A Pragmatic Retrospective Analysis Of Chinese Obligatory Compliments In Managing Interpersonal Relationships

Compliments are a common speech act in interpersonal communications that have a role in building rapport.Compliments vary greatly from culture to culture in terms of strategies and functions.Different from the compliments used in other cultures,Chinese people are concerned with face and emphasize harmony,so they often use compliments as a pragmatic strategy to build rapport.He proposes the concept of “Chinese Obligatory Compliments”,pointing out that Chinese people make compliments to others or self-denigration in response to others’ compliments to build rapport.Therefore,this thesis aims to explore Chinese Obligatory Compliments’ strategies and functions with the embedded Chinese socio-cultural factors with an integrated model based on the Rapport Management Theory by Spencer-Oatey and the Renqing Principle by Ran Yongping to analyze 75 excerpts from four Chinese TV drama scripts.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,it is found that six pragmatic strategies of Chinese Obligatory Compliments are employed between interlocutors in a social setting: praising others more,contrasting,self-denigration,returning compliments,rapport-related response strategy and combination strategy,which function as enhancing a positive face,achieving reciprocity,building rapport,and avoiding conflicts,etc.Power,solidarity,and the Renqing-related facework and self-denigration maxim have all contributed to the emergence and use of obligatory compliments.The findings could contribute to the contextualized study of complimenting speech acts.And the conceptual framework of COCs analysis model may shed light on the complimenting speech act research from a socio-cultural perspective.