Gender based differences in compliments and compliment responses in the american comedy TV series

Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses --- 33 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY --- 37 2.1.. 55 Table 1-2: Herbert’s CR types 1989 Table 1-3: Funct

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration - i

Acknowledgements - ii

Abstract - iii

Table of contents - iv

List of abbreviations - vii

List of tables - viii

List of figures - ix

INTRODUCTION - 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study - 1

2 Aims of the study - 2

3 Research questions - 2

4 Scope of the study - 2

5 Methodology - 3

6 Significance of the study - 3

7 Organization of the study - 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW - 5

1.1 SPEECH ACT THEORY - 5

1.1.1 Austin’s speech act theory - 5

1.1.2 Searle’s speech act theory - 6

1.2 POLITENESS AND FACE THEORY - 8

1.2.1 Notion of politeness and face - 8

1.2.2 Conversational-maxim view on politeness - 8

1.2.2.1 Grice’s cooperative principle - 8

1.2.2.2 Leech’s politeness principle - 9

1.2.3 Face-management view on politeness - 11

1.2.3.1 Negative and positive face - 11

1.2.3.2 Positive and negative politeness - 12

1.3 COMPLIMENTS - 13

1.3.1 The definition of compliments - 13

1.3.2 The topics of compliments - 13

1.3.3 The functions of compliments - 14

1.4 COMPLIMENT RESPONSES - 14

1.5 GENDER AND LANGUAGE - 17

1.5.1 Gender and sex - 17

1.5.2 Gender-based differences in language use - 19

1.5.2.1 Topic control - 19

1.5.2.2 Talking time - 20

1.5.2.3 Tag questions - 20

1.5.2.4 Interruption - 23

1.5.2.5 Use of silence - 24

1.5.3 Explanations for gender-based differences in language use - 24

1.6 GENDER AND POLITENESS - 27

1.7 RELATED STUDIES - 29

1.7.1 Review of the studies on compliments and compliment responses - 29

1.7.2 Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses - 33

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY - 37

2.1 METHODOLOGY - 37

2.1.1 Material - 37

2.1.2 Data collection procedures - 37

2.1.3 Participants - 37

2.1.3.1 Female characters - 37

2.1.3.2 Male characters - 38

2.1.4 Data analysis procedures - 39

2.2 RESULTS - 39

2.2.1 The differences in compliment behavior between males and females - 39

2.2.1.1 Frequency of compliments - 39

2.2.1.2 Topics of compliments - 42

2.2.1.3 Functions of compliments - 47

2.2.2 The differences in compliment responses between males and females - 51

2.3 DISCUSSION - 56

2.3.1 Discussion of the findings on the differences in compliment behavior between males and females - 56

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

males and females - 58

CONCLUSION - 61

1 Summary of the findings - 61

2 Implications - 62

2.1 Intercultural communication - 62

2.2 Pedagogical implications - 63

3 Limitations of the study - 65

4 Suggestions for further research - 65

REFERENCES - 67 APPENDIX

Compliments and compliment responses in the American comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty” (Episodes 1-10, Season 1) - I

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS

LISTS OF TABLES

Table 1-1: The five general functions of speech acts (Yule, 1996, p 55)

Table 1-2: Herbert’s CR types (1989)

Table 1-3: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Holmes, 1992) Table 1-4: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Coates &

Cameron, 1989) Table 1-5: Interruptions in cross-sex conversations (Zimmerman & West, 1975) Table 2-1: Female characters

Table 2-2: Male characters

Table 2-3: The distribution of compliments to someone present and someone

absent by gender of complimenter Table 2-4: The number of compliments in the overall episodes

Table 2-5: Compliments by gender of participants

Table 2-6: Interaction between compliment topic and gender of participants

Table 2-7: Compliments on Appearance

Table 2-8: Compliments on Possession

Table 2-9: Compliments on Performance/ability/skill

Table 2-10: Compliments on Personality

Table 2-11: Interaction between compliment function and gender of participants Table 2-12: The distribution of compliment responses

Table 2-13: Compliment response interaction data

Table 2-14: Three broad categories of compliment responses

Table 2-16: APPRECIATION TOKEN responses

Table 2-17: AGREEMENT (ACCEPTANCE and NON-ACCEPTANCE) responses Table 2-18: NON-AGREEMENT responses

LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Leech’s indirectness scale (1983, p 108)

Figure 2-1: Interaction between compliment topic and gender of participants Figure 2-2: Interaction between compliment function and gender of participants

