LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature review is organized into four parts: (1) definition; (2) research on compliment
responses; (3) categories of compliment responses; (4) differences and similarities in
compliment responding between English and Vietnamese. The first part deals with
literature on terms of compliment and functions of compliment in both languages. The
second part aims to review the literature on the previous related studies. The next part
concerns with categories of compliment responses in both languages. Finally, the fourth
part analyses and compares the differences and similarities between English and
Vietnamese compliment responses.
2.1. Definition
2.1.1. What is a compliment?
People pay compliments in order to start a conversation, smooth an interaction, strengthen
an emotional exchange. Furthermore, a compliment can enhance the understanding and
friendship of the people who are involved in the conversation.
According to Holmes (1988, p.485), “a compliment as a speech act which explicitly or
implicitly attributes credit to someone other than speaker, usually the person addressed, for
some ‘good’(possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker
and the hearer”. A compliment is one form of speech acts and it can be defined as “an
utterance containing a positive evaluation by the speaker to the addressee” (Liu, 1997).
Newton and Burgoon (1990, p.509) define compliments as “statements that are intended to
make the other feel good about himself/herself”. Generally, a compliment means that you
are giving a positive evaluation about the addressee’s appearance, behavior, manner, skill,
etc.., as illustrated in following example:
You are looking good. Is that a new suit?
Compliments can be considered as a type of speech acts through which a speaker expresses
positive attitudes towards another speaker.
2.1.2. Functions of compliments
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Within the same culture, compliments have different types according to the ways of using

them and their roles in context. The main target of using a compliment is not to lose one’s
face which is likely to be lost if a compliment is misused in context. Compliments can be
described as clearly positive politeness devices which express goodwill and solidarity
between the speaker and the addressee. Wolfson (1989, p.89) maintains that the major of a
compliment is “to create or maintain solidarity between interlocutors” by expressing
admiration or approval. Simultaneously, Wolfson (1989, p.171) states that one of functions
of compliments as used by speakers of American English is to encourage or reinforce
desired behavior. Holmes essentially agrees with this view by treating compliments as
“positively affective speech acts directed to the addressee which sever to increase or
consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and addressee” (1988, p. 486). Herbert
(1990, p.76) similarly reviews function of compliments. He demonstrates that compliments
are used to “negotiate solidarity with address”. Their aim is to make the addressee feel good
and their formulaic nature minimizes the chance that they will be misinterpreted by the
addressee. Herbert (1990) suggests that some compliments serve as expressions of praise
and admiration. For example, the teacher’s compliment about a student’s work would
generally be considered as praise
Teacher: “this is excellent Jennie. You’ve really done a nice job”.
Wierzbicka (1989, p.87) remarks that compliments are usually intended to make others feel
good and performed for maintaining “good interpersonal relationships”. Wolfson, too,
notes that they serve as “social lubricants” (1989, p. 89). Everyday people give and receive
compliments on appearance, ability, possession and some aspect of personality or
friendliness. Moreover, compliments are speech acts that are primarily aimed at
maintaining, improving or supporting the addressee’s face.
2.2. Research on compliment responses
In this study, we seek a large number of previous related studies on how to respond to
compliments. There is an infinite number of words that could be chosen to compliment, but
the set of lexical items and grammatical patterns we use in our daily interaction when
complimenting and have high frequency in our daily discourse are very restricted. There are
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some studies related to the study we are going to carry out. According to Wolfson (1986),
two-thirds of English compliments use the adjectives “nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great”,
and 90% make use of just two verbs “like and love” (p.116). The lack of creatively form
and content of English compliments is related to their function in discourse. Pomerantz
(1978) was the first researcher to study compliment responses in American English. She
provided many examples of different types of compliment exchanges, but she did not give
precise proportions of each type of responses. Herbert (1986) also provided a quantitative
analysis of compliment responses in American English. She distinguished various types of
compliment responses within three categories: agreement, non-agreement and other
interpretation. Holmes (1988) did research on compliments and compliment responses in
New Zealand. She analyzed quantitatively the topics that compliments referred to and
discussed the frequencies of giving and receiving compliments between men and women.
Le Phuong Binh (2008) in “A Vietnamese-English Cross-Cultural Study of Positive
Politeness and Negative Politeness in Complimenting” points out the use of positive
politeness and negative politeness strategies in complimenting by English native speakers
and Vietnamese ones. Nguyen Phuong Suu 919900 in “Giving and Receiving Compliments
– A Cross-Cultural Study in English and Vietnamese” investigates how people give
received compliments in Australian English and in Vietnamese. Ho Thi Kieu Oanh (2000)
carried out a research on complimenting and responding compliments between Vietnamese
and American people in “Cách thức khen và tiếp nhận lời khen trong phát ngôn của người
Việt và người Mỹ”. In addition to these, Saito and Beecken (1997) developed and analyzed
compliment responses in two ways in which the first one is categorized as positive,
negative or avoidance; the second one is based on semantics like gratitude, topic change,
affirmative explanation, agreement, return and similar formula. Likewise, Farghal and
Alkhatib (2001) also exploited it not in only one way and resulted in simple-complex
responses, macro-micro functions and intrinsically-extrinsically complex responses. All of
these works are carefully organized. However, researches on this issue in English and
Vietnamese are not many. There is just some discussion about the compliment behavior of
two languages. From the previous study, it can be seen that compliment responses have

