Responding To Thanks In Hong Kong English And Philippine English From The Perspective Of Variational Pragmatics: A Comparative Study

The speech act of responding to thanks,academically termed as imbalance reducer after thanks(IRAT)(Bieswanger,2015),fulfils important social functions in human communication.With the prosperous development of variational pragmatics,scholars have carried out research on IRATs among different varieties of English,most of which are in the Inner Circle as defined in Kachru’s(1982)three circle model.Within the framework of Schneider(2005)and Bieswanger(2015),this study attempts to systemically and empirically explore IRATs in Hong Kong English and Philippine English,based on both experimental data and natural data collected via different sociolinguistic methods,with the aim of discovering the landscape of IRATs in the English varieties of the Outer Circle in Asian countries（regions）.The fieldwork is conducted with 200 participants in Hong Kong and Manila,yielding 619 realizations of IRATs.On the one hand,differences and similarities concerning the use of IRATs are found between the two English varieties.On the other hand,the comparison of IRAT realizations between Hong Kong English and British English,and between Philippine English and American English are made to test their similarities.A nationally distinctive type DON’T THANK ME is found in Hong Kong corpus;a nationally distinctive supportive move Take care is found in the Manila corpus;and an Asian featured internal modification No is found in both corpora.