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 use a target 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 sincere admiration 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; Holmes, 1988a; Wolfson, 1983, 1989) Complimenting is a tool of establishing friendship 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 social interactions to follow Americans pay compliments so frequently that neglecting to do so can even be interpreted as a sign of disapproval (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989; Wolfson & Manes, 1980) and a wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Holmes & 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 from different cultures interact, breakdowns in communication may happen due to signaling different speech act strategies that reflect the culture‟s distinctive interactional style 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

essential for Vietnamese learners of English to know how to give appropriate compliments and responses in English

Complimenting is inevitably affected by social factors including gender According to Tannen (1990), gender differences are parallel to cross-cultural differences Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the interactions between men and women, men and men, or women and women exchanging compliments and responses

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

in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through the American Comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty” The people in the TV series are not real people, but the actors are chosen to match the real ones in daily life What can be assumed is that the data would bare resemblance to real life language Hopefully, 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 frequency of compliments, compliment topics and the functions of compliments Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments response strategies are explored The findings will pave the way for several pedagogical and intercultural communication implications

3 Research questions

The research seeks the answers to the following research questions:

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

and females?

Research question 2: What are the differences in compliment responses between males

and females?

4 Scope of the study

There are four seasons in this TV-series with the total of 85 episodes However, due to 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 minutes Totally, this study will analyze ten 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 does not belong to interactants, compliments to speakers themselves or to a group of people, compliments from a group to a 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

longer 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)

Also, compliments can have an ironic meaning (Holmes, 1995, p 119) For instance, if the interlocutors are enemies, the compliments between them have ironic meanings Within the scope of an M.A thesis, only sincere compliments are analyzed

5 Methodology

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

quantitative one In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are based 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 and contrastive are also utilized to 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 strategies in English It will add to the research on compliments and second language acquisition Regarding researchers who share the same interest in the topic, they could rely on this paper to get useful information for their future studies

Besides, the study could help Vietnamese learners of English to be aware of sociolinguistic aspects of English and thus to improve their pragmatic competence As for teachers of English, the findings from 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 study) describes the procedures to conduct the research, presents, 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 studies Following this part are References and Appendix

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, theoretical preliminaries and fundamental concepts related to the research topic are reviewed Moreover, the overview of related studies is also taken into consideration

1.1 Speech act theory

1.1.1 Austin’s speech act theory

Austin, with a pivotal work in the field of linguistics How to Do Things with Words (1962),

was one of the first modern scholars recognizing that words are in themselves actions

According to Austin, in saying something the speaker does something (1962)

Austin stated that there are three related acts in the action of performing an utterance:

locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act Locutionary act is the basic act

of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression The second dimension, the

illocutionary act, is performed by uttering some words, such as complimenting,

commanding, offering, promising, threatening, thanking, etc In other words, it is the

communicative force of an utterance The third part is the perlocutionary act, which is the

actual result of the locution The perlocution is defined by the hearer‟s reaction

Let us consider the following example:

A: “Give 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 not be what the speaker B wants to happen but it is caused by the locution 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

Of these three dimensions, the illocutionary force is the most discussed The term “speech act” is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance The illocutionary force of an utterance is what it “counts as” Austin distinguishes the locutionary and illocutionary acts by stating that the interpretation of the locutionary act is concerned with meaning and the interpretation of the illocutionary act with force He later proposed a tentative classification of explicit performative verbs He divided them into five categories based on the notion of illocutionary force They are

verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives and expositives Compliment can be

categorized into the group of behabitives to express one‟s attitude towards something

1.1.2 Searle’s speech act theory

Searle (1975) wrote that Austin‟s classification needed to be seriously revised because it contained several weaknesses One problem is that the same utterance can potentially have different illocutionary 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 act by stating a set of necessary 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 To 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) Searle‟s taxonomy of speech acts includes five types:

1) Declarations (“bringing about changes through utterances”): These kinds of speech

acts change the world via their utterance E.g.: declaring, christening

2) Representatives (“telling people how things are”): These speech acts, which

represent a state of affairs, have a word-to-world fit In other words, the speaker‟s intention

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

3) Expressives (“expressing our feeling and attitudes”): These kinds of speech acts

state what the speaker feels They express psychological states and can be statements of

pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or sorrow Based on this classification, compliment

belongs to “Expressives”

4) Directives (“trying to get people to do things”): The speakers use these kinds of

speech acts to get someone else to do something They express what the speaker wants

