The Effect Of The Second Language On The First On Compliment Responses

Compliment responses are an important area of pragmatics, and have been the subject of a number of studies in recent years. At the same time, language transfer has also received a good deal of attention from the linguistics and teaching worlds. While the effect of the first language on the second has been explored in great detail, by contrast the effect of the second language on the first (so-called"backwards transfer") is a relatively new and largely neglected area of study. This paper is an attempt to add to the sparse body of research in this newly-emerging field.Through an analysis of the compliment responses of 23 native English speaking Chinese learners, this paper intends to explore what effect, if any, the study of Chinese has on the compliment response strategies of English speakers, and how this fits into the larger picture of pragmatic transfer in general, and backward transfer in particular. It is also hoped that this study may shed some light on the relationship between the first and second languages in the bilingual mind, as well as the language learning process.