Luận văn gender based differences in compliments and compliment responses in the american comedy tv series ugly betty

Interruptions in cross-sex conversations Zimmerman 4 West, 1975 Female characters Male characters The distribution of compliments to someone present and someone absent by gender of compl

Statement of the problem and rationale for the study -—

Aims of the study—~

a Organization of the study-

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW -

1.1 SPEECH ACT THEORY -

LLL Austin’s speech act theory

1.1.2 Searle's speech acl theory

1.2 POLITENESS AND FACE THEORY -

1.2.1, Notion of politeness and face

1.2.2.2 Leech’s politeness principh

1.2.3.1 Negative and positive face- 1.2.3.2, Positive and negative politeness — 1.3 COMPLIMENTS

1.3.1 The definition of compliments —~

1.4 COMPLIMENT RESPONSES -

1.5 GENDER AND LANGUAGE

1.5.3 Explanations for gender-based differences in language usc -

1.6 GENDER AND POLITENESS

1.7 RELATED STUDIE

1.7.1 Review of the studies on compliments and compliment responses —

1⁄72 Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and

2.3 DISCUSSION

2.3.1 Discussion of the findings ơn the differences in compliment behavior between

2.3.2 Discussion of the findings on the differences in compliment response between

~ 58

males and females —-

CONCLUSION -

1 Summary of the findings -

2 Implications

2.1, Intercultural communication -

2.2 Pedagogical implications -~

3 Limitations of the study

4, Suggestions for further research-

Cooperative principle Compliment response Discourse Completion Test Face-saving act

Face-threatening act Fernale

Male

Politeness principle

Interruptions in cross-sex conversations (Zimmerman 4 West, 1975) Female characters

Male characters The distribution of compliments to someone present and someone absent by gender of complimenter

The number of compliments in the overall cpisodes Compliments by gender of participants

Interaction between compliment, lopie and gender of participants

Compliments on Appearance

Compliments on Possession Compliments on Performance/ability/skill Cornplitnents on Personality

Interaction between compliment function and gender of participants

‘The distribution of compliment responses

Compliment response interaction data Three broad categories of compliment responses ACCEPTANCE AGREEMENT responses

APPRECIATION TOKEN responses AGREEMENT (ACCEPTANCE and NON-ACCEPTANCE) responses NON-AGREEMENT responses

NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT responses

The introduction states the problom and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, scope, methodology, the significance and the organization of the whole paper Above all, it isin this chapler thai the research questions are sel oul to work as the guidelines for the

whole research,

1, Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

‘An effective language user is competent in not only linguistics but also pragmatics, As Yule (1996) put it, “nothing in the use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting the

pragmatics wrong might be offensive” (p 5-6) To be able to usc a targct language appropriately in terms of pragmatic competence, language users should employ a variety of

speech acts Complimenting is one of them,

Compliments not only express sinecre admization of positive qualities, but they also replace greetings, thanks or apologies, and minimize face-threatening acts (henceforth FTAs), such as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987, Tolmnes, 19884; Wolfson, 1983, 1989) Complimenting is a tool of establishing fliendship that creates ties

of solidarity in American culture It is also an important social strategy that functions as an opener for a conversation, allowing meaningful sacial interactions to fallow Americans pay compliments so frequently that naglooting 1o da so an even be interpreted as a sign of disapproval (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989, Woltson & Manes, 1980) and a wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Llolmes & Brown, 1987)

Each culture requires various kinds of speech act behavior, Blum-Kulka, House and

Kasper (1989) found that “culturally colored interactional styles create culturally determined expectations and interpretative strategies, and can lead to breakdowns in intercultural and interethnic communication” (p 30) In other words, when people fom different cultures interact, breakdowns in communication may happen due to signaling different speech act stratcgics that refcct the culturc’s distinctive interactional stylc Complimenting is a particularly suitable speech act to investigate because it acts as a

window through which we can view what is valued in a particular culture Thus, it is

worthwhile to study the interactions between men and women, men and men, or women

cullural differences Therefore, il is

s are parallel lo cre

and women exchanging compliments and responses

All those reasons stimulate the rescarcher to conduct a study on gender-based differences

in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through the American Comedy 'TV-series “Ugly Betty” ‘Ihe people in the ‘'V series are not real people, but the

aclors a1

s chosen to match the real ones in daily Hf, Whal can bo assured is thal the dala would bare resemblance to real life language Hopefillly, the study will make a contribution to the field which it is envisioned and fill the gaps in previous research

2 Aims of the study

First of all, the study sets out to investigate the gender-based differences in compliment behavior including the frequoney of compliments, compliment topies and the functions of compliments, Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments response strategies are explored ‘I'he Endings will pave the way for several pedagogical

and infercultural communication implications

3 Research questions

The research secks the answers to the following rescarch questions:

Research question 1: What are the differences in compliment behavior between males

There wre four scasons in this TV-scries with Ihe Lolal of 8S cpisndes However, duc Lo the

size and limitation of a preliminary research, the dialogues in the episodes one to ten in the

first season are used with the development of the story Every episode takes about 40 ininutes Totally, this study will analyze len episodes of around 400 minutes

‘The compliments among 18 characters balanced in gender, 9 females and 9 males, are chosen, Some compliments are excluded from the present study: compliments to a place or

an object that doss not belong to interactants, compliments to speakers themselves or to a group of people, compliments from a group toa particular thing or a special person

Furthermore, a compliment may be sincere or insincere, Mills (2003) stated:

‘The ‘hearer might consider that the speaker is being insincere and is only complimenting because he/she wants something — i.e that it is serving some Jonger term goal; or it might be interpreted as suggesting that the person does not look good at all, but the speaker is being kind (p 220)

Als , complimnents can have an ironic meaning (Iolmes, 1995, p 119) For instance, ifthe

interlocutors are enemies, the compliments between them have ironic meanings Within the scope of an M.A thesis, only sincere compliments are analyzed

5 Methodolagy

Quantitative and qualitative methods are both used in this paper with priorities given to the

quantitative onc In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are bascd on the

analysis of the empirical studies and statistics processed on Stata 10, a software program commonly used in social sciences In addition, such methods as descriptive, analytic, comparative ani contrastive arc also ulilived lo describe and analyze, to compare and

contrast the database so as to find out gender-based differences in compliments’ frequency,

topics and functions and types of compliment response strategies

6, Significance of the study

‘The present study is conducted to find out the influences of gender on compliment behavior and compliment response stratepies in English It will add to the rescareh on compliments and second language acquisition Regarding researchers who share the same interest in the Lopic, they could rely on this paper lo gel usefull information for their filure

shudics.

