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Transcript of ``Different Responses to Compliments in Chinese and English
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Different Responses
to Compliments in Chinese and English
Wang Yuhuan
Laiyang Agricultural College
Abstract: This article reviews the previous researches made on compliments by
well-known American linguists such as Manes, Wolfson, Pomerantz, Herbert.
The study is based theoretically on the politeness principle advanced by Brown
& Levinson. It is concerned with a cross-cultural investigation of responses to
compliments. An experiment using a questionnaire is conducted in China to
elicit responses to sincere compliments in different circumstances under parallel
situations in Chinese and English. Results are compared and analyzed in relation
to cultural values and assumptions specific to each culture. The cultural
difference reflected in complimenting responses in Chinese and English is
analyzed by comparing the results of the questionnaire.
Key words: politeness principle; compliment; questionnaire; cultural difference
1. Previous Studies on Compliments
In the past thirty years, many linguists have carried out researches on
compliments. It is generally accepted that Manes & Wolfson (1978) did the most
complete and profound research on complimentary behaviors. They (1978,
1983b,) have spent a lot of time analyzing 1,200 examples that they collected in
a great variety of everyday speech situation. They used them as data for their
research on how compliments function in the speech of middle-class native
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speakers of American English.
Pomerantz and Herbert (1978) have done much research on responses to
compliments among English-speaking American monolinguals. In his study,
Pomerantz attempts to analyze the different patterns of response to compliments
and suggests that responses are subject to some separate constraint systems.
Some Chinese scholars such as Jia Yuxin (1997), Zhuang Enping (1993)
have laid emphasis on compliments as parts of their descriptions on
cross-cultural communication. This article will discuss compliments in the angle
of response patterns for the purpose of finding out some cultural values in
compliment in the English language.
2. Politeness Theory
In Recent years, many scholars home and abroad such as Grice (1975),
Leech (1983 ) and Brown & Levinson (1978 ), Chen Rong ( 1986 ), Gu Yueguo
(1992), Wang Jianhua (1998) have been studying politeness theory. Brown &
Levinson advanced the theory of face work which is most influential. They
think face work has its popularity. The face that a model person wants to keep in
fact is ones public self-image. There are two kinds of face: positive face and
negative face. Positive face means that the speaker has a desire that his ideas are
accepted or approved by others while negative face means that the speaker has a
desire that his ideas or behaviors wont be hindered or intruded by others.
Politeness is regarded as a symbol of mans civilization. Politeness is a
rational behavior used by model person to meet his face. Politeness is a means
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for people to keep positive and negative faces. To be polite is to lessen the
face-threatening act. In social communication, people should respect another
partys positive face and take care of another partys negative face as well. The
concept of politeness in nature is strategic to keep faces for both parties.
Compliments are communicative behaviors. People make compliments in
order to start a conversation, smooth an interaction, strengthen an emotional
exchange and enhance the mutual understanding and friendship of the people
who are involved in the conversation. When people make compliments, they
consider to show politeness in the first place. The purpose of performing an
experiment on compliments is to know how verbal behaviors are performed in
Chinese and English cultures.
3. An Experiment on Responses to Compliments
3.1 Design
A questionnaire is designed in English and Chinese. The questionnaire
consists of eight dialogues, before each of which there is a short description of
the situation, the setting, the social relations between the participants and their
social status. Topics of the eight dialogues in the questionnaire are carefully
designed in order to reflect various social aspects from different aspects. They
touch several facets such as personal attributes, changes in appearance, personal
performance, skills and accomplishments.
To the compliments in each dialogue, three optional responses are provided
in A, B and C. Each subject is to choose the one that she/he thinks most
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appropriate. If the subject thinks none of the given choices proper, he may write
down his own response in D. To take reliability of the experiment into account,
the following factors are carefully considered when the questionnaire is
designed: (1) age, profession and educational background of the subjects; (2)
languages used in the experiment; (3) subjects in different groups; (4) form of
the questionnaire; (5) topics of compliments; (6) method to analyze the data.
3.2 Subjects
100 subjects are requested to do the questionnaire and are classified into 5
sample groups.
Group 1: 20 native speakers of English, coming from America, Canada,
and Australia. They are teaching English or learning Chinese in
Qingdao University, Yantai University and Laiyang Agricultural
College.
Group 2: 20 teachers of English from the English Department of Yantai
University and Laiyang Agricultural College.
Group 3: 20 junior students from the English Department of Laiyang
Agricultural College.
Group 4 : 20 f reshmen f rom the Food Science Depar tment of
Laiyang Agricultural College.
