This paper examines the act of complimenting and responding to compliments among Singapore Chinese. To this end, I explored naturally occurring compliment exchanges during the Chinese New Year (CNY) period. These exchanges are not only gender-sensitive, but age- and generation-sensitive as well. The CNY celebrations are governed by certain conventions, exchanging compliments being one of them. The conventional setting helps us understand the functions of compliments and the nature of their responses better, thus avoiding overgeneralizations. Compliments and their responses in the CNY context appear to play an important mainly phatic role. This study suggests that (a) married females pay and receive most compliments and (b) the most common compliment topic centers on their children’s academic achievement and potential career success rather than appearance (Holmes 1988) or possessions (Herbert 1991). In addition, most responses are of the non-acceptance type with downgrading, which is in line with findings from other researchers (see, e.g., Gu 1990; Chen 1993). A survey carried out on these non-acceptance responses shows that informants understand them as being largely conventional and formalistic rather than literal in nature, probably due to the conventional setting. This speech event of compliments and their responses is a mirror of cultural values (Manes 1983), revealing that the Chinese-speaking community of Singapore places high importance on children’s socio-economic success and practices conventional humility.
(1984) Indirect speech acts in Chinese polite expressions. JCLTA 19.3: 1-10.
Boyle, R
(2000) You’ve worked with Elizabeth Taylor!: Phatic functions and implicit compliments. Applied Linguistics 21/1: 26-46.
Brown, P., and S. Levinson
(1978) Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. Goody (ed.), Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-234.
Brown, P., and S. Levinson
(1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Byrnes, H
(1986) Interactional style in German and American conversations. Text 61: 189-206.
Chen, R
(1993) Responding to compliments: A contrastive study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics 201: 49-75.
Du Bois, J.W.et al.
(1993) Outline of discourse transcription. In J.A. Edwards and M.D. Lampert (eds.), Talking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research . New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, pp. 45-89.
Goffman, E
(1955) On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry. Journal of the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18.3: 213-231.
Goffman, E
(1967) Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books.
Golato, A
(2002) German compliment responses. Journal of Pragmatics 341: 547-571.
Grice, P
(1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: speech acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41-58.
Grice, P
(1989) Strides in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gu, Y
(1990) Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics 14.2: 237-257.
Gupta, A.F
(1992) The pragmatic particles of Singapore Colloquial English. Journal of Pragmatics 181: 31-57.
(1990) Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. Language in Society 191: 201-224.
Herbert, R.K
(1991) The sociology of compliment work: An ethnocontrastive study of Polish and English compliments. Multilingua 101: 381-402.
Herbert, R.K
(1997) The sociology of compliment work in Polish and English. Multilingua 10.4: 381-402.
Herbert, R.K., and H. Straight
(1989) Compliment-rejection versus compliment-avoidance: Listener-based verus speaker-based pragmatic strategies. Language and Communication 91: 35-47.
Ho, D.Y
(1975) On the concept of face. American Journal of Sociology 81.4: 867-884.
Hu, H.C
(1944) The Chinese concepts of ‘face’. American Anthropologist 46.1: 45-64.
Holmes, J
(1988a) Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics 281: 485-508.
Holmes, J
(1988b) Paying compliments: A sex-preferential politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics 121: 445-465.
Holmes, J
(1993) New Zealand women are good to talk to: An analysis of politeness strategies in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 201: 91-116.
Holmes, J
(1995) Women, Men and Politeness. London and New York: Longman.
Jucker, Andreas H
(2009) Speech act research between armchair, field and laboratory: The case of compliments. Journal of Pragmatics 411: 1161-1635.
Jaworski, A
(1995) ‘This is not an empty compliment!’ Polish compliments and the expression of solidarity. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 5.11: 63-94.
Knapp, M.L., R. Hopper, and R.A. Bell
(1984) Compliments: A descriptive taxonomy. Journal of Communication 34.4: 12-31.
Laver, J.D.M.H
(1975) Communicative functions of phatic communion. In A. Kendon, R.M. Harris, and M.R. Key (eds.), The Organization of Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction. The Hague: Mouton.
Laver, J.D.M.H
(1981) Linguistic routines and politeness in greeting and parting. In F. Coulmas (ed.), Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech. The Hague: Mouton.
