This dissertation is a sociolinguistic investigation into the system of the speech act of complimenting among young Japanese. Sociolinguistic studies on complimenting have been rather extensively carried out in Western academic discourse since the 1980s. The rapid development of this field went hand in hand with the existing growing body of work on speech acts, linguistic politeness and language and gender studies, all fields which came to flourish during the 1960s-80s. The speech act of complimenting has so far been overwhelmingly regarded as one of the most obvious positive politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson 1987; Holmes 1995) and also as a feminised sociolinguistic practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2003; Herbert 1990). However, the sociolinguistic examination of complimenting in non- Western speech communities remains less well investigated. This dissertation challenges some traditional premises about the nature of this speech act and explores how sociolinguists should go about analysing this variable in the context of a non-Western speech community. In so doing, I highlight that applying localized cultural knowledge plays a crucial role in unfolding the social and linguistic systems of complimenting in a Japanese speech community. The analysis presented here draws on a corpus consisting of more than 40 hours of recordings with 67 young Japanese university students, collected through ethnographic techniques. Fieldwork was conducted for over a year in order to obtain these data in southern Japan (namely, Kumamoto and Oita prefectures). A total of 369 compliment utterances within 143 compliment sequences were extracted and transcribed from this corpus. To achieve a satisfying sociolinguistic understanding of this speech act, the data are analysed with a combination of both the qualitative methods of discourse analysis and the quantitative methods of variationist sociolinguistics. This dissertation brings much needed discussions of this variable situated within non-Western contexts and hence makes significant contribution to the field, by adding new perspectives and findings about complimenting behaviour. On the one hand, my work found some regularity in compliments which parallel the findings of previous studies. This itself is a new insight in the field of compliments studies, namely, that there are crossculturally (if not universally) pervasive properties of complimenting. On the other hand, this study highlighted some originality in this speech act among the young Japanese. The construction and application of compliments in the case of Japanese substantially manifest its complex and intricate sociolinguistic system, which my dissertation is dedicated to describing through the naturally occurring data of spoken Japanese.

<p>The study of appropriateness in language use is part of pragmatics, and how speakers give and respond to complements is a source of data in such studies. Compliments are strategies to explicitly or implicitly ascribe qualities that are mutually appreciated by the speaker and the addressee of a compliment. When individuals from different cultures interact in conversations, including the giving and receiving of compliments, and their behaviour is based on different conventions, it may lead to misunderstandings. Earlier studies (Cedar, 2006 & Sharifian, 2005, 2008) suggest that pragmatic transfer can cause cross-cultural misunderstanding. Second language users seem to transfer first language pragmatic rules into second language domains. This study will examine whether pragmatic transfer occurs in Swedish as first language into English as a second language in compliment responses. It will be assumed that pragmatic conventions are influenced by both linguistic and social norms. A Discourse completion task was used in order to obtain the data. The Discourse completion task consisted of one questionnaire in English, and one translated into Swedish, with situations where a compliment was given and the participant was instructed to imagine him/herself in that situation and give their most probable response to that compliment. The results showed that there was no significant difference between compliment responses given in Swedish and those given in English by native Swedish speakers. Thus, pragmatic transfer could have occurred. The Swedish participants’ compliment responses were also compared to compliment responses of Scottish English L1 speakers. The results are discussed in relation to other studies of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses, and suggestions for future research are considered.<strong> </strong></p>

The study of appropriateness in language use is part of pragmatics, and how speakers give and respond to complements is a source of data in such studies. Compliments are strategies to explicitly or implicitly ascribe qualities that are mutually appreciated by the speaker and the addressee of a compliment. When individuals from different cultures interact in conversations, including the giving and receiving of compliments, and their behaviour is based on different conventions, it may lead to misunderstandings. Earlier studies (Cedar, 2006 &amp; Sharifian, 2005, 2008) suggest that pragmatic transfer can cause cross-cultural misunderstanding. Second language users seem to transfer first language pragmatic rules into second language domains. This study will examine whether pragmatic transfer occurs in Swedish as first language into English as a second language in compliment responses. It will be assumed that pragmatic conventions are influenced by both linguistic and social norms. A Discourse completion task was used in order to obtain the data. The Discourse completion task consisted of one questionnaire in English, and one translated into Swedish, with situations where a compliment was given and the participant was instructed to imagine him/herself in that situation and give their most probable response to that compliment. The results showed that there was no significant difference between compliment responses given in Swedish and those given in English by native Swedish speakers. Thus, pragmatic transfer could have occurred. The Swedish participants’ compliment responses were also compared to compliment responses of Scottish English L1 speakers. The results are discussed in relation to other studies of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses, and suggestions for future research are considered.