E.g.: commands, orders, requests

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

kinds of speech acts to commit themselves to some future action They express what the

speaker intends E.g.: promises, refusals

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

as follows:

Table 1-1: The five general functions of speech acts (Yule, 1996, p 55)

X = situation Declarations

„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, but also in foreign language learning and teaching and cross-cultural research Although the theories proposed by Austin and Searle do not capture the cultural intricacies that arise in actual realizations of speech acts, they can be useful tools in categorizing human language, as long as these cultural variations are carefully considered Many researchers explored the actual forms and their functions of different speech acts in different languages in cross-cultural study They found that speech acts were constrained

by politeness principle at different degrees depending on different cultures Thus, it is essential to refer to two important notions - politeness and face in the next section

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

everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize” (p 60) He also stated that

“politeness, in an interaction, can then be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person‟s face In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in situations of social distance or closeness” (p 60) When the other is socially distant, showing awareness for their face is described in terms of respect or deference On the other hand, when the other is socially close, showing the equivalent awareness is often described

in terms of friendliness, camaraderie, or solidarity

1.2.2 Conversational-maxim view on politeness

1.2.2.1 Grice’s cooperative principle

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 mainstays 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 extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least mutually accepted directives” (p 307) From these implicatures arises the ground-breaking cooperative principle, or the idea that the main goal of any conversation is communication, and the participants must be cooperating to achieve this goal Grice elaborated on this, saying that

a vital part of the cooperative principle (CP) is to “make 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 this principle into four basic maxims which go towards making a speaker‟s contribution “cooperative”: Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner Each of these maxims is understood to be obeyed by participants when successful communication occurs When communication breaks down, however, it is due to a violation of one or more

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

“opt out” (e.g., refusing to answer a question), a “clash” (failure to fulfill one maxim without violating another), or “flouting,” 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 that has largely been accepted as universal and applicable to any language 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 certain non-Western languages and cultures 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 Leech‟s view, the CP in itself cannot explain 1) why people are often so indirect in 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

construction of politeness into the Politeness Principle (PP) and its maxims, which

includes the Tact Maxim, the Generosity Maxim, the Approbation Maxim, the Modesty Maxim, the Agreement Maxim and the Sympathy Maxim

Leech‟s PP may be formulated in a general way from two aspects: to minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs and maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs Leech‟s maxims of politeness principle tend to go in pair as follows:

1) Tact Maxim (in impositives and commissives)

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

2) Generosity Maxim (in impositives and commissives)

a Minimize benefit to self b Maximize cost to self

3) Approbation Maxim (in expressives and assertives)

a Minimize dispraise of other b Maximize praise of other

4) Modesty Maxim (in expressives and assertives)

a Minimize praise of self b Maximize dispraise of self

5) Agreement Maxim (in assertives)

a Minimize disagreement between self and other

b Maximize agreement between self and other

6) Sympathy Maxim (in assertives)

a Minimize antipathy between self and other

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-maxim (b) seems to be less important than sub-maxim (a) In fact, 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 same as Grice, Leech is also by no means free 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 act, by which the speaker benefits

the listener, should fall into the category of convivial, from 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 are 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 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 Positive face is one‟s wish 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 In short, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to

be connected

Pridham (2001) explained 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” (p 52) By challenging other

people‟s faces, one is said to be having a “face-threatening act” (FTA) An act of uttering something to lessen the potential threat is called a “face-saving act” (FSA) For instance,

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

[1] Him: I’m going to tell him to stop that awful noise right now!

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

bit 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 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, 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 politeness An FSA which is concerned with the person‟s positive

face will tend to achieve solidarity through offers of friendship, for example, the use of

compliments This is called positive politeness On the other hand, an FSA which is

oriented to the person‟s negative face will tend to show deference, emphasize the

importance of the other‟s time or concerns, and even include an apology for the imposition

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

politeness often leads to indirectness, and formality in language 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 complimenter‟s noticing and attending to the complimentee‟s interests and needs People in the West will respond to others‟ compliments 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 dress”, he is

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

of what constitutes a beautiful “dress” 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

(Cited in Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 48)

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 meanings: they are remarks that express admiration 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

According to Holmes (1988b), “a compliment is a speech act 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 direct or indirect, which means it could have an explicit meaning that 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, it is given to others, not to the speakers themselves

1.3.2 The topics of compliments

A topic may properly serve 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 Based on the U.S data, 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 In other studies, compliment topics can be classified into three categories based on the objects of compliments:

appearance/possessions, 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 or reinforce solidarity by expressing appreciation or approval” (Manes & Wolfson, 1981, p 130) Specifically, the functions are divided into the following groups based on previous studies

