A Contrastive Study On Compliment Response Strategies In Chinese And English Talk Shows

The speech act of compliment plays a very important role in maintaining solidarity aswell as harmony in social interactions. But people with different cultural backgrounds showdifferent preferences for compliment response strategies. Different values are root fordifferent pragmatic conventions, and thus in turn are potential sources for misunderstandingsin intercultural communication. Therefore, raising learners’ cultural awareness and developingtheir communicative competence are made prominent in the new National Guidelines forLanguage Education (2011). This paper examines compliment response strategies from nativeChinese and English speakers and potential factors accounting for differences from a culturalperspective, helping learners acquire related pragmatic norms, facilitating teaching andlearning and raising awareness of language users and educators in terms of culturaldifferences in language use and communication. Data is collected through transcription ofinterviews from Chinese and American talk shows. With the statistical methods of frequencyand T-test, this research answers the following questions:1. What are the mainly adopted compliment response strategies by the Chinese andAmerican interviewees corresponding to different compliment topics?2. How are the compliment response strategies of the Chinese different from those of theAmericans?3. What are the potential factors that account for the differences?This study got the following three major findings:1. Chinese prefer the strategies of appreciation, downgrading and giggling, whileAmericans prefer to appreciate, giggle and qualify the compliments they receive.2. The two groups follow different trends when responding to compliments on differenttopics. The case for ability and personality is somewhat consistent with the general patterns ofthe two groups. Drastic differences are found on appearance and friends and relatives.Chinese downgrade and comment more frequently than appreciating compliments onappearance while most Americans appreciate them directly. As for the topic of friends andrelatives, Americans prefer to agree with the compliments rather than appreciate directly.3. Difference in cultural origins and values towards self-achievement, self-looking,self-character and group members between Chinese and Americans are main factors,especially those towards self-looking and group members.