Access to abstract restricted until 12/14/2016 / Access to thesis restricted until 12/14/2016 / Department of English

Previous research has shown some significant differences in the way speech acts are made and responded to in different cultures and languages. This study investigates two speech acts in particular, compliments and refusals, in two specific cultures, England and Poland. The project investigates the role of emotions in communication and social interaction with reference to these speech acts, which are particularly interesting due to their opposite emotional valence: compliments are perceived as positive and refusals are negative. English and Polish compliments and refusals are investigated as the two cultures are often perceived as proximate, which suggests that the observed differences will be particularly interesting as they have the potential to shed light on important and yet intractable distinguishing features of the two cultures. The research has two lines of investigation: theoretical and empirical. The theoretical aspect of research aims to bring together insights on the role of emotions in communication and a cognitive perspective on communication to explain the functions of compliments and refusals in social interaction and the relation between the cognitive and affective aspects of the production and reception of these speech acts. The empirical part of the research is based on an original study that presents new insights into complimenting and refusing behaviour in English and Polish culture. The comparison of English and Polish findings reveals many similarities in complimenting behaviour and some striking differences in refusing behaviour (most notably, Polish speakers tend to be less congruent than English speakers when making refusals and their refusals tend to be more detailed and more elaborate). The pragmatic analysis of the data has some interesting implications for the classification of compliment responses, suggesting that the classification should be based on appreciation, rather than on acceptance or rejection.

Studies across different languages over the past three decades have claimed that compliments are formulaic in nature, realized by only a few syntactic and semantic formulae. Much of the research employs elicitation or ethnographic field notes data, which biases the analysis to single utterance, explicit and formulaic compliments. However, my observations of Chinese compliments in naturally occurring conversation paint a different, much more sophisticated, picture. The current study investigates the realization of spontaneous Chinese complimenting behavior in the speech communities of Shanghai and other cities in China. Over 200 speakers from different walks of life were audio-recorded in a vast array of natural settings. Three hundred compliment-response sequences were selected for analysis. Adopting a combination of the pragmatic speech act analytic approach and the discursive pragmatic analytic approach, the current study examines the pragmatic-discursive structure of Chinese complimenting in conversation sequences over multiple turns involving two or more parties. Results of the study reveal that Chinese compliments and compliment responses are not isolated, single utterance acts, but rather multi-turn discursive events. Chinese compliments operate as pragmatic-discursive strategies working together over the discourse in a core and support relationship. Among the 3,835 compliment strategies identified, 525 are core strategies and 3,310 are support strategies. The core compliment strategy is normally the first general summative statement initiating a compliment topic. Seven major support compliment strategies—agreement, comment, example, repetition, intensification, quote, and comparison—fulfill three major pragmatic-discursive functions: to align with, to elaborate, or to emphasize the core or another support strategy. The seven major support compliment strategies are further realized by a wide variety of substrategies and linguistic forms with no formulaicity and predictability in lexical or syntactic distribution. The different pragmatic-discursive strategies interact such that the participants negotiate and “co-construct” the compliment event. The analysis indicates that context, both interaction-external and interaction-internal, is crucial in the construction and interpretation of a compliment action.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Compliments, speech acts used to establish and reinforce solidity in human interaction, are employed extensively in various social situations. The act of giving compliments as well as responding to compliments may differ for various social contexts and cultural norms. Particularly for second language learners, the target environment may influence the way they employ compliments in their second language. This study aimed to investigate the compliment responses of Chinese second language speakers of English in view of their length of stay in the US and topic of the compliment. Four participant groups included a US group, and three Chinese ESL groups with different length of stay in the US. Both quantitative and qualitative results indicated that the four groups shared a similar tendency to employ compliment responses. These results suggest that there may be a new concept of culture developing, which is not bound to geographic location and first language.

No description available.

1 Abstract The aim of this thesis is to analyze communication functions, verbal and nonverbal means of compliments in Czech which occur in private informal discourse. Material for this analysis was collected from audiovisual and audio recordings of communication between family members and friends. As for the identification of the communication functions of compliments the method of conversation analysis was chosen. Functional classification was created based on the location of compliments in global organization of conversation, linguistic form of compliments and actions that compliments are performing or accompanying. Another part of this thesis is devoted to the analysis of verbal and nonverbal means used at complimenting. The structures, lexical units and the most significant nonverbal means used in the production of compliments were identified. For the purpose of comprehensive description of compliment sequences we also analyze reactions to compliments.

<p>The aim of this study was to find out how features that have been found to be typical of women’s language, such as hedges, tag questions and a high level of talkativeness etc., are represented in a popular TV series. Five cross-sex conversations from one episode of the sitcom <em>The New Adventures of Old Christine </em>were analyzed, and the results show that many of the features of interest, as for instance tag questions, minimal responses and indirect style, are unexpectedly used more frequently by men in this small investigation. In fact, the only feature that was used more frequently by the female main character was hedges. Several factors affect the results of the study, as for instance the fact that the conversations are fictional. The special characteristics of the speakers also affect the results, as well as the tone and the topic of the chosen conversations. Many of the features of interest were used to a very small extent, which is probably a result of the fact that the language in a sitcom is to be entertaining and rather quick, which leaves little or no room for the features studied.</p>

The aim of this study was to find out how features that have been found to be typical of women’s language, such as hedges, tag questions and a high level of talkativeness etc., are represented in a popular TV series. Five cross-sex conversations from one episode of the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine were analyzed, and the results show that many of the features of interest, as for instance tag questions, minimal responses and indirect style, are unexpectedly used more frequently by men in this small investigation. In fact, the only feature that was used more frequently by the female main character was hedges. Several factors affect the results of the study, as for instance the fact that the conversations are fictional. The special characteristics of the speakers also affect the results, as well as the tone and the topic of the chosen conversations. Many of the features of interest were used to a very small extent, which is probably a result of the fact that the language in a sitcom is to be entertaining and rather quick, which leaves little or no room for the features studied.