Group 5: 20 staff members from Laiyang City government
Subjects in Group 1 are all English native speakers whose answers can
represent how the English communities usually respond to compliments.
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Subjects in Group 2 and Group 3 are teachers and students in the English
Department. The aim to choose these subjects is to find out whether their
answers are quite similar to those of Group 1 due to many years English
teaching and studying. Subjects in Group 4 are students of science who have
studied English for several years in middle schools and one year in college. It is
certain that they are influenced culturally by the English language to some
degree. Their answers will serve as good information for the analysis of
responses to compliments of the young Chinese people. Subjects in Group 5 are
carefully selected. They are workers, drivers, secretaries or officials in different
departments in Laiyang government. Most of them were graduated from middle
school. They know little English.
3.3 Data Collection
Since compliments may have numerous and complex alternative responses,
one major challenge for this study is how to collect the obtained data so that
quantitative analysis can become feasible. For the sheer contrastive purposes, it
seems workable to classify responses into two categories:1) acceptance/
agreement; 2) rejection/ disagreement. In the experiments, some subjects give
their own responses in D. So the first step is to assign these responses to one of
the three choices according to the degree of their similarity to A, B, or C. When
this is done, all the responses under A, B, or C in each group are categorized
under X and Y, with X representing acceptances/agreements, and Y standing for
rejections/disagreements. The entire process of assigning and regrouping can be
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illustrated by the following example:
[Item 5] (The headmaster attends a class run by Miss Hopkins. After class)
Headmaster: You did very well, Miss Hopkins. Very livelyvery
impressive. No wonder the pupils enjoy your teaching so
much.
Miss Hopkins: A: Oh no, I was awful. Quite nervous. I really was.
B: Its very nice of you to say so. I love these children.
C: Not at all. Im never happy with my class performance.
D:
For this item, Group 1 ( English native speakers, n=20 ) comes out with a
frequency distribution of A/2, B/16, C/0, D/2. The two responses under D are: (a)
Thats Okey. I really enjoy it. (b) Thank you for your kind remarks . As the
above responses are similar in nature to B, they naturally go to the same slot. It
is clear that B should belong to the acceptance/agreement category and therefore
come under X, the remaining A and C are regrouped under the other category Y
because they both can be regarded as disagreement with the compliment
assertion. Thus the resulting frequency distribution for statistical analysis
becomes: X/18; Y/2.
3.4 Data Analysis
To guarantee the reliability and validity of the experimental analysis, a
statistical method is used to analyze the results of the experiment. First,
experimental papers are collected. Second, answers to each dialogue from
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different groups are classified into X or Y. Third, a statistical formula is used to
calculate the significance differences. Finally, an analysis and discussion are
made based on the results of statistical analysis to show the different cultural
phenomena reflected in various languages.
The distribution of responses across the 8 items for each group is presented
in Table 1. The results after regrouping on the X/Y basis are listed in Table 2.
Table 1 Responses of the 8 Items for Each Group
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C
D
A B C D
Group 1 2 15 1 2 5 14 0 1 1 2 17 0 19 1 0 0 2 16 0 2 4 5 9 2 2 15 3 0 12 3 4 1
Group 2 2 17 0 1 9 10 0 1 0 5 15 0 10 1 6 3 2 18 0 0 2 0 18 0 2 15 2 1 16 1 2 1
Group 3 0 15 1 4 3 11 6 0 0 4 14 2 10 1 5 4 2 17 0 1 0 2 14 4 0 16 3 1 16 1 1 2
Group 4 4 6 10 0 3 10 7 0 2 8 10 0 8 6 4 2 2 14 4 0 6 6 8 0 6 9 5 0 5 7 8 0
Group 5 7 9 4 0 2 11 7 0 1 11 8 0 3 4 13 0 4 11 5 0 10 6 3 1 8 5 7 0 5 7 8 0
Table 2 Results after Regrouping under X/Y
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5
X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y
Question 1 17 3 17 3 19 1 6 14 9 11
Question 2 20 0 20 0 20 0 13 7 13 7
Question 3 17 3 17 3 16 4 10 10 8 12
Question 4 19 1 19 1 19 1 14 6 16 4
Question 5 18 2 18 2 18 2 14 6 16 4Question 6 11 9 18 2 18 2 8 12 4 16Question 7 15 5 16 4 17 3 9 11 5 15
Question 8 13 7 17 3 18 2 8 12 5 15
3.5 Results
(x11x22-x12x21)2x00
x10x20x01x02
X2=
The following tables show results of the significance level between groups
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under comparison by using the statistical formula.
