an investigation of gender differences in responding to compliments = sự khác biệt về giới trong cách tiếp nhận lời khen

The purpose of this study is to examine the sociolinguistic characteristics of gender differences in compliment responses, in other words, whether the social variables of the interlocuto

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Hanoi – 2009

Supervisor: DR HÀ CẨM TÂM

Hanoi – 2009

Table of contents

Certificate of originality of thesis ………

Acknowledgements………

Abstract………

List of Tables ………

List of abbreviations and conventions………

Part 1: Introduction………

1 Rationale………

2 Aims of the study………

3 Scope of the study………

4 Method of the study………

5 Organization of the study………

Part 2: Development………

Chapter 1: Literature Review………

1.1 Overview of speech acts………

1.2 Compliment and compliment responses………

1.2.1 Complimenting as a speech act………

1.2.2 Function of compliment………

1.2.3 Compliment responses………

1.3 Politeness ………

1.3.1 Definition of politeness………

1.3.2 The face-saving view of politeness………

1.3.3 Politeness in complimenting and responding to compliments………

1.3.4 Gender and politeness………

1.4 Previous studies of gender in compliment and compliment responses…………

i

ii

ii

iv

v

1

1

2

2

3

3

4

4

4

6

6

8

9

11

11

12

14

15

17

Chapter 2: The study………

2.1 The research designing………

2.1.1 The research question………

2.1.2 Selection of informants………

2.1.3 Data collection instruments………

2.1.4 Situation design………

2.1.5 Data-collecting procedures………

2.2 Analytical Framework………

Chapter 3: Data analysis and discussion………

3.1 Data analysis procedures………

3.2 Results………

3.2.1 Compliment response strategies by males of the topic dimension…………

3.2.2 Compliment response strategies by females of the topic dimension………

3.2.3 Compliment response strategies by gender ………

3.2.4 Summary………

3.3 Discussions………

Part 3: Conclusion………

1 Major findings………

2 Implications………

3 Suggestions for further research………

References………

Appendix ………

19

19

19

19

19

20

21

22

25

25

26

26

27

28

30

31

36

36

37

38

40 I

PAGE

26

28

29

Comment Acceptance Comment History Disagreement Discourse Completion Tests Face saving act

Face threatening acts

No Acknowledgement Performance

Possession Praise Upgrade Qualification Question Reassignment Return Request Interpretations Scale Down

Part 1: Introduction

1 Rationale

In everyday life, there are a number of speech acts we can choose to show positive politeness, for example, greetings, hanks, friendly address terms and expressions of concern ―A compliment is one of them, which notice and attend the hearer‘s interests, wants, needs, goods ‖ (Holmes: 1988)

Since 1970s, linguists have attached the study of speech act, such as Apology, Request, Compliment & Compliment Response, Refusal and Complaint, etc These studies show that, the social and situational factors, which will exert their influences on the use of the speech acts, include gender, age, level of education, social distance, social relationship, style, and ethnicity and so on Compliments, as a positive speech act, will be inevitably influenced by these social factors

Although pragmatists and sociolinguists have examined the relationship between gender and language for the last thirty years, there is little consensus about this relationship As far as female speech is concerned, arguments continue to focus on whether

or not female speakers express powerlessness in their speech or whether they express a form of speech only different from that of males by using, for example, more polite speech style Of the social causes of gender differentiation in speech style, one of the most critical appears to be the level of education In all studies, it has been shown that the greater the disparities between educational opportunities for boys and girls, the greater the differences between male and female speech (Spolsky, 2000) The more recent feminist theory has focused on the social construction of gender, not exclusively in childhood but for a whole lifetime, and this seems to be more powerful in explaining gender differences in language use

Compliments are positive speech acts, which are sensitive to both social constraints and individual variables Social factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, social status and social relationship between the interlocutors will inevitably influence the complimenting behavior of all interlocutors