4

Besides, the study could help Vietmamese leamers of English to be aware of sociolinguistic aspects of English and thus to improve their pragnratic competence Ax for leachers of English, the findings trom this paper may have crucial pedagogical implications for practice of teaching English as a foreign language

7 Organization of the study

After the Introduction, the rest of the paper includes the following parts:

Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the background of the study including the definitions of key concepts and the discussions of related studies

Chapter 2 (The surly) describes the procedurcs 1o conduel the research, prescnls, analyzes the results and discusses the findings the researcher obtained according to the two research

questions,

Conclusion summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, provides some implications and points out the limitations of the research as well as proposes several suggestions for further sludics, Following this parl are Refercneas and Appendix

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, theoretical preliminaries and fundamental cancepis related to the rescareh topic are reviewed Moreover, the overwiew of related studies is also taken into

consideration.

LLL, Austin's speech act theory

Anstin, with a pivotal work in the field of linguistics Low to Do Things with Words (1962), was onc of the first modo scholars recognizing thal words arc in themselves actions: According to Austin, in saying something the speaker does something (1962)

Austin sialed thai there are Ihree relaied acts in the action of performing an ullerance locutionary act, allocutionary act, and perlocutionary act Lectionary act is the basic act

of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression The second dimension, the ilacMllanary act, is performed by uttering some words, such as complimenting, commanding, offcring, promising, thcatening, thanking, ste In other words, it is the communicative force of an utterance, ‘Ihe third part is the perlocttionary act, which is the actual resuli of ths locution, The pertocution is defined by the hearer’s reaction

Let us consider the following example:

A: “Gtve me some cash.”

‘The locutionary act is the sound A makes when he says the utterance ‘The illocutionary act

is that A performs the act of requesting B to give him some cash It may or may net be whal the speaker R wanls lo happen bul il is caused by the Tocntion A's ullorance may

1.12, Searle's speech act theory

6

Searle (1975) wrote that Austin’s classification needed to be seriously revised because it contained several weaknesses One problem is thal the same utterance can potentially have different Mocutionary forces The speaker will find it hard to assume whether the intended illocutionary force will be recognized by the hearer Searle (1976) attempted to explain the notion of the illocutionary acl by stating a set of

ary and sufficient conditions for the performance of a particular kind of the illocutionary acts He reclassified it and proposed so-called direct and indirect speech act ‘Io be exact, a declarative used to make a statement

is a direct speech act, but a declarative used to make a request is an indirect speech act

(Yule, 1996) Scarle’s taxonomy of speech acts includes five types:

1) Declarations (“bringing about changes through utterances”): ‘hese kinds of speech acts chang the world via their utterance F.g.: declaring, christening

2) Representatives (‘telling people how things are”): ‘These speech acts, which represent a stale of affairs, have a word-lo-world fit, In other words, the spoaker’s inlention

is to make words fit the world E.p.: asserting, disagreeing,

3) Expressives (“oxpressing our focling and attitudes"); Those kinds of speech acls stale whal the speaker fecls They express psychological slales and can be stalements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or somow Based on this classification, compliment belongs to “Lixpressives”

4) Directives “tying to get people to do things”): The speakers use these kinds of speech acts to get someone else to do something ‘hey express what the speaker wants E.g.: commands, orders, requests

5) Commissives (‘committing ourselves to doing things”): ‘The speakers use these

h aels lo commit themsclyes to sore future

speaker intends, E.g.: promises, refusals

Following Searle, Yule (1996, p 55) summarized the five general functions of speech acts

Declarations words change the world S causes X

Representatives make words fit the world S believes X

Expressives make words fit the world S feels X

Darectives make the world fit words 8 wants X

Commissives make the world fil words S intends X

Mey (2001, p 87) wrote that Searle’s proposal “is more oriented than Austin’s towards the real world, inasmuch as it takes its point of departure in what actually is the case, namely that people perform a speech act whenever they use language, irrespective of the

‘performative’ criterion,” yet noted that both sets of speech acts definitely share

similarities,

‘The theory of speech acts has been influential not only in philosophical and linguistic fields, bul also in foreign language learning and teaching and cross-cultural research Although the theories proposed by Austin and Searle do not eapture the cultural intricacies that arise in actual realizations of speech acts, they can be usefull tools in categorizing human language, as long as these culinral variations are carefully considered Many

1.2 Politeness anu face theory

1.2.1, Notion of politeness and face

Politeness could be treated as a fixed concept, as in the idea of “politeness social behavior’,

or stiquette, within a culture, It is also possible to specify a number of different general principles for being polite in sociat interaction within a particular culture, In an interaction, Jet us assume that participants are generally aware that such noms and principles exist in the society at large ‘There will be a more narrowly specified type of politeness In order to describe il, the concept of face should be clarified According to Yule (1996), “face means the public selfmage of a person It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that

for their face #8 described in terms of respect or deferenes On the other hand, when the other is socially close, showing the equivalent awareness 1s often described

in terms of friendliness, camaraderie, or solidarity

1.2.2 Conversutional-muxim view on politeness

1.2.2.1 Grice’s cooperative principie

In the 1968 lectures entitled “Logic and Conversation”, Grice sought to bring a philosophical, formalist approach to human language by proposing a series of terms that have become nmainstays in the field of linguistics and in other areas One of the most important ideas posed is that of conversational implicatures, which are ideas implied in conversation, and are “cooperative efforts, and each participant recognizes in them, to

some cxtonl, a common purpose or sel of purposes, or al least mutually accepted

a Vital part of the caoperative principle (CP) is to “trakc your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (p 307)

Grice then divided ths principle into four basic maxims which go towards making a speaker's confribution “cooperative”: Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner Hach of these maxims is understood to be obcyed by participants when successful communication occurs, When communication breaks down, however, it is duc to a violation of one or more

of these maxims ‘These violations can be either be a simple violation (such as a lie), an

“opl oul” (e.g, refusing to answer a question), a “clash” (failure lo fulfill oe maxim without violating another), or “tlouting,” which Grice defined as to “blatantly fail to fulfill” a maxim {p 310).

