Compliments are speech acts in which the speaker expresses admiration for the addressee, who is positively evaluated either directly or indirectly for something or someone connected with him/her. Compliments are therefore hybrid speech acts combining expressive and verdictive illocutionary force. What counts as a positive evaluation crucially depends on the cultural value systems holding in a given society, and also on the addressee’s personal values. Consequently, the compliment status of an utterance is often uncertain and needs to be negotiated with the addressee. This is the main reason why compliments are better understood in connection with responses, as part of whole conversation sequences. Because of their dual illocutionary force and the conflict between two politeness maxims (agreement and modesty), compliments trigger a wide range of response types in all languages studied up to date. Compliments satisfy an existential need to praise and be praised and as such are universal speech acts, having several functions in social interaction. The enormous amount of research – carried out from different theoretical and methodological perspectives – shows a great deal of cross–cultural variation in the sociolinguistic norms regulating the exchange of compliments, as concerns frequency, gender, age, role relationship among participants, topic and modulation of their intensity.

Compliments

ALFONZETTI, Giovanna Marina
2013-01-01

Abstract

Compliments are speech acts in which the speaker expresses admiration for the addressee, who is positively evaluated either directly or indirectly for something or someone connected with him/her. Compliments are therefore hybrid speech acts combining expressive and verdictive illocutionary force. What counts as a positive evaluation crucially depends on the cultural value systems holding in a given society, and also on the addressee’s personal values. Consequently, the compliment status of an utterance is often uncertain and needs to be negotiated with the addressee. This is the main reason why compliments are better understood in connection with responses, as part of whole conversation sequences. Because of their dual illocutionary force and the conflict between two politeness maxims (agreement and modesty), compliments trigger a wide range of response types in all languages studied up to date. Compliments satisfy an existential need to praise and be praised and as such are universal speech acts, having several functions in social interaction. The enormous amount of research – carried out from different theoretical and methodological perspectives – shows a great deal of cross–cultural variation in the sociolinguistic norms regulating the exchange of compliments, as concerns frequency, gender, age, role relationship among participants, topic and modulation of their intensity.
2013
978-3-11-023201-1
compliments atti linguistici metodologia; compliments speech acts methodological overview
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11769/71137
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