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interrogative. Compliment utterance is under the category of expressive
utterance. Expressive utterances contain the speaker’s feel to the hearer.
Women and men tend to give compliments about different things. Women
and men can give a compliment to other about possession, ability,
appearance, and personality. Women have tendency to be complimented on
their appearance more often than men. Men usually appear to prefer to give a
compliment to other men on possession. Compliments on appearance to men
can make them be embarrassed. Holmes (in Paulston and Tucker, 2003: 187)
states that “an appearance compliment is clearly an expression of solidarity, a
positively perfective act. Compliments on possessions are much vulnerable to
interpretation as face-threatening acts”. So, men
use more potentially face-
threatening compliments than women.
2.
Literary Review
Compliment is often used by someone to appreciate other. The
appreciation contains the physical appearance, what other people to do
(achievement), what other people’s personality, and what other people use
(dress, skirt). Holmes (in
Paulston and Tucker, 2003: 177) states that “a
compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credits 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.” Compliments are usually intended to make others
feel good (Wierzbicka
in Paulston and Tucker, 2003: 178). Wolfson (in
Paulston and Tucker, 2003: 178) states that “a compliment as social
lubricants which create or maintain rapport.” Compliment also as devise to
make other people happy and feel confidence. Compliments are clearly
positive politeness devices which express goodwill and solidarity between the
addressee and the addresser. The important function of a compliment is most
obviously
affective and social, rather than referential or informative. There
some different functions of using compliments are as follows (Holmes in
Paulston and Tucker, 2003: 181):
a.
To express solidarity;
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b.
To express positive evaluation, admiration, appreciation or praise;
c.
To express envy or desire for hearer’s possessions;
d.
As verbal harassment
There are two kinds of compliment strategies (Ming – Chung Yung
Journal, 2005; 48-91):
a.
Direct Compliments
It refers to remark including linguistic forms that directly and
unambiguously frame these comments as compliments; direct compliment
involves the topics complimented, such as:
1)
Isn’t the food great!
2)
I’m impressed a lot!
3)
I really like your hair that way.
b.
Indirect Compliments
It refers to remark which would be seen as compliments by the
addressee, although the positive semantic carrier generally associated with
complimenting is missing at the level of the linguistic form. Despite the
fact that the linguistic forms of these utterances
are indirect and less
conventionalized so as to allow the addressee to make other possible
interpretations of the intended meaning, this type of comment can usually
be interpreted as having complimentary force. Hence, it seems obvious
that compared to direct forms, indirect compliments need more inferences
on the part of the addressee to reconstruct the intended meaning conveyed
in the message by the speaker. Indirect compliment involves the topic
complimented. For example:
1)
Wow, I hope I’ll have a coat like this.
2)
Your boyfriend is a very lucky man.
3)
Wow, what did you do to your hair?
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4)
When did you learn to play this?
Women and men can give a compliment to other including some
compliment topics. Manes and Holmes (in Paulston and Tucker, 2003:
187) describe four variations of compliment topics:
a.
Appearance compliment
I like your outfit Beth. I think I could wear that
b.
Ability/ performance compliment
Wow you played well today Davy
c.
Possessions compliment
Is that your flash red sports car?
d.
Personality/ friendliness
I’m very lucky to have such a good friend.
This study is not only one study that done by the writer. There are
some references those become inspiration to this study.
Tang and Zhang
(2008) studied
Compliment Responses among Australian English and
Mandarin Chinese Speakers.
This research had goal to investigate
compliment responses (CR) among Australian English and Mandarin
Chinese speakers. The data were collected
through the use of written
discourse completion tasks (DCT), with four situational settings
(appearance, character, ability and possession). The results of this study
demonstrated a consistent tendency across the macro,
micro and
combination levels for the Chinese participants to use fewer Accept
strategies, and more Evade and Reject strategies, than their Australian
counterparts; that were the Chinese expressed appreciation for a
compliment less and denigrated themselves more. For the Chinese
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