Compliment Response Strategies Research Articles

A Comparative Study of Pragmatic Strategies in Compliment Responding Strategies between South Korean and South African International Students in China: Cross-Cultural Variations and Implications

Compliment is one of the essential speech acts of daily communication (Holmes, 1988). This study aimed to investigate the similarities and differences in the compliment responding strategies used by South Korean and South African international students in China. Data was collected using a discourse completion task questionnaire written in English (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), covering four domains: appearance, personality, ability, and possessions. A total of 40 South Korean and South African international students participated in the survey. The results showed significant differences in the compliment response strategies employed by the two groups of students. Overall, both groups used the “Accept” strategy most frequently and the “Reject” strategy least frequently. However, South African students used the “Accept” strategy much more often than their South Korean counterparts while South Korean students relied on the “Evade” strategy to a much greater extent than South African students. Additionally, South African students utilized “Combination” strategies more frequently than South Korean students. Across the four discourse scenarios, the two groups exhibited similar compliment response strategies only for ability-based compliments. For the other three scenarios, their compliment response strategies differed significantly. These differences can be largely attributed to the distinct linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the two student groups, as both unconsciously transferred aspects of their native language and culture into their use of English. Overall, the compliment response patterns of South African students were more closely aligned with those of native English speakers. This is likely due to the status of English as an official second language in South Africa, which provides South African students with more extensive exposure to and familiarity with English language and cultural conventions, compared to the South Korean students for whom English is a foreign language.

A pragmatic analysis of compliment response strategies by Emirati Arabic speakers

A pragmatic analysis of compliment response strategies by Emirati Arabic speakers

Compliment Response Strategies in Institutional Discourse within an Emirati Context: Focus on Power and Gender Differences in University Student-Professor Exchanges in English

Background: Context plays a significant role in effective communication. Among various aspects of context, culture is particularly important since it necessitates that language be used effectively so that a specific purpose can be achieved successfully. One key element of such communication is the effective use of speech acts including compliment and compliment responses (CR).
 Aim: This research aimed to identify the CR strategies produced by Emirati users of English in a university setting, as a response to a compliment received from an international professor on their academic performance and the psychological effect such a compliment is likely to have on them. It also investigated the influence of gender on CR strategies.
 Methodology: The data were collected using a discourse completion task. Fifty-eight students (33 male and 25 female) participated in the study. The CR strategies were analyzed using Holmes' (1988) classification scheme.
 Results: The results showed that a compliment from a professor, irrespective of his/her gender, would make the students happy, with positive effects on their motivation, self-confidence, and feeling of closeness to the professor. The students also thought a CR was necessary for politeness purposes. The most commonly used CR strategy was that of acceptance. The male and the female students produced similar CR strategies in responding to the professor, irrespective of his/her gender. Yet they were more likely to use micro-level strategies (e.g., appreciation token, comment, and promise) with the male professor. The students also used downgrading and disagreeing but only while responding to the male professor. In their conversation with the female professor, they used the strategies of shifting credit and requesting reassurance.
 Significance: These results provide evidence for the face-enhancing nature of CR strategies as utilized by Emirati users of English with international faculty in a university setting.

Gender-Based Differences in Compliment Responses Among Jordanian University Students

The current study aims at exploring the difference between male and female Jordanian university students with regard to their compliment responses on Facebook. It also investigates the difference between male and female Jordanian university students when they respond to compliments offered by the opposite sex. The study is based on a corpus consisting of 233 compliment responses collected from responses to comments on Facebook posts. The data analysis was based on Herbert’s (1986) taxonomy of compliment response strategies. Findings of this research show that both male and female Jordanian university students tended to use the agreement strategies more frequently than the non-agreement and other interpretation strategies. The findings also show that although both male and female students use the agreement strategies more frequently, there are also differences in the use of the sub-categories of the agreement strategy among them. Results of the study also indicated that the Jordanian culture, norms, and expectations, as well as the relationship between the complimenter and the complimentee, accounted for the very limited number of compliments on appearance and compliment responses that occurred between two students of different genders.

