A Contrastive Study Of English Compliment Response Strategies

Based on the previous studies,a DCT(Discourse Completion Task) questionnaire is conducted.By contrastive study,it is to explore the employment of compliment response(CR) strategies on Chinese university.English native speakers(American overseas students) and Chinese learners of English on Chinese university campus are invited as participants.For the sake of research, the participants are grouped from three levels:learner group and English native speaker group,English major group and non-English major group,learners with different linguistic proficiency within major and non-major groups(English major high-level group,English major low-level group,non-English major high-level,group,and non-English major low-level group).This thesis intends to answer the following three research questions:1.What are the differences and similarities of the compliment response strategies between Chinese learners of English and English native speakers on campus? 2.Do English major learners and non-English major learners differ in the choice of compliment response strategies? If so,is the difference significant? 3.Does linguistic proficiency affect the choice of compliment response strategies? By analyzing the differences and similarities from the three aspects,the author further analyzes the causes. Ultimately,the study aims to provide some implications for EFL teaching in China.This thesis consists of seven correlated chapters as follows:Chapter One,Introduction,gives a brief introduction to the objectives and significance of the study,the research questions and the outline of the thesis. Chapter Two,Research Background,presents related theories and researches, including speech act theories,politeness theories,pragmatic competence, interlanguage pragmatics,and studies of compliment responses both at home and abroad.Compliment response is actually a kind of speech act.Speech acts and politeness are closely related to each other.Therefore,what is firstly presented are speech act theories of Austin(1962) and Searle(1972,1979),and politeness theories of Leech(1983),Brown & Levinson(1978,1987),and Gu Yuguo(1990, 1992).As the present study makes a contrastive study of compliment response strategies between English native speakers and Chinese learners of English, between English major learners and non-major learners,and between learners with different linguistic proficiency,it attempts to explore the learners' pragmatic competence.Consequently,pragmatic competence and interlanguage pragmatics are also presented.Finally,compliment response studies both at home and abroad are discussed.Chapter Three,Research Methodology and Procedure,contains research questions,research participants,research instrument,data collection and classification.The study employs DCT questionnaire as the research instrument to collect data.The native speakers---American overseas students on Chinese university campus,and Chinese learners of English---English majors or non-majors,from Xihua University are chosen as participants.In Chapter Four,Discussion and Analysis,by virtue of SPSS(12.0),three research questions are answered.Both learners and native speakers employ acceptance category strategies most,evasion and nonacceptance category strategies less,and request interpretation least;however,influenced by Chinese culture,Chinese learners of English use compliment response strategies differently from native speakers(for example,learners use acceptance category strategies less but request interpretation strategy more than the native speakers). English major learners and non-major learners only differ significantly in a few strategies.Learners with different linguistic proficiency employ some compliment response strategies differently and linguistic proficiency affects the choice of compliment response strategies to some extent.Chapter Five,Factors Behind the Differences and Similarities,tries to explore the factors behind the differences and similarities between groups.One factor is the influence of pragrnatic transfer and the other is the influence of EFL teaching.Chapter Six,Implications for EFL Teaching,offers some implications for EFL teaching.Chapter Seven,Conclusion and Limitations,is the summary of the research findings of the present study and then lists some limitations.