A Study Of Gender Differences In Compliment Responses Under The Context Of Chinese Among College Students

Language is a cultural and social phenomenon, which plays an important role in our life.There are obvious differences in language usage between men and women, which arereflected in many aspects such as vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, speaking style andcommunication strategy. With reform and opening-up policy and the development ofglobalization, China has deeper relation and communication with other countries in politics,economy and culture, so the compliment response strategies between men and women havechanged among contemporary college students.The study will investigate the gender differences on compliment responses of collegestudents under the context of Chinese, on the theoretical guidance of Brown and Levinson’sface theory, Leech’s politeness principle and Gu Yueguo’s Chinese politeness principle andthrough ways of tape-recording and observation in daily communication. The data will beanalyzed by Goldvarb X from distributional analysis.The study shows that under the influence of western culture and concept, the responsesto compliments have changed a lot compared with those years ago. From the perspective ofmaco-strategies, both men and women tend to accept compliments; from the perspective ofmicro-strategies, they choose different response strategies, which also have changed withcertain degree. Women often adopt positive polite strategy Appreciation to satisfy the needs ofaddressee’s positive face; men often use Expanation. The choice of compliments responsesare related with topics and the compliment giver closely. When complimented on appearanceand ability/performance, men tend to adopt Upgrade to show their sense of humor, especiallyamong male friends with close relationship, while women seldom adopt the strategy. Menthink that the self-promotion will not threat the compliment giver’s face. When the topic ofthe compliment is about possession, men tend to agree with the giver directly or useexplanation strategy to offer some information for they think the compliment wants to knowsomething about it; women are more likely to appreciate the compliment giver directly oroffer appreciation plus explanation for they care about affective interaction. Women oftenoffer appreciation to male compliment givers to show their politeness; men are more likely touse upgrade strategy to male complimenters. It is suggested that Chinese speakers appears to be in a transitional period, the tendency from Modesty Maxim to the Agreement Maxim,however, the Modesty Maxim is still a significant part of Chinese traditional culture.Under the Politeness Principle, gender differences on Chinese compliment responsesamong college students are due to traditional conception, culture and society. The research onChinese compliment responses can on one hand help second language learners realizeChinese speech acts and norms comprehensively, and on the other hand, enrich researches onspeech acts, esp. gender differences.