Table 3 Comparison between Group 1 and Group 2
Group1
X Y
2
X Y
3
X Y
4
X Y
5
X Y
6
X Y
7
X Y
8
X Y
Group1 17 3 20 0 17 3 19 1 18 2 11 9 15 5 13 7
Group2 17 3 20 0 17 3 19 1 18 2 18 2 16 4 17 3
No significant difference between the two groups on any item
Table 4 Comparison between Group 2 and Group 3
Group1
X Y
2
X Y
3
X Y
4
X Y
5
X Y
6
X Y
7
X Y
8
X Y
Group2 17 3 20 0 17 3 19 1 18 2 18 2 16 4 17 3
Group3 19 1 20 0 16 4 19 1 18 2 18 2 17 3 18 2
No significant difference between the two groups on any item
Table 5 Comparison between Group 3 and Group 4
Group1
X Y
2
X Y
3
X Y
4
X Y
5
X Y
6
X Y
7
X Y
8
X Y
Group 3
Group 4
X2
19 1
6 14
18.02
20 0
13 7
8.485
16 4
10 10
3.956
19 1
14 6
4.329
17 2
14 6
2.5
18 2
8 12
10.99
17 3
9 11
7.033
18 2
8 12
10.99
Result ** ** * * ----- ** * **
Table 6 Comparison between Group 4 and Group 5
Group 1X Y
2X Y
3X Y
4X Y
5X Y
6X Y
7X Y
8X Y
Group 5
Group 4
X2
9 11
6 14
0.96
13 7
13 7
0
8 12
10 10
0.57
16 4
14 6
0.53
16 4
14 6
0.53
4 16
8 12
1.9
5 15
9 11
1.76
6 15
7 12
1.026
Result -------- -------- ------- ------- -------- -------- -------- --------
Table 7 Comparison between Group 5 and Group 1
Group 1X Y
2X Y
3X Y
4X Y
5X Y
6X Y
7X Y
8X Y
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Group 1
Group 2
X2
9 11
17 3
7.03
13 7
20 0
8.48
8 12
17 3
7.25
16 4
19 1
2.06
16 4
18 2
0.78
4 16
11 9
5.23
5 15
15 5
10
5 15
13 7
6.46
Result * ** * -------- ----- ** ** *
Table 8 Comparison between Group 3 and Group 1
Group1
X Y
2
X Y
3
X Y
4
X Y
5
X Y
6
X Y
7
X Y
8
X Y
Group 1
Group 2
X2
9 11
19 1
11.99
13 7
20 0
8.48
8 12
16 4
7.36
16 4
19 1
2.06
16 4
18 2
0.78
4 16
18 2
19.80
5 15
17 3
14.55
5 15
18 2
17.28
Result ** ** * -------- ----- ** ** **
Table 9 Comparison between Group 1 and Group 3
Group1
X Y
2
X Y
3
X Y
4
X Y
5
X Y
6
X Y
7
X Y
8
X Y
Group 1
Group 3
X2
17 3
19 1
1.111
20 0
20 0
0
17 3
16 4
0.17
19 1
19 1
0
18 2
18 2
0
11 9
18 2
6.14
15 5
17 3
0.62
13 7
18 2
3.58
Result -------- -------- -------- -------- ------- * ------- *
Pay attention to the following notes:
1. When > 0. 05, broken lines are used to indicate that there is no significant
difference.
2. When < 0. 05, symbol * is used to show that there is significant
difference.
3. When < 0. 01, symbol ** is used to show there are clear significant
difference.
4. Discussion
4.1. Different Manifestations of Universal Politeness and Modesty
Some linguists have studied the different ways people show their politeness
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in their interactions.For example, Pomerantz has explored the interaction of the
preference for agreement with compliments on the one hand (1978) and
self-denigration on the other (1984a). To agree with a compliment is to run
counter to a constraint against self-praise. To preserve something of both the
preference for agreement and the constraint, various intermediate methods are
often used as follows: agreements with praise-downgrade; agreements with
praise that is shifted to third party; returning compliments.
Usually receivers of compliments are subject to self-praise avoidance. Not
only does praising oneself with strong positive descriptions have a violable
condition, but even acceptance by agreeing with a compliment assertion is liable
to an interpretation of indulging in self-praise. Therefore, subsequent to
compliments which are directly praising a co-participant, agreements are most
unlikely to occur. This phenomenon can be considered to be an overt reflection
of an intention to be polite or modest on the part of the receiver of a
compliment.
