论文总字数：31548字

摘 要

称赞语作为一种重要的礼貌语言，在中英跨文化交际中起着重要的作用。由于社会背景和文化价值的不同, 称赞语也存在着各自的特点。本文以中国英语学习者使用的英语称赞语为例，从中英称赞语在语言形式、话题分布、应答策略、语用原则方面所存在的差异的角度出发，探析由这些差异带来的中国英语学习者称赞语运用失误的原因，并为中国英语学习者提出避免失误的策略。以期了解这些差异并减少在跨文化交流方面出现的误解局面，提高跨文化交际能力。

关键词：称赞语；语用失误；差异；跨文化交际

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Theoretical Basis for This Research 2

3.1 Definition of Compliment 2

3.2 Definition of Pragmatics 3

3.3 Definition of Pragmatic Failures 3

4. Causes of English Learners’ Pragmatic Failures in Using English Compliments 4

4.1 Differences in Language Forms 4

4.2 Differences in Topic Distribution 6

4.3 Differences in Response Strategies 7

4.4 Differences in Pragmatic Principles 8

5. Strategies to Avoid Pragmatic Failures in Using English Compliments 11

5.1 Making Clear the Relationship Between Language and Culture 11

5.2 Intensifying Communication Practice with Native English Speakers 12

5.3 Adapting to the Social Context 13

6. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 16

1. Introduction

In linguistics, compliment is often defined as “a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some good (possessions, characteristic, skill, etc.) that is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer.” (Holmes, 1986: 485) From this definition, we can see that compliments are intercommunication between the speaker and the listener, which are the commendatory comments of the former on the latter. Therefore, compliments both have communicative function, and expressive function.

Compliments are usually intended to have a positive impact on interpersonal relations. As a kind of polite speech act, compliment has attracted more and more attention of linguists who have done many studies. These studies are helpful for English learners, especially important to those people who participate in intercultural communication. However, different moral values, traditional cultures and customs make compliments of English and Chinese have many differences in language forms, topic distributions, response strategies and pragmatic principles. And these differences lead to English learners’ pragmatic failures in using English compliments directly or indirectly.

This paper is through contrastive analysis, comparing compliments of English and Chinese in language forms, topic distributions, response strategies and pragmatic principles, and it also gives some strategies to English learners to avoid pragmatic failures in using English compliments and improve their communication competence in cross-cultural communication.

2. Literature Review

As a kind of speech act frequently used, compliment has caused wide concern and research from scholars. Since the publication of Compliment Responses by Pomerantz in 1978, many linguists such as Manes, Wolfson, Herbert and Holmes have studied compliment and compliment responses. With the development of linguistics in China, domestic study on compliments and compliment responses has become more and more important in recent years.

In 1992, Gu Yueguo published an article Politeness, Pragmatics and Culture in the Foreign Language Teaching and Research, describing the relationship between politeness, pragmatics and culture. In 1997, Jia Yuxin published Intercultural Communication, in which through questionnaire survey and from the aspects of syntactic structure and semantic composition, English and Chinese compliments are analyzed contrastively. In 2000, in the Compliments in Cross-cultural Studies published in the Journal of Sichuan International Studies University, Duan Chenggang made a quantitative study on the written compliment architecture through experimental method of corpus collection section.

In most cases, these researches analyzed compliments from the aspect of speech act theory, and carried on little comparative analysis from pragmatic principles on Chinese and English compliments. This paper attempts to take pragmatic principles as one of its theoretical frameworks, through compliments of English learners and native English speakers used in their daily life as examples of comparative analysis, and tries to analyze English learners’ pragmatic failures, further to provide some help to successful cross-cultural communication.

3. Theoretical Basis for This Research

3.1 Definition of Compliment

Compliment is a common language phenomenon, whose basic function is not transmitting information, but shortening the social distance between communicators, making contacts and maintaining social interpersonal relationship.(Holmes, 1987: 445) Therefore, compliments are called “social lubricant” (Wolfson, 1983: 89) by linguists. The basic structure of compliments is composed of “compliment and response” and the two behaviors are indispensable. From the perspective of social behavior, compliment embodies value judgment, evaluation, and appreciation of things in daily communication, and is the external reflection of social culture value. (WangQin, 2007: 28）Therefore, different cultural backgrounds make compliment’s content, language forms, response patterns form have different characteristics, only by understanding these different characteristics caused by cultural differences, it is possible to avoid pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication.

3.2 Definition of Pragmatics

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the way in which context contributes to meaning. It studies specific words in certain circumstances, and studies how to understand and produce language through context. Pragmatics contains speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology (Mey, 1993: 23). Context is the core concept in pragmatics. Pragmatics studies the exchange of meaning which relies not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any existing knowledge about those covered, the inferred purpose of the speaker, and other factors.

3.3 Definition of Pragmatic Failures

Thomas is the earliest scholar studying pragmatic failure; she divided pragmatic failure into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistic failure is mainly the misuse of language expression style and language expression structure, which refers to the pragmatic meaning that non-native speakers give to an utterance is different from what native speakers give to the utterance, or speakers move speech act tactics of first language to second language inappropriately. Sociopragmatic failure refers to errors occur due to not knowing or ignoring social cultural background differences between both languages.(Tomas, 1983:56)

He Ziran was the first Chinese scholar to introduce the theory of pragmatic failures. He believed that pragmatic failures are not errors concerning language forms, but are errors that result from the use of inappropriate spoken language, or wrong words, and make the utterance cannot achieve desired effect.(He Ziran, 1997:226)

4. Causes of English Learners’ Pragmatic Failures in Using English Compliments

The differences in culture and value between the English and the Chinese lead to differences in language forms, topic distribution, response strategies and pragmatic principles between Chinese and English compliments. And these differences are exactly causes which lead to English learners’ pragmatic failures in using English compliments. In this paper, contrastive analysis of Chinese and English compliments will be made in these four aspects, and examples of pragmatic failures in using English compliments will be listed, in order to further understand causes of these pragmatic failures.

4.1 Differences in Language Forms

4.1.1 Lexical differences

In English, adjectives in English vocabulary are mostly used to express the meaning of compliments, which proportion is around 80%, and are embodied in these words such as nice, good, lovely, beautiful, great and pretty.

For example:

1. Your apartment is nice.

2. It was a great meal.

In addition, the frequently used verbs include like, love, enjoy, admire and be impressed by etc.

For example: I like your shoes.

According to Li Yuee and Feng Jianghong’s survey of Mandarin, firstly, 81.9% Chinese compliments are adjectives, embodied in some words as beautiful, good, high, cool; secondly, 11.1% Chinese compliments are nouns , such as “a hand (two hand), two, skill” in compliments.( Li Yuee amp; Feng Jianghong, 2000:28)

For example: You are a genius. (你真有才)

By contrast, the use of verb is less, which ratio is only 7.1%. The commonly used verbs include “admire, praise” etc. Therefore, in cross-cultural communication, when a Chinese person wants to compliment an English person about his good talent, the Chinese may say, “You have good talents.”, which sounds a little strange to the English person, for the English usually use the utterance “You’re talented.” to praise others’ ability.

4.1.2 Syntactic differences

English compliments have 3 fixed sentence formats, which are frequently employed with ratio over 80%. (Manes and Wolf son, 1981: 117-124)

1. PRON. be really a NP. [This was really a good meal.]

2. I (really) like/love NP. [I like your car.]

3. NP. be/ look (really) ADJ. [Your dress looks nice.].

Statistical data shows that Chinese compliment sentences have the following patterns:

1. (PRON.) NP. (ADV.) ADJ. [A wonderful game!]

2. (You) NP. V. ADJ. [You did very well!]

3. PRON. (really) is ADJ. NP. [This is really good book!]

Comparing language examples, we find that English compliments are more likely have the first person pronoun “I” in the beginning. By contrast, many Chinese compliments start with the second person pronoun “you”. English compliments are of common form of “I (really) like/ love.” to express praise and appreciation to others. While in Chinese, in order to avoid making the other person feel being envied, Chinese people generally do not use “I love to your ...” to compliment each other about something. But in the English culture, expressing personal love can let others know your thinking and can also shorten the social distance, and maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships.

Therefore, in cross-cultural communication, an English person’s utterance of “I like your little sister. She is so lovely.” to compliment the Chinese person’s sister, may cause the Chinese person to be a little uncomfortable.

4.2 Differences in Topic Distribution

As for the content of compliments，Wolfson, on the basis of her data, divided it into two major categories: those which relate to appearance and those which comment on ability (Wolfson and Judd, 1983: 90). After that, many Chinese scholars also do research on this issue to develop Wolfson’s view. In summary, the content of compliments mainly falls into the following categories:

1. appearance (one’s looks include haircut, eyes and clothing)

2. performance and ability (a well-done job, a skill played game, or verbal performance)

3. possessions (a personal possessions，including children，spouse and property)

4. personality (loyalty，kindness，maturity and mentality)

However, Chinese people and American people adopt somewhat different attitudes toward compliments concerning topics above.

For instance, as for compliments on appearance, American women are willing to accept others’ compliments; but for Chinese women, if a person offers compliment on her appearance, his act would likely be taken as a kind of offence.

Another example is that Americans can compliment their families in front of strangers, including praising their children like that “He is smart in the school basketball game.” and etc. Chinese people will think it is of too much vanity. Chinese in general compliment others’ families in front of people, in order to produce modest expressions, such as “my wife”（贱内）and honorific words such as “your father”.（令尊）

Moreover, as to get along with relatives and neighbors is a Chinese tradition, we are concerned about each other and assist each other, so it is easy to know to others’ privacy. This situation is quite different from the west. English people lay stress on privacy, so they do not want others to interfere with their personal things. In this case, if a Chinese person want to compliment his American friend’s new car with “Nice car. How much do you pay for it?”, he may make his friend a little uncomfortable, because in his friend’s view, it is his privacy. Thus pragmatic failure is made.

4.3 Differences in Response Strategies

4.3.1 Acceptance strategy

Acceptance strategy is a positive response to the compliments people get. For example, people may say, “Thank you.”, “Yeah, I think it went well, too.”, “I am glad you like it.” As mentioned above, English people will readily adopt this strategy to response other’s compliment. However, Chinese people can’t accept the previous answer this way, because they think that accepting a compliment to some extent means that they are not modest. Take the following dialogue for instance:

In English speaking regions, it is often heard:

A: That’s really a great shirt.

B: Yes, it matches my pants.

While in Chinese speaking environments, people may use the utterance “No, it’s not so great.” to response other’s compliments, which may puzzle the addresser and cause pragmatic failure.

4.3.2 Mitigation strategy

In this strategy, the speaker often transfer or reduce the degree of compliments in a variety of ways to avoid being self-praised, and also avoid negating the addresser’s compliments. It is normal to hear the following conversation in English:

A: Peter, you really did a good job.

B: Did I? Thanks to my brother, he gave me much help.

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