Compliments in Cross-Culture Perspective by Nessa Wolfson (original) (raw)
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A comparative study of Mexican and Irish compliment responses
The purpose of the present study is to compare the compliment responses (CRs) provided by 60 native Mexican Spanish speakers and 60 Irish English native speakers. Using a discourse completion task, 1080 responses were analyzed based on Herbert's (1989) and Nelson, El Bakary and Al-Batal's (1993) taxonomy. Findings suggest the existence of cross-cultural similarities in Irish and Mexican CRs in the frequency of deflecting comments and the mechanisms that are used to redirect the praise force. Second, the two languages differ in important ways. In responding to compliments, Irish recipients are much more likely than Mexican speakers to use a single strategy when formulating CRs. The findings further show that social factors (social distance, social power, gender, and the topic of the compliment) in both Mexican and Irish society seem to be crucial parameters in the formulation and acceptance or rejection of a compliment.
International Journal of Linguistics, 2014
This research explores the strategies employed by the Vietnamese to respond to compliments and the influence of compliment receivers' perception of the compliment on their responses. Three hundred and sixty compliment/compliment response sequences were obtained from 120 extended interviews with 126 participants (6 interviewers and 120 interviewees). The conversations were tape-recorded. The interviewees' interpretation of their compliment responses was also recorded. The results show the Vietnamese have a high tendency to reject compliments because they want to be perceived as modest people by the compliment giver. The analysis of the compliment/compliment response sequences and of the participants' interpretation of their responses indicates that responding to compliments in Vietnamese is a complex speech act. Besides three major strategies used in compliment responses (i.e., acceptance, rejection and deflection), there are cases where the two opposite strategies acceptance and rejection appear in the same response. This reflects the Vietnamese tension between modesty/self-denying and self-appreciation. In other words, different principles involved in replying to compliments interact both between responses and within responses. The act of responding to compliments in Vietnamese is also complicated in that the receiver of the compliment can use the same strategy to convey different meanings. For example, in deflecting compliments the compliment receiver tends to shift the praised credit to other people, luck, fate or God to acknowledge their contribution. However, compliment receivers
2016
Hall (1976) argued that communication is culturally indexed. In high-context cultures most information exists in the context where it is internalised by people when communicating or it can be found in the physical context (Hall, 1976). The context is essential because sometimes the text does not say what it is trying to convey but the situation and the discourse pattern may help one to determine the essence of the message. This is common in societies where people are indirect in their discourse, often done to minimise face-threatening acts which are considered to be polite. However, some people in other cultures may not view it in the same way and they may consider indirectness as impolite and directness as polite. In this regard, it is evident that different cultures may have different concepts of politeness (Watts, 2003).
2013
When compliments are interpreted as sincere and spontaneous, the community can recognise them positively. Furthermore, when two people have a conversation with each other, they may or may not be involved in a power difference (-P) and distance (-D) between them. This study investigates compliment responses between Australian students as Native Speakers (NS) and Indonesian students as Non-Native Speakers (NNS). The study focuses the Compliment Responses (CRs) on specific cultural groups and cross-cultural comparisons between Indonesian and Australian cultures, based on gender and response strategies. Firstly, Indonesian male students will perceive compliments to be more flirtatious than innocent. Secondly, Australian male students will perceive compliments to be more objectively practical than emotional. Finally, in response to compliments, Australian students will use acceptance token agreements and deflections with more frequency than Indonesian students do. The study was designed in a qualitative method, which focused on a single group of two students. The study also used a purposive sampling focusing on reduced variations, simplified analyses, and facilitated group interviewing. In response to compliments, Indonesian male students tend to accept tokens less than Australians do. The Indonesians tend to seek agreement in the extent degree of equality and solidarity, which is similar to what the Australians do.
A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers
Journal of Pragmatics, 2009
This study investigates compliment responses (CR) among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers. The data were collected through the use of written discourse completion tasks (DCT), with four situational settings (appearance, character, ability and possession). A total of 60 university-student informants participated in the study. The findings demonstrate a consistent tendency across the macro, micro and combination levels for the Chinese participants to use fewer Accept strategies, and more Evade and Reject strategies, than their Australian counterparts; that is, the Chinese express appreciation for a compliment less and denigrate themselves more. For the Chinese participants, an implicit and 'detouring' approach is at least as desirable as an explicit CR. This is in line with modesty and collectivism-pillars of Chinese culture. Australians on the other hand prefer using explicit CRs. Another finding is that the Chinese participants used far fewer combination strategies than the Australians, indicating that the Australians made more effort when responding to compliments. The variant linguistic manipulations of CRs shown in this study indicate that any universal CR model will fail, because different cultures have different sets of protocols. The findings in this study add a new dimension to the study of CR use.
Compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese: The influence of region and compliment topic
Journal of Pragmatics, 2012
Situated in a recently established field of variational pragmatics (Schneider and , this study investigates one of the under-researched non-Indo-European languages, Chinese, with regard to the influence of macro-social and micro-social factors on compliments. More specifically, the present study focuses on the impact of region, a macro-social variable, and compliment topic, a microsocial factor, on Chinese compliments given by Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese higher education students. Sixty Taiwanese and sixty Mainland Chinese, equally gendered in each group, completed a written discourse completion task consisting of eight contentenriched situations (Billmyer and Varghese, 2000) eliciting compliments. With regard to the impact of region, commonalities emerged between those compliments of Chinese students in Taiwan and Mainland China. Both groups preferred to offer Explicit compliments as well as Implicit compliments in the form of Requests, Assumptions, and Want Statements. Overall, Explicit compliments emerged as the most popular strategy. However, statistically significant differences were identified between the two groups in a few Implicit compliment strategies. Regarding the effect of compliment topic, both Taiwan and Mainland Chinese students utilized several compliment strategies in similar ways across appearance/possession and performance/ability situations. It appears that in most cases, it was compliment topic rather than the variety of Chinese which modulated the compliments by both groups. In addition, the paper suggests that compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese may have undergone a change, possibly influenced by western cultures.
Crosscultural Communication in English-Speaking Communities: Speech Acts of Complimenting
2020
INTRODUCTION Speech acts take an important role in communication. Austin defines speech acts as the minimal unit of communication. Austin divides speech acts into locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts 1 . One of the most interesting acts to study is complimenting. Herbert studies speech acts such as compliments and compliment responses because there is not an agreement or a common pattern on what is the correct way of complimenting and responding to a compliment, even within the same speech community. Holmes claims that a compliment is: “a speech act which attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed for some ‘good’ possession, characteristic, skill etc.” 2
Compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese
Situated in a recently established field of variational pragmatics (Schneider and , this study investigates one of the under-researched non-Indo-European languages, Chinese, with regard to the influence of macro-social and micro-social factors on compliments. More specifically, the present study focuses on the impact of region, a macro-social variable, and compliment topic, a microsocial factor, on Chinese compliments given by Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese higher education students. Sixty Taiwanese and sixty Mainland Chinese, equally gendered in each group, completed a written discourse completion task consisting of eight contentenriched situations (Billmyer and Varghese, 2000) eliciting compliments. With regard to the impact of region, commonalities emerged between those compliments of Chinese students in Taiwan and Mainland China. Both groups preferred to offer Explicit compliments as well as Implicit compliments in the form of Requests, Assumptions, and Want Statements. Overall, Explicit compliments emerged as the most popular strategy. However, statistically significant differences were identified between the two groups in a few Implicit compliment strategies. Regarding the effect of compliment topic, both Taiwan and Mainland Chinese students utilized several compliment strategies in similar ways across appearance/possession and performance/ability situations. It appears that in most cases, it was compliment topic rather than the variety of Chinese which modulated the compliments by both groups. In addition, the paper suggests that compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese may have undergone a change, possibly influenced by western cultures.
Compliments in Some Ethnic Groups in Indonesia: A Systematic Literature Review
IJASS JOURNAL, 2023
Using the concept of national culture in cultural studies can be useful, but there can be some limitations for not being able to capture specific cultural phenomena in a nation with multifaceted nature such as Indonesia. The current popular assumption about compliments in Indonesia is that Indonesian people tend to reject compliments they receive. This generalisation needs to be investigated further by studying compliment behaviours in various culture across Indonesia. In this study, the researchers discussed compliment behaviours in some ethnic groups in Indonesia by using a systematic literature review. The results show that in Java, Sunda, and Bali ethnic groups, disagreement responses are dominant; while in Makassar, Toraja, Saluan, and Minangkabau, agreement responses are commonly used. As for Buginese people, there are contrastive findings. In addition, it has been noted that further studies need to pay attention on the scope of the research, the effects of some variables on compliment behaviours, and the influence of methodology.