Abstract:
Complimenting behavior, as a common speech act of human beings, has become an intriguing topic in linguistics and its sub-branches. Compliment responses can be seen as solutions for maintaining a balance between (1) a preference to avoid self-praise and (2) a preference to accept or agree with the compliment (Pomerantz 1978). In the present study, the definition of a compliment draws on the work of Holmes (1988).The present study explored compliment responses in of 454 Iranian university students according to the Manes & Wolfson’s (1981) study that demonstrated compliments are highly Formulaic. Therefore the main concern in this study was to determine the basic syntactic forms and categories that carry the compliment’s positive evaluation in Farsi. The Collected data were analyzed according to the syntactic patterns and topics of the compliments in relation to the sex of the participants.
Machine summary:
Holmes (1995) did a study in New Zealand that examined differences in the way men and women use compliments.
It is widely accepted that women regard compliments as a means of expressing rapport and solidarity, while men regard compliments as face threatening or controlling devices, at least in some contexts, (Holmes, 1995: 125).
This study is based on Manes & Wolfson's (1981) study that demonstrated compliments are highly formulaic, so the main concern in this study is to determine the basic syntactic forms and categories that carry the compliment's positive evaluation in Iranian university students.
Because in this study a large majority of the data collectors were female students8, the most obvious pattern revealed by the data is that women gave and received significantly more compliments than men did.
Because the compliments in our data appear to occur more frequently between females and to be given most commonly by females, the researchers like to see whether there are differences in the linguistic patterns and lexical items between males and females.
She found that the pattern NP BE (INT) ADJ/LOOK ADJ appeared to be the most widely used English compliment formula regardless of dialect or sex, accounting for at least 40% of her data in the samples analyzed.
As Table 1 reveals, the syntactic pattern "I like/love NP" occurred much less than the pattern NP/PRON V (INT) ADV In addition, most of the compliment patterns in the data make use of adjectives to express the positive evaluation of the complimenters.