Compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese: The Influence of Region
and Compliment Topic
Chih Ying Lin*, Helen Woodfield, Wei Ren
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, Helen Wodehouse Building, 35 Berkeley Square, Clifton, BS8 1JA, U.K.
ABSTRACT
Situated in a recently established field of variational pragmatics (Schneider and Barron,
2008), this study investigates one of the under-researched non-Indo-European languages,
Chinese, with regard to the influence of macro-social and micro-social factors on
compliments. More specifically, the present study focuses on the impact of region, a macrosocial variable, and compliment topic, a micro-social factor, on Chinese compliments given
by Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese higher education students. Sixty Taiwanese and
sixty Mainland Chinese, equally gendered in each group, completed a written discourse
completion task consisting of eight content-enriched situations (Billmyer and Varghese, 2000)
eliciting compliments. In terms of regional effect, commonalities emerged between those
compliments of Chinese students in Taiwan and Mainland China. Both groups preferred to
offer ‘explicit compliments’, ‘implicit requests’, ‘implicit assumptions’, and ‘implicit want
statements’ as compliments, with ‘explicit compliments’ emerging as the most popular
strategy. On the other hand, statistically significant differences were identified between the
two groups in a few implicit compliment strategies. Furthermore, both Taiwan and Mainland
Chinese students utilized several compliment strategies in similar ways across
appearance/possession and performance/ability situations. It appears that in most cases, it was
compliment topic rather than the variety of Chinese which modulated the compliments by
both groups. In addition, the paper suggests that compliments in Taiwan and Mainland
Chinese may have been undergoing a change, possibly influenced by western cultures.
Keywords: Chinese compliments, Regional effect, Compliment topic
1.
Introduction
In cross-cultural or intercultural pragmatics research, the focus in recent years has been
predominantly on the pragmatic variations between or across different languages under the
influences of micro-social factors (i.e., social dominance, social distance and degree of
imposition). Relatively little attention has been paid to the effect of macro-social factors1,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7799082425.
Email addresses: rebecca.lin@bristol.ac.uk (C. Y. Lin), helen.woodfield@bristol.ac.uk (H. Woodfield),
renweixz@yahoo.com (W. Ren).
1 The major difference between micro-social and macro-social factors is that the former relates to speaker
constellations and might vary from situation to situation while the latter concerns individual speakers and
1
such as, region, gender, ethnicity, age and social class, on different varieties of a language,
either at the national or the sub-national level (Barron and Schneider, 2009). Research in
dialectology has investigated the systematic impact of social factors on the phonological,
grammatical and lexical levels between different dialects (see Wolfram and Schilling-Estes,
1998, with respect to varieties of English). Nevertheless, few studies in either pragmatics or
dialectology have thus far explored the influences of macro-social factors on intra-lingual
variations at the pragmatic level. In light of this research gap, Schneider and Barron (2008)
have established a new sub-field of pragmatics, variational pragmatics (henceforth VP), which
is thus situated at the interface of pragmatics with dialectology. This new sub-discipline aims
to explore the effect of macro-social factors on intra-lingual pragmatic conventions. As
Barron and Schneider (2009:425) indicate, “pragmatic similarities may occur across
languages, while pragmatic differences may occur across varieties of the same language”.
Of the existing variational pragmatics research, discussions have essentially drawn on the
varieties of Indo-European languages, for example, English (Holmes and Brown, 1987;
Creese, 1991; Breuer and Geluykens, 2007; Barron, 2008), Spanish (Márquez-Reiter, 2003;
Placencia, 2008; Félix-Brasdefer, 2009, 2010b), German (Muhr, 2008; Warga, 2008), French
(Schölmberger, 2008), and Dutch (Plevoets et al., 2008). Even in Schneider and Barron’s
recently published (2008) edition of variational pragmatics, none of the papers dealt with the
national or sub-national varieties of non-Indo-European languages, for instance, Chinese and
Japanese. To our knowledge, there have been two studies thus far involving Chinese speakers
with the focus on pragmatic variations. Bresnahan et al. (1999) investigated how Chinese
native speakers in Singapore and Taiwan responded to a friend’s requests at different levels of
imposition. Spencer-Oatey et al. (2008) conducted a study on the evaluation of compliment
response strategies by university students in Britain, Mainland China and Hong Kong. Intralingual variations in Chinese were identified between Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong
respondents in the judgements of disagreement responses.
Responding to the call for more variational pragmatics research, especially on non-IndoEuropean languages, this study examines the effect of both macro-social and micro-social
factors on compliment giving in two varieties of Chinese. More specifically, the study has two
objectives: first, to investigate regional differences in compliments given by Taiwan Chinese
and Mainland Chinese college/university students, that is, the impact of region (macro-social
factor) on Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese compliments. Second, the paper aims to
explore the extent to which such compliments vary according to the interplay of the region
variable with a micro-social factor, the topic of compliments.
As compliments may reflect societal values, the issue of what counts as an acceptable
topic varies from culture to culture. Several general topic categories have been identified
across languages (Wolfson, 1983, 1989; Knapp et al., 1984; Daikuhara, 1986; Holmes, 1986,
remains comparatively stable across different contexts (Schneider and Barron, 2008; Barron and Schneider,
2009). Thus, micro-social variation is sometimes called “situational variation” (Schneider and Barron, 2008:18).
2
1988, 1995; Wang and Tsai, 2003; Yu, 2005): these have involved appearance/possession,
performance/ability and personality traits, with the first two categories occurring most in the
above mentioned studies. The topics of compliments seem to be commonly shared across
different cultures; however, each culture has its preferences for, or acceptance of, certain topic
categories and specific attributes within the categories. For example, possession compliments
in American English included those relating to children and spouses (Wolfson, 1983; Knapp
et al., 1984). Nevertheless, such compliments were regarded as inappropriate in New Zealand
English (Holmes and Brown, 1987). Holmes and Brown (1987) indicated that in New
Zealand, it was unacceptable to compliment a man on his wife in that this reflected a view of
his wife as a possession. This example reveals cross-cultural differences in the perceptions of
appropriate compliment topics. The present study thus takes a dual focus, namely, the
influence of (a) region and (b) compliment topic on Chinese compliments. A written discourse
completion task (henceforth DCT) was employed to investigate Taiwan and Mainland
Chinese students’ perceptions of appropriate complimenting behavior, aiming to address the
following two research questions:
(1) To what extent does the overall preference for compliment strategies by Taiwan Chinese
differ from that by Mainland Chinese?
(2) With regard to situational variations, when giving compliments in appearance/possession
and performance/ability situations, to what extent do compliment strategies by Taiwan
Chinese differ from those by Mainland Chinese?
This paper starts with an overview of empirical studies which investigate Chinese
compliments. Next, the methodological issues are addressed with regard to variational
pragmatics in general and the present study in particular, including the participants, the
instrument, coding scheme and data analysis. The results are discussed in relation to
implications for compliments in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese on the basis of changes
observed in appropriate complimenting performance. The final section concludes with a
summary of findings and suggestions for future research.
2.