Several studies have shown that there are some differences between males and females in their realization patterns of compliments and compliment responses Two important studies that focus on gender differences in complimenting and responding to compliments are those by Holmes (1988) and Herbert (1990) They found that the syntactic patterns and lexical choice used by men and women were different Based on the findings, they assumed that females use compliments for keeping solidarity while males regard compliments as potential face threatening acts (FTAs) They examined kinds of topics and situations, as well as gender-based distributions

Although a lot of research has been carried out on compliments and compliment responses, the study on relationship between genders in compliment responses is still something new in Vietnam The purpose of this study is to examine the sociolinguistic characteristics of gender differences in compliment responses, in other words, whether the social variables of the interlocutors, namely, social status, gender and age, have any influence on the compliment response strategies the respondent may employ

2 Aims of the study

This study examines the differences of linguistic strategies between British women‘s and men‘s compliment responding, exploring the function of the positive speech acts as positive strategies The study provides an analysis concerning the differences between the same genders and the different genders in compliment responds strategies The reason why men and women differ in language use is that they often different role in society

3 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the differences of linguistic strategies between British male and female subjects in the workplace in responding to compliments in some daily situations in terms of linguistic strategies The data we can obtain from the Discourse Completion Tests will show us only nonverbal

Gender is the main variable in the present study There are four types of compliment situations with regard to the gender of complimenters and respondents: male – male, male-female, and female - male, female - female In each of the situations designed in the questionnaires, there are two possibilities of the gender group That is to say, the two

interlocutors in each situation might be of the same gender or might be of different genders This may influence the production or selection of compliment response strategies The study is based on the analytical framework established by Herbert (1986), but modified by the author for the present study

4 Method of the study

This study focuses mainly on analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaire The questionnaire is designed to elicit the informants‘ compliment responses in the situations under study The data collection of this research is done by using the Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) It is believed that DCTs constitute important starting points for further research since they facilitate the collection of large amount of data Each discourse sequence presented a detailed description of the situation, specifying the gender and social status of the complimenter The participants‘ task was supply the responses to the situation given The data we can obtain from the DCTs will show us only ―discourse in written form‖

5 Organization of the study

This research includes three parts Part 1 introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope and the method of the study Part 2 is the development of the study There are four Chapters in this part Chapter one will review briefly the related theories, such as speech acts, politeness, review of the studies on compliments and compliment responses Chapter two discusses the methodology of the study, which includes the research questions, design

of the study, the selection of subjects, instruments, situation design, analytical framework and the procedures of data collecting and analyzing In Chapter Three, this paper will show the results of the study In Chapter Four, this paper will give discussions and the major findings of the results obtained in the research And finally in Part 3, this paper will briefly summarize the major discoveries of this study, indicate the limitations and implications of the study and point out the directions for further research

Part 2: Development

Chapter 1: Literature Review

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background of the research These theories include theories on speech act, politeness The theories will build up the theoretical framework of this study

1.1 Overview of speech acts

Although many theories have studied speech act theory, generally all of them share the common theme that speech acts are the actions that are involved when some one says something

According to Searle (1969:24), language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as promising, threatening and requesting that one perform in speaking

George Yule (1996:47) defines that actions performed via utterance are generally

called speech acts, and in English, are commonly given more specific labels such as

apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request The circumstances in

which actions are performed via utterances are called the speech events In many ways, it

is the nature of the speech event that determines the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act For example, on a wintry day, the speaker reaches for a cup of tea, believing that it has been freshly made, takes a sip, and produces the utterance

“This tea is really cold” This utterance can be interpreted as a complaint Changing the

circumstances to really hot summer day with the speaker being given a glass of iced tea by

the hearer, taking a sip and producing the same utterance “This tea is really cold” This

utterance is likely to be interpreted as praise If the same utterance can be interpreted as different kinds of speech act, then obviously no simple one utterance to one action correspondence will be possible It also means that there is more to the interpretation of a speech act than can be found in the utterance alone

According to Austin (1962), the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act