Compliment and Compliment Response Strategies from Photo Comment Sections as used by Filipino Facebook Users

Compliments and compliment responses are prevalent in Social Networking Sites (SNS), like Facebook. This study was conducted to investigate the compliment and compliment response strategies produced by Facebook users in photo comment sections. This study used the qualitative and quantitative design in spotting and analyzing the felicity conditions of compliment and compliment response strategies produced by thirty participants. Using Zhang’s (2013) taxonomy for compliment strategies, the results showed that the most used approach in complimenting is Explicit compliment, in which the complimenters used adjectives that carry positive values. Meanwhile, using Yu’s (2004, cited in Tamimi Sa’d’, 2015) taxonomy for categorizing compliment response strategies, the Face Relationship-related Response Strategy is the most common strategy used by the complimentees in responding to the received compliments. Most of the complimentees chose not to accept, amend, or reject the compliment. Instead, they dealt with the compliment implicitly within the interaction, preferring not to directly address the prepositional content of the compliment. It was revealed that the use of strategies depends on the relationship between the complimenter and the complimentee. Their relationship may influence the kind of strategies and words the complimentees use in their responses. The social media users, as they read this study, will be aware of how compliments and compliment responses function and are structures in this online setting, which may incite them to use these two social acts more strategically.

Compliments and Compliment Responses among Palestinian EFL University Learners: A Sociolinguistic Study

This study investigates compliments and compliment responses from a sociolinguistic perspective as realized by forty Palestinian EFL university learners. The investigation focused on identifying how the participants perform compliments and compliment responses in English. Moreover, it addressed the asymmetries in this field among male and female participants. The researchers created a discourse completion task (DCT) to collect data. The collected data were analyzed based on the analytical framework of Yuan (2002) of compliment strategies and the analytical framework of Herbert (1990) of compliment responses strategies. The findings of the study show that Palestinian EFL university learners tend to perform explicit compliments more than other compliment strategies. The learners also tend to accept compliments more than reject them. Besides, there are no significant gender asymmetries among Palestinian EFL university learners in terms of how they perform compliments and compliment responses. Finally, the findings reveal that social status does not affect the way Palestinian EFL university learners express and respond to compliments. Keywords: Compliment, Compliment Responses, DCT, Compliment Strategies, Gender, Social Status.

An Analysis of Compliment Response Strategies by Jordanian Adolescent Students: The Influence of Gender and Social Power

This study highlights the compliment response strategies of Jordanian adolescent students, and discusses the respective influences of gender and social power on the production of these strategies. The participants were 37 male and 37 female Jordanian adolescent students at private secondary schools in Amman, with ages ranging from 14–16. They responded to eight discourse completion test situations translated into Arabic to ensure the participants’ understanding. These eight scenarios resembled academic situations which students might face in their daily life, and were intended to represent interactions with persons of different social standing/power. The resulting data were analysed based on the classification system found in previous research. The results revealed that both male and female participants preferred to accept compliments over using non-acceptance strategies. The most frequent strategies used by both groups were combination strategies and acceptance strategies, while nonacceptance strategies and face relationship-related response strategies were the least common. However, there were differences in the preference and frequency of use of other compliment response strategies such as amendment and no acknowledgment strategies. The participants’ gender and the social power of the speakers were also found to influence the choice and perception of politeness. For example, the males tended to use more acceptance strategies compared to the females. They also preferred different rank order of compliment response strategies when the hearer was of lower status. Finally, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were briefly discussed by the researchers.

SCRUTINIZING COMPLIMENT RESPONSE STRATEGY IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN INDONESIA

<span lang="EN-US">Teaching compliment expression might be challenging for Indonesian EFL teacher, especially presenting compliment responses in some certain context of situation. The present study aims at investigating the compliment response strategies in some learning resources used by English teachers in Indonesia. The subjects of this study are the two EFL textbooks written by non-native English speakers and the supplementary materials derived from two Youtube channels and two materials from online learning websites created by native English speakers</span><span lang="IN">.</span><span lang="EN-US">The findings revealed accepting was the common compliment response strategy represented in all learning resources. it is also noted that the supplementary materials have various compliment response strategies completed with the meta-pragmatic information on each dialogue. The study implied that the EFL students should be equipped with pragmatic and sociolinguistic information in order to achieve the successful communication. </span>

