Publication article

Keywords: compliment, compliment topic, gender 
1.
 
Introduction 
Compliment is a way to increase people’s confidence. Compliment is not 
only an utterance which contains words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, but 
it has a meaning between the lines. Besides that, compliments also have some 
functions in interpersonal communication. There are six classifications of 
speech act: declarative, representative, expressive, directive, commisive, and 

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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