A Contrastive Study Of Compliments In English And In Chinese

In different cultures, compliment act contains different social and cultural values. And such differences have great effect on the function, response, form and content of compliment. This thesis mainly discusses these aspects of complimenting expressions in English and Chinese from a view of contrast, so as to disclose the different beliefs and history hidden behind the two distinct languages.First, the functions, formulas, contents and responses of English and Chinese compliments are studied through comprising two literary works: Cao Yu's drama Sunrise as a representation of old Chinese society and a serial of TV play Family Album U.S.A. as the typical Western society. Then, using a corpus of compliment exchanges, an analysis is provided of the categorization of compliment functions and responses of Chinese and English. The syntactic patterns and lexical items characterizing the compliments of the two languages are described. The topics preferred by the speakers of the different cultural backgrounds are discussed.All the findings are related to the assumption that the characters of English and Chinese compliments are influenced by their respective cultures and thoughts. That is, the features of Chinese complimenting act derive directly from the high values placed on modesty and collectivism; the Westerners give more consideration to equality and individualism when offering or responding to a compliment.