Abstract
Compliments are frequently applied in social communication. It has been
viewed to ―grea the social wheels‖ and to ―rve as social lubricants‖(Wolfson,1983:89), which is primarily aimed at maintaining, enhancing, or supporting the addre‘s f ace (Goffman, 1967).
The prent study compares between Chine and English compliment
respons from the cultural factor to find their differences.
Compliment respon has its own universal strategies which both Chine and Americans share. There are two main strategies, one is Acceptanace and the other is Nonagreement. However, owing to their respective traditional cultures, the proportions of tho two respons are quite different. Chine, affected by value the collectivism as the core of their culture. They are educated to be modesty and rerved. So when confronting with compliments, most of them will respond with rejection to obey the social norms. By contrast, Americans shaped by their unique historical impacts, highly advocate individualism. They harbor totally different ideas of modesty. Among all the compliment respon strategies, Acceptance is the most frequently ud one in order to show their courtesy.
Key words: American English, Chine Compliment Respons, Contrastive Study, Culture, Gender，中美称赞答语对比研究
专业：英语语言文学方向：语言学
硕士研究生：朱缙丽指导教师：刘素华
摘要
在日常生活交际中，称赞语是一种常用的言语行为，用来维护，加强或支
持称赞一方的面子，被社会语言学家比喻为社会的润滑剂。称赞语是一种配对的语言现象，即称赞语必有其相对应的应答。社会语言学家认为称赞语及其答语不仅受到文化因素影响，而且还受到社会变量，如社会地位，性别，和年龄等影响。
本文采用了对比分析的方法，针对中美两国不同的文化背景，分析称赞答
语方面的异同之处。称赞答语有其固有的模式策略，即中国人和美国人都有相同的应答策略，主要为两类：一为同意对方的称赞；二为不接受对方的称赞。但由于文化传统的不同，这主要的两类应答方式在具体运用时，所占比例大不同。在中国，受儒家思想的影响，集体主义是文化的核心观念，所以
面对他人的称赞，多半选择否定回答，为了表明自己的谦虚，不自夸。然而，由于历史发展原因，美国人注重个人主义观念，他们对礼貌有异于中国人的不同理解。他们认为对称赞者话语的肯定才是一种礼貌行为。作为社会变量的性别因素，深受文化的影响，所以在考虑称赞答语的跨文化研究时，对比了男女性别因素对称赞答语策略的运用，研究它是如何影响男性和女性在称赞答语使用中的不同策略，以及原因。
本文研究的数据库包括：一，借用美国学者Pomerantz 和Herbert 的研究
数据；二，通过自然观察法（见附录A），作者收集了中文称赞语应答数据，它们来源日常会话；三，通过DCT 形式（见附录B），作者搜集了中文以及英文称
赞语应答数据。作者收集的中文数据为228 组，英文为125 组。Contents
Introduction (1)
Chapter One Literature Review (4)
1.1 Compliment Speech Act (4)
1.1.1 Compliment (4)
1.1.1.1 Definition of Compliment (4)
1.1.1.2 Formulas of Compliment (5)
1.1.1.3 Function of Compliment (7)
1.1.2 Compliment Respon (9)
1.1.2.1 Definition of Compliment Respon (9)
1.1.2.2 Compliment Respon Strategies (10)
1.1.2.3 Previous Studies on Compliment Respon and Limitations (13)
1.2 Politeness Principle (15)
1.3 Language and Culture (17)
Chapter Two Data Collection and Findings (20)
2.1 Data Collection (20)
2.2 Comparison of Compliment Respon (21)
2.2.1 Compliment Respon in American Data and Chine Data (21)
2.2.2 Similarities and Differences in Compliment Respons in Both Languages (32)
2.2.2.1 Similarities of Compliment Respon in Both Languages (32)
2.2.2.2 Differences in Compliment Respon Strategies between Both Languages (35)
2.2.3 Summary (37)
2.3 Gender –Bad Comparison of Compliment Respon in Both Cultures (38)
2.3.1 Compliment Respon of American Data and Chine Data (38)
2.3.2 Similarities and Differences in Compliment Respon between American English and (40)
2.3.2.1 Similarities (40)
2.3.2.2 Differences (41)
Chapter Three Cultural Reasons for Compliment Respon in Both Languages (44)
3.1 American Culture and Chine Culture (44)
3.1.1 American culture (45)
3.1.1.1 Individualism (45)
3.1.1.2 Courtesy (47)
3.1.1.3Directness (48)
3.1.2 Chine Culture (48)
3.1.2.1 Collectivism (49)
3.1.2.2 Modesty (49)
3.1.2.3 Rervedness (51)
3.1.3 Summary (51)
3.2 Gender factor (52)
3.2.1 Gender-Bad Views on Function of Compliment (52)
3.2.2 Gender-Bad Roles Set by Society (54)
3.2.3 Summary (58)
Chapter Four Implications and Limitations of the Rearch (59)
4.1 Implications (59)
4.1.1 Implications in Cross-Cultural Communication (59)
4.1.2 Implications in Language Teaching and Learning (60)
4.2 Limitations (62)
Conclusion (64)
Bibliography (67)
<72Ap pendix A (73)
Appendix B (79)
Introduction
