A Study On The Changes Of Compliments And Compliment Responses In Chinese Society

This study employs sociolinguistic interviews as the methodologicaltool to explore whether there is any change happened to the personalfocus of compliments and compliment responses within the pastdecade in Chinese society and what are the driven factors behind suchchanges. Sociolinguistic factors such as age and gender are studiedwith compliments and compliment responses to sort out how thesesocial factors exert effects on Chinese people’s performance ofcompliments and compliment responses.By examining the data on Chinese people’s performance ofcompliments and compliment responses we collected in this study andcomparing it with Jia’s(1997) and Herbert’s(1989) data, we find severalinteresting convergences and divergences between the these studies.First, we find that Chinese people maintain some of the traditionalbehaviors when paying compliments.2nd personal focus still occupiesover half of all the compliments, almost the same as15years ago,which distinguishes itself from English native speakers’ behavior inpaying compliments. The most significant divergences for Chinesecompliments and compliment responses behavior emerged in Chinesepeople’s responses to compliments. People opt to accept andappreciate compliments more compared with15years ago, and thisphenomenon is more obvious in the younger age group. The percent ofcompliments responses at macro-level in current study stand rightbetween the data of Herbert’s American data in1989and Jia’s dataon Chinese compliment behavior in1997.In exploring the changes happening to the speech act ofcompliments and compliment responses, we find that Chinese peoplekeep the traditional values of modesty, harmony, but the trend ofindividualism and self-assurance started to emerge, especially among the younger generation. By comparing Western and Chinese culture,we better understand the differences of two cultures but by exploringthe changes happening to Chinese culture, we better understandourselves, which would greatly facilitate the intercultural dialogue wehave in the international platform. An assimilated one culture in thewhole world would not be as desirable as the co-existence of diversifiedcultures. The values reflected in Chinese people’s performance ofcompliments and compliment responses show us that modernity andtradition can co-present, and unity can exist within diversity.