A cross cultural study on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by learners of english at hung vuong university

1

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
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

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NGUYỄN THỊ TỐ LOAN

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON PRAGMATIC
TRANSFER
IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY LEARNERS OF ENGLISH
AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY
(Nghiên cứu giao văn hoá về chuyển di ngữ dụng học trong
cách đáp lại lời khen của sinh viên học tiếng Anh ở trường
Đại học Hùng Vương)

M.A. Minor Thesis

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15


HANOI – 2010


2

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
-----



-----

NGUYỄN THỊ TỐ LOAN

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON PRAGMATIC
TRANSFER
IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY LEARNERS OF ENGLISH
AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY
(Nghiên cứu giao văn hoá về chuyển di ngữ dụng học trong
cách đáp lại lời khen của sinh viên học tiếng Anh ở trường
Đại học Hùng Vương)

Field: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Code: 60.22.15
Supervisor: ĐỖ THỊ MAI THANH, M.A


HANOI – 2010


6

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration............................................................................................................................................. i
Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................................. ii
Abstract.................................................................................................................................................. iii
Table of contents.................................................................................................................................. iv
List of abbreviations........................................................................................................................... vi
List of tables, figures and appendices……………................................................................... vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................ 1
1. Background of the study............................................................................................................... 1
2. Significance of the study............................................................................................................... 2
3. Aim of the study............................................................................................................................... 3
4. Scope of the study............................................................................................................................ 3
5. Design of the study.......................................................................................................................... 4
6. Summary............................................................................................................................................ 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT............................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW..................................................................................... 5
1.1. Pragmatics and speech act.................................................................................................... 6
1.2. Theories of politeness.............................................................................................................. 6
1.3. Interlanguage pragmatics and communicative competence..................................... 8
1.4. Pragmatic transfer.................................................................................................................. 10
1.5. The speech acts of compliment and responding to compliments............................ 10
1.5.1. The speech acts of compliment...................................................................................... 10
1.5.2. Compliment responses..................................................................................................... 11
1.5.3. Previous studies of pragmatic transfer in responding to compliments……...

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CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY............................................................................................................ 15
2.1. Subjects...................................................................................................................................... 15
2.2. Instruments and procedures............................................................................................... 16

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2.3. Administration of the questionnaires............................................................................... 18
2.4. Data collection procedures................................................................................................... 18
2.5. Coding and data analysis..................................................................................................... 18
2.6. Summary.................................................................................................................................... 19
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION....................................................................... 20
3.1. Pragmatic strategies used in responding to compliments......................................... 20
3.1.1. Strategies from acceptance to denial ………...……………………………..

21

3.1.2. Strategies along the avoidance continuum …………………………………

22

3.1.3. Frequency of pragmatic strategies used in responding to compliments by
all groups................................................................................................................................................. 24
3.2. A comparison of the pragmatic strategies used among the three groups.............25
3.2.1. Similarities in the frequency of CR strategy use between the HVU learners
of English and NV groups …………………………………………………………….

25

3.2.2. Differences in the frequency of CR strategy use between the HVU learners
of English and NE groups................................................................................................................... 28
3.3. The occurrences of pragmatic transfer........................................................................... 30
3.4. Summary.................................................................................................................................... 34

PART C: CONCLUSION................................................................................................................. 35
1. Conclusions...................................................................................................................................... 35
2. Pedagogical implications.............................................................................................................. 36
3. Limitations of the study............................................................................................................... 37
4. Suggestions for further research............................................................................................... 38
References.............................................................................................................................................. 39
Appendix 1.............................................................................................................................................. I
Appendix 2............................................................................................................................................ III


8

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Throughout this work, abbreviations and symbols are adopted for the description of
recurrent concepts and speech features.
CRs = Compliment Responses
DCTs = Discourse Completion Tests
EFL = English as a Foreign Language
FTA = Face-threatening Act
HVU = Hung Vuong University
IELTS = International English Language Testing System
ILP = Interlanguage pragmatics L1 = First Language
L2 = Second Language
NE = English Native Speakers
NV = Vietnamese Native Speakers
NNs = Native Speakers
NNs = Non - native Speakers
Ss = Students
TL = Target Language
UQ = University of Queensland