been discussed in many books. Nevertheless, little attention is paid on the comparison
between compliment responses in two languages. For this reason, our study attempts to
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analyze the categories of compliment responses in English and Vietnamese and points out
the similarities as well as differences between them.
2.3. Categories of compliment responses
Most of the studies quoted above provided different frames of classification which is
difficult for us to find the best one to employ. Among these works, those presented by
Pomerantz (1978) and Herbert (1989) can be considered the most traditional. In her study,
Pomeranzt divided the compliment responses into three categories including Acceptances,
rejections and Self-praise avoidance. With Herbert (1986) revised Pomerantz’s
classification by analyzing American English speakers’ compliment responses. He sorted
out compliment responses into three-category (Agreements; Non-agreements and evasions),
twelve –type taxonomy of compliment response. The use of these organizations is quite
popular.
2.3.1. Agreement
 In general category of agreements, it is also divided into six subtypes of agreements
as: Appreciation Tokens, Comment Agreements, Praise Upgrades, Comment
History, Praise Downgrades, and Return.
 Appreciation Tokens: The acceptance of compliments is usually expressed
through tokens such as thank you, thanks, thank you so much, well, and
thank you, or non-verbal ones like smiles and nods,(Pomerantz,1978).
Example 1:
AA: What a beautiful hat!
BB: Thank you
Example 2:
AA: I am looking forward to seeing this!
BB: oh (smile)

 Comment Agreements: The hearer accepts the compliment with an
appreciation token (Thanks) and adds relevant comments about the item
being complimented.
Example 3:
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AA: you are beautiful in white!
BB: oh really, because I like white color.
 Praise Upgrades: The hearer does not only accept the complimentary force
of the speaker’s positive evaluation of the speaker, but considers it as being
insufficient and she/he increases the evaluation.
Example 4:
AA: you sing very well today, John!
BB: of course!
 Comment History: In this type of compliments response the hearer agrees
with speaker’s original assertion and adds a History Comment.
Example 5:
AA: The color of this bowl is fantastic, oh, Good choice!
BB: I know. I have one already and all my friends like it, so I am buying one
for one of them. I always get compliments on it.
 Praise downgrades: Praise downgrades or Scale-down agreements show an
awareness of the dilemma of accepting a compliment and avoiding self praise at the same time, (Pomerantz, 1978).
Example 6:
AA: I think it is the best noodle in Ha Noi.
BB: Yes, that’s right. We make it ourselves and my chefs are standing in the
kitchen.
 Return: Chen (1993:58) explains that "Returning compliment" can be seen
as a direct result of the indebting nature of compliment. It helps the hearer to
get out of the debt by returning the verbal gift to the receptors.

Example 7:
AA: Your hair looks really nice!
BB: Thanks. So does yours.
2.3.2. Non-agreements

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 It was relatively rare for a person to overtly reject a compliment or evade it than to
disagree with it. The speaker changes the topic, for instance or responds to some
other aspect of the previous speaker’s utterance. - agreements:
 Within the category of non-agreements five subtypes of response are distinguished:
 Scale Down: The hearer scales down the praise of the compliment by
minimizing its force, (Herbert, 1989:15).S/he does not deny the
complimentary force of the speaker’s assertion, but intends to mitigate the
force of the compliment.
Example 8:
AA: I like your shirt.
BB: It’s really quite old.
 (Doubting) Question: This type of response has the following pattern: A
compliments B and B questions A about compliment assertion + (asks for
repetition, clarification, or expansion of compliment assertion)
Example 9:
AA: Your plan is very good!
BB: Really?
Example 10:
AA: It’s excellent! I really enjoyed reading it!
BB: Thanks.
 Disagreement: The main way of showing disagreement is by uttering a
direct contrastive counter assertion.