Compliments
Holmes (1988:446) observes that “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”. Following this definition, compliments serve as a positive politeness
strategy (Brown and Levinson, 1987) to satisfy the hearer’s positive face wants. However,
compliment receivers might sometimes experience compliments as negative or facethreatening. In some cultures like Samoan (Holmes, 1986, 1988) and Chinese (Ye, 1995;
3
Wang and Tsai, 2003; Yu, 2005), compliments might imply for the hearer an element of envy
or desire of the complimented object and might, therefore, be interpreted as an indirect
request that violates the hearer’s face. An in-depth study of a speech act, like compliments,
not only reveals the rules of speaking in a speech community but also offers insights into the
value system of an individual and the community (Wolfson, 1981, 1989). Compared with a
number of compliment studies in different varieties of English and other western languages
(Manes and Wolfson, 1981; Knapp et al., 1984; Wolfson, 1984, 1989; Holmes, 1988, 1995;
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Herbert, 1989, 1990; Parisi and Wogan, 2006), Chinese
compliments have received relatively little attention in the literature. The four major studies
comprise Ye’s (1995), Yuan’s (2002), Wang and Tsai’s (2003) and Yu’s (2005) research, with
the first two studies focusing on Mainland Chinese, the third one on Taiwan Chinese and the
last study comparing Taiwan Chinese with American English compliments.
2.1. Previous research on Mainland Chinese compliments
Ye (1995) investigated the effects of topic and gender on compliments and compliment
responses in Mainland Chinese. In this study, compliments were further explored in terms of
strategies, semantic items, compliment focus and functions. A DCT composed of 16 situations
was conducted with 96 Mainland Chinese. The findings indicated that Chinese native
speakers in Mainland China preferred to give ‘explicit compliments’. Furthermore, more
‘explicit compliments’ and fewer non-complimentary remarks were evident in performancerelated situations compared with appearance contexts. It was concluded that compliments for
performance were preferred and more acceptable by Mainland Chinese. Moreover, Ye (1995)
suggested that compliments might create rather than reduce the distance between the
interlocutors. This assumption contradicts the function of compliments in English varieties
(Wolfson, 1983; Holmes, 1988), namely, to consolidate or increase solidarity between the
speaker and the hearer, but lends support to Daikuhara’s (1986) investigation of Japanese
compliments in which it was observed that compliments sometimes signify deference and
thus create social distance while at the same time maintaining solidarity.
Yuan (2002) employed multiple methods to explore compliments and compliment
responses in Kunming Chinese, a dialect spoken in Kunming, Mainland China. Oral and
written DCTs, designed based on natural observation data, were administered to 175
informants of three age groups, three education levels and two gender groups to provide a
complete picture of compliments as a speech event in Kunming Chinese. Interviews were
conducted with some respondents who accomplished an oral DCT to elicit their perceptions
and intentions of compliments. Similar to Ye’s (1995) finding, Kunming speakers tended to
pay ‘explicit compliments’ in the majority of the situations in both DCT and observation data.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that some cases of opt-outs and non-complimentary remarks
were identified in both Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s (2002) DCT data. Although the DCT might not
4
reflect language use in natural settings (Yuan, 2002; Golato, 2003; Woodfield, 2008; Jucker,
2009), the occurrence of opt-outs indicated that some Chinese speakers might choose not to
express their positive intentions in some situations where a compliment is expected.
2.2. Previous research on Taiwan Chinese compliments
Wang and Tsai (2003) investigated compliments and compliment responses by
Taiwanese college students, adopting ethnographic observation (Manes and Wolfson, 1981).
In particular, they examined the syntactic and semantic structures of compliments,
compliment topics and compliment responses in relation to the gender of the speaker and the
hearer. A total of 454 natural compliments and compliment responses were recorded. The
results showed that appearance was the most common topic in either cross-gender or samegender interactions except that females were more likely to compliment men on their
performance/ability instead of their appearance. The popularity of appearance compliments
among Taiwan college students was contradictory to Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s (2002) studies on
Mainland Chinese speakers in which performance was a preferred topic of compliments.
Appearance and ability compliments accounted for 22.7% and 25.4% of the compliments
respectively based on the observation data in Yuan’s (2002) research and 45.2% and 28.2% of
the compliments respectively in Wang and Tsai’s (2003) study. Compliments on appearance
were much less common in Mainland Chinese than Taiwan Chinese whereas performance
compliments were equally frequent in these two Chinese varieties. In addition, based on
compliments and compliment responses by Taiwanese students, Wang and Tsai (2003)
suggested that Chinese compliments normally have a positive effect on interpersonal
relations, for instance, to reinforce solidarity, to maintain rapport, or to attend to the
addressee’s positive face wants. This is in sharp contrast to Ye’s (1995) conclusion which
suggested that such speech acts create a distance between people of close relationship.
Yu (2005) also employed ethnographic observation to investigate Taiwan Chinese and
American English speakers’ compliments by analyzing the distribution of compliments, their
functions, compliment topics and addresser-addressee relationship as well as the issue of
cultural universality versus specificity. A total of 410 compliment exchanges were produced
by 356 Taiwan Chinese participants and 789 compliment exchanges by 636 Americans. All of
the compliments in Yu’s (2005) study occurred in ordinary conversations between people of
various occupations, ages, statuses and relationships while the compliment data in Wang and
Tsai’s (2003) study mostly appeared between undergraduates or graduates and their peers,
namely, the student community. In Yu’s (2005) research, Taiwan Chinese speakers were
observed to offer significantly fewer compliments than their American counterparts. Direct
compliments were the most frequent strategy for the two groups of speakers while Taiwan
Chinese produced indirect compliments proportionally more than Americans. Compared with
Wang and Tsai’s (2003) evidence described above, there were differences in compliment
5
functions and topics in Taiwan Chinese compliments. First, in Yu’s (2005) study, Taiwan
Chinese tended to compliment on performance/ability while appearance compliments were
more popular in Wang and Tsai’s (2003) data. Second, Yu (2005) stated that in Chinese
culture, compliments were mainly employed as assertions of admiration whereas Wang and
Tsai (2003) suggested that Taiwan Chinese students offered compliments to establish
solidarity or rapport.
In brief, these four studies on Mainland, Kunming and Taiwan Chinese compliments
demonstrate intra-lingual variations in several respects with regard to compliment strategies,
topics of compliments and functions of compliments. The findings lend support to Barron and
Schneider’s (2009) claim that pragmatic variations do indeed exist between varieties of the
same language. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that speakers of the same
language variety do not necessarily utilize the language variety in the same way.
3.