(1) To express admiration or approval of someone‟s work/appearance/taste (Herbert, 1998)

(2) To establish friendship that creates ties of solidarity (Wolfson, 1989)

(3) To replace greetings, gratitude, congratulations, thanks, or apologies (Wolfson, 1989)

(4) To soften the tight atmosphere and minimize FTAs such as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes, 1988b, and Wolfson, 1983, 1989) (5) To open or sustain conversations as a politeness strategy allowing meaningful social interactions to follow (Manes, 1983)

(6) To show the envy of other‟s possessions or performances (Manes, 1983)

(7) To 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 perhaps 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-part It can be generally divided into two main types: agreement and non-agreement Herbert‟s framework with examples from his American ethnographic data is a well-designed compliment response categorization

Table 1-2: Herbert’s CR types (1989)

(1) Thanks/ Thank you/ [nod/ smile]

(2) Comment Acceptance

Addressee accepts the complimentary force and offers a relevant comment

on the appreciated topic

(2) F1: I like your

hair long

F2: Me too I’m never getting it cut

short again

compliment and asserts that the complement force

(4) Comment History

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 from the addressee

(4) F1: I love that

outfit

F2: I got it for the trip to Arizona

compliment assertion, but the complimentary force is transferred to some third person or the object itself

(5) F: That‟s a

beautiful sweater

M: My brother gave it to me

praise is shifted (or returned) to the first speaker

(6) F: You‟re funny

M: You’re a good audience

Non-agreement

the complimentary force, pointing to some flaw in the object or claiming that the praise is overstated

(8) Disagreement Addressee asserts that the

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

(8) F1: Your

haircut looks good

F2: It’s too short

merely qualifies the original assertion, usually

with though, but, well, etc

(9) F1: Your portfolio turned out

great

F2: It’s alright, but

I want to retake some pictures (10) Question/

Question Response

Addressee questions the

appropriateness of the compliment

sweater!

M2: You like it?

(11) No Acknowledgement

Addressee gives no indication of having heard the compliment: The addressee either (a) responds with an irrelevant comment (i.e., Topic shift)

(12) Request

Interpretation

Addressee, consciously or not, interprets the compliments as a request rather than a simple

compliment responses per

se as the addressee does not perceive the previous

(12) F: I like your

shirt

M: You want to borrow this one too?

speech act as a compliment

Although the framework of compliment response categorization cited is well-grounded, it may not be able to account for all compliment response data in a certain study, for example this one Therefore, it is at times necessary to revise the framework to make it more suitable for a specific study

1.5 Gender and language

1.5.1 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 Since 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 (West and Zimmerman, 1987) – something we perform (Butler, 1990) As Eckert and

McConnell-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

biological sex, it exaggerates biological difference and, indeed, it carries

biological difference into domains in which it is completely irrelevant (p 10)

Another distinction between sex and gender is stated by World Health 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 attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”

There is no biological reason, for example, why women should mince and men should swagger, or why women should have red toenails and men should not But when sex is considered as “biological” and gender is regarded as “social”, these above distinctions are not clear-cut People tend to think of gender as the result of nurture – as social and hence

fluid – while sex is simply given by biology However, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) stated that:

There is no obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender begins, partly

because 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

ultimately social (p 10)

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

Labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision We may use scientific

knowledge to help us make the decisions, but only our beliefs about gender –

not science – can define our sex Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect

what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place (p 3)

“To what extent gender may be related to biology, it does not flow naturally and directly from our bodies” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p 13) The individual‟s chromosomes, hormones or secondary sex characteristics do not determine occupation, gait

or use of color terminology According to Eckert and McConnell-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 exaggerated and extended in the service of constructing gender” (p 13)

This study focuses on gender as a social construction – as the means by which society jointly accomplishes the differentiation that constitutes the gender order In particular, it analyzes the differences between males and females in complimenting and responding to compliments

1.5.2 Gender-based 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 differences” (as cited in Canary & Dindia, 1998, p 3) Stier and Hall (1984) in a study

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 did not apperar to be strongly asymmetrical” (p 456) Similarly, Hall and Veccia (1990) found that, over all ages and body parts, men touched women with the same frequency that women touched men However, even when such similarities are granted, researchers often remain eager to explore and elaborate on gender differences more than similarities

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

Women resort to more attention-seeking devices (Know what? or Guess what I just heard)

