Complimenting behaviour on Facebook
Responding to compliments in American English
María Elena Placencia | Birkbeck, University of London
Amanda Lower | Birkbeck, University of London
Hebe Powell | Birkbeck, University of London
Compliment responses in face-to-face interaction have been extensively studied in different languages and cultures. Studies on complimenting behaviour in social-digital contexts are beginning to emerge (cf. Cirillo 2012; Placencia and Lower 2013; Maíz-Arévalo 2013). This paper aims to contribute to this emerging body of work by examining the responses to compliments made on Facebook (FB) by a group of women within an FB network in the US. While they received 1057 compliments, they produced only 205 responses. These results contrast with findings for face-to-face interactions, where non-response is exceptional, suggesting a strong influence of the medium on social norms. Regarding compliments which were responded to, acceptance predominated over rejection, in line with previous work within English-speaking communities (cf. Holmes 1986). Supplementary data from interviews with a group of American FB users revealed that their expectations are, overall, different from face-to-face interaction, with various factors influencing their compliment response behaviour.
Published online: 15 September 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.7.3.01pla
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.7.3.01pla
References
Arendholz, Jenny
2013 (In)Appropriate Online Behavior. A Pragmatic Analysis of Message Board Relations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987[1978] Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chen, Rong
1993 “Responding to Compliments. A Contrastive Study of Politeness Strategies between American English and Chinese Speakers”. Journal of Pragmatics 201: 49–75.
2001 “Self-politeness: A Proposal”. Journal of Pragmatics 331: 87–106.
2010 “Compliment and Compliment Response Research: A Cross-cultural Survey”. In Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures, ed. by Anna Trosborg, 79–101. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Chen, Rong, and Dafu Yang
2010 “Responding to Compliments in Chinese: Has it Changed?” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 1951–1963.
Cirillo, Valeria
2012 “The Pragmatics of Virtual Environments. Compliment Responses in Second Life”. Lingue e Linguaggi 71: 37–58.
Clark, Herbert H
1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Duthler, Kirk W
2006 “The Politeness of Requests Made via Email and Voicemail: Support for the Hyperpersonal Model”. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 111: 500–521.
Fraser, Bruce, and William Nolen
1981 “The Association of Deference with Linguistic Form”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 271: 93–109.
Herbert, Robert K
1989 “The Ethnography of English Compliments and Compliment Responses: A Contrastive Sketch”. In Contrastive Pragmatics, ed. by Wiesław Oleksy, 3–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Herring, Susan C
2001 “Computer-mediated Discourse”. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton, 612–634. Oxford: Blackwell.
2007 “A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-mediated Discourse”. Language@Internet. Available at: http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2007/761
Holmes, Janet
1986 “Compliments and Compliment Responses in New Zealand English”. Anthropological Linguistics 281: 485–508.
Kachru, Braj B
1985 “Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle”. In English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Languages and Literatures, ed. by Randolph Quirk and Henry G. Widdowson, 11–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (for the British Council).
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine
2004 “Introducing Polylogue”. Journal of Pragmatics 361: 1–24.
Leech, Geoffrey N
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Li, Charlene, Josh Bernoff, Remy Fiorentino and Sarah Glass
2007 “Social Technographics: Mapping Participation in Activities Forms the Foundation of a Social Strategy”. Forrester Research, April 2007, 1–13. (Retrieved on 18 May 2012 from www.tccta.org/links/
Committees/pub-archive/Social-Technographics.pdf).
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria
2001 “Compliment Responses among British and Spanish University Students: A Contrastive Study”. Journal of Pragmatics 331:107–127.
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2013 ““Just Click ‘Like’”: Computer-mediated Responses to Spanish Compliments”. Journal of Pragmatics 511: 47–67.
Manes, Joan
1983 “Compliments: A Mirror of Cultural Values”. In Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition, ed. by Nessa Wolfson and E. Judd, 82–95. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Manes, Joan, and Nessa Wolfson
1981 “The Compliment Formula”. In Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardised Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 115–133. The Hague: Mouton.
Marcoccia, Michel
2004 “On-line Polylogues: Conversation Structure and Participation Framework in Internet Newsgroups”. Journal of Pragmatics 361: 115–145.
