A Study Of Gender Differences In Compliments And Compliment Responses In American TV Series Gossip Girl

Compliment, as a positive polite speech act, is frequently applied in people’s dailysocial interaction. Being a hot topic in the research field of sociolinguistics, genderdifferences in compliments and compliment responses have received great attention fromlinguists in recent years. The act of complimenting serves the social function of achievingsolidarity, shortening the social distance and maintaining a harmonious relationship withthe addressee in communication. Besides, compliment is also regarded as the sociallubricant which could be used to express praise, admiration, approval, encouragement, etc.Therefore, research on gender-based differences in compliments and complimentresponses is a valuable issue.It is well-known that gender-based differences in language exist commonly in socialcommunication. Gender as a social identity, is a significant social factor that influencesthe usage of language. It is considered as the independent variable in this study, and theuse of compliments and compliment responses is taken as the dependent variable.Throughout this thesis, analysis and interpretations are based on the theoreticalframework of speech act theories, the face theory and politeness theory. The study dealswith gender-specific compliments from different points of view by analyzing complimentsand compliment responses in American television series drama Gossip Girl. Thehypothesis is that there exist differences between males and females in compliments andcompliment responses. The research data concentrates on compliment frequency, theformulas, the topic of compliment and compliment response strategy brought by genderdifferences.Both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are used in this study. And itmainly employs conversation and discourse analysis in dealing with data. The researchmaterials are all extracted from the dialogues between actors from the TV drama series, ranging from season one to season six. A total of416compliment speech events constitutethe corpus of the present study.The study finds that compared with males, females prefer to compliment more toothers and receive more compliments from other people. Secondly, the formulas ofcompliments are used differently by males and females. On the syntactic level, in terms ofperson focus, females are more inclined to use personal forms especially the first personand the second person to compliment others whereas males show a greater tendency to usethe third person or impersonal focus. On the lexical level, females tend to apply moreintensifiers that reinforce the strength of compliments, while males are more likely to useless intensified words. Thirdly, different topics are used for complimenting males andfemales. Topics of appearance and personality are more appropriate and welcome forfemales whereas possessions and ability are more proper for males. At last, ways malesand females respond to compliments are also different. In general, females tend to acceptcompliments more often, however, males are more likely to evade and reject complimentsbetween males than that of females.