Locutionary act is the basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic

expression

Illocutionary act is performed by uttering some words, such as commanding,

offering, promising, threatening, thanking, etc For example, when A says: “Give me some

cash” to B, the locutionary act is the utterance he makes when he says the sentence; the

illocutionary act is that A performs the act of requesting B to give him some cash

The third part is the perlocutionary act, which is the actual result of the locution It

may or may not be what the speaker B wants to happen but it is caused by the locution For example, A‘s utterance may have any of the following perlocutions: A persuaded B to give him the money; B refused to give him the money; B was offended; etc In a word, the perlocution is defined by the hearer‘s reaction

Of these three dimensions, the most discussed is illocutionary force Indeed, the term

―speech act‖ is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of

an utterance

Austin classifies illocutionary acts into five types, i.e., verdictives, exer- citives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives Austin‘s classification is best seen as an attempt to give a general picture of illocutionary acts: what types of illocutionary act one can generally perform in uttering a sentence One can exercise judgment (Verdictive), exert influence or exercise power (Exercitive), assume obligation or declare intention (Commissive), adopt attitude, or express feeling (Behabitive), and clarify reasons, argument, or communication (Expositive) ―Compliment‖ can be categorized into the group of bahabitives to express one‘s attitude towards something

John Searle (1969) divides the illocutionary act into five types of general functions.The five-category classification of illocutionary acts is representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations

Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes

to be the case or not Statements of fact, assertions, conclusions, and descriptions, for

example: ―The earth is flat.‖ or ―It was a rainy day‖, representing the world as he or she

believes it is

Directions are those kinds of speech acts that speakers used to get somebody else to

do something They express what the speaker wants They can be positive or negative, for

example: ―Don‟t smoke!” or ―Give me a cup of tea!” They may be very modest attempts

as inviting or suggesting, or they may be very fierce attempt as insisting, ordering, or commanding

Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves

to some future course of action, such as promises, threats, refusals, pledges etc They can

be performed by the speaker alone, or by the speaker as a member of a group For

example, ―I will be back” or, ―We will not do that”

Expressives is to state what the speaker feels They express psychological state and

can be statements of the speaker‘s attitude, feelings and emotions, for example, pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, sorrow, complaints, apologies and compliments etc

Declaratives is the speech act which changes the world with their utterance, such as

command, declaration, etc For example: ―We find the defendant guilty!”

The theory of speech acts is not only useful illustrating the kinds of things we can do with words but also necessary for identifying some of the conventional utterance forms we use to perform specific actions However, a more extended interaction should be taken into consideration in order that we could understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted with speech events The following part will discuss complimenting as speech acts and the relevance of compliments

On the previous section, the paper mentioned speech acts And as we all know, many researchers explored the actual forms and their functions of speech acts in languages The next section will discuss complimenting as speech acts

1.2 Compliment and compliment responses

1.2.1 Complimenting as a speech acts

Recent studies of such speech acts as apologies, directives, expressions of disapproval and compliments have rich implications (Wolfson, 1984) The compliment speech event has been a subject of careful sociolinguistic investigation in recent years However, studies of compliments have shown that this small 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, 1981; Holmes, 1986;

Holmes (1988), Herbert (1989))

Complimenting is a kind of speech act belonging to the category of Expressives (Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels They express psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or sorrow.), based on Searle‘s (1979) classification According to Brown and Levinson (1987), complimenting is a positive politeness strategy aiming to praise the addressees for

a past or present action In other words, compliments are prime examples of speech acts that notice and attend to the hearer‘s interests, wants, needs, and goods A frequent

denotation is Holmes‘s (1988:446) definition: “A compliment is a polite speech act which

explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some „good‟ (possession, characteristics, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and hearer” She defines a compliment as a speech act

that is accomplished either explicitly or implicitly to express admiration or approval for some good of the addressee In such a situation, explicit compliments are those whose

meaning is understood literally, as in a direct speech act, for example, ―you look nice in

blue” Similarly, implicit compliments account for indirect speech acts whose meaning can

be inferred among participants, for instance, “I wish I could play the piano like you do”