Merrison, Andrew John, Jack J. Wilson, Bethan L. Davies, and Michael Haugh
2012 “Getting Stuff Done: Comparing E-mail Requests from Students in Higher Education in Britain and Australia”. Journal of Pragmatics 44 (9): 1077–1098.
Nelson, Gayle L., Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Erin Echols
1996 “Arabic and English Compliment Responses: Potential for Pragmatic Failure”. Applied Linguistics 171: 411–432.
Placencia, María Elena, and Amanda Lower
2013 “
Your Kids are So Stinking Cute. Complimenting Behavior on Facebook among Family and Friends”. Intercultural Pragmatics 101: 617–646.
Pomerantz, Anita
1978 “Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of Multiple Constraints”. In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, ed. by Jim Schenkein, 79–112. New York: Academic Press.
Raymond, Eric S., and Guy L. Steele
1993 The New Hacker’s Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Schneider, Klaus P
1999 “Compliment Responses across Cultures”. In On Language in Theory and Practice: In Honour of Janusz Arabski on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday. Vol 1: Language Theory and Language Use, ed. by Maria Wysocka, 162–172. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Tang, Chen-Hsin, and Grace Qiao Zhang
2009 “A Contrastive Study of Compliment Responses Between Australian English and Mandarin Chinese Speakers”. Journal of Pragmatics 411: 325–345.
Uehara, Edwina S
1995 “Reciprocity Reconsidered: Gouldner’s `Moral Norm of Reciprocity’ and Social Support”. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 121: 483–502.
Watts, Richard J
2003 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Werry, Christopher C
1996 “Linguistic and Interactional Features of Internet Relay Chat”. In Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Susan C. Herring, 47–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Yus, Francisco
2010 Ciberpragmática 2.0: Nuevos usos del lenguaje en Internet. Barcelona:
Planeta.
Cited by
Cited by 19 other publications
Cenni, Irene & Patrick Goethals
2021. Business responses to positive reviews online: Face-work on TripAdvisor.
Journal of Pragmatics 180 ► pp. 38 ff.
Dendenne, Boudjemaa
2021. Complimenting on-the-go: Features from colloquial Algerian Arabic.
Journal of Pragmatics 172 ► pp. 270 ff.
Eslami, Zohreh R., Nasser Jabbari & Li-Jen Kuo
2019.
In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness,
► pp. 68 ff.
Eslami, Zohreh R., Lu Yang & Chang Qian
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 21 ff.
Eslami, Zohreh R. & Xinyuan Yang
2018. Chinese-English bilinguals’ online compliment response patterns in American (Facebook) and Chinese (Renren) social networking sites.
Discourse, Context & Media 26 ► pp. 13 ff.
Lower, Amanda
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 49 ff.
Luo, Mufan & Jeffrey T. Hancock
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 289 ff.
Maíz Arévalo, Carmen
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 73 ff.
Morady Moghaddam, Mostafa
2019. Responses to compliments in online English chat: a comparison between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers.
Journal of Multicultural Discourses 14:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Page, Ruth
2019. Self-denigration and the mixed messages of ‘ugly’ selfies in Instagram.
Internet Pragmatics 2:2 ► pp. 173 ff.
Page, Ruth
2019. The future of internet pragmatics.
Internet Pragmatics 2:1 ► pp. 46 ff.
Pano Alamán, Ana
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 145 ff.
Placencia, María Elena
2019.
In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness,
► pp. 93 ff.
Placencia, María Elena & Zohreh R. Eslami
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 1 ff.
Placencia, María Elena & Hebe Powell
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 99 ff.
Ruiz-Tada, Marina, Marta Fernández-Villanueva & Elsa Tragant
2020.
In Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 313],
► pp. 121 ff.
Stoian, Claudia E.
2020. Speech Acts across Cultures: Teaching Compliment Exchanges.
East-West Cultural Passage 20:1 ► pp. 145 ff.
Wu, Jianhong
2021. Book review.
Journal of Pragmatics 180 ► pp. 35 ff.
Yus, Francisco
2019. An outline of some future research issues for internet pragmatics.
Internet Pragmatics 2:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. 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.