Grice’s work on conversational implicatures formed a general theory for human

communication thal has largely been accepted as universal and applicable lo any Tangu

However, there exists a great deal of debate over the cross-cultural implications of Grice’s maxims and since their introduction, many authors have felt that he ignored a cultural component which makes its application to corlain non-Western languages and cnllures

difficult, and as some have proposed, impossible

1.2.2.2 Leech’s politeness principle

Leech is one of the linguistists who are concerned with how politeness provides a missing link between the Grice’s CP and the problem of how to relate sense to force (Leech, 1983)

In Leooh’s view, the CP in iisclf canmot explain 1) why peaple ars offen so indirect im conveying what they mean; and 2) what is the relationship between sense and force, Leech emphasized the normative or regulative aspect of politeness This is brought out by his coustructian of politeness inlo the Politeness Principle (PP) and its maxims, which includes the Tact Maxim, the Generosity Maxim, the Approbation Maxun, the Modesty Maxim, the Agreement Maxim and the Sympathy Maxim

Leoch’s PP may be formnlated in a generat way from twa aspects: lo minimize (other things being, equal) the expression of impolite belietS and maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs Leech’s maxims of politeness principle tend to go in pair as [ollows

1) Tact Maxim (in impositives and commissives)

a, Minimize the cost to other b Maximize the benefit to other

2) Generosity Maxim (ir impositives and commissives)

a, Minimize benelit to self b Maximize cost to self

3) Approbation Maxim (int expressives and asscrlives)

a, Minimize dispraise of other _b, Maximize praise of other

4) Modesty Maxim (in cxpressives and assertives)

a, Minimize praise of self b, Maximize dispraise of self

5) Agreement Maxim (in assertives)

a, Minimize disagreement betweon sclf and other

b, Maximize agreement between self and other

6) _ Sympathy Maxim (in assettives)

a Minimize antipathy belween sel€ and olher

b, Maximize sympathy between self and other

(Cited in Fraser, 1990, p 225)

Leech (1983) noted that in his politeness principles and maxims, there is a more general

law that politeness is focused more strongly on other than on self, and within each maxim,

sub-inaximn (b) seems to be less important than sub-maxim (a) In facl, among the six

maxims, the most essential one is the tact maxim, for it is used in impossitive and

commissive, where politeness is the most greatly needed On the other hand, approbation

maxim and modesty maxim are very useful to test compliment and compliment responses

in this study

The sume as Grice, Lecch is also by no means fice from challenges and criticisms For example, Gu (1990) suggested to revise the first two maxims: Tact maxim and Generosity maxim Moreover, Leech divided the illocutionary into 4 groups: competitive, convivial, collaborative and conflictive, Compliment, the speech acl, hy which the speaker benefits the listener, should fall mto the category of convivial, fiom the perspective of Leech (1983)

1.2.3, Face-management view on politeness

1.2.3.1 Negative and positive face

The most profound thought of the concept of face is that by Brown and Levinson (1978)

‘They have set out to develop an explicit model of politeness, which will be applied across cultures They put forward that people engage in rational behavior to achieve satisfaction

of certain wants The wants related to politeness arc the wants of face.

According to Brown and Levinson, there are two kinds of faces: “negative face” and

“positive face” Negative face is about a person’s need lo be independenl, to have freedom

of action, and not to be imposed on by others, It is essentially the want that others do not impede your actions Positive face is one’s wish to be accepted, even liked by others, to be ircated as a member of the same group, and lo know that his or hor wants arc shared by others, In short, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to

be connected

Pridham (2001) explained thal “you challenge someone's face in lwo ways: cither by telling them what to do, which implies you have rights over them, or by showing, you disagree with or do not appreciate their values and beliefs” (p 52), By challenging other poople’s faces, one is said lo be having a “face-threatening act” (FTA) An acl of ullcting something to lessen the potential threat is called a “face-saving act” (FSA) For instance,

ina late night scens, where a young neighbor is playing his music very loud and an older couple arc trying to slecp One of them, in [1], proposes an FTA and the other suggests an FSA

|1]| Him: J’ going to tell him to stop that awfd noise right now!

Her: Perhaps you could just ask him if he is going to stop soon because it’s getting a

it late and people need to get to sleep

(Cited in Yule, 1996, p 61)

1.2.3.2, Positive and negative politeness

Brown and Levinson (1987) argued that nemty all speech acts are so-called FTAs, in which faces of the interlocutors tend to be threatened in language interaction For example, compliments may themselves threaten the addresser’s negative face, and compliment responses may Ihrealen the speaker's positive face (ohms, 1988b) In conversations, people take rational actions to preserve both positive and negative faces for themselves and the people they interact with Brown and Levinson (1987) further suggested that we have a choice of two kinds of potitoness An FSA which is concemed with the person’s positive face will tend to achieve solidarity through offers of ftiendship, for example, the use of

12

compliments, This is called positive politeness, On the other hand, an FSA which is oriented to the person’s negative face will tend lo show deference, emphasize the importance of the other's time or concems, and even include an apology for the mposition

or interruption ‘This is also called negative politeness (Yule, 1996) The negative

poliicness ofisn teas Lo indircetness, and formality in hngnage use

In Brown and Levinson’s opinion, complimenting is a kind of positive politeness strategy

that addresses the hearer’s positive face It signals the complimenler’s noficing and

aliending to the complimentce’s interesis and noeds Poople int the Wesl will respond te others’ compliments happily with “thank you” to satisfy the conplimenter’s positive face When a person says to a fomale colleague, for example, that “7 đi&e your dress”, he is indicating the efforl she has made to improve her appoarang and thal hs shares her values

of what constitutes a beautiftd “dress”, By doing so, he makes her “feel good”, since appearance is an important component in the selfimage of females almost all over the world, Still, as far as compliments arc conccrned, sometimes, the complimentee will feel their positive face being threatened, Under this situation, they will try to be indifferent or avoid to answer it directly, to save their faces For example,

A: How efficient of vou to get ihis dene on time

B: it is nothing

(Cited in Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 18)

1.3 Compliments

1.3.1 The definition of compliments

In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2004, p 98), compliments have three kinds of mounings: they arz remarks thal cxpress admimalion of someone or something; they are remarks that show that we trust someone else and have a good opinion

of them; they are remarks that express praise, or good wishes

Acgoriting to Holmes (1988b), “2 complimentis a speech ael which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer” (p 446)

It can be seen from the above definitions that firstly, a compliment is a polite speech act It can be direcl or indirect, which means il cautd have an explicit meaning thal people can recognize it quickly, or its structure could not be obvious, however people still regard it as

a compliment as long as it can attribute credit to someone according to its implicit meaning, Lastly, iLis given to others, nol to the spoakers themselves

