The language of threats in Thai: A Case Study of Interlocutors with Equal Status
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Abstract
Threatening is a speech act which many speakers adopt to fulfill their needs. Meanwhile,
it might harm the relationship between interlocutors. This article aims at examining threatening strategies adopted by native speakers of Thai with equal status using the speech act theory and linguistic politeness as analytical frameworks. The data were collected in the form of written discourse completion tasks (WDCT) and in-depth interviews. The respondents are 230 native speakers of Thai. (200 for the WDCT and 30 for the in-depth interviews) The result shows that when Thai speakers decide to express threats, they prefer linguistic strategies which aim at the illocution rather than managing rapport. The strategies can be categorized into 3 groups including threatening or forcing the hearer (73.27%), expressing dissatisfaction (18.80%), and maintaining rapport between the speaker and hearer (7.93%). It is hypothesized that the notion of “face” and /Khwaam kreng jai/ (‘considerateness’) might be the related socio-cultural factors.
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References
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