A Cross-cultural Study on American and Chinese Compliments
Abstract: Compliment is one of the most commonly used speech acts in social communication. This thesis, through the comparative studies on topic distribution and compliment response of Chinese compliments and American compliments, aims at helping English learners have a profound understanding on compliments in cross-cultural communication. Key words: compliment; culture; cross-cultural communication
1. Introduction
People of different nations have different cultures, thus their values, way of thinking and aesthetic conception are different. Compliments are the reflection of culture. Therefore, through comparing and contrasting the differences between American and Chinese compliments we can get both the rules of verbal communication and social communication to have a better understanding of the two cultures, avoid the taboos and choose the right communication patterns based on the concrete situations.
2. Compliment and Compliment Response
According to Holmes, “a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some ?good?(possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer.” He believes that a compliment is an “intricate combination of positive evaluation, displayed good feelings, implicit friendliness, and half-admitted desire to please.” [1]
A compliment response, according to Nelson, “is a verbal acknowledgement that the respondent of compliment heard and reacted to the compliment.” [2] How to respond to compliments appropriately in a given situation is a very important speech act in the cross-cultural communication. One would expect that competent speakers of English should say \respond to a compliment. Speakers know that the correct response is \don't know what to say. Clearly, this paradox merits investigation, especially for the Chinese people because they are commonly thought to mildly deny the compliment or to return a compliment to the complimentee at once. Sometimes they would even criticize themselves or find a flaw of themselves on the aspects that they are complimented on.
3. Cross-cultural Differences in Topic Distribution
Compliments frequently refer to quite personal matters or aspects of character, some of which may not be valued too much by the addressees themselves, while others may not be meant to be noticed at all. In this chapter, the major topics of compliments are classified into three categories in both Chinese and American compliments.
3.1 Topics on Appearance
American compliments usually focus on appearance or looks. Any change in others? appearance is deserved to compliment for showing one's interest or respect to others. And compliments are usually related to the result of individual effort, but less concerning something born beauty. [3] However, topics on appearance are not the most preferential in China, which is different from American compliments. While female?s looks is also a common topic in Chinese
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compliments, it does not lead a major part in compliments. Moreover, complimenting female?s looks from men is usually considered as a taboo, except for jokes among acquaintances. But in Chinese culture, when a man complimented a woman, especially about the feature, it would probably be considered as flirt or rude. Because Chinese people tend to believe that a distinction should be made between males and females. Though there are some changes in modern times, the conventional norms still affect to a large extent. Chinese compliments concerning appearance may usually go with “born beauty”.
3.2 Topics on Possession
In American, topic on possession has a high frequency. Possessions as topics include others? bags, clothes, cars, pets and even kinfolks such as children, parents, boyfriends or girlfriends. While in Chinese compliments, people often choose somebody's kids, houses, cars, cloths even jobs and salary as topics of possession. Sometimes, personal experiences are also selected. It's natural to compliment other's possessions in American context, while it?s not always safe to praise other's possessions in China, especially between people in close relationship with each other. The reason lies in that the compliment will be probably considered as a request for the possessions and may result in an embarrassment between the speaker and the hearer.
4. Conclusion
Through the comparative study between Chinese compliments and American compliments, this paper attempts to offer some useful information for cross-cultural communication. When people of different cultures interact with each other, it is not enough just to understand each other; they should also pay more attention to etiquette in order to smooth cross-cultural communication.
Works Cited
[1]Holmes, J. Compliment and Compliment responses in New Zealand English [J]. Anthropological Linguistics, 1988.
[2]Wolfson, N. and Manes, J. The Compliment as A Social Strategy [J]. Papers in Linguistics. 1983.
[3]Kong Zi. A Comparative Study of Compliments in English and Chinese from a Cross-Cultural Perspective [A]. Postgraduate Thesis of Qufu Normal University. 2008.
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A cross-cultural study on American and Chinese compliments
