POZDRAVI I ZAHVALE KAO VAŽNI GOVORNI ČINOVI U ŠKOLSKOM I VANŠKOLSKOM OKRUŽENJU

Abstract

In this article we discuss the use of speech acts of greeting and thanking among high school students and the importance of this communication unit in everyday dealings with others in school and extracurricular situations. With speech acts, people perform specific social activities by speaking in a certain way. Greeting and thanking represent simple speech acts from the field of phatic communication that is characterized by a high degree of conventionalisation, ritualism and stereotyping and are indicators of real cultural and emancipated behaviour in society. Many speech acts in a certain community include established patterns collectively accepted by its members as a language formula of sorts. In this regard, greetings and thanking are highly typified statements with the aim of achieving phatic communication and they belong to the group of prestructured language patterns within institutionalised speech acts. The aim of the paper is to determine the ways of realizing the mentioned speech acts on the language level among high school students and their attitudes regarding the importance of such language behaviour and actions from the aspect of politeness, kindness,
and a positive attitude towards other people in educational practice and in everyday communication outside the school environment. It is very  important to point out the educational need for teaching about the importance of greeting and thanking in teaching practice in the context of speech culture and language etiquette. The research has been carried out by surveying first, second, third and fourth grade high school students, and differences in the implementation of the mentioned speech acts on the linguistic level when they are used in the school environment and outside of  educational practice are expected. It is also expected that the differences will be determined by the gender of the respondents, the social status of the  communicator, i.e. the degree of formality, closeness, etc., as well as family and cultural values and customs.