Abstract: Compliments and compliment responses are used as polite speech acts to maintain social relationship, which is common in all cultures. However, because of different cultures, sexes, ages and so on, people may feel shy, uneasy or embarrassed with regard to the compliments they receive, and thus may have difficulty responding to such compliments appropriately. A lot of studies of compliment responses have shown that this speech event is actually far more complicated than it appears since it involves many linguistic, social and cultural factors. It has caught much attention from the researchers  in  various  fields  of  linguistics. However, most of them focus on the study in English context without considering Chinese context. In order to avoid embarrassment or even misunderstandings between Chinese and English people, the present study will, based on the previous studies, make a contrastive study of the Chinese-English strategies of compliment responses from the perspective of Leech’s Politeness Principle. Also, the social and cultural factors which lead to the differences between them are also explored. The thesis ends with an aim to help English learners have a more profound understanding of compliment responses in cross-cultural communication.

Key words: compliment responding strategy; Politeness Principle; factors

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction.1

2. Literature Review. 1

2.1 Previous Studies on Compliment Responses Abroad

2.2 Previous Studies on Compliment Responses at Home

3. Theoretical Framework.2

4. Contrastive Study on Chinese-English Compliment Response Strategies from the View of Politeness Principle 4 

4.1 Hebert’s Compliment Response Strategies

4.2 Comparison Between Chinese and British Compliment Response Strategies

4.3 Factors accounting for the Different Compliment Response Strategies

    4.3.1 Social Factors

    4.3.2 Cultural Factors

5. Conclusion and Limitation

Bibliography.

Acknowledgements