LITERATURE REVIEW

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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review is organized into four parts: (1) definition; (2) research on compliment responses; (3) categories of compliment responses; (4) differences and similarities in compliment responding between English and Vietnamese The first part deals with literature on terms of compliment and functions of compliment in both languages The second part aims to review the literature on the previous related studies The next part concerns with categories of compliment responses in both languages Finally, the fourth part analyses and compares the differences and similarities between English and Vietnamese compliment responses

2.1 Definition

2.1.1 What is a compliment?

People pay compliments in order to start a conversation, smooth an interaction, strengthen

an emotional exchange Furthermore, a compliment can enhance the understanding and friendship of the people who are involved in the conversation

According to Holmes (1988, p.485), “a compliment as a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than speaker, usually the person addressed, for some ‘good’(possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer” A compliment is one form of speech acts and it can be defined as “an utterance containing a positive evaluation by the speaker to the addressee” (Liu, 1997) Newton and Burgoon (1990, p.509) define compliments as “statements that are intended to make the other feel good about himself/herself” Generally, a compliment means that you are giving a positive evaluation about the addressee’s appearance, behavior, manner, skill, etc , as illustrated in following example:

You are looking good Is that a new suit?

Compliments can be considered as a type of speech acts through which a speaker expresses positive attitudes towards another speaker

2.1.2 Functions of compliments

Within the same culture, compliments have different types according to the ways of using them and their roles in context The main target of using a compliment is not to lose one’s face which is likely to be lost if a compliment is misused in context Compliments can be described as clearly positive politeness devices which express goodwill and solidarity between the speaker and the addressee Wolfson (1989, p.89) maintains that the major of a compliment is “to create or maintain solidarity between interlocutors” by expressing admiration or approval Simultaneously, Wolfson (1989, p.171) states that one of functions

of compliments as used by speakers of American English is to encourage or reinforce desired behavior Holmes essentially agrees with this view by treating compliments as

“positively affective speech acts directed to the addressee which sever to increase or consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and addressee” (1988, p 486) Herbert (1990, p.76) similarly reviews function of compliments He demonstrates that compliments are used to “negotiate solidarity with address” Their aim is to make the addressee feel good and their formulaic nature minimizes the chance that they will be misinterpreted by the addressee Herbert (1990) suggests that some compliments serve as expressions of praise and admiration For example, the teacher’s compliment about a student’s work would generally be considered as praise

Teacher: “this is excellent Jennie You’ve really done a nice job”.

Wierzbicka (1989, p.87) remarks that compliments are usually intended to make others feel good and performed for maintaining “good interpersonal relationships” Wolfson, too, notes that they serve as “social lubricants” (1989, p 89) Everyday people give and receive compliments on appearance, ability, possession and some aspect of personality or friendliness Moreover, compliments are speech acts that are primarily aimed at maintaining, improving or supporting the addressee’s face

2.2 Research on compliment responses

In this study, we seek a large number of previous related studies on how to respond to compliments There is an infinite number of words that could be chosen to compliment, but the set of lexical items and grammatical patterns we use in our daily interaction when complimenting and have high frequency in our daily discourse are very restricted There are

some studies related to the study we are going to carry out According to Wolfson (1986), two-thirds of English compliments use the adjectives “nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great”, and 90% make use of just two verbs “like and love” (p.116) The lack of creatively form and content of English compliments is related to their function in discourse Pomerantz (1978) was the first researcher to study compliment responses in American English She provided many examples of different types of compliment exchanges, but she did not give precise proportions of each type of responses Herbert (1986) also provided a quantitative analysis of compliment responses in American English She distinguished various types of compliment responses within three categories: agreement, non-agreement and other interpretation Holmes (1988) did research on compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand She analyzed quantitatively the topics that compliments referred to and discussed the frequencies of giving and receiving compliments between men and women

