Compliment and compliment responses in Italian

The paper will present the main results of my research into compliments in Italian, a language in which there are almost no studies on this topic. In this research two different methodological approaches are used (Jucker 2009), in order to verify whether their integration can give a deeper insight into the object of analysis, i.e.: a) the conversation analysis approach: a large corpus of spontaneous spoken language was recorded in a wide range of situations (in Catania and Rome) and submitted to conversation analysis. This method makes it possible to reconstruct the complex pragmatic functioning of the exchange of compliments, as they are examined not as single isolated speech acts, but in connection with the addressee’s responses (Alfonzetti 2009); b) the interview method: a questionnaire was submitted to 300 speakers, in order to elicit their perceptions and opinions on some of the main theoretical issues that emerged from the analysis (Alfonzetti in press a and b). The paper will be structured as follows: 1. compliments and politeness: I will briefly discuss the suitability of the major perspectives on politeness – the social-norm view; the face-saving view (Brown and Levinson 1987); the conversational- maxim view (Leech’s 1983) – to account for the exchange of compliments; 2. definition of compliments: I will state three main criteria to categorize compliments in conversation: (i) a pragmatic criterion (compliments are hybrid speech acts combining expressive with verdictive illocutionary force); (ii) a formal criterion (implicit and explicit compliments); a sequential criterion (the initiative position serves to distinguish a prototypical compliment from positive evaluative utterances produced as a reaction to a request for an opinion or a self-denigration); 3. functions of compliments: compliments serve a wide range of functions in social interaction: ritual/normative, interactional/phatic, directive, reddressive, etc; 4. responses to compliments: compliments trigger a wide range of response types and this is due either to their double illocutionary force or to the dilemma they pose for the recipient, i.e. between agreeing with the compliment and avoiding self-praise (cf. Pomerantz 1978). An overview of the main strategies Italian speakers use to overcome this dilemma will be given; 5. modulation in compliment-response sequences: in spontaneous talk, compliments and responses form sequences of very different length and structure, within which modulation follows two directions: the complimenter tends to intensify the amount of praise, whereas the addressee tends to mitigate it, as it is predicted by Leech’s Approval Maxim (Maximize the approval of other) and Modesty Maxim (Minimize the praise of self), respectively.