This study investigates the pragmatic transfer Chinese Latter-day Saint (LDS) missionaries speaking English display when responding to compliments in English conversations. Previous studies have shown that native American English speakers have a higher rate of compliment acceptance in their compliment response (CR) strategies. While, native Chinese speakers have a higher rate of denial in their CRs (. A common research question is whether or not CR strategies transfer from a Chinese English speaker's first language (L1) into their English conversations. To measure this, 40 missionaries from the LDS church participated in naturalized role plays. Half were native Chinese (10 male, 10 female), and the other half were native American (10 male and 10 female). Each missionary participated in two role play situations, once with a male researcher and once with a female researcher. These role plays were conducted in English. In each role play the researcher complimented the participant in four areas: 1) ability, 2) native culture/hometown, 3) the LDS church, 4) a small possession (e.g. watch, tie, skirt, etc). CRs were recorded then organized on a CR continuum. A series of univariate and related measures ANOVAs was used to measure significance. Results suggest that Chinese missionaries tend to downgrade and disagree with compliments more than American missionaries. Additionally, female Chinese missionaries tend to overgeneralize using the appreciation token when responding to compliments. Other significant findings include the effect of gender and compliment topic on the missionaries' CR strategies.

<p dir="ltr">In many Japanese language textbooks and classes, instruction often advocates for responding to compliments with modesty, typically through a negative response. However, previous research by Tatsumi (2013), Shimizu (2007), Terao (1996), and Hirata (1999) suggests that Japanese individuals do not exclusively rely on negative responses when receiving compliments. Moreover, prior studies have predominantly examined the gender of the recipient of the compliment, overlooking the significance of the gender of the person giving compliments. With respect to the topic of compliment responses, previous research has found the following two points. First, Holmes (1988), Herbert (1990), and Matsuura (2004) found that compliment exchanges frequently occur among the younger generation. Second, Itoi (1999), Shimizu (2017) Takamiya (2022) and, Ang (2023) found that the compliments among younger generations are likely to be accepted.</p><p dir="ltr">This study aims to investigate potential differences in compliment responses between Japanese and American women who fall into Generation Z, while also considering the influence of both the gender of the person giving the compliments and the topic of the compliments. A survey was conducted involving 30 Japanese women residing in Japan and 32 American females living in the U.S. Participants submitted their responses online, using either Japanese or English, their native languages. These responses were elicited as reactions to scenarios wherein they received compliments, accompanied by written explanations for their responses.</p><p dir="ltr">The compliments were given by classmates with a relationship of acquaintance who were not yet close, with variations in the gender of the complimenter (male vs. female) and the type of compliment (appearance vs. skill), totaling four distinct scenarios. Their responses were recorded both orally and through written response to share intention. On top of these records, analysis required taking into account the tone of voice and nonverbal cues such as pauses, and hesitations when analyzing and discussing the impact of the complimenter’s gender and the topic of the compliment on the response. Study results show that almost all the compliments were accepted with appreciation by both American and Japanese participants with no difference observed in macro strategies and minimal differences observed in micro strategies. However, this lack of difference is discussed as evident of global influences on pragmatics of different cultures. The findings of this study have implications for communication strategies related to compliments and for pragmatic instruction in teaching Japanese as a second/foreign language.</p>