Method
With respect to the methodology underlying variational pragmatics, three principles were
addressed by Barron and Schneider (2009). The first principle is the contrastivity principle,
defined as follows: “linguistic features can be considered variety-specific only if the variety
under study is contrasted with at least one other variety of the same kind and of the same
language” (Barron and Schneider, 2009:429). In other words, at least two varieties of a
language have to be contrasted in order to establish which features or values are preferred in
one specific variety. Second, it is essential that studies are conducted empirically instead of
relying on researchers’ or others’ intuitions or recalled experiences. The types of such
empirical data may consist of both elicited and naturally occurring conversations, with each
having its own advantages and limitations (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 2005). Again, the
choice of methods should shed light on the issues under investigation (Félix-Brasdefer,
2010a). As the aim of variational pragmatics is to study the impact of macro-social factors on
language in interaction, those experimental methods are favored which allow a certain control
of variables. Although the conception of social factors as stable might be criticized by
reductionism, the experimental design ensures replicability and comparability between studies
in the early stage of variational pragmatics. Barron and Schneider (2009) suggest that the
more systematically the variables are controlled, the more different varieties can be contrasted
and variety-exclusive features can be identified. In this sense, comparability is the third
methodological principle. In short, the three methodological rules of thumb in variational
pragmatics are that two or more varieties of a language are contrasted (contrastive) by
collecting empirical data (empirical) in experimental (comparable) research designs. In the
present study, a written discourse completion task was designed to elicit empirical and
comparable data from two contrastive varieties of Mandarin Chinese, namely, Taiwan Chinese
and Mainland Chinese. The profile of the participants and the nature of the elicitation
6
instrument are discussed respectively in detail in the following sections 3.1 and 3.2.
3.1. Participants
Two groups of participants took part in the present study: 60 Taiwan Chinese and 60
Mainland Chinese2, to follow the contrastivity principle noted earlier. That is, two varieties of
Mandarin Chinese were the focus of the study, Taiwan and Mainland Chinese. The former
was elicited from students at a college in the central part of Taiwan and the latter from
learners at a university in the Shandong province in Mainland China. In other words, there
were a total of 120 Chinese-speaking college/university students, aged between 19 and 23
years with an average age of 21.4 years. Furthermore, all learners were sampled from a pool
of non-English majors to exclude the possible influence of another language/culture on
compliment production. Mandarin Chinese served as the native language for both groups of
the respondents. Moreover, there were an equal number of male and female participants in
each group. According to the above description of the participants, such variables as
educational level, field of study, and gender were controlled to ensure the homogeneity of the
participants. In other words, the respondents in the present study were equally gendered and
they were all non-English-major students from the same level of educational background
(e.g., college or university).
3.2. Instrument
The compliments from Taiwan and Mainland Chinese participants were elicited from a
written discourse completion task. This instrument has been commonly employed in crosscultural or intercultural pragmatics research but also widely discussed and criticized. Due to
its non-interactive and inconsequential nature (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 2005), the DCT
cannot examine conversational features typical in spoken discourse, for instance, turn-taking,
negotiations between interlocutors, and paralinguistic or non-verbal resources (Yuan, 2001;
Kasper, 2008; Woodfield, 2008). More importantly, its decontexualized design (Kasper, 2008)
does not yield actual language use in face-to-face communication but participants’ beliefs
about pragmatic appropriacy (Yuan, 2002; Golato, 2003; Jucker, 2009). In spite of its
limitations, the DCT provides large samples of highly controlled data in a short period of time
(Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 2005). Furthermore, its replicability allows a comparison of
speech act(s) across various languages or varieties of a language. The advantages of the DCT
are in keeping with two of the methodological principles proposed by Barron and Schneider
(2009), namely, the employment of empirical and comparable data. Consequently, the DCT
serves as an appropriate methodological tool in the present study as it focuses on participant
2
The claims in the following sections were applied to the participants in the current study only. Thus, the terms,
Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese, do not refer to general Chinese speakers in the respective regions. The
results might vary according to other factors, for instance, age and social status.
7
perceptions of appropriate production, allows for control of variables, and offers initial
insights into how compliments were realized in different varieties of Chinese, a topic
currently under-researched in variational pragmatics.
The present study formed part of a larger research project which investigated a
combination of three speech acts including compliments, refusals and requests in Taiwan and
Mainland Chinese. There were 20 situations in total consisting of 8 compliments, 8 refusals
and 4 requests. It was thought that the inclusion of three speech acts could prevent the
respondents from assuming that all situations were associated with a specific speech act, thus
producing invalid responses. Moreover, the number of situations in the current study was at a
mid-point between the 16 items in Ye’s (1995) DCT and the 24 items in Yuan’s (2002) DCT.
In other words, the 20 situations in the present DCT were comparable to the DCTs in Ye’s
(1995) and Yuan’s (2002) studies.
The DCT in the current study was an open written questionnaire without a dialogue
(Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 1993) or a rejoinder (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989; Rose, 1992;
Johnston et al., 1998). The participants read situational descriptions and provided written
responses. According to Billmyer and Varghese (2000), content-enriched DCTs elicit more
elaboration which is more likely to be identified in authentic data than content-poor prompts.
Accordingly, each situation contained the following information: the name and gender of the
interlocutor, the relationship with the interlocutor, the length of acquaintanceship, the
frequency of interaction, and the setting. Furthermore, compliment situations were based on
two major topics, appearance/possession and performance/ability, in line with previous
studies (Yuan, 2002; Wang and Tsai, 2003). Following Knapp et al.’s (1984) definitions,
appearance/possession-related compliments are associated with the addressee’s physical
attributes and features and items of ownership. On the other hand, performance/ability
compliments are those which signal the approval of someone’s skills or abilities, for example,
academic or work performance (Knapp et al., 1984). Under each topic, two situations were
created in which compliments would be directed towards interlocutors of the same and
opposite gender respectively. Hence, there were a total of eight situations (see Appendix A for
the version for Taiwanese students). Table 1 provides a synopsis of the compliment scenarios.
Compliment topics and the gender of the addressee were the two independent variables in the
design of the DCT. This paper focuses on the impact of compliment topic on compliment
strategies in Chinese.
8
Table 1
Descriptions of compliment situations.
Compliment situation
Compliment topic
1. Mobile phone
appearance/possession
2. Class presentation
performance/ability
3. Hairstyle
appearance/possession
4. Handbag
appearance/possession
5. Basketball competition
performance/ability
6. Weight loss
appearance/possession
7. PE test
performance/ability
8. Talent show
performance/ability
Gender of the addressee
male
female
male
female
male
female
male
female
As the respondents of the present study were all students, the situations were designed to
reflect student life. Though the participants might not have the same or similar experiences
described in the situations, they did not have to place themselves in a different social role, for
instance, a professor or an employer. Bonikowska (1988) states that it is problematic to
require respondents to adopt a role with which they are not familiar and base any conclusions
on their linguistic performance. In this regard, all informants were required to maintain their
original role of a student. Furthermore, Chinese compliments tend to occur between people of
equal status (Wang and Tsai, 2003; Yu, 2005) and between casual friends (Yu, 2005).
Therefore, the situations were controlled for two variables: social dominance and social
distance. Participants (S) were considered to be social equals with their (hypothetical)
interlocutor (H) as both were students and casual friends: thus both social dominance and
social distance were configured as S=H across the eight situations.
There were two versions of the DCT as Taiwan and Mainland Chinese used different
forms of the characters in Chinese. One version was written in traditional Chinese for
Taiwanese students and the other in simplified Chinese for students in Mainland China. A
sample situation from the Mainland Chinese version is provided at the end of Appendix A.
Each version was checked by two researchers from the corresponding regions and also crosschecked by a person from the other region to ensure the agreement between the two versions.
The DCT was then modified according to their feedback and piloted before the current study
was implemented.