9

LI
Tables
Table 1.1

Comp

Table 1.2

Summ

Table 2.1

Comp

Table 3.1

Freque

compl
Table 3.2

Statist

HVUE

used/d

Table 3.3

Statist

HVUE

used/d
Figures
Figure 1.1

Possib

Figure 3.1

Freque

contin

studen
Figure 3.2

Freque

the HV

used a
Figure 3.3

Freque

contin

studen
Figure 3.4

Freque

the HV

used a
Figure 3.5

Variati

contin

of CR
Figure 3.6

Variati


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the HVUE, NE and NV groups (based on the number of CRs
containing each strategy in each group)

Appendices
Appendix 1

Discourse Completion Tests (English version)

Appendix 2

Discourse Completion Tests (Vietnamese version)

I
III


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PART A: INTRODUCTION
This initial part outlines the research problem and background of the study as well as its
scope and significance. More importantly, the aims and objectives are highlighted with two
research questions to provide guidelines for the whole research.
1.

Background of the study

In the Gulf war, two ladies, an American and a Kuwaiti, met. The American expressed her
admiration of the Kuwaiti‟s necklace, and being polite, the Kuwaiti lady responded to this
admiration with a common response, “It is yours”. The American took this response
literally and accepted the necklace as a gift. She believed that the Kuwaiti lady was sincere
in her offer and did not understand that this was only a customary response and should not
be taken literally. What the Kuwaiti lady said was only a sign of politeness, generosity and
hospitality. The appropriate response would have been to say, “Thank you”; not to take the
jewelry, of course. This misinterpretation happened because these ladies belonged to
different cultures with different traditions, thus have different frames of reference.
Communicating with speakers of other languages is a complex behavior that requires both

linguistic and pragmatic competence. Whether we speak in a first or second language, we
are influenced by socio-cultural norms and constraints that affect the way we communicate.
In practice, many language learners have experienced the loss of how to do in actual
intercultural communication though they know perfectly well the phonological,
morphological, syntactic rules, and the semantic meaning of every word and sentence.
Looking back on the history of English teaching in Hung Vuong University (HVU), Phu
Tho, Vietnam, teachers‟ attention tends to focus on linguistic knowledge, while pragmatic
information is not usually stressed. Therefore, most students here are good at reading and
writing with sufficient knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary and able to score
high in tests, but they fail in communicating with foreigners. In these cases, the mistakes
they commit are not verbal or grammatical; instead, these mistakes occur because certain
social conventions or rules of interpersonal relationship have been violated. These kinds of
mistakes are defined as pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure may cause misunderstanding,
and thus sets up barriers to successful cross-cultural communication.
Some of the foreign volunteer teachers at HVU said to me that sometimes they might
consider the way the students respond to compliments offending or bizarre, because they


12

understood only the words without the cultural rules that govern them. The problem here is
that HVU learners of English do not produce target-like compliment responses. Hence, this
study aims at finding out how HVU learners of English produce compliment responses in
English and whether pragmatic transfer can occur.
My interest in the issue of responses to compliments derives mainly from my teaching and
supervising experiences. To my knowledge, so far, there has been no systematic research
carried out on the pragmatic failures made by HVU students in the process of English
learning and cross-cultural communication. Hence, an elaborate study should be
implemented in order to develop students‟ pragmatic competence as well as teachers‟
capability in cultivating students‟ communicative competence.

2.