The present study aimed to find out which compliment response types Saudi learners of English would use in particular situations within an academic context and to identify possible cultural and gender differences in the compliment responses between Saudi learners of English and native speakers of American English. In order to examine the two main variables of the present study, which were cultural and gender differences, the study used a Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Task (MDCT). The instrument included four imaginary written situations related to an academic context. Specifically, the first two scenarios involved a compliment on student achievement by a male and a female professor. In the third and fourth scenarios, the compliment was offered by a male and a female classmate, respectively. The compliment response types were based on Herbert's (1990) taxonomy. The participants included 104 American native speakers and 71 Saudi English speakers, all of them enrolled at a US university. The analysis of the data involved calculating descriptive statistics and multiple chi-square tests to elicit possible differences between native and non-native in each situation. Descriptive statistics were used to provide a detailed description of the results in terms of percentages. In addition, the value of Phi was calculated for each chi-square test in order to provide further evidence about the effect size of the observed differences. Overall, the results for the comparisons of cultural differences revealed that there were more similarities than differences between the American and Saudi participants in their compliment responses in all four situations. Furthermore, the results of the gender comparisons showed that there were more gender differences within the American sample than within the Saudi one. The lack of or very small number of cultural and gender differences was attributed to the fact that the majority of the Saudi participants had spent a substantial amount of time in the US and were all enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs at a US university. Another speculation that emerges based on the results of this study is that the similarities between the Saudi and American students, and the male and female participants, could be attributed to the changing definition of culture in the present day globalized world. Particularly, it appears that cultural differences may be fading away, especially among the younger generations, under the influence of globalization, advanced technology, and the Internet.

[pt] Este trabalho tem como objetivo principal identificar o modelo canônico de comportamento dos falantes nativos cariocas para reagir a elogios em situações ordinárias de interação. Tendo em vista que as respostas a elogios podem ser consideradas atos de fala complexos, com normas de uso dependentes de questões culturais, consideramos que os mesmos carregam um alto potencial de risco de mal-entendidos e de constrangimentos para falantes não nativos que tentem realizá-los a partir das normas de suas próprias culturas. Visando colaborar com os estudos voltados para o ensino de português para estrangeiros, esta pesquisa se propõe a dar os primeiros passos rumo à compreensão da orientação de polidez carioca que embasa a construção do ideal de comportamento de seus falantes nativos. Para tal, buscamos para nossa fundamentação teórica conceitos da Pragmática e da Antropologia cultural. A análise de dados baseia-se num corpus criado a partir da aplicação de um questionário com algumas hipóteses de respostas a elogios de situações cotidianas, em que os informantes escolheram as mais e as menos adequadas para cada situação. Visando uma confirmação do padrão encontrado, numa segunda etapa, buscamos comparar alguns desses dados a formas usadas em situações reais, por meio de gravações de elogios provocados em interações espontâneas. Os resultados apontaram a aceitação como a forma idealizada de reação a elogios para diferentes tópicos e em diferentes contextos situacionais. / [en] This paper seeks to identity the canonic pattern of behavior of Rio de Janeiro s native speakers and their reactions when receiving compliments in ordinary day-to-day situations. Responses to compliment can be considered complex speech acts, with norms which are dependent on cultural factors. Based on that, the author considers that these situations embody a strong potential for misunderstandings and embarrassment for non-native speakers, when they fail to adapt their own cultural background to the natives standards during interactions. This research proposes to collaborate with the Portuguese as a Second Language field of study by advancing in the understanding of Rio de Janeiro s politeness norms, which are the basis for the ideal behavioral pattern of native speakers. The theoretic fundaments rest in Pragmatics and Cultural Anthropology concepts. The data analysis is based on information gathered from a questionnaire, which presented some hypothesis of responses to compliments in ordinary situations and in which the repliers chose the most and the least appropriate reactions for each situation. Seeking to confirm the pattern that was drawn from the responses, on a second phase, the study sought to compare some of the data collected to the speech patterns used in real-life situations, through the use of pre-recorded responses to compliments in spontaneous situations. The results showed that, for different subjects and situational contexts, the ideal behavior to native speakers is the acceptance of the compliments, rather than its rebuttal.

Set within the framework of the newly established field of variational pragmatics (Schneider and Barron, 2008), this study investigates pragmatic variation between two different regional varieties of English, namely American English and Singaporean English. Specifically, the speech act of compliment responses is compared. The data were collected through written discourse completion tasks (DCT) and responses were analysed and coded using an adapted version of Holmes’ (1988) categorization system for compliment responses (CRs). The CRs come from a total of 40 participants and a total of 320 compliment responses were analysed. The DCT was supplemented by an introspective-recall with six participants. The findings demonstrate that the preferred strategy for both groups is in the order of accept, evade and reject. Even so, the Singaporeans use more reject strategies and less accept strategies than the Americans do. Further, the Americans employ more combination strategies than the Singaporeans. The Singaporeans however, employ more non-verbal and paralinguistic cues than the Americans. The results also show differences in the two varieties’ attitudes to and perceptions of compliment responses. In addition, the study suggests that compliments in Singapore might be undergoing a change. The findings are particularly important for pedagogical purposes.