A Contrastive Analysis of Compliments in American English and Vietnamese
When a student gets a high score, his teacher usually says: “Good job!”. When a child automatically cleans up the room after playing, her parents are likely to say: “You are very good”. When you go to school wearing a new shirt, you probably hear from your friends: “That shirt looks nice on you”. Those utterances are called compliments which are used to show that someone likes someone else’s appearance, belongings, or work etc. Due to different cultural background and social values, English and Vietnamese native speakers have different norms of complimenting as well as responding to compliments. In this essay, I will discuss the notion of compliment made in American English and Vietnamese in terms of topics, formulas, and responses.
First thing first, let have a look at the definition.
Definition of compliment
Cambridge dictionary defines a compliment as “a remark that expresses approval, admiration or respect”. In linguistics, Holmes (1986, p.446) wrote “A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit 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.” So, through compliments, people can build up solidarity by providing positive evaluation, appreciation for good deeds, praise for achievement, or worsen relationship by intentionally or unintentionally abusing compliments, which make the complimenters somewhat too flattering.
Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” No matter what language is used, a good compliment helps to express speakers’ good will towards the hearers. We may say complimenting is an art and complimenters are artists who should know what can be the subject for a compliment.
Topics for compliment
Previous researchers have found out that some common topics that people worldwide would like to comment on include appearance / possession, and ability /
First thing first, let have a look at the definition.
Definition of compliment
Cambridge dictionary defines a compliment as “a remark that expresses approval, admiration or respect”. In linguistics, Holmes (1986, p.446) wrote “A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit 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.” So, through compliments, people can build up solidarity by providing positive evaluation, appreciation for good deeds, praise for achievement, or worsen relationship by intentionally or unintentionally abusing compliments, which make the complimenters somewhat too flattering.
Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” No matter what language is used, a good compliment helps to express speakers’ good will towards the hearers. We may say complimenting is an art and complimenters are artists who should know what can be the subject for a compliment.
Topics for compliment
Previous researchers have found out that some common topics that people worldwide would like to comment on include appearance / possession, and ability /