Significance of the study

It is hoped that this study might be of theoretical and pedagogical importance.
Theoretically, it might shed light on the communicative strategies inherent in compliment
responses among HVU EFL learners.
Most of previous studies focused their research on compliments and compliment-responses
in general but rarely on EFL students‟ complimenting behaviors. What is more, this study
might be included within the body of literature that has shown the extension of research of
pragmatic competence and its relationship to foreign language learning and teaching. It
might support the assumption that ignorance of cross-cultural differences might cause
potential breakdown in communication. Such research might enable teachers to show
points of similarity and difference to students in order to use positive but avoid negative
transfer which might lead to pragmatic failure.
On the practical side, this study might provide practical insights into whether there is need
for further pedagogical training of learners of English so that they may acquire pragmatic
competence in responding to compliments in English. If the results of the study indicate
such a need, learners might be given specific instructions to help them respond to
compliments appropriately. The findings of this study could be of great help in the teaching
and learning of foreign languages in relation to culture, like teaching Vietnamese to
speakers of other languages or teaching English to Vietnamese at HVU as well as in
developing a syllabus for courses.


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To sum up, gaining knowledge of native Vietnamese and English speakers‟ response
strategies to compliments may enhance our ability to communicate effectively in a crosscultural setting without facing any communication breakdowns.
3.

Aims of the study

The present research is an effort:
1) to investigate what typical response strategies to compliments are used; and
2) to compare the response strategies to compliments as used by English native speakers

(NE), Vietnamese native speakers (NV), and HVU English learners (HVUE) in terms of
the frequency of use of the pragmatic strategies. The possibilities of pragmatic transfer
effecting of the cross-cultural competency in the responses of HVU EFL learners to
baseline responses by English and Vietnamese natives are also examined.
More specifically, the study is designed to answer the following two questions:
1. Are there any similarities and differences in strategy use of compliment responses

among those groups?
2. Is there pragmatic transfer in the communicative act of responding to compliments in

English by HVU learners of English? If there is a transfer, what is transferred?
The research questions are answered through the investigation of the following two assumptions:
1. There are significant differences and similarities in strategy use in responding to

compliments by HVU learners of English as a foreign language and NE and NV speakers.
2. There is pragmatic transfer in the communicative act of responding to compliments in

English by HVU learners of English. What is transferred can be explained by finding out
the similarities in strategy use in responding to compliments by HVU learners of English as
a foreign language and native Vietnamese speakers and the differences between HVU
learners of English as a foreign language and native English speakers‟ response choices.
4.

Scope of the study

The present thesis study focuses on HVU EFL learners who are taking IELTS class to
prepare for a post-graduate course in an English-speaking country. Due to the limited
numbers of students, the limited range of speakers and speech situations, we cannot claim


14

that the results of this study show the whole picture of compliment response interaction in
Vietnamese EFL learners. Hence, its findings may not be necessarily generalized to
(a) Vietnamese EFL learners who do not have the same motivation,
(b) Vietnamese learners of English as a second language (ESL), and
(c) a larger population of L2 learners with different L1 backgrounds.

Secondly, the chosen target norm for baseline target language data in this thesis is
Australian English. Therefore, the language behavior of the NSs of Australian English in
this study may not apply to NSs of other varieties of English.
Finally, the present study only looks at the linguistic aspects of compliments and responses
to compliments and thus, paralinguistic and other non verbal aspects will be outside the
scope of inquiry.
5.

Design of the study

Part A provides an introduction to the topic of research, and by stating the research
questions, limits the scope of the study. It also defines the operational terms and outlines
the structure of the thesis.
Part B, the Development is sub-divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the literature
relevant to the topic of research and summarizes what has been done and what has not yet

been done about the topic so far, indicating the gap that the present thesis will bridge.
Chapter 2 presents the research methodology in terms of sampling, instrumentation, data
collection, and data analysis. Chapters 3 reports and discuss the main findings according to
research questions.
The final part summaries the main issues touched upon so far in the study. Apart from that,
the researcher addresses some pedagogical implications, limitations of the study and calls
for further research.
6.

Summary

In conclusion, this chapter has presented the background, and significance of the study. These
contribute to the purposes and the research questions of this study of the pragmatic transfer in
compliment responses of HVU learners of English. The present study also provided the scope
and limitations of the study. An outline of this study was given in the final part of the chapter.