(Cordella, Large and Pardo 1995)

In an early study, Manes and Wolfson (1981), examining a corpus of compliments uttered in daily conversation in American English, discovered that there exists a large amount of patterning at both the syntactic and the semantic levels They found that five

positive evaluative adjectives—nice, good, pretty, beautiful, and great—accounted for two-thirds of the adjectives that complimenters used By the same token, the two verbs like and love accounted for 86 percent of the positive evaluative verbs They concluded that

compliments are highly formulaic, both in their syntactic form and in the lexical items that carry the positive evaluation Subsequent studies in this vein of research (e.g., Holmes

1986, 1988; Herbert 1990) have tended to corroborate Manes and Wolfson‘s general findings, focusing on the gender difference in compliment forms Both Holmes and

Herbert found that women used the I like/love NP formula much more than men, and that

women‘s compliments were more personal in focus, while men complimented on ability and performance

Manes and Wolfson (1981) and Wolfson (1983) observed that compliments seem

to fall naturally into two general categories—those which focus on appearance and/or

possessions, and those which have to do with ability and/or accomplishments With respect

to the first category, in addition to compliments on apparel, hairstyle, and jewelry, it is

very common for Americans to compliment one another on such seemingly personal matters as weight loss Favorable comments on the attractiveness of one‘s children, pets, and even husbands, boyfriends, wives, or girlfriends seem to fall within this same category,

as do compliments on cars and houses Compliments assigned to the second category include those referring to the addressee‘s skill or performance, e.g a well-done job, a skillfully played game, a good meal According to Manes and Wolfson‘s (1981) and Wolfson‘s (1983) studies on compliments in American English, the greatest number of appearance/possession compliments are given and received by acquaintances, colleagues, and casual friends, especially by females Upper-status males rarely received compliments, and these were nearly never associated with appearance By contrast, women are the recipients of the great majority of compliments on appearance/possession In this case, however, the status of the woman seems to have little if any effect, since she can be complimented on her appearance by virtually anyone Similarly, Holmes (1986) suggests that there is agreement between the New Zealand and American norms at this very broad level concerning appropriate/acceptable topics of compliments In another study examining the distribution of compliment topics by gender, Holmes (1988) pointed out that there is a clearly observable tendency for women to receive compliments on their appearance and to

compliment each other on their appearance

In addition, studies of compliments have focused on the following areas: function, and compliment responses Most of the studies have concentrated on complimenting in different varieties of English

1.2.2 Function of compliment

The functions of complimenting are varied People may compliment one another to maintain or re-establish a social relationship, to reinforce a desired action (e.g., teacher-student interaction), or to soften a speaker‘s discourse before uttering a face threatening act (FTA) (Holmes 1986; Brown and Levinson 1987) Wolfson maintains that the major function of a compliment is to ―to create or maintain solidarity between interlocutors‖ by expressing admiration or approval (1983:89) Holmes essentially agrees with this view by treating compliments as ―positively affective speech acts directed to the addressee which

serve to increase or consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and addressee‖ (1988a:486) Holmes (1988: 464) also maintained that compliments appeared to be functionally complex speech acts which served as ―solidarity signals, commenting on friendships, attenuating demands, smoothing ruffled feathers and bridging gaps created by possible offenses‖ Compliments are usually intended to make others feel good The primary function of a compliment is most obviously affective and social, rather than referential or informative They are generally described as positively affective speech acts serving to increase or consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and addressee

However, compliments have other functions too Wolfson points out that they are used to reinforce desired behavior, for example in a classroom situation They often serve

to strengthen or to replace other speech acts such as apologies, thanking, and greetings They are also frequently used to soften criticism Thus, compliments may be followed by

“but” or “though” and a criticism Compliments are also used to open a conversation and

they may even be used as sarcasm, e.g., “You play a good game of tennis-for a woman.”

