A Contrastive Study On Both English And Chinese Compliments From Perspective Of Intercultural Communications

Compliments are frequently used in daily life.No matter in English or Chinese,here are a lot of compliments.Compliments can close the distance between each other and create a harmonious atmosphere for communication.Consequently,the compliment is called “Lubricating the social wheels”.In the 1970 s,research abroad have launched compliments.A lot of scholars focus on the topic distribution,sentence structure,wording,response strategies,gender difference and so on.They achieved fruitful results.Until the 90’s Chinese scholars began to study Chinese compliments.With the rapid development of society,more and more frequent exchanges between the world.Intercultural communication has become a significant feature of twenty-first Century.Some scholars of intercultural communication field such as Jia Yu Xin and Hu Wen Zhong are analyzed and contrasted English compliments and Chinese compliments from the perspective of intercultural communication.They found some reasons making the differences of English compliments and Chinese compliments from the cultural aspect.But these researches mostly just theory,not combined with teaching Chinese as a foreign language.This paper takes Grice’s cooperative principle, Leech’s politeness principle, Itheoretical basis.Taking some films and television works as the data source,such as <Desperate Housewives> <Ten Years Of Love> <Ma Xiang Yang To The Countryside> <Divorce Lawyer> <If You Are The One> and so on.This article did the research on the 200 English and Chinese compliments and read the previous theory for reference.Finally this article found the following four conclusion:I.Compliment topics are mainly focused on the four aspects of appearance,property,personality and ability both in English compliments and Chinese compliments.II.The syntactic forms of English compliments and Chinese compliments both showing formulaic.But they still have their own characteristics.Chinese compliments prefer to use comparison to show praise while English compliments often use “I like/love”.III.Adjective is the most important semantic vector both in English compliments and Chinese compliments. “good” “nice” “great” “beautiful” are frequently used.Besides,there are many adverbs and idioms in Chinese compliments.IV.English compliments mostly use the accept response strategies,while Chinese compliments mostly use the reject response strategies.In addition,Chinese compliments prefer to use the “modesty maxim”than English compliments.Whether in the accept response strategies or reject response strategies,Chinese compliments will use a lot of self abasement.Finally,In order to learn and use Chinese compliments better,we suggest that we should do culture teaching and attach importance to Chinese compliments and use scene style teaching in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.