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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
The purpose of this chapter is to provide information pertaining to this research, which was
obtained from reviewing the related literature and studies. It begins with some concepts of
the study which are pragmatics and speech acts, politeness theory, interlanguage
pragmatics and communicative competence, pragmatics transfer, and the speech acts of
compliments and CRs. Finally, an overview of the comparative studies on responses to
compliments and the theoretical framework for the present investigation are presented.
1.1.

Pragmatics and speech act

There are as many definitions of pragmatics as there have been attempts by pragmaticians
to shed light on the nature of the discipline which is one of the youngest in the widening
field of linguistic inquiry. Pragmatics basically comprises “the study of language usage”
according to Levinson (1983, p.5), or in a more elaborate definition from Kasper and Rose
(2001, p.2), “the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context”.
According to Yule (1996, p.3), “pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as
communicated by a speaker (or a writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has,
consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than
what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves.” In this sense,
pragmatics essentially focuses on language in use and users.
Pragmatics is often classified into two components, namely, pragmalinguistics, which
concerns appropriateness of form, and sociopragmatics, which involves appropriateness of
meaning in a social context (Canale, 1983; Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983; Tamanaha, 2003).
One of the most compelling notions in pragmatics is the notion of speech act. A speech act
is a functional unit in interaction. The term “speech act” originated from the observation
that speech can produce action (Austin, 1962; Searle 1969, 1975, 1979). For example, the
spoken utterance: “I apologize” produces the action of apologizing. Examples of different
kinds of speech acts are requests, offers, commands, greetings, invitations, promises,
apologies, complaints, compliments, compliment responses, etc. According to Speech Act
Theory (Austin, 1962) and later the further systematization of this theory (Searle 1969,
1975, 1979), in making an utterance, a speaker also performs certain actions and does


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things with words. These actions are characterized by force, (i.e. the speaker‟s intention),
and consist of the following components.
- The locutionary act is the actual saying of something with its literal meaning. The
illocutionary act refers to the force behind the literal meaning. It reflects the speaker‟s

communicative intention.
Example: He said to me: “Hit him!” (Meaning of the action of hitting by “hit” and
referring to him by “him”).
- The illocutionary act is the investment of a communicative force or the act performed in

saying something by means of some kind of conventional force associated with it either
explicitly or implicitly.
Example: She urged (or advised, ordered, etc.) them to hit him.
- The perlocutionary act is the bringing about of certain effects on the hearers; or the act of

producing certain consequential effects upon feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience/the
speaker/other people, possibly done with the design, intention or purpose of producing it.

Example: She persuades (or got) them to hit him; or she made (or had) them hit him.
Speech acts are universal but the language norms uses in each speech act vary crossculturally. Therefore, relying on the native scociocultural norms in performing speech act
in the target culture may lead to misinterpretation and breakdowns in intercultural and
interethnic communication.
In recent literature, Kasper (1998) replaced the term “speech acts” with “communicative
acts”. “Communicative acts” better describe actions performed through both verbal
language and non-verbal language in interaction. As a result, the term “communicative
acts” is suggested in place of “speech acts” and is used hereafter in the present study.
1.2.

Theories of politeness

Another pivotal concept in pragmatics is politeness. Politeness theories explain how
politeness is viewed, achieved and maintained in different cultures. According to Fraser
(1990), there have been four approaches to politeness including the social-norm view, the
conversational contract view, the conversational-maxim view and the face-saving view. In
the social-norm view, politeness is common-sense, acceptable behavior which involves

avoiding taboo subjects and speaking with a reasonable extent of formality. Fraser‟s