Direct and Indirect Compliment Responses: A Descriptive Qualitative Study among Indonesians and Americans

Abstract: Indonesians and Americans have the strategies to respond the compliment which came from different culture. The aims of this research were addressing types of strategies and disclosing the direct and indirect response used by the Indonesians and Americans to respond the compliments. The research data consist of English and Indonesian. The data was analyzed by using qualitative method. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) questionnaire was used to know the differences between compliment response given to Indonesians and Americans. The result of the research showed that the (1) responded category of Holmes (1986) classification of compliment responses strategies (CRs) are using three strategies (accept, reject and evade) among Indonesians and Americans. Indonesians tended to accept, reject and evade compliment by giving some reasons. While Americans tended using three categories by saying, "thank you" due to express of openness and receiving appreciation from the interlocutor. (2) The existence of culture plays an important role in responding compliment towards Indonesians and Americans. The Americans respond to compliments direct response and simple answers to compliments. Meanwhile, Indonesians prefer to respond compliment with indirect responses because they were leaning on the principle known as saving face politeness.

Article in Translation: Chinese compliment responses in triadic contexts

Current studies on compliment responses are largely confined to the dyadic model of communication, without taking into consideration the influence of third parties present. The most commonly used methods of data collection in compliment response research are discourse completion tasks (DCT), role play, etc., the objectivity and accuracy of which remain unconfirmed. With the method of natural conversation recording and targeted elicitation, this article collects 233 cases of female college students' compliment responses in both dyadic and triadic contexts in Beijing and analyzes the data in the model of “acceptance-mitigation-evasion-rejection”. The results show that the frequency of accepting compliments among Chinese college students has increased greatly compared to the findings of Chen (1993), indicating noticeable Western influence on Chinese compliment response strategies. However, there is a significant difference between the acceptance ratio in dyadic and triadic contexts. In dyadic communication, the compliment receivers generally prefer the acceptance strategy, while in triadic contexts, they choose evasion and rejection. This finding indicates that the westernization of compliment response strategies in Chinese culture is a gradual and heterogeneous process and the Self-denigration Maxim still plays an important role in the culture at a deeper level. This study also indicates that the use of DCT tends to raise the ratio of acceptance strategy in general in Chinese compliment response research.

The Impact of Socio-Pragmatic Instruction on the Performance of Iraqi EFL Learners in the Compliment Response Strategies


 
 The purpose of the present study is to examine the impact of the instruction in the English sociopragmatic awareness among Iraqi EFL learners in the speech act of complimenting responses . It is well-known that sociopragmatic aspects of language use vary across different languages and cultures .Such aspects map out the socio-cultural norms and conventions as well as the strategies that underlie the pragmatic performance of different language speakers in a variety of target language situations . Being a teacher for more than ten years in an Iraqi university , the researcher has noticed that Iraqi EFL learners entertain a low ability to communicate effectively in responding to the speech act of complimenting , despite the fact that many of them have a perfect dominion of the target language grammar rules . However, it seems that L2 teachers often overlook pragmatics, which constitutes a crucial element of language ability of L2 learners ; this might be attributed to the difficulty of its teaching . The resulting lack of pragmatic competence of L2 learners can lead to pragmatic failure and , more importantly , to a complete communication breakdown . It is hypothesized that Iraqi EFL learners are not proficient in responding appropriately to compliments when put in real-life situations due to their inadequate pragmatic competence .Hence , it is very necessary to provide them with socio-cultural knowledge incorporated into the EFL classroom if we are aiming at fruitful communication .The second hypothesis states that socio-cultural knowledge plays a significant role in enhancing Iraqi EFL learners' performance in responding to compliments in English appropriately .The present study has shown that Iraqi EFL learners perform significantly different forms of compliment responses from those produced by native speakers of English in terms of quality . The results reached at validate the hypothesis put forward , and call for the importance of instructing Iraqi EFL learners concerning socio-cultural norms and conventions of L2 they are studying .

