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

Abstract

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.

Politeness strategies in Ugandan English: making requests and responding to thanks

“…Schneider 2005, Aijmer 1996). However, if the trend observed by Dikin (2017) as regards the decline in the use of (you're) welcome in Canadian English in preference to no problem (especially among the young generation) is also present in other L1 Englishes, then the use of (you're) welcome may remain only more prevalent in L2 Englishes such as Ugandan English. As a formal expression in British English (Aijmer 1996, Schneider 2005, this is the response that is taught in Ugandan schools as a polite formula that one is supposed to use.…”

Responses to Thanks in Ireland, England and Canada: A Variational Pragmatic Perspective

“…Yet others rather highlight position and remain more neutral as to the exact function of responses to thanks. These include 'responses to thanks' (Dinkin, 2018;Leech, 2014;Mulo Farenkia, 2013), 'responses to gratitude' (Gesuato, 2016), 'thanking responders' (Aijmer, 1996) or 'thanks responses' (Rüegg, 2014;Staley, 2018).…”

“…Other approaches do, however, exist. Dinkin (2018), for instance, does not differentiate between head moves and supportive moves but is more generalising at an early point in the analysis. For instance, he categories bye bye and have a good day (elsewhere analysed as supportive moves) as ACKNOWLEDGEMENTs and so allocates these to the same category as the forms sure, okay and yeah (analysed as head moves elsewhere).…”

“…Schneider, 2007). Research on CanE has been conducted on a range of genres, including everyday conversational discourse (Mulo Farenkia, 2012Schneider, 2017) as well as responses to thanks in the context of the genre of direction-giving (Bieswanger, 2015;Dinkin, 2018) and in the context of interviews (Talla Sando Ouafeu, 2009). Descriptions of responses to thanks in IrE and EngE are, however, limited to research on everyday conversational discourse (Schneider, 2005).…”

Emancipating (im)politeness research and increasing its impact

“…;Barron & Schneider 2009;Dinkin 2018;Lin et al 2012;Ren 2018c;Ren et al 2013;Schneider & Barron 2008).…”