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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 29:3 (2019) ► pp.410–435

Appraising and reappraising of compliments and the provision of responses

Automatic and non-automatic reactions

ORCID logo | Shahrood University of Technology

The role of cognitive processes in compliment-response (CR) exchanges is an underdeveloped area of investigation. This article aims to probe whether Persian speakers’ responses to compliments change in line with their appraisals of the situation. To achieve this aim, Persian speakers’ responses to compliments are analysed based on their first and second appraisals of the event. In this study, with a focus on the CR exchanges, Persian speakers (N = 160) were observed and audio-recorded during everyday conversation. The results of this study manifest that Persian speakers have distinct (and even opposite) reactions based on their first and second appraisal of compliments. This suggests, therefore, that Appraisal 1 and Appraisal 2 undergo different sociocognitive processes that reflect automatic and non-automatic responses to compliments. It is concluded that the relation between Appraisal 1 and Appraisal 2 is mostly contradictory rather than confirmatory, in that the first compliment is mostly appraised as a politeness strategy (a social lubricant), whereas the second compliment is frequently appraised as purposeful or strategic praise. In addition, the first compliment is responded to automatically, whereas the second compliment is approached non-automatically.

Keywords: appraisal, compliment responses, Persian speakers, pragmatics, speech acts
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Macro strategies in R1 and R2
    • 4.2Compliment 1 and appraisal 1
    • 4.3Compliment 2 and appraisal 2
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 18 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18016.mor
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