Gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in the American comedy TV-series Ugly Betty

Gender-based differences in compliments and
compliment responses in the American comedy
TV-series "Ugly Betty"
Sự khác biệt trong cách thức khen và tiếp nhận
lời khen giữa các giới trong tiếng Anh qua bộ
phim truyền hình Mỹ "Ugly Betty"

Bùi Thị Ánh Ngọc

University of Languages and International studies
M.A. Thesis. English linguistics: 60 22 15
Supervisor: Ph.D. Kiều Thị Thu Hương
Năm bảo vệ: 2011
Abstract. This study examines the differences in compliment behavior and compliment
response strategies in American English between males and females. The data were
collected from the ten episodes in the first season of the American Comedy TV-series
“Ugly Betty”. The analysis of 167 compliment exchanges showed that there were
significant differences between males and females in giving compliments and using the
response strategies. Nevertheless, they still shared some common features. Regarding
compliment frequency, females tended to compliment other females more whereas
males complimented females far more than they complimented other males. In this
research, except for the topic of appearance, there was no significant statistic difference
in the choice of others compliment topics between the two genders. It should be noted
that male – female interactions complimenting on appearance took the first place. In
terms of functions, females used compliments most often to establish, confirm or
maintain solidarity while male compliments more often offered admiration. The
findings of the differences in response type frequencies from the two groups revealed
that there was more likelihood of non-agreement than agreement. It might be due to the
high frequency of no acknowledgement responses. In the light of these findings, several
pedagogical implications were drawn. Most importantly, English foreign language
teachers should show the learners how to appropriately compliment and respond in

communicative situations.
Keywords. Giao tiếp; Tiếng Anh; Phim truyền hình
Content.
INTRODUCTION
The introduction states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the
aims, scope, methodology, the significance and the organization of the whole paper.
Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are set out to work as the
guidelines for the whole research.
1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study
An effective language user is competent in not only linguistics but also pragmatics. As
Yule (1996) put it, “nothing in the use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting
the pragmatics wrong might be offensive” (p. 5-6). To be able to use a target language
appropriately in terms of pragmatic competence, language users should employ a
variety of speech acts. Complimenting is one of them.
Compliments not only express sincere admiration of positive qualities, but they also
replace greetings, thanks or apologies, and minimize face-threatening acts (henceforth
FTAs), such as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes,
1988a; Wolfson, 1983, 1989). Complimenting is a tool of establishing friendship that
creates ties of solidarity in American culture. It is also an important social strategy that
functions as an opener for a conversation, allowing meaningful social interactions to
follow. Americans pay compliments so frequently that neglecting to do so can even be
interpreted as a sign of disapproval (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989; Wolfson & Manes,
1980) and a wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense
(Dunham, 1992; Holmes & Brown, 1987).
Each culture requires various kinds of speech act behavior. Blum-Kulka, House and
Kasper (1989) found that “culturally colored interactional styles create culturally
determined expectations and interpretative strategies, and can lead to breakdowns in
intercultural and interethnic communication” (p. 30). In other words, when people from
different cultures interact, breakdowns in communication may happen due to signaling
different speech act strategies that reflect the culture‟s distinctive interactional style.

Complimenting is a particularly suitable speech act to investigate because it acts as a
window through which we can view what is valued in a particular culture. Thus, it is
essential for Vietnamese learners of English to know how to give appropriate
compliments and responses in English.
Complimenting is inevitably affected by social factors including gender. According to
Tannen (1990), gender differences are parallel to cross-cultural differences. Therefore,
it is worthwhile to study the interactions between men and women, men and men, or
women and women exchanging compliments and responses.
All those reasons stimulate the researcher to conduct a study on gender-based
differences in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through
the American Comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty”. The people in the TV series are not real
people, but the actors are chosen to match the real ones in daily life. What can be
assumed is that the data would bare resemblance to real life language. Hopefully, the
study will make a contribution to the field which it is envisioned and fill the gaps in
previous research.
2. Aims of the study
First of all, the study sets out to investigate the gender-based differences in compliment
behavior including the frequency of compliments, compliment topics and the functions
of compliments. Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments
response strategies are explored. The findings will pave the way for several pedagogical
and intercultural communication implications.
3. Research questions
The research seeks the answers to the following research questions:
Research question 1: What are the differences in compliment behavior between males
and females?
Research question 2: What are the differences in compliment responses between
males and females?
4. Scope of the study
There are four seasons in this TV-series with the total of 85 episodes. However, due to
the size and limitation of a preliminary research, the dialogues in the episodes one to

ten in the first season are used with the development of the story. Every episode takes
about 40 minutes. Totally, this study will analyze ten episodes of around 400 minutes.
The compliments among 18 characters balanced in gender, 9 females and 9 males, are
chosen. Some compliments are excluded from the present study: compliments to a place
or an object that does not belong to interactants, compliments to speakers themselves or
to a group of people, compliments from a group to a particular thing or a special person.
Furthermore, a compliment may be sincere or insincere. Mills (2003) stated:
The hearer might consider that the speaker is being insincere and is
only complimenting because he/she wants something – i.e. that it is
serving some longer term goal; or it might be interpreted as suggesting
that the person does not look good at all, but the speaker is being kind.
(p. 220)
Also, compliments can have an ironic meaning (Holmes, 1995, p. 119). For instance, if
the interlocutors are enemies, the compliments between them have ironic meanings.
Within the scope of an M.A. thesis, only sincere compliments are analyzed.
5. Methodology
Quantitative and qualitative methods are both used in this paper with priorities given to
the quantitative one. In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are based on
the analysis of the empirical studies and statistics processed on Stata 10, a software
program commonly used in social sciences. In addition, such methods as descriptive,
analytic, comparative and contrastive are also utilized to describe and analyze, to
compare and contrast the database so as to find out gender-based differences in
compliments‟ frequency, topics and functions and types of compliment response
strategies.
6. Significance of the study
The present study is conducted to find out the influences of gender on compliment
behavior and compliment response strategies in English. It will add to the research on
compliments and second language acquisition. Regarding researchers who share the
same interest in the topic, they could rely on this paper to get useful information for
their future studies.

Besides, the study could help Vietnamese learners of English to be aware of
sociolinguistic aspects of English and thus to improve their pragmatic competence. As
for teachers of English, the findings from this paper may have crucial pedagogical
implications for practice of teaching English as a foreign language.
7. Organization of the study
After the Introduction, the rest of the paper includes the following parts:
Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the background of the study including the
definitions of key concepts and the discussions of related studies.
Chapter 2 (The study) describes the procedures to conduct the research, presents,
analyzes the results and discusses the findings the researcher obtained according to the
two research questions.
Conclusion summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, provides some
implications and points out the limitations of the research as well as proposes several
suggestions for further studies. Following this part are References and Appendix.
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VIETNAMESE
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tiếp nhận lời khen. Luận án tiến sĩ khoa học ngữ văn. ĐH KHXH & NV,
ĐHQGHN.