A Study Of Compliment Responses In Chinese From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Cmpliment and compliment response are used to negotiate social identities andrelationships. Pomerantz (1978:81-82) claimed that the recipient of a complimentfaces two conflicting conditions that pose a dilemma when responding to it:(1) toagree with the speaker and (2) avoid self-praise. The respondents will try to balancethe two diametrically conflicting conversational principles which are “concurrentlyrelevant but not concurrently satisfiable” and there is no universal solution to thedilemma. Of the existing researches, the focus has been put on western phenomena.Besides, the studies focusing on pragmatic variation are rather limited, especially inthe case of Chinese. Furthermore, there are some disagreements among studies oncompliment responses in Chinese and this may lie in the changing social norms andvalues. Besides, the process is dynamic and adaptation-driven. Therefore, in this study,compliment responses in Chinese are analyzed from a new perspective of pragmaticswhich is known as the Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren (2000).This study tries to answer the following three research questions:1) What are thetypes of Chinese compliment responses found in the data?2) What are the similaritiesand differences in the use of compliment responses by college students in Taiwan andMainland China?3) How do Chinese compliment responses adapt to the social worldand mental world in general, in mainland China and in Taiwan?Based on Yu (2003,2004), Herbert (1990) and Ye Lei’s (1995) taxonomies ofcompliment responses,2360compliment responses by Mainland Chinese collegestudents and Taiwanese college students are collected. This study focuses on the typesof compliment response which are used by Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese usingDCT questionnaires as research instrument.By analyzing all the data, the findings are:1) From the overall distribution of compliment responses, the three mostfrequently used types are Amendment, Combination and Acceptance in both MainlandChinese and Taiwanese data. Therefore, it can be concluded that Chinese collegestudents tend to accept compliments in an indirect way both in Taiwan and MainlandChina.2) In terms of variational pragmatics, the study shows more intra-lingualsimilarities than differences between Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese. At the macro level, the tendency is consistent in both groups: to use Amendment most and FaceRelationship Related Response least. Only to find that Taiwanese adopt moreCombination and less Amendment than Mainland Chinese. It may indicate thatTaiwanese made more effort when responding to compliments.3) It is shown that both groups of students adapt to the mental world and socialworld which include the language users, complimenter’s emotions, college socialsetting, traditional Chinese culture and Chinese Social Development.In spite of the efforts made, this study is not without limitations. It cannotgeneralize the patterns of compliment responses in either Taiwan or Mainland China.Besides, the social variables need more careful control.