Women may offer- and men withhold - conversational support in the form of assenting

responses (mm-hm, yeah) (DeFrancisso, 1991; Fishman, 1978; Leet-Pellegrini, 1980)

“These patterns suggest that women do more „interactional work:‟ their speech strategies function both to hold a share of conversational time and attention for themselves and to provide support to their male conversational partners” (Crawford, 1995, p 42)

1.5.2.2 Talking time

There is a particularly interesting finding given that being 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 silence 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) However, when talk offers the possibility of enhancing the speaker‟s status, men tend to talk 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 faculty meetings (B Eakins & G Eakins, 1976), college students‟ discussions of

a social issue (Leet-Pellegrini, 1980) and so on There is plenty of evidence from research

in the United States and from Britain demonstrating that males tend to talk more the women in public contexts where talk is highly valued and attracts positive attention (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 most comfortable Holmes (1995) also stated that, “women may experience formal public

contexts as more face threatening than men do, while men, perhaps, find private and intimate contexts less comfortable” (p 37) Each gender contributes least in the situation they find most uncomfortable

1.5.2.3 Tag questions

Lakoff‟s studies were among the first widely influential ones on language-use features In her seminal publications, Lakoff (1972, 1973, and 1975) stated that the differential use of language needed to be explained in large part on the basis of women‟s subordinate social status and the resulting social insecurity According to her observation, women‟s use of

color terms (mauve, ecru, lavender), of adjectives (divine, adorable), their frequent use of tag-questions (John is here, isn’t he?) and weak expletives (Oh fudge I’ve put the peanut

butter in the fridge again!) differed radically from male 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

believed 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

16)

Furthermore, she claimed that downtoning a statement shows lack of confidence Support

for this position comes from those situations in which either verification of the statement

can be made by mere inspection: John is here, isn’t he? or where it reflects the opinion of the speaker: The way prices are rising these days is horrendous, isn’t it? Clearly, these

sentences need not be questioned and, thus, demonstrate the speaker‟s 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 her essay relied 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 evaluative reaction studies also support this position Bock (1996) (as cited

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 to expressing uncertainty, insecurity and the wish to be accepted (1), tag-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,

Andrew, a chance to pick up on the topic suggested by the speaker and get into a conversation with Frank

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

(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 functions 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)

Function of tag Women Men

(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) With the total of a 45,000-word corpus of the “Survey of English” at University College, London, Coates and Cameron‟s study showed similar results to Holmes‟ study Women

used more affective-facilitative tags while men use more modal ones In contrast to

Holmes, no softening tags were found With respect to the function of uncertainty and insecurity, a further differention should be considered Coates and Cameron assumed an uncertainty on the part of the speaker for the modal function However, as the contrast with (1) demonstrates, the uncertainty in (4) concerns the information, not the speaker

Table 1-4: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Coates & Cameron,

The above studies show that women and men behave differently in a speech situation This difference manifests itself, for instance, in linguistic behavior by the differential use of question tags

1.5.2.4 Interruption

In a conversation, the participants use a number of strategies to achieve their conversational goals One of these goals may be to dominate other participants of the speech situation The use of interruptions is an obvious strategy Their use is generally explained by the relative power of the participants which derives from their social status The higher incidence of interruptions, thus, is seen in the relatively high social and 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 Zimmerman and West (1975) reported the following results:

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

Cross-gender conversations Male Female Total

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

is often characterized by passivity and low vitality This in turn results in the wish to be accepted by the dominating group However, high achieved status does not necessarily protect women against being interrupted: female physicians are frequently interrupted by male patients (West, 1984)

1.5.2.5 Use of silence

“Silence can be used as a device for controlling interaction” (Crawford, 1995, p 42) Fishman (1978) noted that women gave many minimal responses expressing interest (e.g.,

mm-hm) during their husbands‟ speaking turns, while husbands‟ withholding of minimal

responses to their wives functioned to express lack of interest and to control topic development In groups, the recognized expert may exert control by saying little, thus withholding approval and forcing others to attend to subtle nonverbal cues to assess the expert‟s position (Berger, 1985) In DeFrancisco‟s (1991) research, men talked less than their partners, and their most frequent turn-taking violation was not to respond

1.5.3 Explanations for gender-based differences in language use

A variety of explanations have been proposed for gender differences in language use Chambers (1992) gave a biological explanation Claiming an innate, albeit small, neurological advantage for women, Chambers assumed that this advantage was realized in the use of verbal skills and transferred to other behavioral skills Using data from studies in Detroit and Belfast, from Japan and the Middle East, Chambers argued for a sex-based analysis of variability Although pointing to the tentative nature of this explanation he claimed that “female precocity 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)