(Wolfson, 1983:86-93)

While the primary function of compliments is most obviously affective, it is possible that some compliments are intended to convey and perceived as having a stronger referential message than are others Johnson and Roen (1992) argue that the compliments they analyzed in written peer reviews simultaneously conveyed both affective (or interpersonal) meaning and referential (or ideational) meaning In some contexts, compliments may function as praise and encouragement Herbert (1990) suggests, based

on an analysis of American compliments, which some compliments serve as expressions of praise and admiration rather than offers of solidarity Thus, the relationship between participants is crucial in accurately interpreting the functions of a compliment

On the other hand, there is strong pressure on speakers to avoid or minimize self-praise

Her American data reveal that a large number of compliment responses deviate from the model responses of accepting compliments, and actually show a prevalence of disagreements and rejections According to her analysis, the prevalence of disagreements and rejections is an outcome of yet another system of constraints which co-operates along with the other systems on compliment responses That system involves speaker‘s minimization of self-praise (Pomerantz 1978:81)

Likewise, in a series of studies on compliments, Holmes (1986, 1988) developed three main categories of compliment responses, based on the credit attribution component

of compliments: Accept, Reject, and Deflect or Evade She analyzed complimenting behavior in terms of Brown and Levinson‘s (1987) Politeness Theory and considered compliments to be, on the one hand, positively affective speech acts, and on the other, potentially face-threatening acts, which account for the variety of compliment responses Her data indicated that in New Zealand, by far the most frequent response to a compliment was Accept (1986, 1988) She further examined gender characteristics in the interaction between the gender of complimenter and complimentee and found that males will ignore

or legitimately evade a compliment more often than women will (Holmes 1986) The results of her study reveal the existence of sex-preferential strategies for compliment responses Specifically, New Zealand men tend to interpret compliments as FTAs more readily than their female counterparts, with the latter usually treating them as strategies for maintaining solidarity In a study on Polish compliments and their alleged solidarity function, Jaworski (1995) suggests a refinement to Holmes‘ remark in the sense that whilst females tend to exchange compliments to achieve relational solidarity, males often use the procedural solidarity function of compliments in order to negotiate in-group power relation Herbert (1990) has noted differences in the use of compliments and compliment responses between females and males, such as fewer instances of compliments being returned or of disagreeing compliment responses by the former, together with a higher tendency to question or fail to acknowledge the compliment by the latter

Based on the previous work of Pomerantz (1978), Herbert (1986a) provides a quantitative analysis of compliment responses in American English Herbert classified compliment responses strategies into the following twelve categories: 1 appreciation token, 2 praise upgrade, 3 comment acceptance, 4 comment history, 5 reassignment, 6 return, 7 questioning, 8 scale down, 9 qualification, 10 disagreement, 11 non-

acknowledgement, 12 request for interpretation And Herbert noticed that 66% of Americans responded to compliments with agreement and only 0.4% responded with disagreement

Herbert conducted a contrastive study on American and South African compliment responses spoken by college students (1989, 1990) His data suggested that Americans exhibit a high frequency of compliment-expression but a low frequency of compliment-acceptance; South Africans exhibit a low frequency of compliment-expression but a high frequency of compliment-acceptance He explained the contrast in terms of ideological differences between Americans and South Africans That is, the high frequency of compliments and the low rate of acceptance in the U.S data reflect American notions of equality and democratic idealism, whereas the low frequency of compliments and the high rate of acceptance are tied to elitism in South Africa

We have mentioned complimenting as speech act and compliment responses The next section will discuss notions of politeness and face

Lakoff (quoted in Yule,1996:106) defines politeness as ―A system of interpersonal

relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” This author connected politeness with

Grice‘s Cooperative Principle, which is based on the assumption that people are cooperative and aim to be as informative as possible in communication

Yule (1996:60) states that “it is possible to treat politeness as a fixed concept, as in

the idea of “polite social behavior”, or etiquette, within a culture”

Leech (quoted in Thomas, 1995:158) s argues “politeness as crucial in explaining

“why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean” Especially, in face-

threatening act (FTA) where either speakers‘ face or hearers‘ face or both parties‘ face can

be threatened For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow,

it‟s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and

turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so Holmes noted that compliments may function as face threatening acts They may imply that the complimenter would like to possess something, whether an object or skill, belonging to the addressee (1988a:487) She also points out that even when a compliment appears to refer to a third person, it may well be indirectly complimenting the addressee She provides this example: Recipient‘s old school friend is visiting and comments on one of the children‘s manners

Complimenter: What a polite child!

