ON THE STRUCTURE AND USE OF COMPLIMENTS IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH
ON THE STRUCTURE AND USE OF COMPLIMENTS IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH

Author(s): Jana Švárová
Subject(s): Language studies, Communication studies, Semantics
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: compliment; compliment responses; subjects of compliments; speech act; positive politeness; spoken interaction; situation comedy;
Summary/Abstract: The investigation deals with one of the positive politeness devices – compliments. The issue of compliments has been subjected to extensive research (Manes & Wolfson 1981, Holmes 1995, Hatch 1992) considering various aspects of paying and receiving compliments. The paper rather focuses on a relatively unexplored area of spoken language in which compliments frequently occur – the popular genre of sitcom, which is represented in the study by three British and two American sitcoms broadcast after 2000. The detailed analysis of the corpus data (735 compliments) offered a number of surprising conclusions regarding notably the syntactic structure of compliments, various functions that compliments fulfil as well as the ways compliments are exploited in everyday interactions. The validity of the suggested conclusions is limited by the extent of the corpus data and the fact that fictional discourse was used. Nevertheless, the material under investigation reflects the basic features of real spoken communication and hence the conclusions can be considered, at least to a certain extent, relevant to present-day language. The present paper is based on a diploma thesis successfully defended in June 2010 at the Department of the English Language and Literature, Masaryk University, Brno.

• Details
• Contents