Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Bonn (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie), course: Intercultural Communication, language: English, abstract: The present study compares the thanking behavior across native speakers of Turkish and German and aims to discover similarities or differences based on the form and function of the respective realization strategies. The main focus of the research is to find out if each of the two cultures is oriented towards positive or negative politeness based on an analysis of expressions of thanks functioning as a speech act. In the past, both the Turkish and the German language have been studied in terms of thanking behavior and politeness orientations, but little to no research has been conducted in comparing the languages in these aspects. It is hoped that the contrastive study at hand provides relevant results regarding differences in thanking behavior and politeness orientations between Turkish and German culture.