3.3. Coding scheme
The responses from the DCT data were classified into three main categories, ‘explicit
compliments’, ‘implicit compliments’ and ‘opt-outs’. Explicit compliments are generally
direct and unambiguous positive remarks that contain at least one positive semantic carrier
(Ye, 1995; Yuan, 2002; Yu, 2005). On the other hand, implicit compliments, without a
positive lexical item at the level of linguistic form (Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005), require more
inferences from the addressee to reconstruct the implicated meaning (Lewandowska9
Tomaszczyk, 1989; Yu, 2005). For example, a male speaker compliments a female friend’s
handbag by saying, “Nǐ de bāobāo hǎo piàoliàng ā! Wǒ yě xiǎng gěi wǒ nǚpéngyǒu mǎi
gè le” 你的包包好漂亮啊! 我也想給我女朋友买个了3 (Your handbag is so pretty! I would
like to buy one for my girlfriend). The first sentence “Nǐ de bāobāo hǎo piàoliàng ā!” 你的包
包好漂亮啊 (Your handbag is so pretty) is coded as an ‘explicit compliment’ because of the
positive adjective “piàoliàng” 漂 亮 (pretty). The second utterance “Wǒ yě xiǎng gěi wǒ
nǚpéngyǒu mǎi gè le” 我也想給我女朋友买个了(I would like to buy one for my girlfriend),
while not including any positive lexical items, carries complimentary force in that people
normally buy things that are good (Yuan, 2002) and the male speaker of this utterance likes
the handbag and might intend to please his girlfriend by sending her the handbag as a gift.
Hence, the sentence “Wǒ yě xiǎng gěi wǒ nǚpéngyǒu mǎi gè le” 我也想給我女朋友买个了
(I would like to buy one for my girlfriend) is categorized as an ‘implicit compliment’ on the
handbag. Following Yuan’s (2002) coding scheme, both ‘explicit compliments’ and ‘implicit
compliments’ were head acts in the present study. That is, ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit
compliments’ could appear alone, independently from each other. ‘Implicit compliments’ did
not replace ‘explicit compliments’ nor become supporting moves when they co-occurred with
‘explicit compliments’. Based on the current data, ‘implicit compliments’ were further
categorized into eight types. Three categories were adapted from LewandowskaTomaszczyk’s (1989) and Yuan’s (2002) studies. They consisted of ‘implicit contrast’,
‘implicit explanation’ and ‘implicit request’ compliments. The remaining five strategies
emerged from the present data and were composed of ‘implicit admiration’, ‘implicit
assumption’, ‘implicit evaluation’, ‘implicit joke’ and ‘implicit want statement’ compliments.
That is, these eight compliment strategies were generated both inductively and deductively.
The definition of each implicit compliment strategy is provided in Table 2 with the examples
in italics.
A few respondents chose to say nothing; in this case, their responses were coded as ‘optouts’. Replies other than compliments, for instance, greetings, address terms, or noncomplimentary remarks, were excluded in the data analysis. For example, in the Mobile
Phone situation, one student replied by saying, “Zhè shǒujī shì xīn de ma? Hǎo piàoliàng ā!”
这手机是新的吗? 好漂亮啊 (Is this a new mobile phone? [It looks] very nice). The first
sentence “Zhè shǒujī shì xīn de ma?” 这手机是新的吗? (Is this a new mobile phone?) signals
a notice of a new item from the addressee but does not have any complimentary meaning;
hence, it was not included for data analysis but the second utterance “Hǎo piàoliàng ā!” 好漂
亮啊 ([It looks] very nice) was coded as ‘explicit compliment’. An equal number of DCT
completed by male and female participants were selected randomly from the two regions and
independently coded by another researcher who was initially given the definitions and
3 All
Chinese examples in this paper were from the participants in the present study and represented in their
original forms. Thus, some sentences were written in simplified Chinese if they were given by Mainland Chinese
students and some in traditional Chinese if they were produced by Taiwanese respondents.
10
examples of all compliment strategies. When there were differences in coding, the two raters
discussed and reached an agreement. The Kappa statistic was performed to determine the
consistency between the two raters. The inter-rater reliability was found to be K = 0.92 (p <
0.001).
Table 2
The categories of implicit compliment strategies.
Type
Definition & example
Admiration
to show the speaker’s admiration by setting the addressee as a learning
target, e.g., “Wā! Jīntiān nǐ de qǐhuà bàogào de bú cuò. Rúguǒ kěyǐ,
xiǎng gēn nǐ xuéxí yīxià.” 哇! 今天你的企劃報告得不錯. 如果可以, 想
跟你學習一下 (Wow! You did a good presentation today. If possible, I’d
like to learn how to do it [presentation skill] from you.)
Assumption
 the speaker’s assumption regarding the addressee’s past effort to
produce
good
performance,
e.g.,
“Wā!
Wǒ juéde
nǐ
de jiǎnbào hěn bàng ye! Nǐ yīdìng huā hěnduō shíjiān zài zhǔnbèi ba!”
哇! 我覺得你的簡報很棒耶! 你一定花很多時間在準備吧! (Wow! I
think your presentation was very good. You must have spent a lot of
time preparing for it.)
 the speaker’s assumption regarding the future good outcome based on
the addressee’s performance, e.g., “Yùtíng, tài bàng le. Kàn lái
dìyīmíng fēi nǐ mò shǔ a!” 玉婷, 太棒了. 看来第一名非你莫属啊!
(Yuting, brilliant! You will definitely get the first prize.) (in the Talent
Show situation)
Contrast
 the
contrast between the addressee and others, e.g.,
“Biérén pīn le mìng pǎo cái miǎnqiǎng tōngguò, Kàn nǐ bù fèi
lìqì jiù dǎ le mǎn fēn.” 别人拼了命跑才勉强通过, 看你不费力气就
打了满分 (Others ran so hard to barely pass the test. You got a full
mark without much effort.)
 the contrast between the speaker and the addressee, e.g., “Nǐ tán
de zhēn bàng, wǒ yě tǐng xǐhuān gāngqín de, kě jiù shì méi tiānfèn, bù
huì tán.” 你弹得真棒, 我也挺喜欢钢琴的, 可就是没天分, 不会弹
(You played the piano so well. I like playing the piano as well, but I
don’t have that talent. I can’t do it.)
Evaluation
to give a complimentary evaluation to assure the addressee’s past effort,
e.g.,
“Nǐ gāngcái de
biǎoyǎn shízài shì tài yōuxiù le,
xīnkǔ
de liànxí zǒngsuàn shì yǒu dàijià de.” 你剛才的表演實在是太優秀了,
辛苦的練習總算是有代價的 (Your performance was really awesome.
All the hard work paid off.)
Explanation
to describe the good aspects of the addressee’s appearance/performance,
e.g., “Nǐ de bàogào zuò de hěn hǎo ye! Shàngtái yě dōu bù huì jǐnzhāng,
kěyǐ jiāo wǒ rúhé zuò ma?” 你的報告做得很好耶! 上台也都不會緊張,
可以教我如何做嗎? (Your presentation was very good. You were not
nervous at all. Could you teach me how to make a presentation?)
Joke
to express the speaker’s positive intentions in a jokey way, e.g., “Wā!
Nǐ biàn hǎo zhèng yo!
Dà zhèng miē ya!