13.2, The topics of compliments

A topic may properly scrve as the focus of a compliment, In spite of the broad range of topics found in some research, the majority of compliments are restricted to only a few general topics Hased on the U.S data, Manes and Wolfson (1981) and Wolfson (1983) observed thal compliments scam to fall nalurally into iso gencral ealogorics - those which focus on appearance and/or possessions, and those which have to do with ability andor accomplishments With respect to the first category, in addition to compliments on apparel, hairstyke, and jowelry, ÍL is very common for Ammericans to compliment onc anofhir on such seemingly personal matters as weight loss Favorable comments on the attractrveness

of one’s childien, pets, and even husbands, boyfiends, wives, or girlfriends seem to fall within this same category, as do compliments on cars and houses Compliments assigned

to the sccond category include those referring to the addressce’s skill or performance, o.2

a well-done job, a skillfully played game, a good meal According to Manes and Wolfson’s (1981) and Wolfsan’s (1983) studies on compliments in American Fnglish, the greatest number of appearance/pousession compliments are given and received by acquaintances, colleagues, and casual friends, especially by females In other studies, compliment topics

căn bơ chữa into thres calogoios ba sử ơn (ho cjoels of compliments

oupearancelpossessions, performance/skills/abilities and personality traits (Manes &

Wolfson, 1981; Knapp, Hopper & Bell, 1984; Wolfson, 1989; Herbert, 1998)

1.3.3 The functions of compliments

‘The main function of complimenting behavior is “to create ot reinforce solidarity by expressing appreciation or approval” (Manes & Wolfson, 1981, p 130) Specifivally, the functions are divided into the following groups based on previous studies

1998)

One `3 Work/aippsararIce/fi

1

(3) To establish friendship that creates ties of solidatity (Wolfson, 1989)

(3) To replacc grcctings, gratitude, congratulations, thanks, or apologics (Wolfson, 1989),

(4)To soften the tight atmosphere and minimize FTAs

4h as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes, 1988b, and Wolfson, 1983, 1989)

(5) To open or sustain conversations as a politeness stralogy allowing meaningfid social interactions to follow (Manes, 1983)

(6) To show the envy of other's possessions or performances (Manes, 1083)

(7) Ta fawn others especially from the subordinate to the dominant (Manes, 1983) 1.4, Compliment responses

As a greeting expects a greeting in response, compliment expects a compliment response

This compliment - response sequence can pethaps be seen as an “adjacency pair” in which

one initiation utterance is expecting a conventionalized response However, a

complimenter is usually expecting the compliment recipient to respond with a different second pair-parl, Tl can be general

divided imo two main lypes: agreement and non agreement, Herbert's framework with examples from his Americen clhnographie data is a well-designed compliment response categorization

Table 1-2: Herbert's CR types (1989)

Agreement (D Appreciation A verbal or nonverbal | (2) Thanks; Thank

compliment, acceplznce

not being tied to the specific semantics of the

stimulus (2) Comment Addressee accepts the | (2) Pl: I like your Acceptance complimentary force and | hair long

offers a relevant comment | #2: Me too Lar

on the appreciated Lopic never getting it cut

Adiiessce accepls the compliment and asserts that the complement force

is insufficient

Addressee offers a comment (or series of comments) on the object complimented, these comments differ from (2)

in that the latter are impersonal, that is, they shift the force of the compliment fiom the addressee

3) FI like that

shirt you're

wearing

AM You're not the

first and you're not

(5) Reassignment ‘Addressee agrees with the

compliment assertion, but the complimentary force is transferred to some third

person or the object itself

praise is shifted (ơi retuned) to the first speaker

Addressee disagrees with the comphmentary force, pointing to some flaw in the object or claiming that the praise is overstated oO FF Youre

funny

M: You're a gaod audience

(12) Request

Interpretation

(5) Disagreement ‘Adiivssce asscrts that the

object complimented is not worthy of praise: the first speaker's assertion is in

(9) Qualification Weaker than (8): addressee

merely qualifies the

original asscrtion, usually

with though, but, well, etc

(il) No Address gives _no| (72) Ml: That's a

Acknowledgement | indication of having heard | beautiful sweater

the compliment: The adatres

not, interprets — the

compliments as a request

rather mm a simple

compliment Such responses are — nơi

compliment responses per

se as the addressee does not perceive the previous M2: Did you finish

the assignment for

today?

(42) F: 1 like your shirt,

M: You want to

horrow this one

tou?

1.5 Gender and language

1.3.1 Gender and sex

‘The English-language distinction between the words sex and gender was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s by British and American psychiatrists and other medical personnel work with intersex and transsexual patients, Sinee then, the term gender has been increasingly used to distinguish between sex as biologically and gender as socially and culturally constructed,

Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we

do (Wesl and Zimmennan, 1987) — something we perform (Buller, 1990) As Eckert and MeConnell-Ginet (2003) put it,

sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential,

whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex Gender builds on Viological sex it exaggerates biological difference and, indeed, it camies biological difference into domains in whieh il is completely inzelevanl (p 10)

Another distinction bolwaon sex und gon stated by World Healthy Organization

(2011); “Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours activities, and ailributos thal a given socicty considers appropriate for men amd wornen™

‘There is no biological reason, for example, why women should mince and men should swagger, or why women should have red toctaifs and man should nol Bul when sox is considered as “biological” and gender is rogarđed as “social”, thesc above distinetions wre

not clear-cut People tend to think of gender as the result of nurture as social and hence

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Guid — while sex is simply given by biology However, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) stated that

‘There is 10 obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender begins, partly

‘Vecanse there is no single objective biological criterion for male and female sex [ ] the very definition of the biological categories male and female, and people's understanding of themselves and others as male or female, is ullimately social (p 10)

Fausto-Stcrling (2000) summarized the situation as follows:

Labeling someoue @ man or a wornan is a social decision, We may use scientific Imowledge to help us make the decisions, but only our beliefs about gender

not science — can detine onr sex Furthermore our beliefs about gender atfect

whal kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the final place (p 3)

“To what cxtent gender may be related to biology, it docs not flow naturally and direetly from our bodies” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p 15) Ihe individual’s chromosomes, hormones or secondary sex characteristics do nol delermine eccupation, gail

or use of color terminology According to Eckert and MeConnell-Ginet (2003), “gender is the very process of creating a dichotomy by effacing similarity and elaborating on difference, and even where there are biological differences, these differences are cxaggcraled and oxlanded in the service of constructing gender” (p 13)

