Abstract

The present study is a pragmatic study of congratulation responses in Iraqi Arabic. It aims at finding out the main and sub- responses strategies in the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses, figuring out the more frequent types of positive politeness strategies used in the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses and investigating the influence of gender in expressing the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses concerning the questions above. The researcher hypothesizes that there are different responses strategies used in the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses. In the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses, there are positive politeness strategies more frequently used than others, and the congratulation responder's gender affects his / her Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses. By using a discourse completion test(DCT), the researcher verifies these hypotheses to be conducted on 60 students(males/females) at Mosul University/ College of Basic Education/Department of English as a sample for the research. The test consists of ten happy situations, and the participants have to imagine the situations that his/her friend is congratulating him/her and to write their responses in Arabic. Finally, the data have to be analyzed in terms of the taxonomy proposed by Elwood (2004) and then by the positive politeness strategies stated by Brown and Levinson (1987). Based on the results of the current study, it has been found that there are different responses strategies used in the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses, there are positive politeness strategies more frequently used than others, and finally, males and females employ somewhat similar congratulation responses strategies but with varying frequencies and realizations.