Speech Acts Bibliography - Compliments / Responses

Achugar, M. (2001). Piropos as metaphors for gender roles in Spanish speaking cultures. Pragmatics, 11, 127-37.

Achugar analyzes piropos as metaphors for gender roles as well as speech events. The article explores their use historically as well as their evolution in the Spanish-speaking world. Specific contextual and formulaic constraints for performing piropos are analyzed. The analysis demonstrates that piropo topics tend to center around food, movement, chivalry, and divinity. Traditionally, piropos were seen as compliments, but as the nature of piropos and the role of women change, piropos seem to be perceived as more offensive by women. The author discusses the connection between men's linguistic choices for performing piropos and their view of, and relationship with, women. Achugar speculates on the continued use of piropos as compliments in Latin American as the role of women also continues to evolve.

Achugar, M. (2002). Piropos: Cambios en la valoración del grado de cortesía de una práctica discursiva. In Placencia, M. E. & Bravo, D. (Eds.), Actos de habla y cortesía en español (pp. 175-92). Munich, Germany: LINCOM Europa.

Traditionally piropos have been categorized as polite compliments given by men to women in the public realm. They are often given anonymously without a response. This study analyzes the use of piropos in order to determine the standard by which piropos are considered polite or insulting by women as well as the social and linguistic variables that affect this perception. In order to gain insight into women's perspectives of the politeness of piropos, 23 Uruguayan women (ranging from 21 to 56 years of age) completed an interview discussing perceptions of piropos and rating various examples as more or less polite. Results show different politeness perceptions based on the topic of the piropo, age of the women, and other factors influencing the effect of the piropo (e.g., gestures, intention). Piropos that referred to the divinity or the braveness of the man were generally rated as more polite while those referring to food or movement were interpreted as less polite, sexual in tone, and an invasion of privacy. Furthermore, piropos were generally considered more polite by women as they increased in age. The author asserts that many of these politeness perceptions are influenced by the society in which the participants live and the changing roles of men and women.

Alba-Juez, L. (2001). Some discourse strategies used to convey praise and/or positive feelings in Spanish everyday conversations. In Campos, H., Herburger, E., Morales-Front, A. & Walsh, T. J. (Eds.), Hispanic Linguistics and the Turn of the Millennium: Papers from the 3rd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 364-80). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

In this work, the author analyses instances of positive irony in Peninsular (PnS) and Argentinean (AS) Spanish. She notes that, as opposed to the traditional negative use of irony in English, the combination of affirming the interlocutor's positive face and using irony is very often utilized to offer praise in Spanish. This use of irony is often linguistically marked (e.g., PnS: Menuda or diminutive; AS: castigar). Furthermore, the use of profanity is very common. A number of strategies are employed to achieve this positive irony. These include: opposite position of literal utterance, adj + ‘menuda’, diminutives, joking, insults, understatements, superlatives, exaggerations, If p, then q = not p, echo thought, prosodic features, pretending, and contradicting. Examples and analysis of each strategy are given.

Barnlund D. C. & Araki, S. (1985). Intercultural encounters: The management of compliments by Japanese and Americans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 16 (1), 9-26.

An interview with 56 participants (20 Americans in the US, 18 Japanese in the US, and 18 Japanese in Japan) revealed that the Americans gave compliments much more frequently than the Japanese — Americans reported to have given a compliment in the previous 1.6 days whereas Japanese had only done so in the previous 13 days. Some of the findings: most frequently praised features were appearance and personal traits among Americans and acts, work/study, and appearance among Japanese. American used a wider range of adjectives than Japanese who used fewer adjectives and adjectives with less of a range in meaning. In responding to compliments, Americans tended to accept compliments or justify or extend them; Japanese questioned their accuracy, denied them, explained the reason why they were not deserved, or responded by smiling or saying nothing at all. The closer the relationship was, the more frequently Americans gave compliments, while Japanese were less likely to offer praise. Female speakers in both cultures were more likely to give and receive compliments. The authors also report their findings from a questionnaire given to 260 Japanese and 260 American participants. Although preferred strategies of expressing admiration were similarly indirect among both the American and Japanese participants, Japanese preferred noting one’s own limitations twice as much as Americans and relied on non-verbal communication much more frequently. Americans preferred giving praise to a third party twice as much as Japanese. Some other findings are in relation to gender, topic focus, and communicative partners.