Example 11
AA: You are a very good person, John.
BB: No, I'm not.
 Qualification: Pomerantz (1978:101) suggests that this type of non
agreement is shown with qualifications of the prior evaluative terms. It
usually contains markers like though, yet, and but…
Example 12
AA: Nice hair cut!
BB: Oh, thanks, but it’s a bit short maybe.
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2.3.3. Other interpretations: This category includes Shift credit, Informative comment
Ignore, and Request reassurance.
 Expressing gladness:
AA: by the way, I read your article that you published last week. It was very
good.
BB: Oh, that’s good. Thank you.
Or A: I read that article you published last week. It was very good.
B: Well, great.
 Follow-up question:
AA: You know I just I just read your article that you published last week. I
thoughts it was excellent.
BB: Thanks a lot. What do you find interesting about it?
 Opting out:
AA: Oh, that’s nice. How lovely! It’s my favorite color. I am wanna buy a
blue car one day.
BB: Heh heh.
 Informative comment: Herbert (1989: 14) notes that occasionally in the
informative comments, the hearer ignores the praise aspect of the

compliment and treats the previous utterances as a mechanism for
introducing a topic.
Example
AA: That's really a good quality!
BB: Well, I read about it in developmental psychology I can tell what
People are up to and then I usually give them my motivation speech.
 Request reassurance: The hearers requested additional reassurance that the
compliment was genuine. Such responses were ambiguous; it was difficult
to know the intention of the speaker. Did s/he want an expansion or
repetition of the original compliment, or did he want to question the
sincerity of the hearer
Example:
AA: nice shoes!
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BB: You wanna borrow this one too?
2.4. Differences and similarities between English and Vietnamese compliment
responding.
2.4.1. Similarities between English and Vietnamese compliment responding.
The similarities between English and Vietnamese are indicated in the choice of
strategy use. In spite of the differences, in both languages, people have a tendency to use
“Appreciation Tokens” more than “praise upgrades” and others in “agreements”. It is also
the fact that “comment history” and “Praise downgrades” are preferred than
“Disagreements” respectively in both English and Vietnamese. The result of this study
indicates that people often prefer accepting compliment than rejecting in both languages.
However, the differences seem to be greater in compliment responses between English and
Vietnamese.
2.4.2. Differences between English and Vietnamese compliment responding.
2.4.2.1. Differences in the frequency of Compliment Response strategy use between

English and Vietnamese.
In general, the acceptance compliment is applied in both languages. In English,

the

“Appreciation Token” is preferred while the “ Praise Downgrade “, “Disagreement” and
“Opting out” are disfavored. It happens vice versa with Vietnamese. In Vietnamese, people
have a tendency to use “Praise downgrade” in most situations. And they never use “praise
upgrade” in responding to compliments.
Similarly, Vietnamese tend to avoid using “expressing gladness” and asking “follow-up
question”. They feel more comfortable to simply reply with “doubting questions” and
“opting out”. On the contrary, English would use other strategies instead of using “opting
out” in responding compliments.
On the other hand, while English prefer to use the term “thank you” in responding to
compliments (Herbert, 1986; Saito and Beecken, 1997), Vietnamese tend to deny it or reply
in a negative way to express the modesty and politeness in communication.
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2.4.2.2. Differences in the combination of Compliment Response strategy between
English and Vietnamese.
In both languages, people often employ a combination of various strategies instead of using
monotonous strategy in compliment responding.

For English speakers, they combine

“appreciation token” with “return” and “explanation” in communicative activities. In
contrast, Vietnamese speakers often associate the strategies as “disagreement” and “praise
downgrade” in accepting compliments. If there is “appreciation token”, it would be
combined with “disagreement”, “praise downgrade” or “doubting questions”.

Example 1: Response combination types: “disagreement” and “praise downgrade”.
In Vietnamese: AA: wow! What a lovely T-shirt!
BB: Oh, it is not good; it is just an old T-shirt.
In English:

AA: wow! What a lovely T-shirt!
BB: Thank you. Not much I think.

(Response combination types: “praise downgrade” and “appreciation token”)
Example 2: Response combination types: “appreciation token” and other strategies.
In Vietnamese:
AA: John, you were really excellent in your performance last week!
BB: it is not good. Thank you very much.
(“Appreciation token” + “disagreement”)
In English:
(“Appreciation token” + “agreement”)
AA: John, you were really excellent in your performance last week!
BB: oh yeah. Thanks. It is not bad.
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(“Appreciation token” + “return”)
AA: You are so cute!
BB: Thanks. So are you.
(“Appreciation token” + “explanation”)
AA: I like your tie. It suits you well.
BB: Thanks. I bought it for the trip to New York.
Example 3: response combination types: “return” or “appreciation token” + “return”
In Vietnamese:
(“return” +”praise downgrade”)

AA: It’s a really nice car. I really like it.
BB: Oh, well, it is just a normal and not very reliable car.
In English:
(“Return” + “appreciation token”)
AA: How a beautiful you are today!
BB: Thanks, you too

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