Xiànzài yǒu
hěnduō
11
Request
Want statement
nánshēng zhuī nǐ hou!” 哇! 妳變好正唷! 大正4咩呀! 現在有很多男生
追妳吼! (Wow! You look so beautiful. [You are] a pretty girl. There
must be a lot of men who have a crush on you.)
to ask the addressee for his/her opinion, advice or experience, or to
request the addressee to do something, for instance, to teach the speaker
some skills, e.g., “Nǐ de bàogào zuò de hěn hǎo ye! Shàng tái yě dōu
bù huì jǐnzhāng, kěyǐ jiāo wǒ rúhé zuò ma?”你的報告做得很好耶! 上
台也都不會緊張, 可以教我如何做嗎 ? (Your presentation was very
good. You were not nervous at all. Could you teach me how to make a
presentation?)
to show the speaker’s want, wish or interest in the complimented topic,
e.g., “Nǐ zhè gè bāobāo zhēn piàoliàng, wǒ yě xiǎng mǎi yī gè” 你这个
包包真漂亮, 我也想买一个 (Your handbag is really pretty. I would like
to buy one as well.)
3.4. Data analysis
The compliment data were analyzed by both descriptive and inferential statistics.
Frequencies and percentages were used to identify the most and least popular strategies by
Taiwan and Mainland Chinese (region variable) and to investigate similarities and differences
in the distribution of compliment strategies by the two groups in appearance/possession and
performance/ability situations (the interaction between the region variable and the factor of
compliment topic). The frequency of each compliment strategy was calculated based on its
individual occurrences in the data. Using the example of ‘implicit admiration’ compliments in
Table 2 (i.e., You did a good presentation today. If possible, I’d like to learn how to do it
[presentation skill] from you), there was one ‘explicit compliment’ (the first utterance) and
one ‘implicit admiration’ compliment (the second utterance). Regarding inferential statistics,
the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (the K-S test) and Levene’s test were first computed to analyze
the normality of the data and homogeneity of variance respectively, two significant
assumptions of a parametric test. The statistics showed that these two assumptions were not
met. In other words, a non-parametric test is a preferred choice to yield appropriate test
results. To test differences between two independent groups, Mann-Whitney U test, “the nonparametric equivalent of the independent T-test” (Field, 2009:540), was carried out to
examine if the differences in compliment strategies were significant between Taiwan and
Mainland Chinese (regional difference) with the probability value set at p < 0.05.
4
Differences between traditional and simplified Chinese were identified in the lexicon appearing in
compliments. For example, the adjective “牛” (i.e., brilliant) was used by Mainland Chinese participants only to
compliment a person’s performance and the adjective “ 正” (i.e., good-looking) was employed by Taiwan
Chinese respondents only to praise a female’s appearance. The lexical differences between the two varieties of
Chinese were beyond the scope of the present study and may be explored in future research.
12
4.
Results and discussion
4.1. Regional differences in compliment strategies
Table 3 presents the frequency and percentage of each compliment strategy by the two
groups of Chinese speakers. Based on the DCT data, a total of 120 Chinese participants
produced 1083 compliments across the eight situations (516 compliments by Taiwan Chinese
and 567 compliments by Mainland Chinese). There were 10 ‘opt-out’ responses, 5 in each
group. Put differently, every respondent gave an average of 1.1 compliments in each scenario.
Table 3
Frequencies and percentages of compliment strategies by region.
Compliment strategies
Explicit compliments
Implicit compliments
Admiration
Assumption
Contrast
Evaluation
Explanation
Joke
Request
Want statement
Sub-total
Opt-outs
Total
Taiwan
380 (72.9%)
136 (26.1%)
1 (0.2%)
30 (5.8%)
13 (2.5%)
2 (0.4%)
2 (0.4%)
6 (1.2%)
52 (10.0%)
30 (5.8%)
516 (99.0%)
5 (1.0%)
521 (100%)
Rank
1
10
3
5
8
8
6
2
3
7
Region
Mainland China
464 (81.1%)
103 (18.0%)
10 (2.7%)
21 (3.7%)
13 (2.3%)
0 (0%)
7 (1.2%)
6 (1.0%)
30 (5.2%)
16 (2.8%)
567 (99.1%)
5 (0.9%)
572 (100%)
Rank
1
5
3
6
10
7
8
2
4
9
4.1.1. Explicit compliments
The results indicated that both groups of the respondents preferred explicitness in their
compliment-giving behavior. ‘Explicit compliments’ were the most popular strategy by
Taiwan and Mainland Chinese across the situations, with Mainland Chinese significantly
more explicit than Taiwanese participants (U = 1073.50, z = -3.87, p < .001). The ‘explicit
compliments’ (81.1%) by Mainland informants were more than four times as frequent as their
‘implicit compliments’ (18%). Taiwan Chinese tended to pay compliments explicitly as well
but with more frequent use of implicit strategies. The ‘explicit compliments’ (72.9%) by
Taiwan Chinese were 2.5 times more frequent than their ‘implicit compliments’ (26.1%). In
keeping with previous studies, Chinese speakers were explicit in expressing their positive
intentions (Ye, 1995; Yuan, 2002; Yu, 2005), in similar ways to American English speakers in
Yu’s (2005) study.
13
4.1.2. Implicit compliments
With respect to implicit compliments, three strategies occurred frequently in both Taiwan
and Mainland Chinese compliment data. These strategies included ‘implicit requests’,
‘implicit assumptions’, and ‘implicit want statements’ and accounted for 82.4% and 65% of
Taiwan and Mainland Chinese implicit compliments respectively. Clearly, these three types of
implicit compliments were more widely employed by respondents from Taiwan. The other
implicit strategies were relatively less common in Chinese compliments, especially Taiwan
Chinese. For example, there were only two instances of ‘implicit evaluation’ and ‘implicit
explanation’ compliments each in the Taiwanese corpus. These two strategies also occurred
infrequently in the Mainland Chinese data.
One interesting difference between the Taiwan and Mainland data lies in the unequal
distribution of the strategy of ‘implicit admiration’. Table 3 shows that all of the ‘implicit
admiration’ compliments were produced by Mainland Chinese students except one by a
Taiwan Chinese. Based on Mann-Whitney U test, the significant differences were observed
only in ‘implicit requests’ (U = 1387.00, z = -2.39, p < .05) and ‘implicit admirations’ (U =
1559.50, z = -2.64, p < .05) between Taiwan and Mainland Chinese.
Compliments in various languages have been recognized as a very routinized speech act
as it is normally performed in a limited number of syntactic and semantic patterns (Manes and
Wolfson, 1981; Wolfson, 1984, 1989; Daikuhara, 1986; Holmes, 1986; LewandowskaTomaszczyk, 1989). The empirical evidence in the present study suggested that the
compliments by the two regional groups tended to be formulaic in nature. That is,
approximately 93% of Chinese compliments were realized in either ‘explicit compliments’ or
one of the three popular implicit strategies mentioned above. These four strategies accounted
for 94.4% and 92.8% of compliments by Taiwan Chinese and Mainland Chinese respectively.
This finding is indicative of the formulaic nature of Chinese compliment strategies, with
‘explicit compliments’ as the most preferred strategy.