Billmyer, K. (1990). "I really like your lifestyle": ESL learners learning how to compliment. Penn Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 6 (2), 31-48.

Studies 9 female Japanese ESL learners tutored in complimenting and responding to compliments and 9 untutored (Japanese because they compliment less and with more restricted adjectival repertoire). It looked not just at the speech act but at the reply -- accept, deflect, reject, and types of deflecting (comment, shift credit, downgrade, request reassurance, return). The data were collected during weekly meetings of matched pairs of natives and nonnatives in a Conversation Partners Program. Participants in both groups were asked to perform compliment-inducing tasks such as showing photos of home and family, reporting accomplishment, visiting each other's homes, teaching each other a proverb, showing a new item of apparel. The tasks were tape-recorded and transcribed. The study found that tutored learners produced greater number of norm-appropriate compliments, produced spontaneous compliments (which untutored group did not), used a more extensive repertoire of semantically positive adjectives, and many more deflecting the compliment in their reply. It was concluded that formal instruction concerning the social rules of language use given in the classroom can assist learners in communicating more appropriately with natives outside of the classroom.

Chung-hye Han. (1992). A comparative study of compliment responses: Korean females in Korean interactions and in English interactions. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 8 (2), 17-31.

Compares the compliment responses of 10 Korean females in English interactions and in Korean interactions, with 10 American females. Data from field notes and interviews. Found that Korean females responded differently when speaking in Korean and English, with little evidence of pragmatic transfer. In Korean, the respondents mostly rejected the compliments (45%), deflecting or evading them in 35% of the cases, and accepting them only in 20%. In English, there was 75% acceptance (!) with only 20% rejection. It appears that the interview was after the compliment to check how the Korean speaker really took it. Their explanation for behavior in English was that textbooks only give "thank you" as response to a compliment, as well as a belief that Americans always accept compliments upon receiving them.

Creese, A. (1991). Speech act variation in British and American English. Penn Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 7 (2), 37-58.

Looks at how cultural differences are reflected in five speech acts: requesting, thanking, apologizing, complimenting, and greeting. The study was done by Creese, a British student in the US. Eight Americans and four Britons were interviewed in order to elicit their perceptions concerning speech act differences between the two cultures. The findings here weren't conclusive with Brits and Americans having differing perceptions in some cases. Creese collected 73 compliments naturalistically from teachers' rooms at U. of Penn and 138 from a London school. Creese then did in-depth analysis of complimenting across the two cultures -- looking at lexical predictability, compliment response, syntactic categories, and compliment topic. Similarity was in the first two areas, with some tendency for the Brits to deflect the compliment slightly more. The big difference was in syntactic preference. The Brits preferred "NP is/looks (intensifier) ADJ" (40%), while Americans preferred "I (really) like/love NP" (42%). While Americans also used the former (34%), the Brits only used the American preference 12% of the time. The other difference was on appearance and ability: American 66% vs. 33%, Brits 39% vs. 54%. Hence, the Americans were complimenting more on appearance and the Brits more on ability.

Daikuhara, M. (1986). A study of compliments from a cross-cultural perspective: Japanese vs. American English. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 2 (2), 103-134.