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conversational contract view was based on the argument that politeness is an integral rather
than additional part of each conversation in which speakers negotiate their rights and
obligations in terms of convention social institutions or prevent encounters. Compared to
the social-norm and the conversational contract views, the conversational-maxim and the
face-saving views are more popular and have a stronger impact on the field.
Central to the conversational-maxim view is Grice‟s (1975) Cooperative Principle, which
states that speakers should cooperate and follow a set of maxims in order to communicate
effectively. Grice‟s maxims are Quality (i.e. Be non-spurious), Quantity (i.e. Don’t say less
than required), Relevance (i.e. Be relevant) and Manner (i.e. Be perspicuous; Avoid
ambiguity and obscurity). Although interlocutors usually desire to adhere to these maxims,
they sometimes flout or deviate from them for different reasons one of which is to be polite.
For example, one may say: “I was wondering if you have a light” to imply a request to
borrow the other‟s cigarette lighter. It‟s obviously a violation of the maxim of Quantity but
it is for the purpose of being polite. Moreover, grounded on Grice‟s Cooperative Principle,
Leech (1993) posited the Politeness Principle, which suggested that the speaker should seek
to maximize benefits to hearer in order to be polite.
The most well-established politeness theory to date is the face saving view advanced by
Brown and Levinson in 1978 (reissued 1987), who stated that politeness principles are
universal. Brown and Levinson‟s theory rests on three basic notions: face, face threatening
acts (FTAs), and politeness strategies. The most central component to this theory is the
concept of face, a dimension of social interaction initially introduced by Goffman (1967).
Face is defined as “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for him/
herself” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.61). They also characterize face as an image that
intrinsically belongs to the individual or to the self. Brown and Levinson first distinguish
between two kinds of face: positive and negative face (the word “negative” here does not

mean „bad‟, it is just the opposite pole from „positive‟).
Positive face is the want to be thought of as a desirable human being, while negative face
is the want not to be imposed on by others. In other words, positive face is the desire for
approval; whereas, negative face is the desire for autonomy or self-determination.
When engaged in social interaction, social actors are expected to save both the positive and
negative face of each other. One's failure to preserve any of the other's face will make the


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other embarrassed, which eventually prevents one from achieving one‟s conversational
goals. Therefore, people strive to preserve others‟ face.
The second notion is face-threatening acts (FTAs), which are defined both in terms of
whose face, speaker‟s or hearer‟s, is at stake and whose face is threatened. In performing
FTAs, participants have to calculate the potential face risks, i.e., how much they are risking
in performing those acts. The three sociological factors taken into the calculation in
determining the level of politeness which a speaker will use to a hearer are:
1) the social distance between speaker and hearer (D),
2) the relative power relationship between speaker and hearer (P), and
3) the ranking of the particular imposition (R).

Moreover, when being faced with an FTA, the speaker can choose among possible
strategies for dealing with it. (Figure 1.1) To mitigate the FTAs, either positive or negative
politeness strategies are used, which are the third notions. Positive politeness strategies are
addressed to hearer‟s positive face wants, such as expressions of solidarity, informality,
and familiarity. Negative politeness strategies are addressed to the hearer‟s negative face
wants and can be described as expressions of restraint, formality, and distancing.
Figure 1.1. Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 69)

1.3.

Interlanguage pragmatics and communicative competence

Since Hymes (1972) first introduced the concept of “communicative competence”, which
is the ability to employ linguistic forms in order to communicate appropriately in social
interaction, it has been recognized as important in the development of the interlanguage of


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foreign language learners. This has been the focus of the studies of interlanguage pragmatics,
the branch of second language research which studies how non–native speaker understand and
carry out linguistic actions in a target language, and how they acquire second language (L2)
knowledge (Kasper, 1992). It can be said that successful and effective speaking of L2 learners
is not just a matter of using grammatically correct words and forms, but also knowing when to
use them and under what circumstances (Olshtain & Cohen, 1988).