4.1.3. Opt-outs
Ten cases of the ‘opt-out’ strategy were equally distributed (around 1%) in both Taiwan
and Mainland Chinese responses. Thus, the difference between the two regions was not
statistically significant (U = 1800.00, z = -.00, ns). Compared with Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s
(2002) studies, a higher percentage of ‘opt-outs’ was identified in their DCT data, that is,
27.6% in Ye’s and 2.6% in Yuan’s studies. A comparison of previous research with the current
study is provided in Table 4 with respect to the three major compliment strategies: ‘explicit
compliments’, ‘implicit compliments’ and ‘opt-outs’. The compliments in these three studies
were all gathered through DCTs composed of appearance/possession and performance/ability
situations eliciting compliments to both male and female interlocutors. In other words, the
DCTs in the three studies were designed based on the same independent variables:
14
compliment topic and the gender of compliment receiver. Moreover, the compliment
situations in the three DCTs were established to occur between interactants who were both (i)
acquaintances and (ii) of equal status. Though situational descriptions in the DCTs were not
completely the same, their similar designs allow a comparison between the three studies on
Chinese compliments.
Table 4
A comparison of previous relevant research with the present study.
Ye (1995)
Yuan (2002)
The present study
Explicit compliments
65.4%
62%
77.2%
Implicit compliments
7%
4.3%
21.9%
a
Opt-outs
27.6%
2.6%
0.9%
a The percentage in Yuan’s (2002) study did not total 100% as the data comprised not merely
explicit and implicit compliments but also compliments that served as adjuncts or supporting
moves. The latter compliments were not included in the coding scheme of the present study
and thus their percentage was not provided in Table 4.
Based on the results from a limited number of empirical studies, there is emerging
evidence that Chinese speakers’ complimenting behavior may have been undergoing a change
during recent years. First, the frequencies of ‘explicit compliments’ and ‘implicit
compliments’ were similar in Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s (2002) studies as shown in Table 4 but
increased dramatically from Yuan’s (2002) data to the present data. More specifically, the
occurrence of ‘explicit compliments’ rises from 62% to 77.2% and ‘implicit compliments’
from 4.3% to 21.9%. These figures revealed that the Taiwan and Mainland Chinese speakers
in the present study offered ‘explicit compliments’ and ‘implicit compliments’ considerably
more frequently than Mainland Chinese and Kunming Chinese in Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s
(2002) studies respectively. Second, the ‘opt-out’ strategy has been significantly infrequent
since Yuan’s (2002) study. Chinese speakers seem to be more willing to express their positive
intentions either explicitly or implicitly instead of refraining from showing their admiration,
lending support to Chang’s (2001) finding that Chinese speakers are not necessarily reserved
in expressing their thoughts, either positive or negative. This might be due to the impact of
western cultures, as indicated by an interviewee in Yuan’s (2002) research. In this latter study,
it was suggested by the interviewee that nowadays the way Kunming Chinese complimented
others was different from the older generation as they had been influenced by western
civilizations through movies or other means of mass media. This claim is supported in a
recent study by Chen and Yang (2010), a replication of Chen’s study (1993) on Chinese
compliment responses. These authors noted that Xi’an Chinese in Mainland China tended to
accept instead of reject compliments as they used to do. A similar changing style has been
observed in compliment responses by Taiwan Chinese (Hsu, 2010). Chen and Yang (2010)
attributed this change to “the influx of Western cultural influences” as speakers of western
15
languages normally accept compliments (Chen and Yang, 2010:1951). Moreover, as American
English has been the main English variety for most students in Taiwan and Mainland China,
their cultural values may have been directly or indirectly embedded in English textbooks or
transferred from teachers of American native speakers, American films or TV programs 5. The
high frequency of compliments by Americans has been widely recognized in a number of
studies (Wolfson, 1981; Nelson et al., 1993; Fong, 1998). It is possible therefore that the
young generation might be adopting the western ways of communication which are deviant
from Chinese traditions. Since all of the respondents in the present study were
college/university students, this might explain why there are remarkable differences in the
frequencies of these three compliment strategies between the present study and Ye’s (1995)
and Yuan’s (2002) studies as shown in Table 4.
To sum up, compared with previous studies, the present study indicated that an
increasing number of Chinese speakers are inclined to express their positive intentions when
compliments are desirable, with most of them in favor of ‘explicit compliments’. These
differences might result from the influence of western cultures. Moreover, the vast majority of
Chinese compliments were formulaic in terms of the strategies employed. The participants in
Taiwan and Mainland China preferred to offer ‘explicit compliments’, ‘implicit requests’,
‘implicit assumptions’ and ‘implicit want statements’ as compliments. Generally, more
similarities were identified between Taiwan and Mainland Chinese speakers with respect to
the frequency of compliment strategies across the situations.
4.2. Situational variations in compliment strategies across regions
4.2.1. Explicit compliments
Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of ‘explicit compliments’ between Taiwan and
Mainland Chinese in terms of compliment topics. In each of the two regions, the explicit
strategy was equally employed in appearance/possession-related and performance/abilityrelated situations. Compared with Ye’s (1995) finding, ‘explicit compliments’ were more
frequent in the present study (50.5% compared to 43% in Ye’s study) for
appearance/possession situations and less frequent (49.5% compared to 69.9% in Ye’s study)
for performance/ability scenarios. In Ye’s (1995) study, complimenting on performance
seemed to be perceived as more appropriate than complimenting on appearance due to higher
frequencies of ‘explicit compliments’ and ‘implicit compliments’ and lower occurrences of
‘opt-outs’ and non-complimentary responses in performance contexts (as noted in section
2.1). Nevertheless, in the present study, the results suggested that compliment topic did not
5
This claim does not deny the fact that the students in Taiwan and Mainland China are influenced by other
English cultures as well, for instance, British English, New Zealand English or Canadian English, as the movies
or TV programs of these varieties are easily accessible through mass media or the Internet. Furthermore, some
English classes are instructed by English-speaking teachers other than Americans. However, the mainstream
remains to be American English in both regions.
16
influence the frequency of ‘explicit compliments’ in either of the two groups studied (Fig. 1).
This indicated that appearance/possession and performance/ability were considered to be
equally appropriate for the Chinese respondents in the current study to offer compliments
explicitly.
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Appearance/Possession
Performance/Ability
Taiwan
Mainland China
Fig. 1. The distribution of ‘explicit compliments’ by region and compliment topics.
4.2.2. Implicit compliments
Detailed analyses of the three popular implicit strategies showed that, in both Taiwan and
Mainland Chinese, ‘implicit request’ and ‘implicit assumption’ compliments mostly appeared
in performance-based situations. This was particularly notable in ‘implicit assumption’
compliments. However, the bulk of ‘implicit want statements’ occurred in
appearance/possession-related contexts as shown in Fig. 2 below. In particular, ‘implicit
requests’ and ‘implicit assumptions’ were more likely to be employed by Chinese students to
compliment their classmates’ accomplishments in class presentation (situation 2). This
implied that the students in both Taiwan and Mainland China focused more attention on
academic performance by either asking for some useful information to advance their
presentation skills or emphasizing their peers’ past effort to deliver a successful presentation.
The italicised sentence in the first example below (1) shows how an ‘implicit request’
compliment was offered in the Class Presentation situation. The instance in (2) is an ‘implicit
assumption’ compliment that implicitly revealed the speaker’s approval of the addressee’s
performance in a talent show.