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 This bent is then increased by the verbal

emphasis of the educational system and by aspects of sex roles that do not

encourage girls‟ development of visual-spatial skills (p 40)

Other researchers put a great deal of stress on socialization as an explanatory factor (e.g Maltz & Borker, 1982; Tannen, 1987) In many societies, girls and boys experience different patterns of socialization and this, it is suggested, leads to different ways of using and interpreting language (Holmes, 1995) In modern 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 interaction The boys‟ interaction 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 are socialized into different cultures Each group learns appropriate ways of interacting from their same sex peers – including ways of interacting verbally” (p 7)

Besides, for decades, many researchers have argued that the differences attributed to gender can be accounted for by differences in social roles and social status (Henley, 1973-

1974, 1977; Kramarae, 1981; Spender, 1980; Thorne & Henley, 1975; Unger, 1976, 1979) Despite the profound social change that has occurred in American society in the past 25 years, men and women are still positioned differently in society According to Aries (1996), “men hold more power and status than women Women have indeed 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 & Dindia, 1998, p 72) A great deal of evidence demonstrates that the dominance and leadership attributed to man is displayed more often by high-status than low-status individuals; when status is controlled 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 (Moskowitz, Jung Suh, & Desaulniers, 1994) However, dominance was not predicted by the gender of participant High-status and powerful individuals have been found to interrupt more than low-status, less powerful individuals (B Eakins & G Eakins, 1983;

Greif, 1980; West & Zimmerman, 1977; Woods, 1988) In discussion among intimate heterosexual couples, speaking time was related to 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 their female partners in discussions (Kollock, Blumstein & 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 decrease

Most people appear to believe that men and women are fundamentally different Mustin and Marecek (1988) argued that people who assume pervasive gender differences

Hare-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

it means to be female or male, what it‟s like to talk to someone of the other (or

the same) [sex], are questions whose answers touch people where they live, and

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

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

Sex differences findings can never enter the scientific discourse neutrally

Rather, they are interpreted within the context of deeply held beliefs about

women‟s [and men‟s] natures In accounting for their results, researchers cannot

avoid being influenced by the sociocultural discourse of gender, because “facts”

about sex differences have no meaning outside that discourse What “counts” as

an interesting or important result, and what “makes sense” as an interpretation,

are always ideological matters (p 32)

1.6 Gender and politeness

Brown, in her work on the analysis of politeness among a Mayan community, argued that women, in general, are more polite than men (Brown, 1980, 1983) According to her, “in most cultures, women among women may have a tendency to use more elaborated positive politeness strategies than men do among men” (1980, p 251) She also discussed the way that many linguists have concluded that women‟s language tends to be more hypercorrect than men‟s and hence more formal (Brown, 1980) This can be because women tend 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 being of great importance for women For her, since relationships in general were being fairly stable, politeness levels were also fairly predictable If there is a shift 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 due to the mitigation of an FTA

In her analysis of strengthening and weakening particles in Tenajapa, she asserted that in this Mayan community, which is very clearly gender-differentiated, women used more strengthening particles when speaking 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 to men This is an important finding, since Brown showed that she was aware 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 assessment of context and audience (Mills, 2003) Later, Holmes (1995) commented on Brown‟s analysis of these particles:

The particles she examined tend to occur most frequently in speech expressing

feelings and attitudes, and … in her data women spent more time talking about

feelings and attitudes towards events than men It seems possible that the

association of particular linguistic devices with women‟s speech may reflect the

fact that they occur more often in discourse types favored by women (p 110)

In general, even though there were several cases where Brown‟s hypothesis was not proven when tested against her data, she still asserted the women and men‟s speech differ significantly in relation to politeness use

A similar finding can be seen in Smith-Hefner‟s (1988) analysis of the use of polite forms

in Java, where she noted that different cultures had different definitions of what counts as polite; she argued that in Java polite forms were associated with high status and with linguistic control and skill Thus, although Javanese women were expected to be more polite than men within the family and this use signaled their subservience (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 that in general women were more polite than men as they are more concerned with the affective rather than the referential aspect of utterances since

“politeness is an expression of concern for the feelings of others” (p 4) She suggested that women were more likely to use positive politeness than men; thus for her, “women‟s utterances show evidence of concern 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 friendliness, and seems 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 negative politeness speech acts Linguistically expressed negative politeness generally takes the form of expressions or strategies which reduce the effect of face threatening 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:

Because gender and other factors impact upon the context and because gender is

indeed something which participants perform and interpret in the context of

hypothesized gendered stereotypes within a community of practice, its is

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

in its relation to the production and interpretation of politeness (p 235)

1.7 Related studies

1.7.1 Review of the studies on compliments and compliment responses

For applied linguistics concerned with language acquisition and with intercultural communication, the insights gained through analysis of the social aspect of language use are of particular importance Recent studies of such speech acts as apologies, directives, expressions of disapproval and compliments have rich implications (Wolfson, 1984) However, studies of compliments and compliment responses 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, 1980; Holmes, 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 cultures

The most extensive study 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 fall into the three syntactic patterns: NP is/looks (intensifier) ADJ (e.g., Your sweater is (really) nice), I (intensifier) like/love NP (e.g., 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 varieties of English, for example, Holmes (1988a), Herbert (1990), etc

Ye (1995)‟s study showed that Chinese compliments were formulaic with a limited range

of positive semantic carriers Ye stated that, due to the nature of the language structure, the 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 (Your) NP (ADV) ADJ (e.g (Your) This sweater is really nice.)

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

3 NP (You V) (ADV) ADJ (e.g This job you did really good.)

He also noted that Chinese compliments rarely used the speaker‟s perspective, “I”

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

Investigating the different ways in which Vietnamese compliments are expressed, Q Nguyễn (1998, p 183-185) suggested a range of lexico-modal markers commonly deployed by Vietnamese speakers in giving compliments:

(i) vừa, vừa mới, đơn giản là, có lẽ, có thể, có khả năng, phải chăng, ở mức độ

nào đó thì, nói khí không phải chứ, …

(ii) một chút, một tẹo, một tẹo teo, tí chút, đôi chút, tàm tạm, đại loại, kiểu, kiểu

như là,…

(iii) vô cùng, thực sự, thật là, thật, rất, rất chi là, quả là, rất là, lắm, thế, đấy, hẳn

ra, ra, lên, …

In American culture, a compliment is often used for maintaining social harmony and for sustaining social interaction (Celce-Murcia, 1991) It can show gratitude, 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 admiration (Herbert, 1990) A wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Holmes & Brown, 1987) For this reason, compliments have become clearly marked features in American English On the other hand, in other cultures, compliments can have more or less marked values For example, a comparative study between Thai and American compliments in English by Cedar (2006) showed that Thai 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 carefully controlled speech 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, El Bakary & Al Batal, 1993) Compliment topics reflect what is culturally considered admirable in society Positive remarks are offered regarding some attributes that are noticeably different such as newness

and weight loss in mainstream American culture (i.e., “noticings”, Hatch, 1992) While compliments on appearance or possessions can be given relatively freely regardless of the status of the interlocutors, 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 performance of those of lower status, hence utilizing compliments as positive reinforcement (Wolfson, 1989)

Research in other speech communities has revealed that complimentable values vary across cultures Q Nguyễn (1998, p 216) found that the topics which should be compliments in Vietnamese culture were spiritual life, ability, promotion and social communication Appearance and economic conditions were unsafe topics In the Japanese society, one‟s appearance, which is greatly valued in English speaking communities, is not the most frequently mentioned topic (Barnlund & Araki, 1985; Daikuhara, 1986) The most frequently topic is that of one‟s ability and achievement In the Korean speech community, Baek (1998) stated that compliments 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 these comments were based on a person‟s conduct or moral behavior which conforms to social norms or his/her role-expectation in the given situation These findings about compliment topics suggest that it is important for nonnative speakers to know not only proper topics for compliments in the target language but also the underlying value of the target culture

With regard to compliment responses, several researchers indicated that American speakers exhibit great ingenuity in avoiding the simple acceptance of compliments (Herbert, 1986, 1989; Pomerantz, 1978) Holmes (1988a), with her New Zealand data, indentified 12 strategies and classified these into three broad types: Accept, Reject, and Defect/Evade Her analysis revealed that Accept was the most preferred response type (61% of all the

responses) Similarly, in Nelson et al (1996), nearly half of the compliments were

deflected and few were rejected Rejection of compliments tended to occur much less

frequently due to its potential face-threatening nature (Knapp et al., 1984; Nelson et al.,

1996)

Compliment responses have often been examined in a contrastive fashion to illuminate cultural differences in CR behavior between different speech communities Q Nguyễn