Compliment speech act has been believed to ―grea the social wheels‖ and
th us to rve as ―social lubricants‖ (Wolfson, 1983: 89). It is said to aim primarily at maintaining, enhancing, or supporting the addre‘s face (Goffman, 1967). Peter
Trudgill (1986) obrves that language is a social phenomenon and a study of
language totally without reference to its social context inevitably leads to the
omission of some of the more complex and interesting aspects of language and to
the loss of opportunities for further theoretical progress. Holmes (1990) states that
the linguists‘ aim is to move towards a theory which can provide a motivated
account of the way language is ud in a community and of the choice people make
when they u language. The scholars‘ opinions suggest that any fruitful studies of
linguistic phenomena cannot be parated from the cultural context in which they
function.
For the last 30 years linguists (Herbert, 1986,1987; Hymes, 1972; Wolfson,
1983; Nelson, 1996) have shown great interests in the speech acts study such as
apologies, compliments, requests, and refusals. The most reason that the speech
acts have been studied a lot is that they can provide insight not only into speech
communities but also into the linguistic and sociolinguistic rules of a language. As
one kind of esntial speech acts, compliment speech act becomes one of the most extraordinary components in social communication, which is a simple but powerful
tool of building relationships. We all have given compliments and received them. So4
Chapter One
Literature Review
1.1 Compliment
1.1.1 Compliment
1.1.1.1 Definition of Compliment
Compliment has been defined by some linguistic rearchers. Daikuhara (1986)
Investigated the speech act of compliment and described the meaning of compliment
that it was to express positive feeling of approval of the hearer for something. His description indicates two things, one is that compliment shows the complimenter‘s sincere expressions of positive feelings to the complimentee and the other is that compliment is a kind of
face-to-face verbal interaction.
Holmes‘ (1986) definition of compliment is that a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to some one other than the speaker, usually that person addresd, for so
me ―good‖ (posssion, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and hearer. It is believed that compliment speech act is a way to display a good feeling, friendliness and half-admitted desire to plea.
The and other definitions assume that the real purpo of most compliments5
is to plea the addre (Herbert, 1990). It ems to be a widely spread popular agreement on what constitutes a compliment. Two conditions for a compliment are specified: ―(1) an expression of admiration on the part of the speaker, (2) concerning a posssion, a ccomplishment, or personal quality of the addre.‖ (Herbert, 1988: 485).
1.1.1.2 Formulas of Compliment
Compliments have the characteristics, which u limited syntactic patterns and
a small range of words with positive meaning. Manes and Wolfson (1981:115) come to the conclusion that ―compliments in American English are formulaic in nature‖, according to their study on 686 American English compliments. They (Manes & Wolfson, 1981: 23) also find compliments contain one of a highly restricted t of adjec tives such as ―nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great‖ (e.g., That‘s a nice picture;
Y our lecture is good; Y ou have such beautiful hair; Y ou look pretty today; He‘s a great actor.) and verbs such as ―like, love‖ (e.g., I like your coat; I love your hair.). Their analysis of the syntactic structure of compliments result in that the following former three most commonly occurring syntactic patterns can account for 85% of American compliments (Manes & Wolfson, 1981:111):
1. NP is/looks (really) ADJ. 50%
< Y our blou is beautiful.
