Compliments and compliment responses and their effects on the hearer’s face in researcher-supervisor interaction
Compliments and compliment responses and their effects on the hearer’s face in researcher-supervisor interaction

Author(s): Marzieh Bashirpour, Imtiaz Hasnain
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: compliments; compliment responses
Summary/Abstract: Daily interpersonal communication is required to interact with people for initiating, developing, defining, maintaining and progressing or sustaining a relationship. Compliments are polite acts providing positive impressions that help in establishing relations, developing confidence and the sense of self-esteem for the hearers. They vary from culture to culture, for instance, while they are generally paid and appreciated in Western culture (Holmes, 1986), in the Eastern culture (Gu, 1990; Chen, 1993) they are rejected or denied. Compliments are also defined as maintaining, enhancing, or supporting the addressee’s face through admiring or approving someone’s work, appearance or taste (Goffman, 1967). Face is something that is emotionally invested and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced. This paper investigates different functions of compliments such as praising, reinforcing a desired action, sarcasm and disapproval, in the context of cross-cultural differences in interaction, focusing on PhD students (different nationalities) who enrolled for studies in Aligarh Muslim University, India and their supervisors in order to understand how and in which contexts they affect the hearer’s face as being positive or negative, and what is the compliment response.

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