Male and Female Students of English Department of State University of Medan in Compliment Responses and Their Meanings

Abstract

Giving and responding to compliments can be a challenge for non-native speakers whose social attributes are different from those in the target language culture. Complimenting is one of the most important speeches used to negotiate interpersonal meaning and to build and sustain rapport and solidarity among speakers. This study is to investigate the types of compliment responses (CR) and the meaning of the compliment responses realized by male and female students. The respondent of the study is the English Department students for six semesters. The total respondents of the study is 70 students consisting of 30 males and 40 females taken by random sampling technique. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is used to collect the data. The data are analysed descriptive qualitative technique. The results of the research show that a) almost all types of compliment responses are used by males and females except the comment history type but they are different in types and frequencies, b) like types of compliment, males and females also use a significantly different way to realize the meaning of compliment response, especially in terms of frequency, for example, more female use comment acceptance than male.