Compliments In The Yemeni Society: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Nada Qanbar

Abstract


This paper is a wide-range empirical investigation of the compliment behavior in the Yemeni speech community. It seeks to investigate its distribution, the structures and syntactic patterns of a compliment expression, the attributes praised, and how compliment is influenced by the sex and social status of both the complimenter and the receiver of the compliment. The corpus of the study consists of 400 compliments collected by the author through an ethnographic method. 20 students studying at Taiz University in Yemen participated in the study. The study reveals that a compliment in Yemeni society is formulaic. 65.75% of compliments in Yemeni Arabic fall into major identifiable syntactic patterns and 55% of the compliments contain adjectives, almost two thirds of which are fixed adjectives. This formulaic nature of compliments in Yemeni society supports that their function is to consolidate solidarity and maintain relationship. The corpus also reveals that 60% of compliments occur among females, and the majority of compliments are on ‘Appearance’, followed by ‘Personal Traits’. The majority of compliments are paid and received among equal status, and the least frequent compliments are given by lower status to higher status.


Keywords


compliments; speech act; Face Threatening Act; gender differences; social status; Yemeni compliments

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdul Sattar, H, Che Lah, S. & Suleiman, R. (2011). Refusal strategies in English by Malay university students. Gema Online™ Journal of Language Studies, 13, 69-81.

Bach, K. (1997). The semantics-pragmatics distinction: What it is and why it matters. Linguistische Berichte, Special Issue on Pragmatics, 8, 33-50.

Bayraktaroglu, A, & Sifianou, M. (2001). Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish. John Benjamin’s: Publishing Company.

Barnlund D. & Araki, S. (1985). Intercultural encounters: The management of compliments by Japanese and Americans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 16(1), 9-26.

Blum-Kulka, S.House, J. & Kasper, G. (1989). Investigating cross-cultural pragmatics: An introductory overview. In S. Blum-Kulka, J.House & G.Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural

pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 1-34). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chen, R. (1993). Responding to compliments: A contrastive study of politeness strategies between English & Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 20, 49-75.

Chen, R & Yang, D. (2010). Responding to compliments in Chinese: Has it changed? Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1951-1963.

Croft, W. (1994). Sentence typology and the taxonomy of speech acts. In S. Tsohatzidis (Ed.), Foundations of speech act theory (pp. 460-77). London: Routledge.

Farghal, M. & Al-Katib, M. (2001). Jourdainan College students’s response to compliments: A pilot study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(9), 1485-1502.

Farghal, M. (2006). Compliment behaviour in Bilingual Kwaiti college students. International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 9(1), 94-118.

Herbert, R. (1990). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. Language in Society, 19, 201-224.

Holmes, J. (1984). Women's language: A functional approach. General Linguistics, 24(3), 149-178.

Holmes, J. (1988a). Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics, 28(4), 485-508.

Holmes, J. (1987).Paying compliments: A sex-preferential politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 445-465.

Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. London and New York: Longman.

Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1989). L'approche interactionneile enlinguistique. Buscila L'interaction, 7-25.

Knapp, M., Hopper, R., & Bell, R. (1984). Compliments: A descriptive taxonomy. Journal of Communication 34, 19 -31.

Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Women’s place. New York: Harper and Row.

Lee, C. (2009). Compliments and responses during Chinese New Year celebration. Journal of Pragmatics, 19(4), 519-541.

Manes, J. (1983). Compliments: A mirror of cultural values. In N, Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 96-102). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Manes, J. & Wolfson, N. (1981). The compliment formula. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine (pp. 115-132). The Hague: Mouton.

Mey, J. (1998). Pragmatics: An introduction. Oxford UK &Cambridge USA: Blackwell.

Morgan, J. (1977). Two types of convention in indirect speech acts. Cambridge: Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc.

Nelson, G., Bakary, W. & Al Batal, M. (1993). Egyptian and American compliments: A cross-cultural study. International Journal of Inter Cultural Relations, 1(72), 293- 313.

Nelson,G., Bakary, W. & AL Batal, M. (1996). Egyptian and American compliments: Focus on second language learners. In S. M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 109-128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Qu, J.& Li-Ying, W. (2005). Pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Chinese learners of English. Sino-US English Teaching, 2(12), 64-74.

Ruhi, S. (2007). Higher-order intentions and self-politeness in evaluations of (Im) politeness: The relevance of compliment responses. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 27(2), 107-145.

Sadock, J. (2004). Speech acts: Handbook of pragmatics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Shouby, E. (1951). The influence of the Arabic language on the psychology of the Arabs. Middle East Journal, 5, 284-302.

Spooner, B. (1976). The evil eye in the Middle East. In C. Maloney (Ed.), The evil eye (pp. 76-84). New York: Columbia University Press.

Tang, C. & Zhang, G. (2009). A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(2), 325-345.

Tannen, D. (1997). Women and men talking: An interactional sociolinguistics approach. In M.R. Walsh (Ed.), Women, men, and gender (pp. 28-90). New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91-109.

Weatherall, A. (2002). Gender, language and discourse. Routledge: New York.

Wierzbicka, A.(1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Wolfson, N. (1981). Compliments in cross-cultural perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 15, 117-124.

Wolfson, N. (1983). An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 82-95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Wolfson, N. (1989). Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. New York: Newbury House/Harper and Row.

Wolfson, N.& Manes, J. (1980). The compliment as a social strategy. Znternutionui Journal of Human Communication, 13, 391-410.

Ye, L. (1995). Complimenting in Mandarin Chinese. In G. Kasper (Ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese as a native and target language (pp. 207-295). Manoa, Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021