Gender Differences In Compliments And Compliment Responses Of Chinese College Students

Compliment and compliment response play an important role as a polite speech act in activities of daily verbal communication. As a positive speech act, they have got many linguists'attention in the past few decades. Incorporating gender difference theory and the relevant methods and theories in pragmatics, social linguistics, this thesis aims to investigate the strategies the post-90s college students use in compliment and compliment response, and reveal the gender differences of using compliment and compliment response between males and females.The DCT questionnaire used in the present research was adapted from Lorenzo-Dus' research (Lorenzo-Dus,2001). Considering the relevant variables like age, gender and education level would affect the results of the research, the researcher did a DCT questionnaire survey among 130 second-year non-English major post-90s college students with the help of colleagues and selected 60 male questionnaires and 60 female questionnaires from 122 valid questionnaires to compare. With the method of using quantitative as well as qualitative researches on the collected data, the researcher gets the following results:(1) In the aspect of using compliment strategies, females use more explicit strategy than males, while males use more implicit, non-compliment and no response strategy. In the level of topic, more males choose to use implicit and non-compliment strategy in clothing and appearance level, but non-compliment and no response strategy in ability and accomplishment level. However, most female subjects prefer to use explicit strategy in both two topics.(2) In the aspect of using compliment response strategies, females use more acceptance and combination strategy than males, while males use more acceptance with amendment, non-acceptance and no response strategy. In the level of clothing and appearance, females use more acceptance strategy than males, while males prefer to use acceptance with amendment and no response strategy. In the level of ability and accomplishment, females use more acceptance and combination strategy than males, while males prefer to use acceptance with amendment, non-acceptance and no response strategy. Finally, with the further integration of the theories from gender difference, traditional, cultural and social perspective, the thesis analyses the reasons of the existence of gender differences in compliment and compliment response. The researcher considers that the gender differences in compliment and compliment response among post-90s college students not only reflect Chinese traditional culture and the different roles males and females play, but also the different viewpoints of the function of compliment behavior. Furthermore, the gender differences also reflect the influence of social development on the language behavior of males and females, especially the narrowing of gender differences between males and females in compliment and compliment response.