Recipient: Thank you We do our best

We have just mentioned different definitions of politeness Here, we will discuss the face-saving of politeness

1.3.2 The face-saving view of politeness

Perhaps, the most profound thought of the concept of face is that of Brown and Levinson (1978) They put forward that people engage in rational behavior to achieve satisfaction of certain wants The wants related to politeness are the wants of face

According to Brown and Levinson (1978), there are two kinds of faces One is

“negative face”, the need to be independent, 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 The

other is “positive face”, the need to be accepted, even liked by others, to be treated as a

member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others Simply speaking, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be connected

In Brown and Levinson‘s comprehensive analysis of politeness and face, two other concepts are also mentioned They are face threatening act and face saving act If a speaker says something that represents a threat to another individual‘s expectations regarding self-

image, it is described as a face threatening act (FTA) For example, requests threaten the

hearer‘s negative face because the speaker is trying to make the hearer act to his own benefit, and therefore is depriving the hearer of his right to freedom of action, etc Oppositions threaten the hearer‘s positive face because the speaker is stating there is something wrong with the hearer‘s beliefs Offers threaten the Speaker‘s negative face because the speaker is giving up his right to freedom of action for the benefit of the hearer, and apologies threaten the speaker‘s positive face because speaker is confessing he has done something that cannot be approved Alternatively, given the possibility that some action might be interpreted as a threat to another‘s face, the speaker can say something to

lessen the possible threat This is called a face saving act (FSA) Pridham (2001:52)

explains that ―you challenge someone‘s face in two ways: either 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‖ By challenging other people‘s faces, one is said to be

making a “face-threatening act” To avoid face-threatening or minimize the degree of

face-threatening, there are various strategies one can employ such as saying something

with a delay or saying something with hedges that indicate hesitation This is called a

face-saving act (FSA)

The interlocutor takes to preserve both positive and negative faces for themselves and the people they interact with essentially add up to politeness They further suggest that when people interact with others they must be aware of both kinds of face and therefore have a choice of two kinds of politeness A face saving act which is concerned with the person‘s positive face will tend to achieve solidarity through offers of friendship, for example, the use of compliments Brown and Levinson (1978) outline four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and indirect strategy

First, bald on record strategies do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer‘s

face This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience With the bald on record strategies there is a direct possibility that the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy For example, a bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to ―do the dishes It‘s your turn.‖

The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the

threat to the hearers face This strategy is most commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict

are used For an American speaker, giving a friend or co-worker the compliment, “Your

hair looks nice today,” would be one example of positive face

The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be

imposing on the listener The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than

in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous Thus, a request without consideration of the listener‘s negative face might be uncomfortable For an American speaker, an example of negative face would be

responding to the question, “Do you like my new haircut?” with, “It looks great,” even

though the speaker‘s true opinion is that the haircut looks horrible

The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy

This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being

imposing For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it‟s

getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn

up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so

We have just discussed face In the next part, politeness in complimenting and responding to compliments will be mentioned

1.3.3 Politeness in complimenting and responding to compliments

Compliments are communicative behaviors People make compliments in order to start a conversation, smooth an interaction, strengthen an emotional exchange and enhance the mutual understanding and friendship of the people who are involved in the conversation When people make compliments, they consider showing politeness in the first place