115 compliment exchanges were collected in natural conversations by 50 native speakers of Japanese and analyzed in terms of age, gender, relationships, situations, and non-verbal cues. The most frequently used adjectives in the compliments were: ii ‘nice/good,’ sugoi ‘great,’ kirei ‘beautiful/clean,’ kawaii ‘pretty/ cute,’ oishii ‘good/delicious,’ and erai ‘great/deligent." The "I like/love NP" pattern never appeared in the data. Although there was a great similarity between compliments in Japanese and English (as was found by Wolfson, 1981) with regard to the praised attributes, in Japanese, compliments about one’s ability or performance (73%) or character (rather than one’s appearance) were common. While Americans praised their family members in public, the Japanese seldom complimented their spouses, parents, or children as this would be viewed as self-praise. Ninety-five percent of all responses to compliments fell into the "self-praise avoidance" category, which included rejection of the compliment (35%), smile or no response (27%), and questioning (13%). The author argues that compliments in Japanese seem to show the speaker’s deference to the addressee and this perhaps creates distance between the interlocutors. The addressee fills in this gap by rejecting or deflecting the compliment in order to sustain harmony between the interlocutors.

Dunham, P. (1992). Using compliments in the ESL classroom: An analysis of culture and gender. MinneTESOL Journal, 10, 75-85.

Reports on an informal study with 45 Southeast Asian high school students employing the complimenting strategy as outlined by Wolfson. The students in the study were instructed on how to maintain or continue the conversation based on the response of the addressee. The author reports that the feedback from the students concerning their use of complimenting and connecting was encouraging, and often resulted in an increased confidence in initiating and maintaining conversations with natives. The author describes a series of 10 techniques for teaching complimenting behavior (82-83): starts by checking out how it is done in the native culture, then in US, vocabulary phrase lists, student practice, role playing in pairs, teacher role play with students in front of class, projects where learners must compliment natives, reporting in next class, connecting techniques to lengthen conversation, paired interaction with complimenting and connecting techniques.

Furukawa, Y. (2001). Gengo kinou dounyuueno ichi shian: "home" wo chuushinni (‘Introducing linguistic functions: Compliments among other functions’). Nihongo nihon bunka kenkyuu, 11, 57-72.

Compliments directed at someone who is of higher status are considered a face-threatening act in Japanese, yet native speakers use a number of strategies to retain respect and politeness while realizing the act. The author argues that no textbook or research has completely analyzed such potentially face-threatening use of speech acts and begins by listing the situations that require particular strategies and commenting on common errors made by learners. The situations in interaction with those of higher status include: when one does a favor or receives one, when one has more knowledge or experience, when one is at advantage, when one gives a compliment, when one invades the hearer’s private territory, when one refers to the hearer’s misfortune, when the hearer makes some sort of an error. The article also includes some sample dialogues in which a person of lower status compliments another of higher status.

Ishihara, N. (2003). Giving and responding to compliments. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & R. Mahan Taylor (Eds.), Teaching pragmatics. Washington DC: Office of English Programs, U.S. Department of State. Retrieved November 28, 2003, from World Wide Web: http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/pragmatics.htm

This paper introduces classroom instruction on giving and responding to compliments for intermediate ESL learners. The instruction facilitates learners outside-of-class observation of and interaction with other speakers of English. Class discussions encourage learners to consider various situational factors and compare American compliments with those in their native languages, sensitizing them to appropriate use of language and cultural differences.

Ishihara, N. (2003). Formal instruction on the speech act of giving and responding to compliments. Proceedings of the 7th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 62-78.

This preliminary case study explores immediate and delayed effects of formal instruction on giving and responding to compliments in an ESL classroom setting. The instruction, given to 31 intermediate adult ESL learners, facilitated their outside-of-class observation and interaction. Their performance in and awareness of giving and responding to compliments were described as measured before, during, immediately after, and one year after the instruction. As the instruction progressed, learners produced longer written complimenting dialogues on appropriate topics, approximated native speakers in their use of syntactic structures of compliments, and utilized newly learned response strategies. Even one year after instruction, a subset of the learners demonstrated their retention of central skills although a few response strategies were marginally employed and may have largely been forgotten. The instruction also contributed to the learners’ understanding of the culturally specific nature of complimenting and awareness of gender, relative status, and appropriate topics in the interaction. After the instruction, the learners reported a higher level of confidence in complimenting interactions and enhanced motivation for learning other speech acts. The analyses lend support to the positive effects of formal instruction in pragmatics reported in previous studies.