‘This study focuses on gender as a social construction — as the means by which society joinily accomplishes the differentiation thal constitules the gender order In particular, #1 analyzes the differences between males and females in complimenting and responding to

compliments

1.3.2 Gender-hased differences in language use

Several contributors appear to adopt the view that similarities rather than differences characterize men and women For instance, Kunkel and Burleson found that “some noteworthy differences between men and women exist, when both within- and between- gender comparisons are made: the similarities are as important-if not more important-than the differsnees” Gs cited in Canary & Dindia, 1998, p 3) Stier and Hall (1984) in a siudy

on communication behavior reported no overall tendency for men to touch women more

than vice versa ‘They concluded: “In general touch in opposite-gender dyads id not

apperar 1o be strongly asyromstrical” (p 456) Similarly, Tall and Veccia (1990) found that, over all ages and body parts, men touched women with the same fiequency that women touched men However, even when such similarities are granted, researchers often

romain cager lo explore and slaborate on gender differances more than similarilies

1.5.2.1 Topic control

In a study of heterosexual married couples, women introduced more conversational topics,

but men were more likely to decide which topics would be picked up and elaborated

Wamen resort to more attention-seeking devices (Know what? or Guess what 1 just heard),

Wornen may offers and men withhold - conversational supporl in the form of assenting

responses Œrmm-Em, veak)} (DeFrancisso, 1991; Fishman, 1978, Leet-Pellegrmi, 1980)

“These patterns suggest that women do more ‘interactional work:” their speech strategies

function both to held a share of conversational lime and attention for themselves and Lo

provide support to their male conversational partners” (Crawford, 1995, p 42)

1.5.2.2 Talking time

There 1s a particularly interesting finding given that bemg talkative is one of the strongest stereotypes of women’s speech (Kramer, 1977) Spender (1989) suggested that the perception of women as the talkative gender continues because the implicit norm is silenos She also stated that “Quite simply, if a woman is expected to be quiet then any woman who opens her mouth can be accused of being talkative” (1989, p 9) Llowever, when talk

offers Lie poss bility of đnhancing the spoak: men fend to tall most Men talk

more than a ‘fair share’ of talk time in a variety of settings: classrooms from elementary school to university level (Crawford and MacLeod 1990; M, Sadker & D Sadker, 1994), university facully mectings (B Eakins & G Eakins, 1976), colloge students’ discussions of

a social issuc (Lect-Pellcgrini, 1980) and so on There is plenty of evidence from rescarch

in the United States and from Britain demonstrating that males tend to talk more the wornen in public conlexls where talk is highly valued and aliracis posilive allention (Holmes, 1991) According to Holmes (1995, p 37), “men tend to value public, referentially orientated talk, while women value and enjoy intimate, affectively orientated talk.” Each gender may be contributing more in the situation in which they are mosl comfortable Holmes (1995) also stated that, “women may experience formal public

lag-quostions (John is here, isn’t he?) and weak explolives (Oh fudge I've pret the pearuet butter in the fridge again!) differed radically trom mule use In certain contexts, women use question tags more frequently than men do She defined the tag-question as

a declarative statement without the assumption that the statement is to be

‘elieved by the addressee: one has an out, as with questions The tag gives the

addressee leeway, not forcing him to go along with the views of the speaker (p

insecurity,

In the years that followed the publication of her work, a considerable amount of research was conducted in connection with Lakoff’s hypotheses A study by Dubois and Crouch (1975) showed that hor essay relicd on casual observation, it is not adequate Hence, her claim was oversimplified In fact, in their study, men produced more tag-questions than

women, Recent evalualive reaction studi also support this position, Bock (1996) (as ciled

in Dubois and Crouch (1975) conducted a poll of 122 American college students on the question; “Women use more tag-questions than men” Less than 41% agreed with this statement while 17.2% disagreed and 41% were undecided.

Additional properties of tag-questions continued to be revealed by further analyses In addition 10 expressing uncertainty, insecurity and the wish Lo be accepled (1), lag-questions also function as expressions of politeness, as hedging and boosting devices Moreover, they facilitate communication In (2) the speaker's ‘haven't you’ gives the addressee,

Androw, a chance lo pick up on the lopie suggested by the speaker and gol inlo a conversation with Frank,

(1) Showing insecurity: I graduated last year, didn't T?

(2) Facilitating conversation: Andrew, this is our new neighbor, Frank, Andrew has just changed jobs, haven't you?

(Holmes, 1992, p 318)

Regarding the different fimetions of the tag-question, Holmes (1992, p 319) presented the following results:

Table 1-3: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Holmes, 1992)

As it can be seen, men use question tags more often to express uncertainty while women

use them largely to facilitate communication

A different division of the fimetion of tag-questions, originally proposed by Ilelmes (1984), is the basis for a study by Coates and Cameron (1989), On the one hand, Coates and Cameron detined an affective function for tags (3) which were directed toward the addresses and signal solidarity On the other hand, tag-questions also served a modal fumction (4)

(3) Showing solidarity: His portraits are quite static by comparison, aren't they?

(4) Indicating uncertainty: You were missing last week, weren't you?

(Coates & Cameron, 1989, p 82)

Table 3-4: Functions of tag-questions hetween women and men (Coates & Cameron,

The above studies show that women and men behave differently in a speech situation This

differcnec manifests itsclf, for instance, in linguistic behavior by the differential usc of

economic status of men Women, on the other hand, are powerless regarding their social.

position This is reflected in fewer interruptions in cross-gender conversations Tirmmermman and West (1975) reported the follawing results

Yable 1-5: Interruptions in cross-gender conversations (Zimmerman & West, 1975)

Cross-gender conversations = Male Female Total

Similarly, as Lakoff (1975), Tradgill (1978) and others have pointed out, low social status

is often characterized by passivity and low vitality ‘his in tum results in the wish to be accupted by the dominating group However, high achieved status docs nol necessarily protect women agamst being interrupted: female physicians are frequently interrupted by male patients (West, 1984)

1.5.3, Explanations for gender-based differences in language use

A variety of explanations have becn proposed for gender differences in language use Chambers (1992) gave a biclogical explanation, Claiming an innate, albeit small, neurological advantage for women, Chambers assumed that this advantage was realized in the use of verbal skitls and transferred Lo other behavioral skills, Using data from studi

Detroit and Belfast, trom Japan and the Middle East, Chambers argued for a sex-based analysis of variability Although pointing to the tentative nature of this explanation he

sin

claimed that “female prococity in verbal skills beginning in infancy predisposes them to apply their verbal skills to all kinds of situations as they grow up” (Chambers, 1992, p 201).