Compliments are face-threatening acts which threatens the face of both the hearer and speaker According to Brown and Levinson (1978), when a speaker offers a compliment, it threatens the hearer‘s negative face because the hearer may feel a need to protect his or her goods or give the goods to the speaker On the other hand, as a compliment is considered a gift to the hearer, it threatens the speaker‘s negative face if the gift of compliment is not accepted A compliment also damages the hearer‘s positive face because upon receiving a compliment, the hearer is constraint to accept or return the compliment In addition to that, a compliment also puts the speaker‘s positive face at risk because by complimenting the hearer, the speaker will give an impression that he or she

desires to possess the hearer‘s goods People in the west will respond to others

complimenting happily with “thank you” to satisfy the conplimenter‘s positive face When

a person says to a female colleague, for example, that “I like your earrings”, he is

indicating the effort she has made to improve her appearance and that he shares her values

of what constitutes a pair of beautiful “earrings” By doing so, he makes her ―feel good‖,

since appearance is an important component in the self-image of females almost all over the world Still, as far as compliments are concerned, 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 you to

get this done on time B: It is nothing

Brown and Levinson argue that nearly 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 threaten the speaker‘s positive face (Holmes, 1988) In order to avoid FTAs, interlocutors will employ certain strategies to minimize the threat and save their faces The speaker should employ the appropriate strategy in order to protect others and ensure smooth interaction Accordingly, the positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies are taken to keep hearer‘s positive face and negative face from being threatened Compliment response may be a positive or a negative politeness strategy depending on the speech act selected The best way is to use polite language

In the next part, some issues about gender and politeness will be discussed With this part, we aim to see how the previous find out about men‘s and women‘s languages

1.3.4 Gender and politeness

It is widely accepted that it is difficult to make global and hence abstract statements about men‘s and women‘s language People engaging in the same community of practice will have something in common, for example, ways of communicating

A number of studies on language and gender have been devoted to identifying, and trying to explain, differences in the speech styles of men and women And one of the main differences has been found in the area of linguistic politeness

According to Homes (1995), `polite people‘ as those who `avoid obvious

face-threatening acts they generally attempt to reduce the threat of unavoidable face

threatening acts such as requests or warnings by softening them, or expressing them indirectly; and they use polite utterances such as greetings and compliments where possible.‟ (Holmes, 1995:5) However, this view of `polite people‘ does not relate those

polite acts to a community which judges the acts and the people as polite, and thus is again

an example of the disembodied, abstract analysis which is often determined by the use of a Brown and Levinson framework

Drawing on Brown and Levinson's work, Janet Holmes argues that in general women

are more polite than men: `Most women enjoy talk and regard talking as an important

means of keeping in touch, especially with friends and intimates They use language to establish, nurture and develop personal relationships Men tend to see language more as a tool for obtaining and conveying information.‟ (Holmes, 1995:2) She states that women

are more likely than men to express positive politeness and to use mitigating strategies to avoid or minimize threatening their interlocutor‘s face For example, women tend to

interrupt less in conversation and “to be more attentive listeners, concerned to ensure

others get a chance to contribute” than men (Home, 1995:67) They also interpret and use

certain speech acts differently to men For instance, not only do women use more

apologies than men but their apologies serve more often than men‘s “as remedies for

space and talk offences-areas of interaction where women are particularly vulnerable and where they may have developed a greater sensitivity” (Home, 1995:185)

Holmes (1988 and 1995) focused her study on gender difference in complimenting in everyday speech in New Zealand Through analysis, she found there existed a number of differences between male and female in complimenting One of the important findings was that women gave and received more compliments than men did This conclusion was based, in part, on the fact that data collectors found it much more difficult to gather compliments from men than from women in natural settings.She also found that women complimented women more than they did men Men also complimented women more than they did men Holmes suggested that women tended to view compliments as expressions

of positive effect, while men were more likely to be embarrassed by them and/or to view them as face-threatening acts

We have just discussed the notion of politeness In next section, the paper will mention gender in compliment and compliment responses

