| Compliment is a speech act which happens with a high frequency in our daily lives, a fact which indicates that responding to compliments is a common feature of discoursal activities. Not only can compliments in their rights serve to negotiate social relations and establish solidarity between the speakers, but also responses to them provide an invaluable insight into speakers' reactions to external appraisals of their personal and social identity. In this sense, compliment responses (CRs) act as a mirror of social and cultural values.Contrastive studies have been extensively conducted on C-CR speech act set across languages and cultures as well as the varieties of English. Those on gender differences as such also reply on the bulk of data in western languages, in contrast with the paucity of research in the Chinese language. Furthermore, it is an even rarer case to interpret gender differences in CRs under a psychological framework, namely, social cognitive theory. So it is hoped that the present study will make some moderate contribution to the previous research on Chinese CRs.Two research questions are developed to define and clarify the purpose of the study: RQ1: What gender differences exist in compliment responses among Chinesecollegians?RQ2: How can the differences be analyzed and interpreted from the social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation?The first research question is answered in a quantitative way and through an empirical study. The study was conducted in Henan University of Science and Technology (HAUST). CR data were collected with Written Discourse Completion Tests (WDCTs) and then were analyzed statistically through SPSS 10.0. The second research question provides a qualitative analysis of the differences obtained in RQ1 and also examines a number of social cognitive determinants which dictate the realization of CRs as they are initiated by Chinese university students of different sexes. Efforts are also made to explore into the functions of these responses and thedistribution of CR strategies by the gender of the speaker as well as the compliment topic.The results of this study show that there is a significant difference in most of the dimensions discussed in the coding scheme of CRs. Meanwhile, the qualitative analysis confirms that social cognitive theory (SCT) plays an appropriate role in explaining the linguistic differences between males and females. It can be suggested from the overall pattern of results that the traditional gender-orientation perspectives persist in the present Chinese society, where the culture and society have been influenced by centuries of a male-dominated life style that places women in a subordinate role and subjects them to unequal treatment. Nevertheless, also notable is the degree of cross-gender affinity shown in the females' unconventional behaviors in their CRs, a fact which may well stem from the progressive disappearance of socio-cultural barriers within the whole society, at least in the case of the younger generations. Toward the end of the research discussion, other findings and further theoretical considerations are added to revamp the limitations in the immediately corresponding discussion of statistical results.The present study is not insignificant despite the limitations in several respects. Both in theory and in practice, it has made a meager contribution to the previous research on gendered language in general and on Chinese CRs in particular. It is recommended that similar studies in future build themselves more upon natural conversations and broaden their domain of study by taking into consideration more variables and a larger and diversified sampling population. |
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