Backward Pragmatic Transfer: An Empirical Study on Compliment Responses among Chinese EFL Learners

This present study aims at investigating compliment response strategies used by different groups of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in order to find out the evidence of the existence of backward transfer from foreign language (FL) or second language (L2) English to their first language (L1) Chinese at pragmatic level. The data is collected through a written Discourse Complete Task (DCT) among four levels of EFL learners in a university in China. The data suggests that backward transfer occurs in their L1 Chinese compliment response. Moreover, backward pragmatic transfer is enhanced by EFL learners’ L2 proficiency. The results of this study are compared with those of Qu & Wang (2005) to see the great changes in the past ten years. The results of this study point to the complexity of language transfer and its interaction with L2 proficiency.

The Investigation of Compliment Response Patterns across Gender and Age among Advanced EFL Learners

Compliment responses (CRs) as manifestations of social-cultural standards and politeness varieties of a certain speech community are prevalent types of speech acts which are vulnerable to be misunderstood and therefore cause communication breakdown. Having this in mind, the recent study aimed at investigating compliment response strategies of Iranian advanced EFL learners across gender and age. The data were collected through application of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), borrowed from Chen and Yang (2010), with four situational settings (appearance, clothing, ability, and possession) to 50 male and 50 female advanced EFL learners of an English institute in Iran. Based on qualitative data analysis, no difference was shown between the CR strategies employed by male and female participants in terms of frequency. Likewise, it was revealed that the frequency of CR strategies used by teenage and adult groups was very close. However, scrutinizing the emerging themes, besides similarities between the given groups, some subtle differences in the terminology of the employed strategies were detected.

The Use of Compliment Response Strategies among Iranian Learners of English: Researching Interlocutors' Relative Power and Gender

This article reports on a study that set out to investigate how Iranian EFL learners respond to compliments in English. The data were collected using a discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of a variety of situations that required the participants, 26 EFL learners (13 males and 13 females) to respond to compliments directed at them. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. To this end, the participants’ responses were coded according to a coding scheme adopted from Yu (2004) which identified six compliment response strategies (CRSs). The findings indicated that, regardless of or concerning gender and power (–P and =P), the first three most frequent CR strategies included “Acceptance”, “Combination” and “Amendment”. These findings were then analyzed in light of previous similar studies that revealed that the participants had followed their first cultural norms not only in usingthe strategies mentioned above but also in employing very infrequently such strategies as “Face Relationship”, “No acknowledgment”, and “Nonacceptance”. As regards the role of gender, a Chi-square test was run which showed that males and females differed significantly in their use of CRSs. Furthermore, males used more CR strategies compared to females.The qualitative analysis of the semantic formulas of the CR strategies also revealed that, by accepting a compliment, Iranian EFL learners sought agreement and consequently relied on positive politeness to foster rapport and solidarity.

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

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

English Compliment Response Strategies on Social Networks by Iranian EFL Learners

Development of technology including computers and the Internet has introduced a new channel of sharing ideas and beliefs in social networks all over the world. Despite a huge number of studies on compliment, this verbal behavior has not received sufficient attention in such contexts as online communication in social networks. This study aimed to investigate the realization of English compliment response strategies by Iranian English as Foreign Language (EFL) Learners on social networks. To this end, a sample of 30 Iranian EFL learners studying at Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch (IAUKB) was selected from friend’s list on social networks. Observing ethical issues, participants’ compliments and compliment response strategies were recorded, classified, analyzed in terms of frequency and percentage, and then interpreted. The findings revealed that the most frequent response strategy to English compliments was acceptance strategies at macro level and appreciation token at micro level. The findings of this study may benefit teachers, linguists, language learners, and others interested in language learning and teaching.

