Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

It's no problem to be polite: Apparent‐time change in responses to thanks

2018; Wiley; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/josl.12278

1467-9841

Aaron J. Dinkin,

Discourse Analysis in Language Studies

This paper reports a rapid and anonymous study of apparent‐time change in Toronto among the use of expressions such as you're welcome and no problem as responses to thanks , thank you , and thank you very much . We observe change in progress toward no problem and no worries at the expense of you're welcome . Meanwhile, a change in stylistic stratification is also taking place: for older speakers, no problem is a less formal response, suitable principally for responding to more perfunctory thanks , rather than more formal thank you ; among younger speakers, no problem appears at equal rates in response to all levels of thanking expressions. This combination of changes may explain the intensity of the negative attention no problem attracts from prescriptivists and in popular media, in that older people perceive younger speakers as using what to them is an informal variant disproportionately frequently when a formal variant is called for.