In the past two decades, a substantial body of research on interlanguage pragmatics has
intentionally been devoted to learners‟ performance within the framework of a speech act.
The ability to perform various speech acts is an important part of the development of
communicative competence. The results of much of the research have verified that speech
act realization differs cross-culturally and the transfer at the pragmatic level does exist in
L2 learners‟ language use. The L2 learners, however, tend to be faced with a great risk of
offending their interlocutors or of miscommunicating when performing speech acts
because they might not have sufficient communicative competence in their L2 and
sometimes they may transfer their L1 pragmatics to their L2 inappropriately (Tamanaha,
2003). As a result, the study of interlanguage pragmatics has been recognized as an
important subfield of research in second language acquisition. As they state, what has been
investigated in this field are overwhelmingly cross–cultural differences and transfer from
the L1; namely, researchers typically examine differences of use in the speech act sets in

the target language and the learners‟ native tongue, and then analyze the learners‟ speech
act performance in the L2 to see how closely it matches the target use (Cohen & Olshtain,
1993; Takahashi & Beebe, 1987).
Among these norms, Kasper (1992) points out that studies in interlanguage pragmatics
have investigated two aspects of speech act behavior. The former is often called
“pragmalinguistic sets”, the semantic formulas that comprise speech acts and the linguistic
forms most frequently used to realize these semantic formulas. The latter is
“sociopragmatic factors” such as the participants‟ age, gender, social power/distance, and
situation factors (imposition) such as the seriousness of the offenses. Furthermore, the
influence of learner-related factors such as attitude, proficiency learning context, length of
residence in the target community is also suspected to affect L2 learners‟ speech act
behavior (Tamanaha, 2003).


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1.4.

Pragmatic transfer

In the field of second language acquisition, pragmatic transfer has been an important issue for
several decades. Pragmatic transfer is defined by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990,
p.56) as “transfer of L1 (first language) sociocultural communicative competence in
performing L2 (second language) speech acts or any other aspects of L2 conversation, where
the speaker is trying to achieve a particular function of language”. In much of the research on
interlanguage pragmatics, second language learners‟ pragmatic transfer has been demonstrated
by comparing corresponding L1 and L2 data; however, what is lacking is a satisfactory
explanation of what specifically influences second language learners‟ production.

Thomas (1983) proposes two main sources of pragmatic transfer; sociopragmatic and

pragmalinguistic. Sociopragmatic is the transfer of the speaker‟s native language, culture
and sociological values; whereas, pragmalinguistic is the transfer of forms related to
pragmatic force and politeness values from the speaker‟s native language. Kasper (1992)
states that pragmatic transfer can be divided into positive and negative. Positive transfer or
the performance of native-like pragmatic strategies typically facilitates communication,
and causes miscommunication or pragmatic failure only when such behavior is considered
to be inappropriate for non-native speakers, due to their position as foreigners. Negative
transfer or “interference” is the transfer of L1 sociopragmatic knowledge or
pragmalinguistic elements related to politeness or pragmatic force, but does not contribute
necessarily to pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure may result from either type of transfer,
and is considered to occur when speakers fail to understand each other‟s intentions (BlumKulka & Olshtain, 1986). Both positive and negative transfer are possible in target
language learning in which positive transfer makes learning an L2 easier because linguistic
features from the L1 work well in the foreign language; whereas, negative transfer takes
place when the use of a native structure or phrase produces an error in the target language.
1.5.

The speech acts of complimenting and responses to compliments

1.5.1. The speech acts of complimenting
Holmes (1988:446) states that “a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly
attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some
“good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and
the hearer”. While a compliment may be regarded as a positive speech act, it may also be