Koike, H. (2000). "Home"eno hentouni kansuru fukuji bunkateki hikaku: Taijin kankei betsu, seibetsu, sedaikan (‘A comparative study of responses to compliments in terms of subcultures: Interpersonal relations, sex, and generations’). Shinshuu Daigaku Kyouiku Gakubu Kiyou (Journal of the Faculty of Education), 100, 47-55.

Analyses of responses to compliments were based on the data from natural conversation in which research assistants complimented their friends and family members in authentic situations. The response strategies in the data obtained from 326 native speaking subjects were examined separately for interpersonal variables, generations, and gender. The author also came up with her own categorization based on past studies (acceptance, rejection, and neutral responses, and sub-strategies in each). Subjects in their 30’s tended to either express thanks(25%), or reject the compliment and offer humble comments (44%), while those in their 60’s mostly responded favorably, often accepting the compliment. Among family members, rejection and humble comments were found much less frequently than in other interpersonal situations, but speakers tended to sound proud or offer positive comments. In responding to work-related people, such a positive tendency drastically decreased and rejection, humble responses, and thanks occurred five times as frequently as in family relationships. Responses to friends were found somewhere in between. Women used rejection, humble comments, and thanks more often than men, while men responded proudly or expressed shyness more than women.

Kryston-Morales, C. (1997). The production of compliments and responses in English by native Spanish speakers in Puerto Rico: An intercultural pragmatics study. New York University. (UMI No. 9810491)

A comparison of compliments and compliment responses of native speakers of American English (n=25) and Puerto Rican Spanish (n=25) as well as native speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish speaking English (n=25) is presented. The primary research questions aim to examine how compliments and responses are realized and negotiated by the non-native speakers of English as well as how socio-linguistic norms of both groups are reflected in these compliments. In addition, the study compares the strategy choice and use of NS of English and NS of Puerto Rican Spanish. Results were collected in three stages. Stage 1 consisted of natural ethnographic observation and compliment record forms. In Stage 2, the participants completed a DCT task with six compliment situations. Open-ended interviews were used to confirm the responses. Stage 3 involved rating the NNS responses on a "nativeness" scale. Similarities and differences between the two NS groups were found and the NNS group fell right in the middle of the two, reflecting values from both language systems. In general, strategy choice is similar; however, the semantic content of both languages varies. The Puerto Rican Spanish-speakers tended to include more set-ups by the person receiving the compliment, fewer mentions of a "good deal", more requests for clarification, and the desire to lend or borrow the items being complimented on. The author asserts that miscommunication by the NNS in English is likely to occur when set-ups are used (may be seen as "fishing for compliments") and when the same item is desired (may impose on the English speakers individuality). Gender differences and implications of these results are further explored

Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2001). Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 107-27.

This study examines a corpus of over 1000 tokens of compliment responses in British English (BE) and Peninsular Spanish (PnS) in terms of cross-cultural and gender differences. The data was elicited through the use of DCTs from male and female undergraduates [NS of Spanish (N=32) and English (N=28)]. The compliments contained varied levels of power and social distance and included a variety of topics (outward appearance, skills/work, personality, and possessions). The analysis reveals cross-cultural and gender differences. The author asserts four main conclusions: (1) NS of BE showed a tendency to question the truth of the compliment, and in turn, the solidarity of the relationship, (2) Both NS of BE and PnS utilized humor and irony in their responses; however, BE speakers demonstrated an absence of upgraders of an ironic nature and PnS speakers (especially males) adopted these types of upgraders, (3) PnS speakers tended to request repetition of the response, atypical of the BE speakers, and (4) an avoidance of self-praise of natural talent and intelligence was seen in both groups. Implications of these results are discussed.

