Compliment Responses
Complimentary responses are governed by two contradictory conditions that must be met simultaneously, according to Pomerantz (1978).
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- Agree with the complimenter
- Avoid self-praise
While trying to meet one condition, the complimentee will inevitably conflict with the other. Pomerantz divides American compliment responses into acceptances, agreements, rejections and disagreements.
Herbert (1986) discovered, in his analysis of 1,062 compliment responses, that not all Americans adhere to Pomerantz's conditions. Speakers were "almost twice as likely to respond with some response other than acceptance." Based on these findings Herbert questions whether native speakers of other varieties of English follow the same patterns. He compares American English with English speakers in South Africa. He found that there was a one-in-three chance of an acceptance response being used by an American speaker as opposed to a three-in-four chance of an acceptance response from a South African English speaker. Herbert and Straight (1986) base the reasoning for this difference on the respective social systems of each group. Americans tend to give more compliments in an attempt to establish solidarity; Americans then tend to refuse compliments they receive, stressing equality. In the society of South African English speakers on the other hand, solidarity among status-equals is assumed. They do not need to work to establish something that they already have, so it is easier for them to accept compliments given to them.
Just as there are differences of compliment responses among separate cultures, there are also differences among men and women within the same culture. American women tend to give and receive more compliments than men do. The idea that women's speech activity works much differently compared to that of men can be observed through compliment responses, as women often work at creating and reaffirming solidarity with compliment response strategies. Wolfson found that elaborate responses to compliments among women occur between intimate, status-unequal, and status-equal acquaintances, and that a majority of elaborate responses occurred between status-equal women.
There are major differences in how men and women perceive compliments that are given by the opposite sex. Shotland and Craig (1988) concluded that both sexes can differentiate between friendly behavior and sexually based behavior but that men perceive situations more sexually than women. They hypothesize that this difference in perception is due to the difference between the thresholds of sexual intent of men and women. Therefore, women misjudge interested behavior as friendly behavior because they have a high threshold of sexual intent. Men, on the other hand, misjudge friendly behavior as interested behavior because they have a low threshold for sexual intent. This difference in threshold levels affects the subject matter of compliments given between men and women as well as how they respond to the compliments given.
Read more about this topic: Complimentary Language And Gender
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