How Compliments and Compliment Responses Differ for American and Chinese People on Instagram

Abstract

This paper reports a qualitative study on complimenting behaviors and response strategies of American English speakers (AES) and Chinese speakers (CS). It explores how the two speech groups differ in their patterns of compliment and response behaviors on Instagram. There are 26 participants who have answered a questionnaire that asks them to rate certain statements and let them give examples of compliments and responses. This paper will discuss the interpretations of the questionnaire and link them to linguistic politeness in virtual contexts and second language learning. Some limitations regarding each step of the research are that the sample size is too small to generalize the result to a greater population and that some questions in the questionnaire were not carefully designed. Future research should take note of the limitations and avoid them as much as possible.