SIGNALS OF UNDERSTANDING IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION:
A CROSS-LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONAL-PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF
INTERJECTIONS
A
THESIS SUBMITTED TO
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
OF
MIDDLE
EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
BY
MEHMET AKKUŞ
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR
THE DEGREE
OF MASTER OF ARTS
IN THE DEPARTMENT OF
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
MAY 2013
Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences
Prof. Dr. Meliha Altunışık
Director
I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of
Master of Arts.
Prof. Dr. Gölge Seferoğlu
Head
of Department
This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully
adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Sağın-Şimşek
Supervisor
Examining Committee Members
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özgür Aydın
(Ankara U., LING)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Sağın-Şimşek (METU, FLE)
Assist. Prof. Dr. Hale Işık-Güler
(METU, FLE)
iv
ABSTRACT
SIGNALS OF UNDERSTANDING IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION:
A CROSS-LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONAL-PRAGMATIC
ANALYSIS OF INTERJECTIONS
Akkuş,
Mehmet
M.A.,
English Language Teaching
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Sağın-Şimşek
May 2013, 302 pages
The main objective of this study is to investigate and find out the
contribution of interjections as indicators of understanding in an Azerbaijani-
Turkish Lingua Receptiva (
LaRa) communication within the framework of
Functional Pragmatics.
The data utilized in this study were collected by video recording four
Turkish and two university Azerbaijani native speakers who had paired each other
and played a world famous guessing game
Taboo. The length of data obtained
from these recordings is circa two hours.
The data obtained from these recordings were transcribed using the
transcription software EXMARaLDA. Moreover, phonological features of the
Turkish and Azerbaijani interjections were analyzed using PRAAT.