Responding to thanks

A variety of forms serve as responses to thanks in Present-day English, albeit infrequently. Such responses minimize the debt incurred by the thanker and serve purposes of negative politeness. The history of responses to thanks has received only brief attention (Jacobsson 2002; Jucker 2020; Taavitsainen and Jucker 2020). Most of the contemporary responses to thanks (e.g., no problem and you bet) are of quite recent origin. Those that “express pleasure” (the pleasure was mine) appear in the late-nineteenth century, while those that express “verbal acknowledgment” (all right, okay) appear in the twentieth century. The increase of minimizing responses is consonant with a trend toward negative politeness, while the loss of the deferential forms found in Early Modern English (your humble servant) reflects the rise of camaraderie politeness. Responses to thanks have also undergone “attenuation” (Jucker 2019), evidenced by the appearance of short forms (welcome), the rise of verbal acknowledgment types, and the increasing use of such responses as conversational closers.

Published online: 13 October 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00052.bri