to achieve particular social goals may vary, the act of greeting, the paradigm itself, can be examined under two communicative functions. (1) trust/safety providing and (2) the power manipulation. This study examines greetings in Turkish folk tales and figures out their socio-pragmatic dynamics based on politeness theory and speech act theory.