Compliment Response Strategies by Thai and Chinese EFL Teachers: A Contrastive Study

This study investigated compliment responses (CRs) by Thai and Chinese EFL teachers. The data were collected through the written discourse test (DCT) in English, containing four settings in terms of appearance, character, ability and possession. A total of 60 Thai and Chinese EFL teachers participated in the study. The results revealed that more similarities were observed than differences in CR strategies used by Thai and Chinese EFL teachers. The teachers from the two countries followed the same patterns of preferences: that is, they employed Accept strategies the most and Reject strategies the least. However, Accept strategies and Evade strategies used by Chinese participants were slightly more frequent than those used by Thais, whereas Thai teachers employed more Reject strategies than Chinese teachers did. In the four situations, some differences existed between the two groups. Chinese teachers employed more varieties of micro strategies than their Thai counterparts did. Interestingly, Thai and Chinese EFL teachers transferred their native cultures in L1 to L2 in some situations. The findings suggested that EFL teachers’ awareness regarding their L2 pragmatics should be improved.

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Compliment Responses Strategies on Intermediate Iranian Foreign Language Learners’ Ability to Respond to Compliments

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of explicit instruction of compliment responses strategies on intermediate Iranian EFL learners’ ability to respond to compliments appropriately. It also touched on the relationship between explicit instruction and Vygotsy’s Zone of Proximal Development. More specifically, the study aimed at exploring the linguistic and pragmatic strategies used by Iranian EFL learners when responding to compliments before and after receiving explicit instruction of compliment responses strategies. Furthermore, the research project investigated the social and cultural norms and values that can affect the formulation of compliment responses strategies. A quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest design was conducted with two groups (experimental and control group) with the total number of 30 English female students at Oil Company Language Institute. The experimental group was exposed to metapragmatic information featuring explicit teaching on compliment responses strategies based on Herbert’s taxonomy, followed by communicative practice. The study based its argument on a data elicited by means of an English version of Discourse Completion Test(DCT).The data, collected from a DCT, were categorized according to the compliment responses strategies in light of Herbert’s taxonomy (1989). The data were analyzed focusing on two super categories, Agreement and Non-agreement strategies. The results were examined through a Chi-Square by comparing the experimental and control group’s use of compliment responses strategies before and after treatment. The results of the data analysis revealed that explicit instruction had an impressively positive effect on raising students’ pragmalinguistic awareness as well as their hindrance of L1 pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfer to L2(second language).

A Study on Compliment Response Strategies by Chinese College Students

Complimenting behavior, as a common speech act of human beings, has become an intriguing topic in linguistics and its sub-branches. The study aims to collect and summarize the CR strategies by Chinese college students. An overall distribution is presented of CR strategies, choices of CR strategies by genders and choices of CR strategies under different contextual factors like relative social power or social distance between the speaker and the hearer. The findings show that CR strategies by Chinese college students have changed a lot and are much different with the traditional patterns: (1) Chinese college students prefer Acceptance strategy to Rejection strategy, and Implicit Acceptance strategy is the first choice. (2)The females have greater tendency to use Explicit Acceptance strategy than the males; whereas the males prefer to use Deflection and Rejection strategies. (3) People prefer to use the Explicit Acceptance strategy when they respond to the compliment from an unfamiliar person or a person with relative greater social power; whereas, Deflection and Rejection strategies are more frequently adopted when people respond to the compliment from a familiar person or a person without relatively greater social power. Under the guidance of pragmatic and sociolinguistics, CR strategies are discussed in terms of Politeness Theories and Social Distance and Social Power affect. It is concluded that the western cultural influences Chinese college students’ employment of pragmatic strategies, which are mostly a compromise under the guidance by universal Politeness theories and Chinese socio-cultural context.

Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Chinese Students' Complimentary Speech Acts

Summary.-This study was designed to examine negative pragmatic transfer of the speech act of English compliments by Chinese who learn English as a foreign language and to estimate the correlation between the amount of negative pragmatic transfer and English proficiency of the Chinese learners. Frequencies of students' performance showed that both in the favored compliments and the response strategies, differences were evident between Chinese English learners and native English speakers. This indicated that Chinese learners had trouble with the "slang" or "idioms" of the target language and tended to transfer negatively their L1 pragmatic norms to their L2 communication. Moreover, the favored compliment response strategies used by two groups of Chinese learners--who had different levels of English proficiency--differed, and negative pragmatic transfer decreased as proficiency in English increased.