A pragmatic analysis of Kĩmwĩmbĩ (e531) condolence messages

Abstract

This study pragmatically analyzes the messages of condolence in Kῖmwῖmbῖ. Condolence is one of Austin’s expressive speech acts. In a burial ceremony or a burial planning meeting, condolers are usually given a chance to express their sympathy and offer support to the bereaved through condolence. However, one challenge that condolers face when expressing condolence is choosing words that express their grief in a sensitive and impactful way. This is because wrong choice of words can easily damage the relationship between them and the bereaved especially if the faces of the bereaved are threatened by their words. The study adopted the qualitative and quantitative research approaches, where the researcher collected data with a view to explaining the condolence strategies, politeness strategies, speech acts features and presuppositions involved in conveying condolence in Kῖmwῖmbῖ and provided their descriptive statistics. The study used Austin and Searle Speech Act Theory, Brown and Levinson Politeness Theory and Yule Presupposition Theory to explain these pragmatic features. The researcher randomly sampled three burial planning meetings and three ceremonies to be used for the study. Purposive sampling was used to sample twenty condolence messages for analysis. The researcher then transcribed and translated into English the condolence utterances with the aforementioned pragmatic features. A guiding card was used to categorize the utterances with these pragmatic features. The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively providing explanation of these features and giving their descriptive statistics in tables. The findings of the study established that making future-oriented remarks was the condolence strategy used the most in these condolence messages. Positive politeness strategy was the most used. The speech acts used in these messages were mostly expressive while the presupposition that was used the most was existential. The findings of this study add new knowledge to the existing in pragmatics, especially on politeness, speech acts, presupposition and burial discourse. The study also provides insights on how Kĩmwĩmbĩ speakers express condolence thus contributing to cross linguistic studies in condolence speech act. Similarly, the study provides data which can be used in other cross linguistic studies hence providing generalized conclusions on condolence speech act.