From Politeness To Effectiveness:a Rhetorical Reinterpretation Of Compliments And Compliment Responses

Ever since ancient Greece, it has been well-acknowledged that rhetoric plays an indispensable role in language use. The "rhetorical turn" in contemporary field of linguistic studies proves that the role rhetoric plays in the production, understanding and operation of modern discourses is no less important than it was thousands years ago. This is why the present thesis undertakes to study complimenting acts from a rhetorical perspective.Scholars at home and abroad have done a great number of researches on complimenting acts, but their methodologies are unanimously pragmatic especially politeness-based:attention is mostly paid to the different strategies for making compliment responses whereby the linguistic, cultural or sexual differences between the speakers could be overcome. Although some of the studies mention factors like context of complimenting, intentions of the complimenter and the like, the methodology is far from rhetorical.By breaking out of the traditional pragmatic approaches, this thesis aims at introducing a rhetorical perspective into compliment study by justifying an effectiveness-centered conception of complimenting acts. Three parts are put forward in order to achieve this end. By examining the Holmes Paradigm and its theoretical foundation, i.e., Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, the first part discusses some presuppositions of the pragmatic paradigm and proposes a rhetorical perspective to reinterpret complimenting acts. The second part compares the pragmatic perspectives with the rhetorical one and delves into the relationship between the two disciplines. The third part further maintains that rhetoric is a necessity in analyzing daily discourses, for without the involvement of this perspective no study of language could claim to be comprehensive.