Nakajima, Y. (1996). Politeness strategies in the workplace: which experiences help Japanese businessmen acquire American English native-like strategies? Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 13 (1), 49-69.

Studies use of discourse completion tests (DCT) and a questionnaire with 22 male speakers of American English and Japanese to see which experiences help Japanese business people to acquire target-like politeness strategies and how Japanese business people perceive the relationship between degrees of indirectness and politeness in Japanese and in English. There were 5 Japanese working for Japanese trading firms in Japan, 5 Japanese working for big business firms in Japan but where they had to use English, 5 Japanese working for a Japanese firm in the US and needing English, 2 Japanese who have worked for firms in Japanese and are currently working in the US in a firm, and 5 native English speakers working in an English-speaking firm in the US. The Japanese and American male speakers were seen to perceive politeness strategies in similar ways. In addition, the study demonstrated that if learners are exposed to specific experiences, they are more likely to acquire the target-like politeness expression rather than transferring their native pragmatics. She looked at refusals, responses to compliments, giving embarrassing information, disagreement, and the relationship between degrees of directness and politeness. Only Japanese who had work experience in English speaking countries understood English "want statements" which are direct but are not considered impolite. The respondents were seen to value their native norms when responding to higher status business people. Most of the Japanese respondents expressed humbleness in their comments and most of the Americans made positive comments in their responses.

Nelson, G. L., Bakary, W. E., & and Batal, M. A. (1996). Egyptian and American compliments: Focus on second language learners. In S. M. Gass and J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 109-128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Uses the act of complimenting for cross-cultural study because it tends to be "a troublesome aspect for speakers of English for learners from different cultural backgrounds," especially because of the form and frequency with which compliments occur in American English. They cited Wolfson and Manes (1980) who collected over 1000 American compliments in a wide range of situations and found that approximately 80% of compliments fall into 3 syntactic patterns: NP is/looks (intensifier) ADJ; I like/love NP; and PRO is ADJ NP. In addition, they found that 2/3 of the adjectival compliments used one of 5 adjectives: nice, good, beautiful, pretty, and great. Before discussing their own study, the researchers described 2 key concepts in understanding complements in Arabic -- the belief in the "evil eye" and the practice of offering the object of the compliment to the person who complimented. They then described their study which investigated Egyptian and American compliments to determine similarities and differences in: 1) compliment form, 2) attributes praised, 3) gender of the compliment giver and recipient, and 4) compliment frequency. The subjects were 20 Egyptian students in Egypt and 20 U.S. students in the U.S. between 18-25 years old, half male and half female. In an interview (which was audiotaped) they were asked to tell the most recent compliment they had given, received, and observed, the relationship between the complimenter and the recipient, the attribute praised, the exact words used in the compliment, and the day the compliment was given.

The results showed that the Egyptian and U.S. American compliments were similar in their form, which was primarily adjectival (adjective was responsible for the positive meaning). The average number of words used in compliments by American females was 6.2, while for males it was 4.3. Egyptian compliments were longer, as Egyptian females used an average of 10.7 Arabic words and males used 8.7. The longer length of Egyptian compliments appears to be due in part to use of repetition of almost the same idea in different words and the use of several adjectives in a series. American and Egyptian compliments also differed in use of comparatives (similes and metaphors particularly), in that 11% of Egyptian compliments contained comparatives while they were not used at all in the American compliments. Many of these Egyptian compliments took the form of "proverbs and other precoded ritualized phrases." In contrast to the 3 main forms of compliments listed above for American compliments, Egyptian compliments predominantly followed these 3 forms: NP ADJ (intensifier); NP VP (intensifier) (ADJ); and NP DEM. PRO. In terms of attributes praised, the researchers found that personal appearance was praised frequently in both cultures, accounting for 50% of Egyptian compliments and 43% of the American compliments. The largest category of American compliments was regarding skills/work, which made up 47% of the total. The type of compliment given in both Egyptian and American compliments appeared to depend on the gender of the giver and recipient of the compliment as well. The study found that Americans gave compliments more frequently than Egyptians, as the number of days reported between the last compliment given and the interview was only an average of 1.6 for Americans while it was an average of 8.6 for Egyptian respondents.

