UTICAJ MATERNjEG JEZIKA NA REALIZACIJU GOVORNOG ČINA KOMPLIMENTIRANjA KOD NEIZVORNIH GOVORNIKA ENGLESKOG JEZIKA

Abstract

The paper deals with the impact of L1 on non-native English speakers in the realization of the speech act of complimenting. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which was used for this research included eight everyday situations and the participants were asked to respond in the most natural manner. The DCT was completed in Serbian and English by students of the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo and University of East Sarajevo. The focus of the paper is on both giving and receiving compliments. Due to the fact that there is scarce research of this pragmatic phenomenon in the Serbian language, this paper is based on the main theoretical postulates of English and comparative studies. A detailed pragmalinguistic and comparative analysis showed that the participants used almost the same strategies when giving compliments with explicit compliments as the most frequent ones. The participants most frequently used the accept strategy when responding to compli- ments. Furthermore, the participants are quite reserved when it comes to complimenting older speakers of a higher social rank, as presented in the DCT situations.