A Contrastive Study Of The Speech Act Of Compliment

A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some'good'(possessions, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer. A complimenting event has been said to serve as"a social lubricant"(Wolfson, 1983), which is primarily aimed at"maintaining, enhancing, or supporting the addressee's face."Compliments are frequently applied in social communication, and how to give compliments and respond to them constitutes a significant part of the communicative competence of every member of a speech community. However, studies of compliments and compliment responses have shown that this speech event is actually far more complicated and revealing than it appears in terms of the relation between language, society and culture. Since compliments are abundant in both English and Chinese and they act as a mirror through which particular cultural values are reflected, the selection of this subject is particularly suitable when cultural comparisons are made, which is also the main reason why the speech act of compliment is chosen as the current research focus.The present study approaches Chinese and English compliments from a cross-cultural perspective. In order to elicit data, A Dream of Red Mansions and Charles Dickens's literature are chosen as the main data source in addition to precious researches and natural observation. By arranging and analyzing these data, the author makes a comprehensive study of every aspect of compliment: linguistic realizations, contents, responding strategies and social functions, with the aims of 1) widening and perfecting the study of the speech act of compliments through its cross-cultural comparison between Chinese and English; 2) discussing the argument position that a compliment act contains different social and cultural values in different cultures, and such differences have a great effect on the functions, contents, responses and forms of compliments, thus drawing the conclusion that the differences in compliment between the two distinct languages reflect and originate from the different social values and beliefs beneath the two cultures; and 3) proposing practical educational implications in second language learning and teaching and revealing the significance of the present study to the enhancement of students'cross-cultural competence.