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Exercise 10: Responding to Thanks
Your response has been submitted to
speechactstrategies@gmail.com.
Strategies and
Expressions in Response to Thanks
u
Since
the expression of thanks is the acknowledgment of indebtedness, the recipient
of thanks often denies the thanks in an attempt to equalize the
relationship. The less indebted the
person doing the thanking actually is, the more likely the recipient of thanks
might be to accepting the thanks.
u
The
phrase, zenzen,
is normally accompanied by a negative such as zenzen mondai nai‘No
problem at all’ or zenzen kamawanai ‘I
don’t mind at all’ and intensifies the force of the utterance. However, it is often used with affirmative
structures, especially among younger speakers (e.g., zenzen iiyo, zenzen heiki, zenzen daijobu),
still emphasizing that there was/will be no problem.
u
Thanks
and apologies in Japanese can be responded to in a similar way, just as the
expressions of thanks and apologies often overlap (Coulmas,
1981).
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