Compliments and Compliment Responses in Italian

In my research on compliments in Italian (language in which there are almost no studies on this topic) I tried to integrate two different methodological approaches: a) the field method, in particular the conversation analytical approach: a large corpus of spontaneous spoken language was recorded in a wide range of situations (in Catania and Rome), transcribed and then submitted to conversation analysis. This method allows to reach a deep understanding of the complex pragmatic functioning of compliment exchanges in conversation, as compliments are examined not as single isolated speech acts, but in connection with the addressee’s responses, as part of whole sequences of talk (Alfonzetti 2009); b) the armchair method, in particular the interview method (Jucker 2009): a questionnaire was submitted to 300 speakers, in order to elicit their perceptions and opinions on some of the main theorethical issues which emerged from the analysis of the corpus (Alfonzetti in press a and b). Here the main results of the research on the field will be presented. The paper will be structured as follows: 1. compliments and politeness: I will shortly discuss the major perspectives on politeness – i.e. the social-norm view; the face-saving view (Brown and Levinson 1987); the conversational-maxim view (Leech’s 1983), ect. – and their suitability to account for the exchange of compliments in conversation; 2. definition of compliments: I will state three main criteria which allow to categorize compliments in conversation: (i) a pragmatic criterion (compliments are hybrid speech acts combining expressive/behabitive with representative/verdictive illocutionary force); (ii) a formal criterion (implicit and explicit compliments); a sequential criterion (the initiative position within a sequence is essential to distinguish a prototypical compliment from positive evaluative utterances produced as a reaction to a request of opinion or a self-denigration. Consequently, the mere form of an utterance, out of its sequential collocation, is not sufficient to establish its illocutionary force; 3. functions of compliments: compliments are mutifunctional speech acts, serving a wide range of functions in social interaction: (i) ritual/normative (i.e. to comply with social norms and expectations of appropriate behaviour); (ii) interactional/phatic (to establish or increase solidarity and to provide opportunities for conversational topic development; (iii) directive (to reinforce a desired behaviour); reddressive (to mitigate a face threatening act); (iv) ideational (to express cognitive judgements); (v) manipulative (to get a personal profit); 4. responses to compliments: compliments trigger a wide range of response types, in Italian as in all other investigated languages. This is due either to their dual illocutionary force or to the interactional dilemma they pose for the recipient 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. compliment-response sequences: in spontaneous spoken language, compliments and responses form sequences of very different length and internal structure. Within them modulation follows a double direction: the complimenter tends to intensify the amount of praise, whereas the addressee tends to mitigate it in his/her response, as it is predicted by Leech’s Approval Maxim (Maximize the approval of other) and Modesty Maxim (Minimize the praise of self), respectively. Bibliographical references Alfonzetti, Giovanna (2009). I complimenti nella conversazione. Roma, Editori Riuniti University Press. Alfonzetti, Giovanna (in press a), I complimenti nella competenza metacomunicativa dei parlanti. In: Preecedings of XXXI Romanistentag (Bonn 27.09. – 01.10. 2009), Peter Lang. Alfonzetti, Giovanna (in press b) I complimenti in italiano. Riflessioni metapragmatiche. In: Preecedings of XXVI International Congress of Romance Linguistics and Philology (Valencia 6-11 september 2010). Brown, Penelope and Steven C. Levinson (1987), Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Jucker, Andreas H. (2009), Speech act research between armachair, field and laboratory. The case of compliments. In: Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1611–1635 Leech, Geoffrey N. (1983), Principles of Pragmatics. London/New York, Longman. Pomerantz, Anita (1978), Compliment responses: notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints. In: Jim Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, 79–102. New York/San Francisco/London, Academic Press