Responses to English compliments form one of the numerous types of
rule-governed linguistic behaviors that are conventional. Simple appreciation
tokens like Thank you are always appropriate. American People think it rather
common to offer an appreciative reply without regarding complimenting as a
way to flatter someone. Most compliments are made to establish a harmonious
relation. It is true that Americans are more frequent to make compliments in
daily life compared with people in the eastern countries.
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However, Chinese speakers are accustomed to making complimenting
responses by the use of self-negating or self-deprecation token as follows:
(a) nali, nali.() ( No, no. It is nothing. )
(b)guojiang, guojiang,() ( You are praising me too much.)
(c) buxing, buxing.() ( No good. No good.)
In China, people often give a reply to compliment in a way of self-praise
avoidance constraint or downgrading the compliments. We should be aware that
although compliment response patterns in American English are rather different
from those of the Chinese ones due to different cultural values and social
constraints, they all show politeness and modesty to some extent.
4.2 Different Cultural Values and Norms
The making of compliments, the responding strategies and their main social
functions are all based on the shared cultural norms and social values. In fact,
specific differences between Chinese and English in the way of expressing
politeness and modesty, as embodied in the variance of compliment response
patterns, can be traced to differences in cultural norms and specific cultural
assumptions.
The tentative findings of this experiment have shown many culturally related
features that mark the differences between Chinese and English in responses to
compliments. One feature is that the Chinese lack the appreciation token like xie
xie () and they would usually show self-deprecation by responding to
compliments such as bu xing, bu xing, na li, na li, guo jiang le. (
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. ). From an English speakers point of view, these may be seen as
language phenomena reflecting a lack of sincerity or politeness. On the other
hand, from a Chinese speakers point of view, the English ways of responding to
compliments may appear to reflect arrogance. Such commonly-heard moral
judgments, though not correct, are not surprising. After all, they are made by
each side against its own cultural standards.
The Chinese culture values highly the notion of humility. In communication,
it is often acceptable for a Chinese to appear respectful and modest through a
manifestation of self humility. This is revealed in the rich system of
self-deprecating Chinese words or characters along with some honorific words.
Here are a few examples of self-deprecating words in Chinese: bi, jian, yu, xiao,
xia (, , , , ), all of which are used to oneself or ones close
relatives to show ones humility. There are also some honorific and respectful
Chinese characters such aszun, gui, xian, ya (, , , ), all of which are
used to show ones respects to others. China is a country where people view
modesty or humility as virtues. It is a cultural norm for Chinese people to show
respects or even humility to their seniors while deprecating themselves.
Both the Chinese and the English want to be polite, but the way to show
politeness is to a considerable degree determined by the cultural norms specific
to each community. The making of compliments, its social functions and its
response tokens are all based on the shared cultural norms, values and social
structures.
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4.3 Acculturation through English Language Learning
The discussion of the findings in relation to acculturation can start from a
closer look at the results of the experiment in Group 3. Subjects in Group 3 are
third year students in the English Department. They have taken many courses to
study the English language in class. They have more chances to communicate
with the English teachers both in class and after class. They gain a lot of
information that includes geography, history, current affairs, institutions, the
media and a variety of other topics. It is true that they have the opportunity to
experience the English culture directly. Considering the above factors, it is not
strange to see the deep English cultural influence on them. It is the acculturation
through English learning that has made these learners accept certain formal
characteristic features of English response patterns, which shows that the
English majors do differ in some ways in their preference patterns from
non-English majors coming from the same college simply as a result of their
English language learning experience. One thing is certain: English language
teaching itself is a process of acculturation that does bring some influence on
people who have been learning English.
5. Conclusion
By analyzing the results of the questionnaire, we come to the following
conclusions:
a) Chinese and English have different compliment response strategies and
patterns.
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own. Further investigation based on solid field work is indispensable. The
tentative conclusions above, nevertheless, may serve as new working hypotheses
in future research.
Reference
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1978 Universal in Language Usage: Politeness
Phenomena, in E.G. Goody (ed.) Questions and Politeness:
Strategies in Social Interaction, Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language
Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Furgurson, C. A. 1976 The Structure and Use of Politeness Formulas,
Language in Society. V. 5.
Hatch, E.M. 1983. Psycholingistics: a Second Language Perspective. Rowley,
Mass.: Newbury House.
Wolfson, N. 1989 Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Newbury House
Publishers.
Wolfson, N. and Manes, J. 1979. Dont dear me. Working Papers in
Sociolinguistics. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development
Laboratory.
Pomerantz, Anita. 1978. Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of
Multiple Constraints. In Studies in the Organization of
Conversational Interaction.
1997.
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1992 4
1987 2
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