VARIATIONS IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES ACROSS GENDER IN DIFFERENT DISCOURSAL SETTINGS
VARIATIONS IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES ACROSS GENDER IN DIFFERENT DISCOURSAL SETTINGS

Summary/Abstract: This study aims at investigating compliment responses of female and male Turkish university students in different compliment situations. The data were collected through a written discourse completion task under four situational settings: appearance, performance, character, and possession. 100 undergraduate students (50 males and 50 females) participated in the study. Holmes’s (1988a, 1988b) macro and micro categories were adapted and developed to analyze the compliment responses of the participants. The responses of both groups obtained from the discourse completion task were compared qualitatively and quantitatively. Results indicated that the general pattern for participants is Accept, Evade and Reject strategies at the macro level and Appreciation Token and Shift Credit at the micro level. Some statistically significant differences between the responses of females and males were identified. Both at the macro and micro levels, how females and males respond to the compliments vary with respect to the situational context they receive the compliment. Under specific situations participants tend to reply similarly which help us to come up with an ethnographic account of CRs.

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