2

Furthermore, Chambers cited Sherman (1978) in support of his position:

The early female advantage bends the twig toward female preference for verbal

approaches to problem solution Thus bent is then increased by the verbal

emphasis of Uwe educational system and by agpects of sex zoles (lml đơ nơi eacowage ginls' development of visual-spatial skills (p 40)

Other researchers put a great deal of stress on socialization as an explanatory factor (e.g Malt & Borker, 1982; Tannen, 1987) In many societies, girls and boys experience different pattems of socialization and ths, it is suggested, leads to different ways of using and interpreting language (Holmes, 1995) In modem societies, most girls and boys operate

in single-sex peer groups through an influential period of their childhood, during which

they acquire and develop different styles of inderaction The boys” inlsraetion tends to be more competitive and control-orientated, while the girls interact more cooperatively and focus on relative closeness Holmes (1995) stated that “gender differences in patterns of language use can be explained by the fact that girls and boys arc socialized inlo different cultures Each group learns appropriate ways of interacting tom their same sex peers inchiding ways of interacting verbally” (p 7)

Besides, for decades, many researchers have argued that the differences attrituned to

gender can be accounted for by differences in social roles and social status (Henley, 1973-

1974, 1977, Kramarae, 1981; Spender, 1980; Thome & Ienley, 1975; Unger, 1976, 1979)

Despite the profound social change that has occurred in American socicty in the past 25

‘years, men and women are still positioned differently in society According to Aries

(1996), “men hold more power and stalus than wornen Women have mdsed entered the

labor force in greater numbers, but they are still paid less for the same work and on average hold jobs with lower status than men’ (as cited in Canary é& Dindia, 1998, p 72) A great

deal of ovidence demonstrates that the dominance and leadership attributed lo man is

displayed more ofien by high-status than low-stalus individuals; when stains is conlrolled

for, gender differences are diminished For instance, in a study of dominance displayed at

work, dominance was predicted by participants’ social roles Less dominance was

displayed toward coworkers and supervisors than toward people being supervised

(Moskowatz, Jung Suh, & Desaulmers, 1994) However, dominance was not predicted by the gender of participant Iligh-status and powerful individuals have been found to

intcrrupt more than low-status, less powerful individuals (B Eakins & G Eakins, 1983,

Greif, 1980; West & Zimmerman, 1977, Woods, 1988) In discussion among intimate helerosexual couples, speaking time was related Lo the amount of power each person held

in the relationship in decision making The more powerful person spoke more in discussions When men and women enjoy equal power, men do not speak significantly more than thsir female partnsrs in discussions (Kollock, Blumsicin & Schwartz, 1985) When men and women are placed in equal status position, gender differences are reduced When dominance and leadership are legitimized for women in organizational settings, the behavior of male and female leaders is quite similar (Eagly & Johnson, 1990)

Nevertheless, the differences between men and women in language are not permanent With the development of society and the changes of cultural values, the differences may

deere:

Most people appear to believe that men and women are findamentally different Llare- Mustin anid Marceck (1988) argued thal poople who assume porvasive gender differences

in social behavior have an “alpha bias” or “the exaggeration of differences” (p 457), As

‘Tannen (1994) recently indicated,

Entering the arena of research on gender is like stepping into a maelstrom What

iL mean to be female or male, whl it’s like to talk Lo someone of the other (or the same) [sex], are questions whose answers Louch people where hey live, and

when a nerve is touched, people howl (p 3}

In a similar manner, one cannot cscape one’s ideological frame of reference when researching how sex differences might affect communication between people Crawford (1995) paul it this way

Sex differencer findings can never enter the scientific discourse newrally

Rather, they axe interpreted within the context of deeply held beliefs about women’s [and men’s] natures, In accounting for their results, researchers cannot avoid being inflnenced by the sociocultural disconrse of gender, because “facts”

about sex differences have no micaning outside thal discourse What “counls” as

an interesting ar impoutant result, and what “makes sense” ag an interpretation,

are always ideological matters (p 32)

1.6 Gender and politeness

26

Brown, in her work on the analysis of politeness among a Mayan community, argued that women, in general, aze more polite than wen (Brown, 1980, 1983) According lo her, “in most cultures, women among women may have a tendancy to use more elaborated positive politeness strategies than men do among men” (1980, p 251) She also discussed the way thal many linguists have concluded thal women’s langage tends to be more hypercorrect than men’s and hence more formal (Brown, 1980) This can be because women tand to gain prestige through appearance and linguistic behavior, since they cannot gain status through their job or income (Trudgill, 1972)

Brown saw politeness as being concerned with questions of social standing and this she saw as heing of great importance for women, Vor her, since relationships in general were being fairly siable, politeness levels ware also fairly predictable, If there is a shifl in the

level or type of politeness used, then we are to assume that there has been a change in respect, an increase in social distance of a change of a face threatening nature She argued

that therefore most fluctuations in politeness levels are duc to the mitigation of an FTA

In her analysis of strengthening and weakening particles in ‘lenajapa, she asserted that in this Mayan community, which is very clearly gender-differentiated, women used more strengthening particles when spcaking to women (and to men) and they also used more weakening particles when speaking to men Women speaking to women used more particles in general than men used lo men, This is an important finding, since Brown showed that she was avare that women do not have a simple general style which all of them use in all circumstances; rather, their choice in terms of the use of these particles depends on the

asstnent of contsxt and audionec (Mills, 2003) Later, Holmes (1995)

commented on Brown’s analysis of these particles

The particles she examined tend to occur most frequently in specch expressing feelings and attitudes, and in her data women spent more time talking about feelings and attitudes towards events than men It seams possible that the àsociation of particular linguislic devices with women’s speech may reflect Lhe fact (hal they occur more often in discourse Lypes favored by women (p 110)

In general, even though there were several cases where Brown’s hypothesis was not proven

when lested against her dala, she still asserted the wornen and men’s speech differ

significantly in relation to politeness use.

