Gratitude in Discourse: Sociolinguistic Analysis of PNHS-Main SHS Students

The study investigates the employment of compliment and compliment response strategies CRs of Senior High School students at Paranaque National High School-Main, Schools Division of Paranaque City. The pertinent study uses the linguistic framework of Holmes (1998;1993) as modified by Yu (2003). One hundred seventeen Senior High School students took part in this study. Forty-seven of whom were grade 11 students under Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (TVL) strand and General Academic Strand (GAS). Whereas, the remaining seventy students were grade 12 students. They were Accountancy Business Management (ABM) strand, Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS) strand, TVL, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics strand. The students-respondents were asked to supply the printed Discourse Completion Test (DCT). This DCT was distributed by the assigned teacher-facilitator. From the data collected, it was revealed that both grades 11 and 12 students opted to follow the Accept, Combination, Evade, and Reject macro pattern. On the other hand, it was found that both groups of students preponderantly utilized Appreciation Token, Return Compliment, Question Accuracy, and Combination as micro pattern of CRs. There was no significant difference insofar as gender of senior high school students was concerned. Implications of this study were provided.