Le Phuong Binh (2008) in “A Vietnamese-English Cross-Cultural Study of Positive Politeness and Negative Politeness in Complimenting” points out the use of positive

politeness and negative politeness strategies in complimenting by English native speakers

and Vietnamese ones Nguyen Phuong Suu 919900 in “Giving and Receiving Compliments – A Cross-Cultural Study in English and Vietnamese” investigates how people give

received compliments in Australian English and in Vietnamese Ho Thi Kieu Oanh (2000) carried out a research on complimenting and responding compliments between Vietnamese

and American people in “Cách thức khen và tiếp nhận lời khen trong phát ngôn của người Việt và người Mỹ” In addition to these, Saito and Beecken (1997) developed and analyzed

compliment responses in two ways in which the first one is categorized as positive, negative or avoidance; the second one is based on semantics like gratitude, topic change, affirmative explanation, agreement, return and similar formula Likewise, Farghal and Alkhatib (2001) also exploited it not in only one way and resulted in simple-complex responses, macro-micro functions and intrinsically-extrinsically complex responses All of these works are carefully organized However, researches on this issue in English and Vietnamese are not many There is just some discussion about the compliment behavior of two languages From the previous study, it can be seen that compliment responses have been discussed in many books Nevertheless, little attention is paid on the comparison between compliment responses in two languages For this reason, our study attempts to

analyze the categories of compliment responses in English and Vietnamese and points out the similarities as well as differences between them

2.3 Categories of compliment responses

Most of the studies quoted above provided different frames of classification which is difficult for us to find the best one to employ Among these works, those presented by Pomerantz (1978) and Herbert (1989) can be considered the most traditional In her study, Pomeranzt divided the compliment responses into three categories including Acceptances, rejections and Self-praise avoidance With Herbert (1986) revised Pomerantz’s classification by analyzing American English speakers’ compliment responses He sorted out compliment responses into three-category (Agreements; Non-agreements and evasions), twelve –type taxonomy of compliment response The use of these organizations is quite popular

2.3.1 Agreement

 In general category of agreements, it is also divided into six subtypes of agreements as: Appreciation Tokens, Comment Agreements, Praise Upgrades, Comment History, Praise Downgrades, and Return

 Appreciation Tokens: The acceptance of compliments is usually expressed through tokens such as thank you, thanks, thank you so much, well, and thank you, or non-verbal ones like smiles and nods,(Pomerantz,1978) Example 1:

AA: What a beautiful hat!

BB: Thank you Example 2:

AA: I am looking forward to seeing this!

BB: oh (smile)

 Comment Agreements: The hearer accepts the compliment with an appreciation token (Thanks) and adds relevant comments about the item being complimented

Example 3:

AA: you are beautiful in white!

BB: oh really, because I like white color

 Praise Upgrades: The hearer does not only accept the complimentary force

of the speaker’s positive evaluation of the speaker, but considers it as being insufficient and she/he increases the evaluation

Example 4:

AA: you sing very well today, John!

BB: of course!

 Comment History: In this type of compliments response the hearer agrees with speaker’s original assertion and adds a History Comment

Example 5:

AA: The color of this bowl is fantastic, oh, Good choice!

BB: I know I have one already and all my friends like it, so I am buying one for one of them I always get compliments on it

 Praise downgrades: Praise downgrades or Scale-down agreements show an awareness of the dilemma of accepting a compliment and avoiding self -praise at the same time, (Pomerantz, 1978)

Example 6:

AA: I think it is the best noodle in Ha Noi

BB: Yes, that’s right We make it ourselves and my chefs are standing in the kitchen

 Return: Chen (1993:58) explains that "Returning compliment" can be seen

as a direct result of the indebting nature of compliment It helps the hearer to get out of the debt by returning the verbal gift to the receptors

Example 7:

AA: Your hair looks really nice!

BB: Thanks So does yours

2.3.2 Non-agreements

 It was relatively rare for a person to overtly reject a compliment or evade it than to disagree with it The speaker changes the topic, for instance or responds to some other aspect of the previous speaker’s utterance - agreements:

 Within the category of non-agreements five subtypes of response are distinguished:

 Scale Down: The hearer scales down the praise of the compliment by minimizing its force, (Herbert, 1989:15).S/he does not deny the complimentary force of the speaker’s assertion, but intends to mitigate the force of the compliment

Example 8:

AA: I like your shirt

BB: It’s really quite old

 (Doubting) Question: This type of response has the following pattern: A compliments B and B questions A about compliment assertion + (asks for repetition, clarification, or expansion of compliment assertion)

Example 9:

AA: Your plan is very good!

BB: Really?

Example 10:

AA: It’s excellent! I really enjoyed reading it!

BB: Thanks

 Disagreement: The main way of showing disagreement is by uttering a direct contrastive counter assertion

Example 11

AA: You are a very good person, John

BB: No, I'm not

 Qualification: Pomerantz (1978:101) suggests that this type of non agreement is shown with qualifications of the prior evaluative terms It usually contains markers like though, yet, and but…

Example 12

AA: Nice hair cut!

