Compliments in Cross‐Cultural Perspective

It is well known that languages differ greatly from one another in their patterns and norms of interaction. Up to now, however, there has been very little systematic comparison of language from the points of view of speech acts and rules of speaking. The speech act of complimenting, as an example of the kind of sociolinguistic information needed in order to understand the problems of language learners, is here examined in some detail. The semantic and syntactic structure of compliments in American English is described and comparisons are made with complimenting behavior in other cultures.