A Comparative Study Of Compliments Between Chinese And English In Business Negotiations

The compliment,a kind of speech act, which have great effect on the function, topic, formula and response of the compliment, incarnates different social and cultural values. The subject of this research is the compliments in business negotiations between Chinese and English. The author makes a great effort to analyze the frequency of occurrence, function, phase of occurrence, topic and formula in business negotiations between Chinese and the English so as to disclose the similarities as well as the differences in the use of compliments between Chinese and English.This thesis is composed of six parts and four chapters.In the Introduction, the author first introduces the importance of the economic relationship, the role of business negotiations; the importance of culture to business negotiations and the significance of compliments to business negotiations, which deals with the necessity and significance of this research. Then the author introduces the literature review about the research of compliments. It is composed of two parts—the compliment studies abroad and the domestic studies of compliments. According to the literature review, we come to know the compliment has drawn many scholars'attention and a lot of researches have been conducted. The author chooses the compliments in business negotiations between Chinese and English and hopes to acquire some specific usages of compliments in business negotiationsChapter One is about the theoretical background. In this part the author introduces several theories adopted to analyze the data. They are Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory, Kaplan's Circular Thought Pattern and Linear Thought Pattern, Hall's High-context Culture and Low-context Culture and Scollon's Deference, Solidarity &Hierarchy Politeness Systems.Chapter Two introduces the methodology to be adopted to conduct the analysis and how the data was collected. The methodology is contrastive study which is the most appropriate method to discuss the usage of a speech act of two different cultures. The data come from some commercial books concerning the authentic material of business negotiations. The author collected total 147 compliments among which 112 are English compliments and 35 are Chinese compliments.Chapter three is the analysis of topic and formula in the context of business negotiations between Chinese and English. As regards the compliment topic, the author draws a conclusion from the data that the topics of English negotiators'compliments are relatively concentrative; while those of Chinese negotiators'compliments are comparatively disperse. The reason for this phenomenon mainly lies in the difference of three aspects—the difference between symmetrical deference politeness and symmetrical solidarity politeness; the difference between high-context culture and low-context culture; the difference between circular thought pattern and linear thought pattern. As far as compliment formula is concerned, the author only analyzes the syntactic and semantic features of the explicit compliments. American negotiators use"NP is/looks (intensifier) Adj."overwhelmingly, while Chinese ones are apt to use as many as sentence patterns as possible. This difference again is the reflection of the difference between high-context culture and low-context culture and the different perceptions of face. Another prominent syntactic feature of Chinese compliments in business negotiations is that Chinese negotiators use"I like/love NP"frequently which is seldom used to express compliment in daily life. Moreover,"like/love"is often substituted by"enjoy/ appreciate/ admire"which seems more formal."Compliment, but/however…"is often used also, this is in accordance with the function of softening criticism of compliments.Chapter Four is the analysis of the data from three aspects of the compliments. They are the frequency of occurrence, function, phase of occurrence in the context of business negotiations between Chinese and English. The data show that the compliments used by English negotiators outnumber those used by Chinese ones overwhelmingly. This phenomenon is closely related with the conflicting perceptions about whom on earth has the right to compliment. China is a large power distance society in which it is always the subordinate that compliments the superior. The US is a small power distance society in which everyone is equal and everyone has the right to compliment others. As to the compliment's functions in business negotiations, the author notes except the functions shared by both Chinese and English (greeting, softening criticism or making request, opening conversations, admiration and gratitude) there are some slight differences. In business negotiations, Chinese negotiators seldom use compliments to encourage their counterpart, because only the superior or the elder is qualified to encourage the subordinate or the younger in Chinese society. The author divides the whole business negotiation into several phases (establishing relations, inquiring and offering, discussing the quality and quantity, discussing the price, discussing the terms of payment, discussing the package and shipment, discussing the insurance and signing the contract). The compliment in inquiring and offering is a positive politeness strategy. The compliment in establishing relationship is a satisfaction of hearer's positive face and negative face. The compliment in signing contract is a remedy for previous face-threatening acts. The compliment in discussing quality is a satisfaction of hearer's positive face.The last part is the conclusion. The author draws the conclusion from the analysis that there are both similarities and cultural-specific usages of compliments between Chinese negotiators and English negotiators. It is essential for Chinese businessmen to conform to the international norms in international trade.