A Comparative Study Of Complaints And Their Responses In English And Chinese

With the development of speech act theory, extensive studies have been made of specific speech acts, such as greeting, compliment, refusal and apology, especially comparative studies between different cultures. But very few studies have been made of the speech act of complaining. As a matter of fact, there are differences and similarities in selecting complaint strategies and complaint-responses by people with different cultural backgrounds. Based on the speech act theory, the present study aims to make a comparative study of complaint strategies and complaint-responses in English and Chinese in order to explore causes of the differences.The data for this study were collected via a written questionnaire in the form of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT). Findings show that there are similarities and differences in each complaint strategy used by Chinese and American students, and meanwhile, similarities and differences also exist in English and Chinese complaint strategies in the same context. In addition, severity of complaints also influences complaint-responses. More severe complaints cause harsher reactions in English, but there is no obvious influence in Chinese.The differences of complaint strategies and complaint-responses in the two languages are caused by the underlying cultural differences of the two societies. Therefore, understanding the differences of complaint strategies and complaint-responses in English and Chinese as well as the underlying cultural differences will help strengthen English learners'cultural awareness and improve their cross-cultural communicative competence so as to facilitate effective communication.