Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Speech Act of Greeting in the Kazakh and English Languages

The present study investigated the sociolinguistic aspects of the speech act of greeting and its differences with regard to expressing or producing forms of greeting in the Kazakh and English languages. Contrastive studies of speech acts of different languages could help to overcome the gap that can happen in interpersonal communication among the speakers of various languages. The focus of the study is on the descriptive sociolinguistic analysis of the speech act of ‘greeting’ in the Kazakh and English languages and the ways of exchanging greetings. Methods used in collecting data were a questionnaire, an observation, an interview, introspection and statistical analysis. The materials which were analyzed involved Kazakh greetings that took place in real-life, and English greetings occurred in audiovisual materials from the internet. The results showed that social contexts had their influence on expressing the speech act of greeting in both Kazakh and English languages, and that each language has its own peculiarities and some similarities. We have defined that how does greeting operate in our life. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p26