Greeting and Taking Leave in Bajjika and English

Abstract

The present research entitled ‘Greeting and Taking Leave in Bajjika and English’ is a successful attempt to explore terms used for greeting and taking leave in the Bajjika language. This is the first research in the field of communicative functions in Bajjika. Further this research compares the explored terms of Bajjika with the respective terms available in the English language. I used primary sources for Bajjika and secondary sources for English. I collected primary data from 60 native speakers of Bajjika using the purposive or judgemental and snowball sampling procedure. A carefully prepared questionnaire was used as the research tool to elicit the data. This research has explored the terms of greeting and taking leave in Bajjika and categorized them. Choice of terms for and by males and females differ in Bajjika and different terminologies are used for people of different ranks. Unlike English, greeting in Bajjika do not vary according to time of a day. The words showing affection are used only by the juniors in Bajjika and those are used by all in English. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter, i.e. introduction, includes general background of the study, review of the related literature, objectives of the study and significance of the study. The sub-topic general background presents linguistic scenario of Nepal in brief and the origin and distribution of Bajjika. The sub-topic communicative functions deals with different classifications of language functions and inclusion of greeting and taking leave in a particular category. This chapter further presents a brief history and present situation of English in Nepalese as well as in global context. Review of the related literature presents the relevant studies, conducted so far, with their objectives, methodology and findings. The second chapter presents the methodology adopted for the study. Similarly, the third chapter analyses and interprets the data collected from both the languages using appropriate illustrations and tables. In this chapter the deciphered terms of Bajjika and English for greeting and taking leave have been compared vividly. The differences and similarities among them have been listed with appropriate examples. Finally, the last chapter, i.e. findings and recommendations, shows the findings and pedagogical implications.