2. I really like/love NP. 16.1%
< I like your car.
3. PRO is really a ADJ NP. 1
4.9%
< That‘s a nice wall hanging.
Y ou V(a) (really) ADJ NP. 3.3%2
how to give and respond to compliments constitutes a critical part of the communicative competence for a person in a certain speech community. However, the previous studies on this speech act have proved that it is much more complicated than it appears, in terms of the relation between language, society, and culture (Pomerantz, 1978; Wolfson, 1983; Wolfson & Manes, 1983; Manes, 1983; Holmes, 1986; Holmes & Brown, 1987; Herbert, 1989, 1990; Herbert & Straight, 1989). It is hard to understand compliment speech act comprehensively merely from the linguistic perspective. Bad on the former rearches on compliment speech act, in this disrtation, the author will attempt to explore the similarities and differences of compliment respons strategies between the Chine native speakers and American native speakers and to reveal the cultural reasons for responding to compliment. compliment respons do differ in both languages. It is impossible to understand the compliment respon thoroughly without considering the cultural factor. Chine
participants respond to a compliment usually with a denial to show Chine modesty.
The mixture of mainly negative way is conveyed by denial and avoidance, like “不
好”(no good), “不，不”(no, no) , is the typical traditional respon to compliments.
By contrast, for an American participant, he/she is much likely to accept the
compliment with a typical respon ―Thank you.‖ This different language
phenomenon between both cultures finds its way into choosing the strategies of
compliment respons and intercultural communication.
The first kind of data in the prent study comes from the corpus of
compliment-compliment respons interchanges in the United States by Pomerantz
and Herbert. They collected the data over a three-year period (1980-1983) at the
state University of New Y ork at Binghamton. The cond kind of data is collected by
the author from the conversations in the daily life (e Appendix A). The last kind of6
< Y ou did a good job.
Y ou V(NP) (really) ADV. 2.7%
< Y ou ran really fast.
Y ou have (a) ADJ NP! 2.4%
< Y ou have such a nice bike!
What (a) ADJ NP! 1.6%
< What a beautiful car!
ADJ NP! 1.6%
< Good shot!
Isn‘t NP ADJ! 1.0%
< Isn‘t your sh irt beautiful!
(V: verb; NP: noun phra; ADJ: adjective; PRO: pronoun.)
Holmes‘s (1986) study on New Zealand English with a corpus of 517
compliments shows the similar results. Therefore, she concludes that compliment
speech act has a remarkable regularity. It appears the same formulas in compliment
across English-speaking communities. And in Chine communities, this speech act
also has the same mantic formulas. Y e‘s (1995) data of Chine compliments, to
some degree, replicate the previous findings. She finds that the positive mantic
carrier in a Chine compliment can be realized by an Adjective/ V erb, an Adverb, a
Noun or a V erb. Each of the, in turn, accounts for 54.5%, 27.4%, 15.8% and 2.3%
of her data. The most frequently occurring Adverbs, 好, 不错; Nouns, 两下子, 好
手; V erbs, 喜欢;Adjectives/ V erbs are 棒，绝了，漂亮，不错.
The above findings have demonstrated that whether in English or in Chine
community, compliment speech act is characterized by the formulaic nature of its
syntactic and mantic compositi on.act as the ―social lubricant rving to create or maintain rapport‖ (Wolfson,
1983:86).
1.1.2 Compliment Respon
1.1.
2.1 Definition of Compliment Respon
The compliment speech event has the structure of ―an adjacency pair operation‖
(Schegloff & Sacks, 1973:296) or ―action chain event‖ (Pomerantz, 1978:109-110).
As the general social convention and the rule of the adjacency pair demand, the first