BB: Oh, thanks, but it’s a bit short maybe

2.3.3 Other interpretations: This category includes Shift credit, Informative comment

Ignore, and Request reassurance

 Expressing gladness:

AA: by the way, I read your article that you published last week It was very good

BB: Oh, that’s good Thank you

Or A: I read that article you published last week It was very good

B: Well, great

 Follow-up question:

AA: You know I just I just read your article that you published last week I thoughts it was excellent.

BB: Thanks a lot What do you find interesting about it?

 Opting out:

AA: Oh, that’s nice How lovely! It’s my favorite color I am wanna buy a blue car one day.

BB: Heh heh.

 Informative comment: Herbert (1989: 14) notes that occasionally in the informative comments, the hearer ignores the praise aspect of the compliment and treats the previous utterances as a mechanism for introducing a topic

Example AA: That's really a good quality!

BB: Well, I read about it in developmental psychology I can tell what People are up to and then I usually give them my motivation speech

 Request reassurance: The hearers requested additional reassurance that the compliment was genuine Such responses were ambiguous; it was difficult

to know the intention of the speaker Did s/he want an expansion or repetition of the original compliment, or did he want to question the sincerity of the hearer

Example:

AA: nice shoes!

BB: You wanna borrow this one too?

2.4 Differences and similarities between English and Vietnamese compliment responding.

2.4.1 Similarities between English and Vietnamese compliment responding.

The similarities between English and Vietnamese are indicated in the choice of strategy use In spite of the differences, in both languages, people have a tendency to use

“Appreciation Tokens” more than “praise upgrades” and others in “agreements” It is also the fact that “comment history” and “Praise downgrades” are preferred than

“Disagreements” respectively in both English and Vietnamese The result of this study indicates that people often prefer accepting compliment than rejecting in both languages However, the differences seem to be greater in compliment responses between English and Vietnamese

2.4.2 Differences between English and Vietnamese compliment responding.

2.4.2.1 Differences in the frequency of Compliment Response strategy use between English and Vietnamese.

In general, the acceptance compliment is applied in both languages In English, the

“Appreciation Token” is preferred while the “ Praise Downgrade “, “Disagreement” and

“Opting out” are disfavored It happens vice versa with Vietnamese In Vietnamese, people have a tendency to use “Praise downgrade” in most situations And they never use “praise upgrade” in responding to compliments

Similarly, Vietnamese tend to avoid using “expressing gladness” and asking “follow-up question” They feel more comfortable to simply reply with “doubting questions” and

“opting out” On the contrary, English would use other strategies instead of using “opting out” in responding compliments

On the other hand, while English prefer to use the term “thank you” in responding to compliments (Herbert, 1986; Saito and Beecken, 1997), Vietnamese tend to deny it or reply

in a negative way to express the modesty and politeness in communication

2.4.2.2 Differences in the combination of Compliment Response strategy between English and Vietnamese.

In both languages, people often employ a combination of various strategies instead of using monotonous strategy in compliment responding For English speakers, they combine

“appreciation token” with “return” and “explanation” in communicative activities In contrast, Vietnamese speakers often associate the strategies as “disagreement” and “praise downgrade” in accepting compliments If there is “appreciation token”, it would be combined with “disagreement”, “praise downgrade” or “doubting questions”

Example 1: Response combination types: “disagreement” and “praise downgrade”

In Vietnamese: AA: wow! What a lovely T-shirt!

BB: Oh, it is not good; it is just an old T-shirt

In English: AA: wow! What a lovely T-shirt!

BB: Thank you Not much I think

(Response combination types: “praise downgrade” and “appreciation token”)

Example 2: Response combination types: “appreciation token” and other strategies

In Vietnamese:

AA: John, you were really excellent in your performance last week!

BB: it is not good Thank you very much

(“Appreciation token” + “disagreement”)

In English:

(“Appreciation token” + “agreement”)

AA: John, you were really excellent in your performance last week!

BB: oh yeah Thanks It is not bad

(“Appreciation token” + “return”)

AA: You are so cute!

BB: Thanks So are you

(“Appreciation token” + “explanation”)

AA: I like your tie It suits you well

BB: Thanks I bought it for the trip to New York

Example 3: response combination types: “return” or “appreciation token” + “return”

In Vietnamese:

(“return” +”praise downgrade”)

AA: It’s a really nice car I really like it

BB: Oh, well, it is just a normal and not very reliable car

In English:

(“Return” + “appreciation token”)

AA: How a beautiful you are today!

BB: Thanks, you too