Study On Compliment And Compliment Response By Chinese EFL Learners

Compliment and compliment responses, as a common and a positive pragmatic speech behavior, are widely used in thanks, apologies, greeting, and opening a conversation, etc. Proper compliments and compliment responses can shorten social distances of the interlocutors, contact efficiently, and maintain harmonious personal relationships. Therefore, compliments and compliment responses, an important and meaningful part in pragmatics, receive much emphasis of research.This study, based on Speech Act Theory, Politeness Principle, and Cooperative Principle, carries out both quantitative and qualitative analyses on compliment responses by a questionnaire, whose participants include the Chinese EFL learners with different English proficiency, and the Chinese with experiences in English language community, with the English native speakers as a reference. The study is performed on three topics of compliment: appearance, achievement and ability, and possession, and six divisions of compliment responses:explicit acceptance, implicit acceptance, deflection, implicit rejection, explicit rejection, and combination.It is statistically concluded that:1) there is no significant difference among Chinese EFL learners (Bachelor and Master group); 2) there is a significant difference between Chinese EFL learners and abroad Chinese; 3) the difference between Chinese EFL learners and English native speakers is:Chinese EFL learners prefer to refuse the compliment, while English native speakers prefer to accept.In the end, the causes for the differences on the uses of the compliments and compliment responses are investigated. The findings point out that both English proficiency and experiences in English language community have positive influence in the acquisition of pragmatic competence of the Chinese EFL learners, but foreign experiences serves as a more influential factor.