POLITENESS IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES OF MALAYSIA CHINESE UNDERGRADUATES

Yingqi Wu,Baljit Kaur

doi:10.24200/mjll.vol5iss1pp41-59

Abstract

Politeness appears to be a prevalent concept in human interaction, and to date, many models of politeness have been put forward in the literature. This study analyses a corpus of compliment responses (CRs) in Malaysian Chinese undergraduates according to the Politeness Principles of Gu (1992) with a view to examine the politeness in responding to compliments. The data in the present study were collected from 30 undergraduates in a local university through role-play scenarios, with a focus on the variables of topic (appearance, character, ability and possession), social distance and social status. The findings of the study show that Malaysian Chinese undergraduates chose various politeness strategies in their CRs among different circumstances. Malaysian Chinese undergraduates’ politeness is greatly influenced by collectivism in Chinese culture so they are more others-oriented. Therefore, they are greatly governed by the Accordance Maxim in CRs by using Acceptance, especially Appreciation strategies. With the assimilation of English, Malaysian Chinese undergraduates are also likely to keep the Refinement Maxim in which indirect responses such as giggling/smiling are frequently used to show great politeness . Nevertheless, the preference of politeness strategies may vary between nowadays Malaysian Chinese and other Chinese generations as there is less preference of Self-denigration Maxim among them in communication.

Highlights

Politeness appears to be a social-cultural phenomenon, which can be generally defined as showing consideration to others in human interactions (Yu, 2003)
Previous studies proved that a sample size of 30 participants is considered sufficient for the study of speech acts through Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (Kasper & Dahl, 1991; Thevendiraraj, 2006)
Based on the five politeness maxims of Gu (1992) (Table 3), the macro strategy of Acceptance belongs to the Accordance Maxim which states that the speakers try to maximize agreement and harmony with the interlocutor

Summary

Introduction

Politeness appears to be a social-cultural phenomenon, which can be generally defined as showing consideration to others in human interactions (Yu, 2003). Investigations have been carried out aiming to pursuit a better understanding of politeness phenomenon in a variety of cultures. The purpose of the studies of politeness is to reflect or realize the social or interpersonal functions of various languages by reducing the potential conflict and miscommunication in human interaction. Among various speech acts studied to date, studies on compliment responses (CRs) are central to furthering the understanding of politeness since it is an act that responds to display of genuine or routine concern for others (Ruhi, 2006). There are only a few studies conducted on the compliment responses (CRs) that evaluate various aspects of the face-saving and the politeness models and devote attention to theoretical implications (Chen 1993; Spencer-Oatey et al, 2000; Yu 2003)

Methods

Results

Conclusion