A Comparative Study on the Use of Compliment Response Strategies by Persian and English Native Speakers

Mansour Shabani ,Maryam Zeinali

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.5p.58

Abstract

The significance of pragmatic knowledge and politeness strategies has recently been emphasized in language learning and teaching. Most communication failures originate in the lack of pragmatic awareness which is evident among EFL learners while communicating with English native speakers. The present study aimed at investigating compliment response strategies, as a sub-category of politeness strategies, used by a group of Persian and English native speakers, and examining the effect of gender on the use of strategies to respond to compliments. To these ends and with the use of convenient sampling, thirty Iranian native speakers (15 females and 15 males) in Iran and 26 English native speakers (13 females and 13 males) in Canada, all college students with age range of 17-30, participated in this study. In order to collect a corpus of compliment responses, a researcher-made questionnaire in the form of a Discourse Completion Task was distributed among the participants. Using two-way ANOVAs, the findings indicated that there is a significant difference between Persian native speakers and Canadian English speakers ( p .05).Considering the findings of the present study, materials developers and textbook writers can make more space in EFL textbooks for exercises about compliments (responses); and help in highlighting the significance of this aspect of pragmatic knowledge. Keywords: pragmatics, politeness, compliment, compliment response, EFL

Highlights

The significance of pragmatic knowledge has been greatly emphasized in language learning in recent years
Using two-way ANOVAs, the findings indicated that there is a significant difference between Persian native speakers and Canadian English speakers (p< .05) with respect to the compliment response strategies investigated in this study namely, accept, evade, and reject
This study aims at addressing and revisiting pragmatic knowledge of Persian and English native speakers by comparing compliment responses that Iranian native speakers use in certain situations with those used by English native speakers in order to find their cross-cultural differentiation

Summary

Introduction

The significance of pragmatic knowledge has been greatly emphasized in language learning in recent years. Acquiring pragmatic competence is challenging for non-native speakers. If non-native speakers transfer their pragmatic knowledge or cultural norms to the target language, it can cause misunderstanding for hearer and they cannot achieve their goal. Yule (2003) believed that in order to figure out what is said in an interaction, we need to consider external and internal factors related to social distance and closeness. These factors influence what we say, and how we interpret it. Green (1996; as cited in Bloomer, Griffiths, & Merrison, 2005)

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