A similar finding can be seen in Sinith-Hefer”s (1988) analysis of the use of polite forms

in Java, where she noted thal different cultures bad different definitions of whal counls as polite; she argued that in Java polite forms were associated with ugh status and with linguistic control and skill ‘Thus, although Javanese women were expected to be more poliic than men within the family and this use signaled their subscrvionce (an assertion which seems to support Brown’s assertion about Tenejapan women), outside the family within the public domain politeness was associated with males

Holmes (1995) argued thal in general women were more polite than mon as they are more concemed with the affective rather than the referential aspect of ufterances since

“politeness is an expression of concem for the feelings of others” (p 4) She suggested that wornen were more likely te usz posilive politeness than men; thus for her, “women’s utterances show evidence of concem for the feelings of the people they are talking to more often and more explicitly than men’s do” (p 6) Positive politeness is here seen to be synonymous with fricndliness, and sccms part of a general stereotype about the way that women should behave, However, she recognized that distinguishing between positive and negative politeness is difficult: “in fact, there are few speech acts which are intrinsically

speech acts” (p 154)

In brief, many researchers have asserted a global difference between men’s and women’s use of politeness However, the generalizations are not always true in different cultures As

Mills (2003) put it

Becanse gender and other factors impact npon the context and becanse gender is

indeed somelhing which participards perfoom and inderprel in Lhe contexl of

hypothesized gendered stereotypes within a community of practice, its is

essential to analyze gender at both the local and the stmctural level, especially

im ils relation Lo the production and interpretation of politeness (p 235)

1.7 Related studies

LULL Review ofthe studies on compliments and compliment responses

28

For applied linguistics concemed with language acquisition and with intercultural communication, the insighls gained though analysis of the social aspect of language use are of puticular importance Recent studies of such speech acts as apologies, directives, expressions of disapproval and compliments have rich implications (WolfSon, 1984)

of comnpliments and compliment respon:

speech event is actually far more complicated than it appears, in terms of the relation between language, society and culture (Pomerantz, 1978; Wolfson, 1981, Wolfson & Manes, 1980; Iolmes, 1988a; Herbert, 1989)

Studies of compliments have focused on the following areas; compliment formulas, functions, topics, compliment responses, and compliment as a gender-preferential strategy

in one culture or across cullures

The most extensive stdy on American compliments was conducted by Wolfson and

Manes, who collected over 1,000 compliments in a wide range of situations The results showed that approximately 80% of American compliments fill into the three syntacte patterns: NP is/looks (intensifier) ADJ (e.g., Your sweater is (really) nice), 1 (intensifier) like/love NP (eg., I (really) like your car), and PRO is (intensifier) (a) ADJ NP (e.g., That's a (really) good question.) (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1983; Wolfson & Manes, 1980)

Following Wolfson and Manes* investigation, there were other studies, which confirmed their finding of the formulas in other varictics of English, for example, Hoknes (19888), Herbert (1990), ete

Ye (1995)'s

of positive semantic carriers, Ye stated that, due to the nature of the language structure, the

Te formulaic with a limited range

study showed thal Chinese compliments

most frequently used positive semantic carriers were Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs

Jia (1997) studied that Chinese adverbs often occurred with most of the positive adjectives and verbs The most popular syntactic patters are:

1 (Yon) NP (ADV) ADI (c.g (Your) This swealcr is really niec.)

2 (You) V NP (ADV) ADJ @g (You) wear this coat really beautiful)

3 NP (You ¥) (ADV) ADJ (c.g This job you did really good.)

He also noted that Chinese compliments rarely used the speaker’s perspective,

The findings concerning compliment formulas indicate that compliments are readily recognizable items of discourse, hey reduce the possibility of misunderstanding between the speaker and hearer

Investigating the different ways in which Vietnamese comphments are expressed, Q

Nguyễn (1998, p 183-185) suggested a range of lexico-modal markers commonly deployed by Vietnamese speakers in giving compliments:

(i) vita, vita mei, don gidn 14, có lẽ, có thể, cả khả năng, phải chăng, ð mức độ

nào đó thì, nói khí không phải chứ,

Gi) mét chút, một tạo, một tẹo teo, tí chút, đội chút tàm tạm, đại loại kiểu, kiểu

Thưa, ii) vô cùng, thực sự, thật là, thậi, xát, rất chủ là, quả là, rất là, lắm, thế, đầy, hẳn

Ta, ra, lên,

In American culture, a compliment is often used for maintaining social harmony and for sustaining social inleraclion (Celoe-Murcia, 1991) TL can show gratilude, open or close a conversation (Wolfson, 1983), soften a criticism or request (Brown & Levinson, 1987), establish and reinforce solidarity between the speaker and the addressee (Herbert, 1989, Manes, 1983; Wolfson ,1983), and serve as expression of praise and adrniration (Hcrberl, 1990), A wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Holmes & Brown, 1987) Kor this reason, compliments have become clearly marked features in American Linglish On the other hand, in other cultures compliments can have

more or less marked values For example, a comparative sludy belweon Thai and Ameri compliments in English by Cedar (2006) showed that Tha culture values humility and modesty Thus, complimenting occurs less frequently in the Thai community than in the

United States A compliment in Thai is a carcfully controlled specch act with a much more

restricted purpose than a compliment in American English

In respect of compliment topics, three major categories have been identified in American English: appearance or possessions, abilities or accomplishments, and personality traits of the interlocutors (Knapp, Hopper & Bell, 1984; Nelson, Hl Bakary & Al Batal, 1993)

Compliment lopies reflect whal is culturally considered admirable in saciely Positive remarks are offered regarding some attributes that are noticeably different such as newness

30

and weight loss in mainstream American culture (i.e., “noticings”, Hatch, 1992) While compliments on appearance or possessions can be given relatively Geely regardless of the status of the intelocutors, those on abilities or accomplishments are more restricted in their distribution It is generally supposed that speakers in higher positions are capable of evaluating the parformance of tho

communication Appearance and economic conditions were unsafe topics In the Japanese

not

sly, one’s appearance, which is greatly valucd in English speaking commun

the most frequently mentioned topic (Bamlund & Araki, 1985, Daikuhara, 1986) The most ftequently topic is that of one’s ability and achievement In the Korean spsech community, Back (1998) stated that complinients on a person’s personality occur more frequently in Korean than in English, In her study, the highest frequency of words for complimenting personality is “good-natured”, “diligent”, and “polite” She claimed that the

comments wore based on # person’s conducl or moral behavior which conforms to social norms or his/her role-expectation in the given situation These findmgs about compliment topies suggest that it is important for nonnative speakers to know not only proper topics for compliments in the largel language bul also the underlying valuc of the

