【正文】 kers of English are often embarrassed by English pliments. They don39。s Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation (Third edition, 1987), the word pliment is interpreted in two aspects when it is used as a noun. First, pliment means an expression of admiration, approval, etc, either in words or by action, eg. by asking somebody for his advice or opinions, or by imitating him. Second, in its plural form, pliments means greetings. Of course, pliments in this paper falls into the first one. Some researchers of pliments adopt the definition a verbal expression of courteous praise by New Webster39。s own face is important。 by working for the mon good, by supporting each other, and by saving others39。s success and future and can only be mented by certain qualified persons. They are prudential and cautious about this type of topics, especially between strangers so as to show politeness to others. Indeed, encoding and decoding politeness is achieved in culturally specific ways. English Compliment Topic In the English society what is plimented generally are aspects of personal appearance which are the result of deliberate effort, not simply natural attractiveness. Indeed, they tend to avoid plimenting on the latter. Compliments on hairstyle are mon。ve lost weight. In China, losing weight may mean that someone has bee sick without noticing the sickness. Far from being a pliment, You39。s face. The use of appropriate semantic and syntactic formulas in different cultures can help the two parties relate more to each other, thus narrowing social gap or social distance. So plimenting and being plimented then bee less embarrassing and unfortable experiences. Differences in the distribution of topics in Chinese pliment and English pliment are potential sources of failure in intercultural munication. That is, there is frequently interaction trouble when members of one cultural group pliment other groups. Therefore, it is essential for the second language students to know as much about pliments in both languages as possible in order to be appropriate when giving a pliment in intercultural situation, hence to improve their intercultural municative petence.婁底職業(yè)技術學院畢業(yè)論文 Differences in Compliment Response Formulas 11 3. Cultural Differences in Compliment Response Formulas The actual munication behavior shows that the fundamental discourse structure of pliment is a kind of adjacency pair (Wardhaugh, 1986). The feature of this structure reveals the cooccurrence of the two categories of utterance behaviors: pliment and response should be cooccurred. That is, if A praises B, B must give a verbal response. Compliment is supposed to be a kind of supportive action (Pomerantz, 1978) from the viewpoint of social behavior. The studies on plimenting behavior will not be thorough without the studies on pliment responses which actually have been received much attention from linguists. As we all know, the Chinese and the Westerners are quite different in cultural backgrounds, world views and thinking patterns. Such differences are also reflected in their different types of responses to pliments. So this chapter focuses respectively on pliment response strategies in English and Chinese and findings in this area offer valuable insights into the parative researches on English pliment responses and Chinese pliment responses. Chinese Compliment Response Formulas Chinese people tend to use more indirect response strategies, most people are intuitively aware that, because pliment giving and responding behavior is used to promote social identities and relations, inappropriate choice of response can lead to face loss. Indirect response strategies in Chinese pliments can be explained by Leech39。 timidness characteristic, which originated from a very conservative 婁底職業(yè)技術學院畢業(yè)論文 Differences in Compliment Response Formulas 12 culture, as reflected in their use of more nonacceptance and nonagreement types of responses to pliments. In addition, their use of such types of responses indicates their desire to maintain social balance with their respective interlocutors, as Nonacceptance replies enable them to shift the plimentary force while Nonagreement responses help them to weaken or deny that force. Chinese social norms require a much higher level of indirectness in social interaction. English Compliment Response Formulas American people use more explicit response strategies. The primary consideration for Americans when they respond to pliments is Leech39。 Chinese qianxu remains at the core of Chinese politeness while modesty is not so valued by English speakers。s (1978) notion of face, individualistic in nature, can be applied to American culture, which emphasizes individual autonomy rather than group harmony. It seems reasonable to assume that people face with the difficult task of responding in a second language in a socially acceptable way. Therefore, in developing intercultural petence, it is important to learn the rules of how to give and accept pliments in American society so as to avoid pragmatic trans fer in intercultural munication. Students have to bee familiar with the cultural norms associated with politeness and face theory as shared by members of American munity. Summary The differences of pliment responses in the Chinese culture, Modesty Maxim is much more heavily weighted and frequently overrides the Agreement Maxim, because“貶己尊人 ”(degrading oneself and upgrading the others) is the characteristic of Chinese polite principle (Gu Yueguo, 1990). The Chinese equivalent of modesty is qianxu, whose cultural connotation is quite different from that of the word in English culture in many ways: Chinese qianxu involves putting down oneself and elevating others while modesty as Leech39。t