1.4 Previous studies of gender in compliment and compliment responses

Some researchers (e.g., Herbert 1990; Holmes 1988) claim that male and female compliments in American English serve different functions Two important studies that emphasize gender differences in complimenting are those by Holmes (1988) and Herbert (1990) Explicit and precise analyses involved in these studies produced some findings on gender differences in complimenting For example, Holmes found that women gave and received more compliments than men did, and Herbert suggests that female compliments rely heavily on solidarity, while males focus on assertion of praise Holmes (1988b) reports that in New Zealand men compliment women far more frequently than they compliment other men She suggests that compliments are not a preferred male strategy for expressing friendship; therefore, men use them less frequently At the same time, when men are complimented, she says that they tend to ignore or evade a compliment more than women

do She claims that men seem to avoid a verbal response altogether by ignoring the compliment or responding to other topics or to the focus of the previous utterance

Herbert (1990) argued that male and female compliments in American English served different functions in discourse He suggested that for women compliments were primarily offers of solidarity, while for males they functioned more often as actual assertions of praise Herbert (1990) found that compliments offered by males to females are more likely to be accepted On the other hand, those offered by a female to another female are more likely to be rejected He suggests that the same gender of the complimenter tends to be a good predictor of the form compliment responses will take Like Wolfson, Herbert claims that compliments from males occur less frequently than from females, and the ―easiest‖ type of compliment to collect is female-female Similar observations were also made by data collectors working with speakers of South African English (Herbert, 1989)

With regards to gender-based differences in compliments and their responses, Wolfson (1983, 1984) contends that women appear to offer and receive compliments much more frequently than men The same pattern has also been found in a comparable New Zealand study by Holmes (1988b) The findings are particularly true of compliments concerning appearance Wolfson (1983) indicates that it holds true across compliment

types that women are far more likely to be recipients of appearance-based compliments than men are She contends that when appearance is the topic of a compliment, the addressee is hardly ever male In addition, there seems to be rather strong constraint against the giving of appearance-related compliments to higher-status males However, the same is not true for women who receive compliments on their appearance from both men and women of the same, higher, and lower status Wolfson (1984) examined the compliment behavior of Americans and found that the way a woman was spoken to was,

no matter what her status, a subtle and powerful way of perpetuating her subordinate role

in society Women used compliments more often to other women than they did to men or than men did to each other Furthermore, compliments on appearance were the dominant topic for women, whereas men complimented on possessions

Ye (1995) also examined gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses He classified the compliment strategies employed by respondents into four categories: Explicit Compliment, Implicit Compliment, Non-Compliment and No Response Results showed that both males and females gave the same order of rank in their preference of compliment strategies However, statistical analysis showed that there was a significant difference between genders using these four compliment strategies Male and female respondents were found to use positive semantic carriers 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 tendency

to Acceptance In short, women are likely to view compliments as expression of positive affects whereas men tend to be embarrassed by compliments and/or consider them face-threatening acts

In conclusion, in this chapter we have reviewed the major issues of speech act, politeness, theories on gender differences and some the previous studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses In the following chapter, it will demonstrate the experiment design concerning dissecting of research questions and hypothesis, methods of data collection and data analysis

Chapter 2: The study

This chapter presents the research questions, the informants of the study, data collection instruments, data collection, the analytical framework and finally data analysis

2.1 The research designing

1.1 The research question

The objective of this study is to examine the gender-based differences in compliment responses This study tries to answer the following questions:

1 Are there any differences of linguistic strategies between British male and female in responding to compliments?

2 Are female speakers more polite than male speakers?

2.1.3 Data collection instruments

There are several methods that have been used to collect data for this area, such as multiple choices, observation and conversation recording method But the data of this study will mainly be carried by using written DCTs (Discourse Completion Tests) It is believed that DCTs constitute important starting points for further research since they facilitate the collection of large amounts of data DCTs are widely used as controlled elicitation tools to collect written discourse for discourse analysis With DCTs, one can easily control the contextual variables that are significant for this study The controlled variables about a given context in production questionnaires make it possible to look into the effect of the variables Nevertheless, the data we can obtain from the DCTs will show

us only ―discourse in written form‖