A Comparative Study on the Use of Compliment Response Strategies by Persian and English Native Speakers

Mansour Shabani, Maryam Zeinali

Abstract


The significance of pragmatic knowledge and politeness strategies has recently been emphasized in language learning and teaching. Most communication failures originate in the lack of pragmatic awareness which is evident among EFL learners while communicating with English native speakers. The present study aimed at investigating compliment response strategies, as a sub-category of politeness strategies, used by a group of Persian and English native speakers, and examining the effect of gender on the use of strategies to respond to compliments. To these ends and with the use of convenient sampling, thirty Iranian native speakers (15 females and 15 males) in Iran and 26 English native speakers (13 females and 13 males) in Canada, all college students with age range of 17-30, participated in this study. In order to collect a corpus of compliment responses, a researcher-made questionnaire in the form of a Discourse Completion Task was distributed among the participants. Using two-way ANOVAs, the findings indicated that there is a significant difference between Persian native speakers and Canadian English speakers (p< .05) with respect to the compliment response strategies investigated in this study namely, accept, evade, and reject. Moreover, it was found that the most widely used compliment response strategy among both Iranian and English participants is accept. Regarding the effect of gender on the use of compliment response strategies by the participants, the results did not reveal a statistically significant difference between the two groups (p> .05).Considering the findings of the present study, materials developers and textbook writers can make more space in EFL textbooks for exercises about compliments (responses); and help in highlighting the significance of this aspect of pragmatic knowledge.

Keywords: pragmatics, politeness, compliment, compliment response, EFL


Full Text:

PDF

References


Akbari, Z. (2002). The realization of politeness principles in Persian. Karen Linguistics Issues 12, 120-135.

Al Falasi, H. (2007). Just say thank you: A study of compliment responses. The Linguistics Journal, 2 (1), 28-42.

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bloomer, A., Griffiths, P., & Merrison, A.J. (2005). Introducing language in use: A course book.Oxon: Routledge.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness (pp. 56-311). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cai, Y. (2012). A study on compliment response strategies by Chinese college students. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3(3), 543-549.

Cook, G. (2003). Applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Enssaif, Z. A. (2005). Compliment behavior: Strategies and realizations in English and Arabic: A case study of female students of the English department, King Saud University. (Unpublished master’s thesis). King Saud University, Riyadh- KSA.

Eslami-Rasekh, A., & Mardani, M. (2010).Investigating the effects of teaching apology speech act, with a focus on intensifying strategies, on pragmatic development of EFL learners: The Iranian context. The International Journal of Language, Society and Culture, 30, 96-103.

Farashaiyan, A ., & Hua, T. (2011).On the relationship between pragmatic knowledge and language proficiency among Iranian male and female undergraduate EFL learners. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 18 (1), 33-46.

Gudykunst, W., & Kim, Y.Y. (2003).Communicating with strangers: An approach to intercultural communication. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.

Herbert, R. (1990). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. Language in Society 19, 201-224.

Holmes, J., (1986). Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics, 28(4), 485-508.

Holmes, J. (1993). New Zealand women are good to talk to: An analysis of politeness strategies in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 20(2), 91-116.

Holmes, J. (1988). Paying compliments: A sex preferential positive politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 12(3), 445-465.

House, J. & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.). Conversational routine. The Hague: Mouton.

Karimnia, A. & Afghari, A. (2011). Compliments in English and Persian interaction: A cross-cultural perspective. Jezikoslovlje, 12(1), 27-50.

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.

Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2001). Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 107-127.

Motaghi-Tabari, Sh., de Beuzeville, L. (2012). A contrastive study of compliment responses among Persians and Australians: The effects of exposure to a new speech community. Applied Research in English, 1(1), 21-42.

Razi, N. (2013). A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Iranian Persian speakers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 61-66.

Sadeghi, E., & Zarei, G. R. (2013).Investigating the use of compliments in Persian and English: A case study of Iranian EFL students. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Translation Studies, 2(2), 30-49.

Sharifian, F. (2005). The Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi: A study of compliment responses in Persian and Anglo-Australian speakers. Pragmatics & Cognition, 13(2), 337-361.

Sharifian, F. (2011).Cultural conceptualizations and language: theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Sharifian, F., & Palmer, G. (2007).Applied cultural linguistics: An emerging paradigm. In F. Sharifian & G. Palmer (Eds.), Applied cultural linguistics: implications for second language learning and intercultural communication (pp. 1-14). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Sorahi, M. A., & Nazemi, T. B. (2013). A cross-cultural study of the use of compliment strategies among English and Persian speakers. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 16(9), 1292-1296.

Talleraas, T. (2014).Compliments on your competence: A comparative study on compliment responses from Norwegian English foreign language learners and native speakers of English with a focus on pragmatic competence and idiomatic expressions. (Unpublished master’s thesis). Universitetet I Oslo.

Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–112.

Tang, C. H., & Zhang, G.Q. (2009). A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(2), 325-345.

Yule, G. (2003). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zhang, J. P. (2013). Compliments and compliment responses in Philippine English. Journal of Language Studies, 13(1).


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.