A Contrastive Study Of Gender Differences In Compliment Responses In American Talk Shows:From The Perspective Of Sociolinguistics

Compliment is a kind of positive speech act with high frequency in people’s daily social communication.Therefore,the study of compliments has always been a hot topic in sociolinguistics at home and abroad.Compliments and responses constitute adjoining pairs.While studying compliments,we should understand how to respond to them so that communication can continue.However,at present,most of the researches on compliment responses focus on the contrast between English and Chinese.Few scholars pay attention to the differences of compliment responses in English countries from a gender perspective.This research is based on the data of compliment responses by 88 guest speakers from "Ellen Show".And constructionism theory and Holmes’ categories on compliment responses are used as theoretical basis.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to analyze the compliment responses.The similarities and differences of compliment response strategies between male and female are found out and the reasons for these differences are analyzed from sociolinguistics perspective.The data are taken from the dialogues in the 15th,16th season of the "Ellen Show".The linguistic examples studied in this paper consist of 258 groups of compliment responses behavior.The collected data are classified and calculated by statistical methods.The relevant data are presented through tables and figures.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)With regard to similarities,both male and female speakers’ compliment responses are remarkably similar.The preference of compliment responses strategies is realized in the order of "Accept","Deflect" and "Reject".In other words,the two groups both prefer "Accept" strategy the most,"Deflect" the second and "Reject"strategy the least;(2)With regard to differences,as for "Accept" strategy,men are least likely to choose "Return compliment" strategy while women are least likely to choose"Downgrading/qualifying utterance" strategy.As for "Deflect" strategy,men tend to choose "Ignore" strategy,while women tend to use "Informative comment" strategy.As for "Reject" strategy;men tend to use "Disagreeing utterance" strategy,while more women choose "Question accuracy" strategy.(3)Traditional cultural factors,social factors,psychological differences and psychological activities between male and female are the main reasons for the differences in the choices of compliment responses strategies.To sum up,differences in compliment responses between male and female may lead to misunderstanding or transgender communication failure.Therefore,this study has both theoretical and practical value in the comparative study of compliment responses.From the perspective of sociolinguistics,based on constructionism theory,this research studies the differences between male and female compliment responses,which provides new ideas for the researches in this field and enriches the research results in the field of sociolinguistics.It is of great significance to avoid transgender pragmatic failure.