Abstract:
Greeting forms are considered as socio-cultural methods developed by humans to
exchange pleasantries and good wishes with the view of advancing friendship,
recognition, and solidarity in a particular speech community. This study examined the
speech act of greeting in the Gonja speech community. It utilizes an ethnographic
design using a qualitative approach to collect data from four (4) Gonja communities
and employs a purposive sampling technique to collect data through observations,
audio recordings, and focus group discussions with native Gonja speakers. It was
discovered that Gonja greetings reflect the universality of the phenomenon, even
though there are culture- and language- specific nuances in their meanings. The data
analysis also uncovered the socio-pragmatic principles guiding greeting choices as
well as shedding light on the socio-cultural facets of the people that are embedded in
their greetings, including the use of non-verbal cues such as squatting and lying down
in showing deference to the elderly and people in authority such as chiefs.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education, submitted to the
School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba
