The Study on Expression of Condolences Between Laypeople and Celebrities to Michael Jackson

Abstract

A condolence note can be a great foundation of comfort to someone who is heartbroken for the loss of his or her loved one. According to Gilbert, Pinel and Wilson (1998), the way people express their condolences’ thoughts, feelings differ according to their power to approach a person, and the social distance between them and the person related to them. This study investigated the speech act’s strategies used between laypeople and celebrities to express their condolences to Michael Jackson and to discover whether celebrities and laypeople convey their condolences’ expression to Michael Jackson in the same manner or approach. Leonard’s and Hillary Zunin’s framework (1991) and Spencer-Oatey’s framework (2005) were adapted to analyze the data on the speech act on expressiveness of condolences. This study revealed that the way they wrote their condolences’ wishes vary according to their statuses, culture and closeness. This research will be able to verify the significance of creating awareness of statuses differences in order to recognize the pragmatic meaning of speech acts in the given language.