(1998), when comparing between Vietnamese and American corpus found that the Americans have a tendency to compliment acceptance and the Vietnamese prefer for compliment obviation Kiều (2006) in her study on disagreements by native speakers of English in North America and Vietnamese speakers within the frameworks of pragmatics and conversation analysis claimed that American conversationalists show a tendency to choose „middle positions‟ to avoid self-praise in response to compliments “They may use

the „agreement + disagreement‟ format to produce (i) scaled-down disagreements, elaborate complimentary components with qualifiers or (ii) downgrade prior compliments,

deploy the (iii) credit shift strategy, or provide (iv) reciprocal compliments” (Kiều, 2006,

p 191) Similarly, Vietnamese compliment recipients also downgraded the scale of prior complimentary assertions, shift the credit referent to a certain third party, or return compliments to first speakers Additionally, she stated that

acceptance and appreciation tokens seem to be common in English while they

were rare in the Vietnamese corpus; maybe, it was the manifestation of the

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

to show modesty or humbleness rather than to agree with/accept and express

appreciations (p 191)

Gajaseni (1994) conducted one contrastive study of American and Thai compliment responses He found that Americans were not only more likely to accept compliments, but that they tended to give more lengthy responses The findings also showed that both groups tended to accept compliments 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 see compliment acceptances as more polite than rejections

In another study, Chiang and Pochtraeger (1993) (as cited in Ye, 1995) compared compliment responses of Chinese-born and American-born English speakers and found the American-born speakers were more likely 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 to American norms The results revealed that in the Japanese speakers‟ responses, rejection of the CR was the ideal and acceptance could be

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

a compliment but to also show solidarity and rapport He stated that “in contrast, it is generally accepted in Japanese society that people should not accept compliments referring directly to themselves or their possessions” (p 53)

Nelson, Al-Batal, and Echols (1996) compared Arabic and English CRs and found that both groups, unlike the previously mentioned studies, were more likely to accept compliments than to reject them The authors noted that Americans used “appreciation tokens” (“thanks”) while the Arabic-speaking Syrians often used formulaic forms not seen

in the American data

1.7.2 Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses

There has also been a noticeable body of research on gender differences in complimenting 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” (p 243) 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

Holmes (1988a) examined gender characteristics in the interaction between the gender of complimenter and complimentee and finds that males would ignore or legitimately evade a compliment more often than women would Her study illustrated the existence of gender-preferential strategies for compliment responses Specifically, New Zealand men tended to interpret compliments as FTAs more readily than their female counterparts, with the latter usually treating them as strategies for maintaining solidarity In her next research, using a corpus of 484 compliment exchanges recorded by linguistics students, 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 Her results also showed the most popular compliment topic was that of

„appearance’ with female - female interactions complimenting on appearance 61% of the time, male - female 47%, female - male 40% and male - male, a surprising 36% (p 455)

From his analysis of responses to compliments, Herbert (1990) concluded, “compliments from females will most likely not be accepted, 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 He suggested that for women compliments were primarily offers of solidarity, while for males they functioned more often as actual assertions of praise

Ye (1995) also studied 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 revealed that there 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 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 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 occur from males to females (60.53%) than females to males (29.27%) (Parisi & Wogan, 2006) Whereas previous studies have focused primarily on corpus analysis and quantitative results (Herbert, 1986; Holmes, 1988a), Parisi and Wogan (2006) incorporated interviews into their methodology to provide further contextual 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 males on appearance for fear of the compliment being misinterpreted as a „come - on‟

In a comparative study on responses to compliments in English between Thai and American, Cedar (2006) 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‟ responses fell into this category The generalization seemed to be that denial responses were not likely to be used by female complimentees, whereas they would be used more often by male complimentees Furthermore, she also found that Thai females used the non-verbal response (smile), while the American females did not Additionally, only the Thai females gave no response One-fourth of the total responses by Thai females were classified as smiling without any verbal elaboration, whereas only four percent of responses by Thai males fell into this category In contrast, none of the American females 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 studies reviewed provide a theoretical 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 interactions (between friends and intimates), Holmes (1988b, p 456) called for the investigation of compliment behaviour in different settings to clarify the patterns found in her corpus Moreover, few studies on the speech act set of compliments and compliment responses have been carried out focusing on the variable-gender Besides, the data collection instrument in almost existing research is the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) However, the data obtained from DCT may not provide a fully authentic picture of what the subjects have actually said in real-life situations since it was elicited 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 life It is a new approach to the growing field of research pertaining to compliment behavior

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