Abstract

This article investigates how gratitude is discursively constructed and how the construction of gratitude reflects Thai society. The study draws on a search for the word กตัญญู /ka-tan juː/ (gratitude) from the Thai National Corpus (TNC) 3.0. The analyzed data contain 175,507 words, including collocates, concordance lines, and expanded contexts. The study employs corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis as theoretical frameworks. The results reveal that the discursive construction of “gratitude” in a Thai context consists of (1) expectations of reciprocating a favor, (2) various acts to express gratitude, and (3) the individuals involved in gratitude discourse. A grateful person is considered to be a desirable member of society. It is also found that gratitude reflects power relations between people in Thai culture. Lexical choices and various linguistic strategies, such as adversative passive construction and modal verbs, are used to show that benefactors are superior to beneficiaries. Inequality among individuals in Thai society is implicit in gratitude discourse.