21

regarded as a face-threatening act (FTA). Brown and Levinson (1987:247) point out that
compliments may be significant FTAs in societies where envy is very strong and where
witchcraft exists as a sanction. Holmes (1988:448) remarks, “compliments can be regarded

as face threatening to the extent that they imply the complimenter envies the addressee in
some way or would like to have something belonging to the addressee”.
Research has shown that complimenting involves a variety of linguistic functions. It is
argued that the main function of compliments is to establish solidarity between speaker and
addressee (e.g., Herbert, 1989; Holmes, 1988; Yu, 1999). By performing this speech event,
people can not only maintain mutual harmony but also re-establish reciprocal social
relationship. Furthermore, complimenting is also to alleviate the weightiness of employing
a face threatening act (FTA) in the discourse (Holmes 1986; Brown and Levinson 1987).
1.5.2. Compliment responses
According to Herbert (1986), a CR is an utterance that is used to respond another utterance
that refers to something respected by the participants and it means to express the
addresser‟s feeling to the addressee. CR was chosen because it is “a much used, yet
intricate act” (Yu, 1999, p. 102). Research has shown not only that responding to
compliments involves a complex relationship among linguistic forms, meanings, and
pragmatic prerequisites, but also that high social stakes shape speakers‟ social behavior,
which, thus, permits a variety of linguistic options and strategies.
Contrastive studies into compliment responses have shown that cross-cultural differences do
exist in the compliment response behavior of the English speakers and other languages
speakers. Ever since Pomerantz (1978) shed light on compliment responses from a pragmatic
perspective, empirical studies have been conducted and demonstrated that speakers of different
languages and language varieties follow different patterns when responding to compliments.
“However, studies based on non-Western languages are scarce” (Farghal and Al-Khatib, 2001,
p. 1486). None of the existing CR studies so far has focused on Vietnamese CRs except for
Nguyen Quang (1999) on “Some dissimilaritities in Vietnamese-American English
compliments and compliment responses”. In his study, he also pointed out that In Vietnamese
culture, people often respond to compliments negatively or reject the compliments to show
modesty while American people tend to accept them.


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In English, a simple CR- “thank you”- is preferred as described in Johnson‟s etiquette
book (1979). The preference for a simple “thank you” in replying to compliments was
demonstrated in American English (Herbert, 1986, 1989; Saito and Beecken, 1997), British
English (Herbert, 1986), and New Zealand English (Holmes, 1986).
CRs can be generally divided into two types: agreement and non-agreement. As the
compliment response types across a number of cultures have been studies for almost three
decades, there are a number of categorization of response types.
It can be said that the classic framework of CR categorization are those suggested by
Pomerantz (1978) and Herbert (1989). Herbert (1986:78) provides a characterization of
compliment responses on the basis of the earliest compliment-response study conducted by
Pomeranz (1978). Herbert (1986:78) categorizes American compliment responses into
twelve types: “Appreciation token, Comment acceptance, Praise upgrade, Comment
history, Reassignment, Return, Question, Scale down, Disagreement, Qualification, No
acknowledgement and Other interpretations”. Table 1.2 is a summary of Herbert‟s
framework with examples from his ethnographic data.
Table 1.1: Compliment response strategies
Response Type

Example

A. Agreement
I. Acceptances
1. Appreciation Token
2. Comment Acceptance
3. Praise Upgrade
II. Comment History
III. Transfers
1.

Reassignment

2.

Return

B. Nonagreement
I. Scale Down
II. Question
III. Nonacceptances
1.
2.
IV. No Acknowledgement
C. Other Interpretations

Disagreement
Qualification


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I. Request

You wanna borrow this one too?
(From Herbert, 1986, p. 79)

In addition to the above classical frameworks, many others have been developed.
Categorization of CR strategies plays an important role in the analysis of this study. Given
the above characterization of the categories of compliment responses, it is able to decide
what strategies are being used in the data that retrieve later in discussion session.

