Pragmatic Transfer In Compliment Responses By Chinese Learners Of English

This thesis reports a study on the pragmatic transfer in compliment responsesby Chinese Learners of English. It has three aims: (1) to discover similaritiesand differences in compliment responses between American Englishspeakers(AES) and Chinese Learners of English(CLE), (2) to provideempirical evidence for or against the existing theories of pragmatic transfer incompliment responses, (3) to reveal differences of social values between thetwo groups. The results of this study are compared with those of R.Chen as hemade a similar study in 1993. The changes in the past more than ten years arediscussed, and so are the reasons for the change.This thesis covers six chapters:Chapter One is a brief introduction. In this chapter, the previous studies onpragmatic transfer and compliment responses are retrospected, the reason whythis topic is chosen and the purposes are given. Then in Chapter Two, thethesis reviews the existing studies related to pragmatic transfer andcompliment responses. The analysis is based on the literature review. Thepresent research gets to the conclusions in accordance with the previousstudies and also has new findings. Chapter Three talks about themethodological issues about the research design. The participants, proceduresand limitations of this research are discussed. Two groups are chosen: 20English major students and 25 non-English major students and the research isconducted in two steps: collection of the data and the analysis. Chapter Four is...