A Contrastive Study On Compliment And Compliment Response In American English And Chinese

Complimenting speech acts are frequently used in interpersonal communications, and compliments are abundant in both American English and Chinese. Based on the previous studies on compliment both at home and abroad, together with the compliment that presented in ordinary interaction, guided by speech act theory and politeness principle, this paper centers on comparing and analyzing compliment speech act in American and Chinese cultures in terms of compliment topic, social function, syntactic level, semantic level, compliment response, along with implied cultural factors. These studies aim to provide a good understanding of how to perform and accept compliments appropriately in different cultural backgrounds.By analyzing compliments in terms of compliment topic, social function, semantic and syntactic patterns, as well as compliment response, the author presents the findings that compliment in American English and Chinese can be interpreted more the same than different. However, Chinese and American compliments in each language contain their own peculiar emphasis and show their typical characteristics. Except for expressing admiration, compliment can serve to negotiate solidarity between interlocutors. American compliments concentrates more on the topics of appearances and possessions, while Chinese compliments favor the topics of achievements and abilities. American compliments are highly formulaic in semantic and syntactic patterns; while implicit compliments are abundant in Chinese. Moreover, regarding compliment response, strategies of accepting and returning are more frequently used in American compliments, whereas more indirect responding strategies such as no acknowledgement and praise downgrade are used in Chinese compliments.The cultural differences between Chinese and American are completely reflected in the differences of the two sets of compliments. These cultural differences can help people understand the cultural backgrounds; the findings of this study can serve as useful suggestions for learners of English, hence to improve their cross-cultural communicative competence.