Compliment responses have eflien been examined in a contrastive fashion lo illuminate

cultural differences in CR behavior between different speech communnties, Q Nguyén

(1998), when comparing between Vietnamese and American corpus found that the Americans have a lendency to compliment acceptance and the Vielnamess prefer for compliment obviation Kiéu (2006) in her study on disagreements by native speakers of English in North America and Viemamese speakers within the frameworks of pragmatics and conversalion analysis claimed thal American conversalionalisls show a, londsncy to

choose ‘middle positions’ to avoid seli‘praise in response to compliments “They may use the ‘agreement | disagreement’ format to produce (i) scaled-down disagreements, elaborate complimentary components with qualifiers or (i) downgrade prior compliments, deploy the (iii) credit shift strategy, or provide (iv) reciprocal compliments” (Riku, 2006,

p 191) Similarly, Viemamese compliment recipients also downgraded the scale of prior complimentary assertions, shift the credit referent lo a cerlain third party, or return

compliments to first speakers Additionally, she stated that

aveeplance and appreciation Lokens seem lo be commom in English while they were rare in the Vietnamese corpus; maybe, it was the manifestation of the

common trend in Vietnamese culnure to disagree with/reject prior compliments

to show modesty or humblenest rather than to agree withfaccept and express

appreciations (p 191)

Gajaseni (1994) conducted one contrastive study of Amencan and Thai compliment responses [le found that Americans were not only more likely to accept compliments, but thal they lended to give morc lengthy responses The ndings also showed that boll groups tended to accept comphments more from an interlocutor of a higher social status and to reject those more often from someone of a lower status This result might show that these

groups sce compliment acceptances as morc polite than rejections

In another study, Chiang and Pochtraeger (1993) (as cited in Ye, 1995) compared compliment responses of Chinese-bom and American-born Tinglish speakers and found the American-born speakers were more likcly to positively elaborate on responses, while the Chinese-born participants were more likely to deny or negatively elaborate on a compliment They stated that for Americans, the least preferred type of compliment

response was rejection or denial,

Yoko (1995) compared Japanese CRs lo American norms, The results revealed that in the

Japanese speakers’ responses, rejection of the CR was the ideal and acceptance could be

32

problematic ‘The author noted that the standard American CR is “thank you” which accepts the compliment without necessarily agreeing wilh it and avoiding appearing conceited, According to Yoko, compliments put the recipient in a conilict to neither reject

a compliment but to also show solidarity and rapport He stated that ‘in contrast, it is gonorally accoptzd in Japanese so

in the Arisrican data

17.2, Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment

corpus of 484 compliment exchanges recorded by linguistics sludents, Holmes (1988, p 449) examined the frequency of compliments between genders, finding 23.1% of compliments occurred from males to females in comparison to 16.5% from females to

males, Har results also showed the most popular compliment topic was thal, of

‘appearance’ with female - fomale interactions complimenting on appearance 61% of the

lime, male - female 17%, female - male A0% and male - made, a surprising 36% (p 455) From his analysis of responses to compliments, Herbert (1990) concluded, “compliments

from females will most likely not be accepled, whereas compliments from males will,

especially by female recipients” (p 67-68) To explain these findings, Herbert (1990)

argued that male and female compliments in American English served different functions

in discourse Te suggested thal for worn compliments were primarily offers of solidarity,

while for males they functioned more ofien as actual asserlions of praise

Ye (1995) also studied gender-based differences in compliments and compliment

rosponses He classified the compliment stralegics cmplayed by respondents into four categories: Explicit Compliment, Implicit Compliment, Non-Compliment and Xo Response Results showed that both males and females gave the same order of rank in their preferonee of compliment stralogics However, statistical analysis revealed thal [here was a significant difference between genders using these four compliment strategies, Female respondents gave more Implicit Compliments than male respondents, while males gave more Implicit Compliments or Non-Compliments Male and female respondents were found to use positive semantic carticrs differently in adverbs and nouns Males used nouns more often than females, while females used more adverbs (Ye, 1995) According to Ye’s study, the distribution of compliment responses also showed that male and female respondents adopted different strategies, Specifically, males chose Non-Acceptance more often them females, whereas females showed a much stronger tendancy to Acceptance

Recently, Parisi and Wogan’s (2006) study provided an updated look at compliment topics and gender in America, Using linguistic students to record compliment exchanges, the corpus was analyzed and a significantly high proportion of compliments on appearance is found to oceur fram males Lo females (60.53%) than fornalcs to males (29.27%) (Parisi & Wogan, 2006) Whereas previous studies have focused primarily on corpus analysis and quantitative results (Llerbert, 1986; Llolmes, 1988a), Parisi and Wogan (2006) incorporated interviews into their methodology to provide further conlextuil information and so gain insight into compliment motivation Through such qualitative methods, they discovered a shared trait amongst the females: namely, that they feel uncomfortable complimenting

inalcs on appearance for fear of the compliznent being misinterpreted as a ‘come - on’.

3

In a comparative study on responses to compliments in English between Thai and American, Codar (2008) claimed that there was a noticeable difference in denial responses between females and males None of the Thai or American females used denial response to the compliments, while 14% of ‘Thai males’ responses and 10% of American males”

were not likely to be used by female complimentees, whereas they would be used more often by male complimentees lurthermore, she also found that 'Thai females used the non- verbal response (smile), while the American females did not Additionally, only the Thai feralcs gave no response Ono-fouth of the total responses by Thai fomales were classified as smiling without any verbal elaboration, whereas only four percent of

ican females

responses by Thai mates (all info this category In contrast, none of the Am:

and males smiled to the complimenter as a response to compliments and none of them

were quiet and fail to give any response, either - they always responded in some way

The studics reviewed provide a thcorctical basis and framework for the present study Nevertheless, research into the field of compliment behavior still has some limitations and raises a number of questions For example, studying compliments from informal

(1988b, p 456) called for the

the data

rosponses hava becn camicd out focusing on the vadablc-gonder Họ

collection instrument in almost existing research is the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) However, the data obtained from DC may not provide a fully authentic picture of what the subjects have aplually said in real-life situations since iL was livited outside of context Differently, in the present study, the data are collected from analyzing the conversations in

an American sitcom, The conversations are supposed to reflect real ones in people’s daily fife, Il is a new approach io the growing field of research pertaining to conmpliment

behavior

In this chapter, the paper reviewed related theories and studies to this study The next chapter will domonstrate the methodology of data collection as well as data analysis, present and discuss the results