1.5.3. Previous studies of pragmatic transfer in responding to compliments
Compared to other communicative acts such as requesting and apologizing, responding to
compliments is less well-documented in the literature on pragmatics and interlanguage
pragmatic research. Existing studies in pragmatic transfer in CRs are limited to ChineseEnglish interlanguage (Yu, 1999; Yuan, 1996); Korean-English interlanguage (Jeon, 1996);
English-Japanese interlanguage (Saito and Beecken, 1997). These studies yielded
conflicting results as to whether or not there is pragmatic transfer in NNs‟ CRs. Below is a
table summarizing example studies to be reviewed.
Table 1.2: Summary of interlanguage pragmatics studies of CRs
Study
Jeon (1996)

Yu (1999)

Yuan (1996)

Saito and
Beecken
(1997)


Evidence of pragmatic transfer was found in CRs by Chinese learners of English (Yu 1999).
In Chinese culture, people often deny a compliment with “I‟m not”. Yu‟s study showed that
when responding to compliments in English, Chinese learners of English behaved like
Chinese NSs and rejected more often than accepted compliments in their CRs. They used
routinized denials rather than appreciation tokens, e.g. “Thank you”.


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In Yu (1999)‟s study, a written role-play questionnaire was used to elicit date from English

NSs, Chinese ESL group in America, Chinese EFL group in Taiwan and Chinese NSs. Results
showed that Chinese NSs and Chinese EFL learners rejected more than accepted compliments
in their CRs; and American English NSs as well as Chinese ESL learners accepted more than
rejected compliments in their CRs. In general, both the ESL and EFL learners groups
transferred their L1 way of responding to compliments into their L2 performance.
In a study of pragmatic competence in the communicative act of complimenting, Jeon (1996)
also found evidence of pragmatic transfer in CRs by Korean learners of English. Data was
collected through a DCT and informal interviews were also conducted to Korean ESL learners.
Great differences were found in learners‟ and English NSs‟ CRs because both Korean EFL and
ESL learners used their native pragmatic knowledge in their realization of compliments and
CRs in English. Transfer of sociolinguistic rules was especially evident in learners‟ CR
strategies. Informal interview, however, revealed that Korea ESL learners were conscious of
differing rules for complimenting and responding to compliments and that they did try to adapt
their speech behavior according to target language norms.

In conclusion, this chapter reviews the relevant literature on pragmatics and speech acts
and politeness theory. In addition, it covers the speech acts of compliments. Then, the
nature of the responses to the speech acts of compliment is described. Lastly, the research
on responses to compliment speech act and the theoretical framework for this study are
presented. The next chapter deals with the main study, coding, and the categorization of
responses to compliment strategies which are used in the main study and it also deals with
the research methods employed.


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CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
This chapter is concerned with the selection of subjects and the instruments of collecting
data. It describes in some detail the design of the instruments and the descriptive
quantitative procedures that were undertaken for analysis of the data.

2.1.

Subjects

A great number of previous studies, e.g. Holmes 1986; Herbert 1990, have shown that
compliment-compliment response sequences occur more frequently among people with
equal social status or acquaintances. In order to control the social variables in the present
paper, participants in the present study were primarily selected from university students,
who have similar educational background, recognize the shared socio-cultural norms.
There were thirty students who were English NSs, Vietnamese NSs and HVU EFL learners
of English. All of them were university students, ranging in age from twenty to twenty-four
years old. So they showed homogeneity in terms of age, education and profession. At the
beginning, a language background survey was conducted to ensure that participants were
suitable students.
- The English group (NE group) included 10 NSs in UQ, Melbourne, Australia. Most of

them are graduates majored in areas such as Economics, Business, Law, International
Relations, and Psychology. There were 5 male and 5 female students in this group. These
subjects provided the baseline data on CRs in English.
- The Vietnamese group (NV group) consisted of 10 NSs of Vietnamese in non-major

English classes at HVU, Phu Tho, Vietnam. Five of them were men and the other five were
women. They were all undergraduates majoring in different subjects such as Economics,
Business, History, Informatics and Agriculture. None of them had any experience living or
studying in an English-speaking country. They gave the baseline data on CRs in
Vietnamese.
- The group of HVU learners of English (HVUE) was composed of 10 Vietnamese

students who come from English major classes, HVU, Phu Tho, Vietnam. Participants of
this group were composed of fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in English

Division from the Faculty of Foreign Languages. Learners‟ proficiency is taken into
account in order to control unwanted variables, e.g., proficiency in English and prior