?English compliments
Among them, nice and good are the most commonly used, which
account for 23% and 20% of the total respectively. The reasons of high
occurrence of nice and good can be explained that they can be used to refer to nearly everything since they lack of specificity and can be useable with almost any object. Of course, such adjectives as lovely, cute, wonderful, kind, enchanting,amazing, marvelous, charming, excellent, wise, fantastic etc. They are also used commonly to show something or somebody is peculiar, or different from others. The high tendency use of these adjectives in ECs may also be related to the fact
that more compliments are given by females.
Fishman(1970) points out, a major question in sociolinguistics is who says what to whom and when. This question in relevant not only to choice of language but also to norms of usage for a particular speech act. While many types of compliments occur in an extremely wide range of speech situations, it is obvious that certain types are more or less appropriate to certain speech situations.
3、Response to Compliment
?Herbert（1986,1989）classified compliment responses
strategies into the following twelve categories: 1. appreciation token 7.questioning 2. praise upgrade 8. scale down 3. comment acceptance 9. qualification 4. comment history 10. disagreement
5. reassignment 11. non-acknowledgement 6. return 12.request for interpretation And Herbert noticed that 66％ of Americans responded to compliments with agreement and only 0.4％ responded with disagreement.
?Response to compliment in English
As for the strategy of English compliment response,
many people may commonly think that a simply “thank you ”may work, which can be certified by Johnson below.
But is it exactly true in all cases? Maybe, Herbet’s classification of compliment response strategies adopted by the Americans based on 1062 cases can clarify it.
Responding strategies used in ECs
General strategies
Specific strategies used Example
A:I really like your shirt . B: Thank you.
A:I like your hair long .
B :Me too ,I’m not getting it cut short again.
Appreciation token
Comment acceptance
Acceptance
Praise upgrade
A: You look like a good tan this year .
B :Thanks. Kinda makes me look even more handsome ,doesn’t it? A:Those are great shorts wendly. B:They have their little own underwear in them.
A: That’s a beautiful necklace . B:It’s my grandmother’s. A :I like your shirt ,Sharon .
B: Thanks ,Ded,I like yours too.
Comment history
Reassignment Return
英语语言学概论Complimenting and Responding to Complimen组)
