A Study of the Social Significance of Greetings

• Main Authors: Chen Chin-Yin, 陳勁穎
• Other Authors: Joseph H. Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48067003522447381669

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 語言學研究所 === 96 === Greetings are an important part in the speech communication. The usage of greetings can reflect a specific cultural and social background. When people approach the other party, they are entering his personal space. Hence, this action causes a face-threatening action, which is proposed by Brown and Levinson. Therefore, people need a greeting to smoothen the interrelationship. Based on the face-threaten theory proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987), I investigate how people greet. The aim of the study is to investigate the use of greetings used by students in Taipei area. There are totally 297 subjects who are divided into three groups according to their age (age 13-16, age 17-19, age 20-28), and in each age group, the numbers of male and female subjects are in nearly equal distribution. The data are collected through questionnaires and are analyzed by Chi-Square. The results of the study are as follows. (1) Generally, the frequency that male students employ greeting strategies is much the same as female students do. Older students employ more greeting strategies than younger students do. (2) As for the familiarity factor, students are prone to confirm the interrelationship, familiar or unfamiliar, in order to decide greet or not, and then, they will have different greeting strategies according to the levels of intimacy, such as questions about H’s situations to a familiar friend, and fixed forms to a casual acquaintance. (3) As for the difference between men and women, generally, women use questions about H’s situation more often than men, and it is most prominent when they greet the hearer of the other sex. Men use filthy words and notice or compliments more often than women. Both men and women use notice or compliments more often to the female hearer. (4) As for the difference among the students in three age groups, older students use more questions about H’s situation as a greeting than younger ones. Surprisingly, older students also more often employ filthy words as a greeting than younger ones. To sum up, from this study, it is obvious that students of different sexes and ages greet differently, and the familiarity to the hearers will affect how students greet. These differences all reflect the current social phenomenon. By comparing the results with the hypothesis, we found that there are some changes in the ways students talk, and they also reflect the change of the society.