A Contrastive Study Of Compliment Speech Acts In Chinese And English

The compliment is a polite speech act that frequently occurs in people's daily verbal interaction to show greetings, appreciations, encouragements, thanks, etc., even to solve controversy and maintain solidarity with others. Some people believe compliments are as critical to social success as oxygen is to breathing. While in the present globalizing world, because of different cultural backgrounds, people from different cultures sometimes may misunderstand others' complimenting behaviors, even may be quite confused about how to give or receive a compliment.Based on the relationships between language and culture, directed by speech act theories and the related politeness theories, this paper studies the similarities and differences of Chinese compliments and American compliments from a synchronic perspective, thus revealing the different cultures between these two nations. It begins with the definitions and the theories related to the compliment speech acts, and then elaborates on the specific contrasts from different aspects, including semantic and syntactic formulas, topics, responding strategies, social functions and distributions. After associating compliments with some influential social factors, this paper finally reveals the different cultures between these two nations, i.e. different beliefs: Confucianism vs Christianity, Hierarchy vs Equality; different thought patterns: Holistic thinking vs Dualistic thinking, Synthesis vs Analysis; different values: Collectivism vs Individualism, Modesty vs Mutual Respects, Reserve vs Open-Mindedness. These contrasts also provide some implications to foreign language teaching and learning and cross-cultural communication. Based on the preceding chapters and the contrastive analyses, the author finally draws the following conclusions: 1) Complimenting is a phenomenon of complexity and it is related deeply to specific culture. 2) There are differences as well as similarities in the compliment speech acts in English and Chinese, which reflects the different cultures between the two nations. 3) Contrastive analysis of compliment speech acts is of great significance to language teaching and learning and cross-cultural communication.The purpose of this paper is to reveal the major similarities and differences in the compliment speech acts between English and Chinese and highlight the cultural disparities between the two nations. It should also be claimed that the use of compliments is dynamic and open to social changes. As a complex phenomenon in any speech community, compliment speech acts reflect the specific society and culture and deserve continuing process of inquiry. The present writer will feel gratified and rewarded if her tentative study does something to help those who are engaged in cross-cultural communication to recognize the different complimenting behaviors and to know more about different cultures, so as to improve their cross-cultural communicative competence.