Lee, C
(1990) Cute yaw haiya-nah! Hawaii Creole English compliments and their responses: Implications for cross-cultural pragmatic failure. University of Hawaii Working Paper in ESL 9.1: 115-161.
Lee, C.L
(2003) Motivations of code-switching in multi-lingual Singapore. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 31.1: 145-176.
Leech, G
(1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B
(1989) Praising and complimenting. In W. Oleksy (ed.), Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 73-100.
Lorenzo-Dus, N
(2001) Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics 331: 107-127.
Ma, R
(1996) Saying “yes” for “no” and “no” for “yes”: A Chinese rule. Journal of Pragmatics 251: 257-266.
Manes, J
(1983) Compliments: A mirror of cultural values. In N. Wolfson, and E. Judds (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition. M.A.: Newbury House, Rowley, pp. 96-102.
Manes, J., and N. Wolfson
(1981) The compliment formula. In F. Coulmas (ed.), Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Situations and Prepatterned Speech. The Hague: Mouton.
Mao, L.R
(1994) Beyond politeness theory: ‘face’ revisited and reviewed. Journal of Pragmatics 21.5: 451-486.
Morgan, J.L
(1978) Two types of convention in indirect speech acts. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: speech acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 261-280.
Pomerantz, A
(1978) Compliment responses. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organization of Conversational Interaction. New York: Academic Press, pp. 79-112.
Searle, J.R
(1971) What is a speech act? In J.R. Searle (ed.), Philosophy of language. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 39-53.
Searle, J.R
(1975) Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: speech acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 59-82.
Sifianou, M
(2001) “Oh, how appropriate” compliment and politeness. In A. Bayraktaroğlu, and M. Sifianou (eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish . Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 391-430.
(2009) A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics 41.2: 325-345.
Tu, W
(1984) Confucian Ethics Today: The Singapore Challenge. Singapore: Federal Publications (S) Pte. Ltd.
Tu, W
(1985) Selfhood and otherness in Confucian thought. In A.J. Marsella, G. DeVos, and F.L.K. Hsu (eds.), Culture and self: Asian and western perspectives. New York: Tavistock Publications, pp. 231-351.
Watts, R.J
(2003) Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wieland, M
(1995) Complimenting behavior in French/American cross-cultural dinner conversations. The French Review 68.5: 796-812.
Wolfson, N
(1983) An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English. In N. Wolfson, and E. Judd (eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp. 82-95.
Wolfson, N
(1984) Pretty is as pretty does: A speech act view of sex roles. Applied Linguistics 5.3: 236-244.
Wolfson, N., and J. Manes
(1980) The compliment as a social strategy. Papers in Linguistics 131: 391-410.
Ye, L
(1995) Complimenting in Mandarin Chinese. In Gabriele Kasper (ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language. Hawaii: Second language and teaching curriculum center, Honolulu, pp. 207-278.
Ylänne-McEwen, V
(1993) Complimenting behaviour: A cross-cultural investigation. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14.6: 499-508.
Yu, M
(2003) On the universality of face: Evidence from Chinese compliment response behavior. Journal of Pragmatics 351: 1679-1710.
Yu, M
(2005) Sociolinguistic competence in the complimenting act of native Chinese and American English speakers: A mirror of cultural values. Language and Speech 48.1: 91-119.
2022. Males and females’ complimenting behaviour on the celebrities’ Instagram comments. JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature) 7:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Cher Leng, Lee
2015. Compliments and Compliment Responses of Singapore Chinese University Students. Global Chinese 1:1 ► pp. 169 ff.
Jenks, Christopher
2013. ‘Your pronunciation and your accent is very excellent’: orientations of identity during compliment sequences in English as a lingua franca encounters. Language and Intercultural Communication 13:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
2017. Developing awareness and use of compliments in the Chinese homestay: A longitudinal case study
. Applied Linguistics Review 8:4 ► pp. 441 ff.
Min, Jennifer Quah Xiao
2015. Compliment Responses among Malaysian Multilinguals. In Researching Sociopragmatic Variability, ► pp. 119 ff.
Wang, Lin
2022. Length, position, and functions of inter-clausal Chinese–English code-switching in a bilingual novel. Linguistics Vanguard 8:1 ► pp. 83 ff.
Wen, Zhou & Deng Jun
2017. The Effects of Explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on Chinese English Language Learners’ Acquisition of Compliment Responses. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics 40:2
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.