Rose, K. R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (1), 27-67.

Reports the results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmatic development among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who completed a cartoon oral production task designed to elicit requests, apologies, and compliment responses in EFL or in Cantonese -- the first two speech acts being in their curriculum but not the third. They found little evidence of pragmatic transfer from Cantonese. The subjects were approximately 40 children at levels P-2, P-4, and P-6 respectively, half receiving the prompts in English, half in Cantonese. They were to tape record what they thought the character in the cartoon would say. In requests, there is at best only weak evidence of any situational variation. It would seem that the children had not yet developed the pragmatic competence in English to exhibit such situational variation. It could also be that the instrument did not adequately capture the relevant contextual features. In apologies, all three levels had similar responses regarding the strategy of expressing an apology. However, P-6 demonstrated more control over intensifiers. They also acknowledged responsibility more and offered repair -- a pattern that was not found in the Cantonese data. There was little evidence of situational variation however. Compliments were not in the curriculum. The most frequent strategy was acceptance of the apology -- in Cantonese as well, so the patterns were similar. There was a marked increase in both frequency and range of strategies used with the P-6 group. No background questions were asked so there is no way of knowing about exposure to English-speaking domestic helpers, parents' English proficiency, and attitudes towards English.

Rose, K. R. & Kwai-fun, C. N. (2001). Pragmatic and grammatical awareness: A function of the learning environment. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 145-170). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Compares the effects of inductive and deductive approaches to the teaching of English compliments and compliment responses to university-level learners of English in Hong Kong. While the deductive group (N=16) was provided with metapragmatic information through explicit instruction before engaging in practice activities, the inductive group (N=16) engaged in pragmatic analysis activities in which they were expected to arrive at the relevant generalizations themselves. Three measures of learner performance were administered in a pretest/posttest design: a self-assessment task (from Hudson et al. and asking respondents to indicate what they believe to be the level of their ability to respond appropriately in the 18 scenarios), a discourse completion task (DCT) (with respondents providing both the compliment and the response for the 18 scenarios), and a metapragmatic assessment task (where they had to rank-order four possible responses from the most to the least appropriate for the same scenarios). The DCT and metapragmatic assessment task were also administered to natives speakers of English and native speakers of Cantonese. Results were mixed, indicating no effect for instruction on learner confidence or metapragmatic assessment of appropriate compliment responses. However, the results from the DCT showed a marked increase in the use of compliment formulas by both treatment groups, with no similar increase for the control group (N=12). Results for compliment responses revealed a positive effect only for the deductive group, indicating that although inductive and deductive instruction may both lead to gains in pragmalinguistic proficiency, only the latter may be effective for developing sociopragmatic proficiency.

Terao, R. (1996). Home kotobaeno hentou sutairu (‘Response styles to compliments]. Nihongogaku (Japanese Linguistics), 5, (5), 81-88.

Using 901 responses to compliments from TV talks shows and authentic conversations, the author focuses on characteristics of compliment responses in Japanese in this article. Compared to Holmes (1986) (although the taxonomy is slightly different) where acceptance types occurred 60% of the times, acceptance was found less than a third (30%). Rejection was used much more frequently in Japanese (25%) than in English (10%). By drawing examples and analyzing some lexical items (e.g., dakewa, nomi, igaito, kekkou, warito ichou, chotto, sukoshi(wa)), the author points out that even in acceptance types in Japanese, there were humble comments that speakers offered. Speakers also used various other semantic strategies to avoid self-praise and admiration for their family members (e.g., offering negative comments and perspectives).

Valdés, G. & Pino, C. (1981).Muy a tus órdenes: Compliment responses among Mexican-American bilinguals. Language and Society, 10, 53-72.