17
Implicit Request by Taiwan Chinese
Appearance/Possession
Implicit Request by Mainland Chinese
Performance/Ability
Implicit Assumption by Taiwan Chinese
Implicit Assumption by Mainland Chinese
Implicit Want Statement by Taiwan Chinese
Implicit Want Statement by Mainland Chinese
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Fig. 2. The distribution of ‘implicit request’, ‘implicit assumption’ and ‘implicit want
statement’ strategies by region and compliment topics.
(1)
Implicit request: TM106 in the Class Presentation situation
Nǐde
jiǎnbào
hěn
bù cuò
ō.
Kě bù
your
presentation
very not bad
PRT7 can not
shuō
say
nǐ
you
dōushì
always
zěnmó
how
zhǔnbèi
prepare
de
DE
kěyǐ
can
gēn
with
wǒ
me
ma?
Q
你的簡報很不錯哦! 可不可以跟我說你都是怎麼準備的嗎?
(Your presentation was very good. Could you tell me how you prepared for it?)
(2)
Implicit assumption: MM15 in the Talent Show situation
Nǐde
biǎoyǎn
tài
bàng
le.
Wǒ
rènwéi
your
performance too
great
PFV I
think
yīdìng
kěyǐ
definitely can
jìnrù
enter
qián
first
sān
three
nǐ
you
míng.
rank
你的表演太棒了, 我认为你一定可以进入前三名.
(Your performance was brilliant. I think you will definitely be one of the top three.)
Unlike ‘implicit requests’ and ‘implicit assumptions’, ‘implicit want statements’ were
overwhelmingly associated with such possession items like a mobile phone or a handbag. A
typical expression is the example (3) below which implicitly attributed the credit to the
complimented item, namely, a mobile phone in this case, as people normally buy things which
6
The first letter of this abbreviation stands for region, that is, T for Taiwan Chinese and M for Mainland
Chinese. The second letter refers to the gender, namely, M for male and F for female. The following number is
used to replace their real names.
7 The abbreviations used in the interlinear translation are as follows, adopted from Wang and Tsai (2003): PRT =
clause final particle, Q = final question marker, PFV = perfective aspect marker, CL = classifier, ADV = adverb.
18
they evaluate positively (Yuan, 2002). Overall, the speakers of Taiwan and Mainland Chinese
shared some commonalities in their employment of these three implicit compliment strategies.
That is, they both preferred to offer ‘implicit request’ and ‘implicit assumption’ compliments
in performance-related situations and ‘implicit want statements’ in appearance/possessionrelated contexts.
(3)
Implicit want statement: MF8 in the Mobile Phone situation
Shǒujī
zhēn piàoliàng! Yàoshì wǒ shǒujī
mobile phone
very pretty
if
my mobile phone
yě
also
huàn
change
yī
one
gè
CL
zhèyàng de.
such
DE
Tài
too
kù
cool
huài
le,
broken PFV
le.
PFV
手机真漂亮! 要是我手机坏了, 也换一个这样的. 太酷了!
([Your] mobile phone is really wonderful! If mine is broken, I would like to buy the
same one as yours. So cool!)
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Appearance/Possession
Performance/Ability
Taiwan
Mainland China
Fig. 3. The distribution of ‘implicit admiration’ compliments by region and compliment
topics.
Moreover, in the present study, all of the ‘implicit admiration’ compliments were
identified in performance-related situations except one in relation to appearance as shown in
Figure 3 above. The admiration strategy was mainly offered to implicate that the addressee
was a learning model for the speaker. As discussed earlier, most of the ‘implicit admiration’
compliments were provided by Mainland Chinese. This suggested that apart from the frequent
occurrences of ‘implicit request’ and ‘implicit assumption’ compliments in performancerelated situations, the students in Mainland China were also inclined to compliment their
peers’ achievements by employing the ‘implicit admiration’ strategy. The following example
is given from a Mainland Chinese male respondent in the Basketball Competition situation.
(4)
Implicit admiration: MM20 in the Basketball Competition situation
Bú
cuò,
bú
cuò, dǎ
de
zhēn hǎo! Jīntiān méiyǒu nǐ
19
Not
bad
not
zhè
this
chǎng
CL
bǐsài
hái
zhēnde hěn nán
competition ADV really very hard
Yǐhòu
later
háiyào
still
bad
duō
more
play
DE
gēn
nǐ
follow you
really well
xuéxí
learn
today
without you
shuō
say
ya!
PRT
ya!
PRT
不错, 不错, 打得真好! 今天没有你, 这场比赛还真的很难说呀! 以后还要多跟你学
习呀!
(Well done! Well done! [You] played really well! Without you, we might hardly win the
competition today. I would to like to learn [some basketball skills] from you.)
4.2.3. Opt-outs
As shown in Figure 4, in both Taiwan and Mainland China, all of the ‘opt-outs’ occurred
in performance- or possession-related situations, seven in performance- (70%) and three in
possession-based contexts (30%). In other words, when compliment topics were associated
with appearance, all the Chinese participants in the present study chose to offer compliments
instead of ‘opt-outs’ whereas this was not the case in performance- or possession-related
situations. This implied that appearance was perceived as an appropriate topic by both Taiwan
and Mainland Chinese respondents to compliment their peers. The popularity of appearance
compliments among Taiwan Chinese students in the current study corresponded to Wang and
Tsai’s (2003) findings that appearance was identified as a more preferred topic of
compliments for Taiwan Chinese college students. Furthermore, the common occurrence of
appearance compliments in Taiwan Chinese is further evidence of the influence of western
cultures as it resembles the social norms relevant to compliments in America (Wang and Tsai,
2003), where the quality of ‘newness’ is highly valued so that it is socially acceptable to
praise someone seen with something new (Wolfson, 1989). Wang and Tsai (2003) mentioned
that a compliment signals the speaker’s notice of a change in the addressee who is worthy of
attention. Nevertheless, the evidence in the present study was in contrast to Ye’s (1995)
finding that compliments on performance were preferred by Mainland Chinese. In Ye’s (1995)
study, ‘opt-outs’ were more likely to occur in appearance- (35.2%) rather than performancerelated situations (12.6%). In the present study, there was no occurrence of ‘opt-outs’ on
appearance in Mainland Chinese data. Moreover, as indicated in section 4.2.1,
appearance/possession and performance/ability were perceived to be equally appropriate for
the Chinese respondents in the current study to perform ‘explicit compliments’. The evidence
above suggested that Mainland Chinese speakers’ preferences for compliment topics might
have shifted after more than two decades, also possibly affected by western cultures.
20
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Appearance/Possession
Performance/Ability
Taiwan
Mainland China
Fig. 4. The distribution of ‘opt-outs’ by region and compliment topics.
The above analyses revealed how the micro-social variable, compliment topic, interacted
with the macro-social factor, region. Chinese students in Taiwan and Mainland China
intended to utilize a variety of compliment strategies in similar ways across
appearance/possession and performance/ability situations. Put differently, the occurrences of
compliment strategies varied according to the topics of compliments, regardless of the
varieties of Mandarin Chinese. The evidence from the present study suggested that situational
variation was more influential than the effect of region with regard to the speech act of
compliments.
