A Comparative Study Of Compliments In Business Negotiations Between China And US

The compliment is a kind of speech act which incarnates different social andculture values. These differences have great effect on the function, topic, formula andresponse of the compliment. The subject of this research is the compliments inbusiness negotiations between China and the US. The author strives to analyze thefrequency of occurrence, function, phase of occurrence, topic, formula and responseof compliments in business negotiations between China and the US so as to disclosethe similarities as well as the differences in the use of compliments by the negotiatorsfrom the two countries.This thesis consists of six parts and five chapters.In the Introduction, the author introduces the economic relationship betweenChina and America;the role of business negotiations;the importance of culture tobusiness negotiations and the significance of compliments to business negotiations.This part deals with the necessity and significance of this research.Chapter One is the literature review about the research of compliments. It iscomposed of two parts—the compliment studies abroad and the domestic studies ofcompliments. According to the literature review, we come to know the complimenthas drawn many scholars' attention and a lot of researches have been conducted. Theauthor chooses the compliments in business negotiations between China and the USas the subject of research which has seldom been touched upon before and hopes toacquire some specific usages of compliments in business negotiations between Chinaand the US.Chapter Two deals with the theoretical framework. In this part the authorintroduces several theories which will be adopted to analyze the data. They are Brownand Levinson's Politeness Theory, Scollon and Scollon's Deference, Solidarity andHierarchy Politeness Systems, Hall's High-context Culture and Low-context Cultureand Kaplan's Circular Thought Pattern and Linear Thought Pattern.Chapter Three introduces how the data was collected and the methodology to beadopted to conduct the analysis. The data come from some commercial booksconcerning the authentic material of business negotiations. The author collected total294 compliments among which 224 are American compliments and 70 are Chinesecompliments. The methodology is contrastive study which is the most appropriatemethod to discuss the usage of a speech act of two different cultures.Chapter Four is the main body of this thesis. It is the analysis of the data fromsix aspects of the compliments. They are the frequency of occurrence, function, phaseof occurrence, topic, formula and response of compliments in the context of businessnegotiations between China and the US. The data show that the compliments used byAmerican negotiators outnumber those used by Chinese ones overwhelmingly. Thisphenomenon is closely related with the conflicting perceptions about whom on earthhas the right to compliment others in China and the US. China is a large powerdistance society in which it is always the subordinate that compliments the superior.The US is a small power distance society in which everyone is equal and everyonehas the right to compliment others. As to the compliment's functions in businessnegotiations, the author notes except the functions shared by both Chinese andAmericans (greeting, softening criticism or making request, opening conversations,admiration and gratitude) there are some slight differences. In business negotiations,Chinese negotiators seldom use compliments to encourage their counterpart, becauseonly the superior or the elder is qualified to encourage the subordinate or the youngerin Chinese society. The author divides the whole business negotiation into severalphases (establishing relations, inquiring and offering, discussing the quality andquantity, discussing the price, discussing the terms of payment, discussing thepackage and shipment, discussing the insurance and signing the contract). Thecompliment in inquiring and offering is a positive politeness strategy. The complimentin establishing relationship is a satisfaction of hearer's positive face and negative face.The compliment in signing contract is a remedy for previous face-threatening acts.The compliment in discussing quality is a satisfaction of hearer's positive face. Asregards the compliment topic, the author draws a conclusion from the data that thetopics of American negotiators' compliments are relatively concentrative, while thoseof Chinese negotiators' compliments are comparatively disperse. The reason for thisphenomenon mainly lies in the difference of three aspects—the difference betweensymmetrical deference politeness and symmetrical solidarity politeness;the differencebetween high-context culture and low-context culture;the difference between circularthought pattern and linear thought pattern. As far as compliment formula is concerned,the author only analyzes the syntactic and semantic features of the explicitcompliments. American negotiators use "NP is/looks (intensifier) Adj."overwhelmingly, while Chinese ones are apt to use as many as sentence patterns aspossible. This difference again is the reflection of the difference between high-contextculture and low-context culture and the different perceptions of face in America andChina. Another prominent syntactic feature of Chinese compliments in businessnegotiations is that Chinese negotiators use "I like/love NP" frequently which isseldom used to express compliment in daily life. Moreover, "like/love" is oftensubstituted by "enjoy/ appreciate/ admire" which seems more formal. "Compliment,but/however…" is often used also, this is in accordance with the function of softeningcriticism of compliments. The last part of this chapter discusses the complimentresponses in business negotiations. The author summarizes the 13th response strategyexcept the 12 types (Herbert, 1986). It's Other Interpretation. It is noteworthy thatScale Down, Question, Disagreement and Qualification which we thought will havehigh frequency in Chinese compliment responses are not used so often. The authoreven finds that some Chinese negotiators use Praise Upgrade to respond thecompliments. The strategy of Return, which can satisfy both parties' face successfully,is used often by both Chinese negotiators and American ones.Chapter Five is the conclusions. It includes five parts—summary of the analysis,necessity of accommodation, limitations of the research, application to businessnegotiations and tips for international business negotiators. The author draws theconclusion from the analysis that there are both similarities and cultural-specificusages of compliments between Chinese negotiators and American negotiators. It isessential for Chinese businessmen to conform to the international norms ininternational trade. Last the author points out some limitations about the research andproposes some tips for business negotiators.