This study compares the compliment responses among English-speaking monolinguals, Spanish-speaking monolinguals, and bilingual Mexican-Americans by analyzing the constraints underlying their responses as well as how speech is used to observe these constraints. Results demonstrate different constraints in the language groups. The English-speaking monolinguals’ responses tended to be categorized as token appreciation, rejection/disagreement of the compliment, or as additional strategies taken from previous research. The Spanish monolinguals included many of the same strategies as the English monolinguals; however, this group also showed a marked distinction between intimates and non-intimates in strategy choice as well as in the politeness formulae that was used (e.g., a tus órdenes). An additional strategy that was found was a request for clarification (noted as a strategy to avoid self-praise). The bilingual group adapted patterns from both groups, demonstrating a greater variety of acceptance patterns. Furthermore, both English and Spanish were used in responses from the bilingual group. The authors assert that this demonstrates a unique system for bilingual speakers, not identical to either group.

Ye, L. (1995). Complimenting in Mandarin Chinese. In G. Kasper (Ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese as a native and target language (pp. 207-295). Manoa, Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press.

Begins with a cross-linguistic/cultural literature review of the role of complimenting in terms of formulas used, topics, responses, distribution and frequency, function, and compliments as a gender-preferential strategy. Since most of the research so far has focused on varieties of English, Lei Ye conducted a study of Chinese compliments to give a different cultural perspective. The subjects were 96 native speakers of Chinese in China (42 male, 54 female) ranging from age 18 to 38 years old, all with an education above the tertiary level. A discourse completion task was used consisting of 16 situations, eight for giving compliments and eight for responding to compliments. The dependent variables were compliment structure, compliment focus, and compliment response strategy. The independent variables were gender (gender-specific names were given to the fictional interlocutors) and compliment topic (personal appearance and skill/performance). Detailed statistical information was given in the chapter for each of the result categories. Some distinctive features emerged: the most frequently used positive semantic carriers in Chinese complimenting were adjective/stative verbs and adverbs; the use of nouns related illocutionary force of complimenting to categorization and evaluation; and verbs rarely function as semantic positive carriers. In Chinese culture, there is preference for giving compliments about performance rather than appearance (in contrast to English in which they are fairly evenly distributed). There are constraints upon giving compliments across genders, because while giving compliments in Western cultures is seen as a courtesy, in Chinese it can be seen as a violation of social order. In addition, the function of compliments seemed to be different in Chinese, because while compliments function to create solidarity in Western cultures, in Chinese it may actually increase social distance. Empirical data supported this claim in that the occurrence of compliments was shown to be relatively low when the status of the Chinese interlocutors was equal.

Yokota, J. (1986). Homerareta tokino hentouni okeru bokokugo karano shakai gengogakuteki teni. (‘Sociolinguistic transfer from the native language in the responses to compliments’). Nihongokyouiku (‘Journal of Japanese Language Teaching’), 58, 203-223.

This research was conducted to test a hypothesis that American learners of Japanese tend to transfer their L2 pragmatic norms in accepting compliments directed to their family members rather than deflecting or refusing them as Japanese speakers would normally do. Nineteen learners of Japanese took the DCT that included 5 items in which the speakers were complimented and another 5 where their family member was complimented both by a same-gender friend of their age. Their responses were compared with those by 20 native speakers of Japanese and those by 21 native speakers of American English (responded in English). The responses were categorized into acceptance, deflection, and rejection, each in combination with upgrading, offering comments, shifting topics, downgrading, returning a compliment, and joking. In her taxonomy, native speakers deflected the compliments more than half of the time. Although they accepted and rejected a compliment about 25% of the time respectively, they tended to make the acceptance and rejection ambiguous by adding negative comments (avoidance of self-praise). Learners seemed to believe that rejection was most polite (overgeneralization) and rejected compliments about 40% of the time. Although most natives deflected or rejected compliments directed at their family members, learners tended to accept them (70%).

Speech Acts Bibliography: Compliments / Responses

Speech Acts Bibliography:
Compliments / Responses