5.
Conclusion
The current study contributes to the field of variational pragmatics by investigating a
speech act (compliments), in an under-researched non-Indo-European language, Chinese. In
terms of regional variation, the study indicated that there were more intra-lingual similarities
than differences between Taiwan and Mainland Chinese compliments. For example, the
student participants in the two regions exhibited clear preferences for ‘explicit compliments’,
in keeping with previous studies. Furthermore, both groups employed three implicit
compliment strategies more frequently comprising ‘implicit requests’, ‘implicit assumptions’
and ‘implicit want statements’, though situational differences were identified in the two
varieties of Chinese, with the first two strategies appearing more in performance situations
and the last in appearance- or possession-related scenarios. With regard to intra-lingual
variations, Mainland Chinese respondents produced significantly more ‘explicit compliments’
and ‘implicit admiration’ compliments whereas Taiwan Chinese participants offered more
‘implicit request’ compliments. The findings in the present study lend support to Barron and
Schneider’s (2009) argument that pragmatic variations do indeed exist between different
varieties of the same language.
This study does not attempt to and cannot generalize the findings to represent Chinese
speakers in either Taiwan or Mainland China for two reasons. First, the participants were
sampled from only one area in each region and thus the data were not fully representative of
21
large populations. Second, the data were generated from a DCT which elicits the pragmatic
knowledge and perceptions of a cultural group instead of their actual language performance.
Consequently, further research could focus on Chinese participants from other areas or even
other regions, for instance, Hong Kong and Singapore, by employing a range of elicitation
instruments (for example, role play) in order to gather speech acts in interaction (Kasper,
2006). In addition, the issue of individual variability was not addressed in the current study, a
subject for future investigations. It should also be noted that none of the compliment
strategies in the present study were exclusively employed by either Taiwan Chinese or
Mainland Chinese. That is, the compliment strategies identified were not region-exclusive but
region-preferential, a matter of weighting of one strategy over the other(s) by a specific group
of speakers.
As Schneider and Barron (2008) indicate, the future tasks in variational pragmatics are to
determine which values are preferred in specific regional varieties of a language and whether
other national or sub-national cultures are equally homogeneous or heterogeneous in the
aspects under investigation. Since the vast majority of Chinese compliments in the present
study were realized in merely four compliment strategies, there seems to be some evidence
that Chinese compliments appear to be predictable on the strategic level. It is proposed that
compliments are formulaic not merely on the syntactic and semantic levels across languages
but also on the strategic level but further research in variational pragmatics is needed to
explore this notion. Moreover, in light of previous studies on compliments of different
English varieties, the present investigation indicated that Chinese compliments may be
converging towards western cultures to some extent. As discussed in section 4.1.3, in
comparison with Ye’s (1995) and Yuan’s (2002) studies, there were higher frequencies in the
present study of ‘explicit compliments’ and ‘implicit compliments’ while the frequency of
‘opt-outs’ was remarkably lower in the current study as compared to previous studies.
Possibly influenced by some westerners’ generosity in offering compliments, Chinese
speakers may be more willing to express their positive intentions either explicitly or implicitly
instead of refraining from showing their admiration. Moreover, in line with widespread
appearance compliments in American English (Yu, 2005), compliments on appearance have
become more popular in Chinese as evidenced in the present data. It is possible that these two
noteworthy instances may reflect an ongoing change in cultural values and social norms
regarding Chinese compliments. Future studies might fruitfully explore the extent to which
the influence of western cultures is also evident in other speech acts or at other levels of
analysis.
22
Appendix A
Written Discourse Completion Task for Taiwanese Students
Situation 1 (Mobile Phone Situation)
A student compliments his/her male classmate on his new mobile phone.
你和同學王正凱已經同班了二年，並有著共同的興趣－彈吉他，因而加入了民謠吉他
社。課後，你們常會一起練吉他。現在是午餐時間，正當你們用餐到一半時，他的手
機響了，你發現他換了新手機，你喜歡這支的造型和功能，你會對他說：
Situation 2 (Class Presentation Situation)
A student compliments his/her female classmate on her good presentation.
這學期，你和林欣怡因選修了同一門英文課而認識。有時，你們會在圖書館一起唸書
。修此課的學生均須完成一份企劃。現已接近學期末，今天每位同學都要上台作簡報
。林欣怡報告時，充滿自信，有不錯的表現，你覺得她的簡報很有趣，也很有條理。
下課後，你走向她並對她說：
Situation 3 (Hair Style Situation)
A student compliments his/her male classmate on his new hairstyle.
剛開學第一週，你正要去圖書館還暑假期間借閱的書。在去圖書館的路上，你遇見了
同學陳松翰。你們去年曾選修同一門科目。暑假時，你們有時會相約出去或一起看電
影。你發現他換了新髮型，覺得此髮型很適合他，你走向他並對他說：
Situation 4 (Handbag Situation)
A student compliments his/her female friend on her new handbag.
今天是你好朋友李佩姍的生日，你們從小學相識至今，一直都有保持聯絡。在生日派
對上，你發現她戴了一個新款的包包。你上週末逛街時，就已注意到這款包包。這時
，你會對她說：
Situation 5 (Basketball Competition Situation)
A student compliments his/her male classmate on his excellent performance in a basketball
competition.
今天是學校的運動會，下午有場校際籃球比賽。你的同學劉志成將代表你們學校參加
比賽。他很有運動細胞，球技很好，是籃球社社長。你們已認識了二年。最近，你也
迷上此項運動，和他一起打籃球。你們學校贏得了比賽，賽後，你走向他並對他說：
Situation 6 (Weight Loss Situation)
A student compliments his/her female friend on her weight loss.
某個星期六下午，你在市區逛街時，遇見了中學時期的同學陳嘉綺。以前，你們下課
23
後有時會玩在一起。畢業後，仍偶爾會保持聯絡。因為你們很久沒碰面，你發現她變
瘦了，也變得更漂亮了，你走向她並對她說：
Situation 7 (PE Test Situation)
A student compliments his/her male classmate on his success in physical education (PE) test.
每到學期末，體育課都要做體能測試，你同學張偉哲每次都輕易通過考試。你們都是
登山社的成員，假日常會去爬山，知道他的體力很好，是個運動健將。今天的體能測
驗，他依然順利通過，這時，你會對他說：
Situation 8 (Talent Show Situation)
A student compliments his/her female junior uni-mate on her good performance in a talent
show.
今天學校舉辦了才藝表演比賽，前三名的參賽者將獲得大奬，因此吸引許多學生報名
參加。有一位學妹林玉婷正在台上演奏鋼琴。之前，你曾在校園看過她，也跟她說過
數次話。你非常喜歡她的表演，演奏後，你會對她說：
Sample of the situation 1 for Mainland Chinese students
A student compliments his/her male classmate on his new mobile phone.
你和同学王正凯已经同班了两年，并有着共同的兴趣—弹吉他，因而加入了民谣吉他
社。课后，你们常会一起练吉他。现在是午饭时间，正当你们用餐到一半时，他的手
机响了，你发现他换了新手机，你喜欢这支手机的造型和功能，你会对他说：
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