A Critique of Contrastive Analysis ofA Critique of Contrastive Analysis ofCompliment between English andCompliment between English andChinese Chinese 1.1. Introduction of the articleIntroduction of the articleRui Yu, Li Fu & Xiao-Yu HousContrastive Analysis ofCompliment between English and Chineseis aclassic inintercultural communication studies. It is published in Journal ofIntercultural Communication StudiesXVI, 2007, Volume 1,Pages 153-162.2.2.Analysis of the articleAnalysis of the articleThe social phenomenon of compliment behavior exists in varioussocieties and linguistic cultures. The compliment behavior can notonly enhance the relationship between communicators but alsoconsolidate and strengthen the solidarity among communicators.Thus, the compliment behavior operates like social lubricant.Compliment responses in Chinese and English have differentcharacteristics because they are influenced by different socialfactors. Consequently,the study on complimenthas been paidextensive attention to.This thesis aims at investigating the1 / 7characteristics of compliment responses in Chinese and English,comparing their differences and similarities and attempting toanalyze the reasons which lead to the differences and similaritiesfromcross-cultural perspective.Based onJuliaGousseva sexperiment, a similar experiment was designed and carried out bythe present author. The purposes were to find the features ofcompliment inChinese byChinese students, todiscoversimilarities and differences of compliment between English andChinese and to explore the reasons why the differences inlinguistic performance exist.This article provides deeper research on this subject andexamines genre of written discourse. Most of previous studiesabroad and in China focus on the syntax and the topic ofcompliment behavior itself. This article also claims that most of thestudies,such as its function,implication,andcauses are basedmostly on the study on the oral compliment.As for the oral compliment,this paper shows it very clear inthe literature review. And it demonstrates the syntactic differencesbetween Chinese and English compliments by the table.When itcomes to the research on the written complient,it mentionsfocusly on the gender difference in compliment.In this thesis, the quantitative method and the qualitative method2 / 7are adopted. It collects materials from college students at ChineseDepartment of a University,and native speakers of Chinese andnon-English majors. The experiment was carefully designed so asto keep great resemblance with that of Julia Goussevas. And thestudy consisted of two parts, gender-linked features, such aspositive evaluation, intensifiers and personal involvement, and discourse strategies, such as good/bad new strategies,opening, closing and framing strategies, and their interests wereon the differences associated genders. Then it analyzes the dataand summarizes the different characteristics on complimentresponses in Chinese and English through a couple of tables.Finally, it explains the differences in the application of linguisticforms and strategy to the compliment, so as to learn the socialand cultural factors that might account for these differences.The major findings of this study are as follows: thebiggest difference lies in the use of positive evaluation, that is tosay the American students use more positive evaluation. This maybe explained by that many Americans are very active in expressingtheir ideas and feelings while more Chinese would like to chooseneutral words and restrain their feeling, for many of them weretaught to be observed and not to be heard when they were young.Most of the English speakers tend to accept compliments.3 / 7Moreover, they often offer series of comments on the objectcomplimented when they accept compliments. They usuallyexpress their disagreement directly when they reject compliments.In addition, English speaker use some combined strategies toexpress their responses to compliment. The Americanstudents use more first person pronoun and lessthird person pronouns than their Chinesecounterparts. It is known to us that the idea of being self-orientedis favored by many people in America. They intend to maximizethe use of first person pronoun in order to show their opiniondirectly in interaction. On the contrary, the idea of other-orientedhas exerted influence over China for thousands of years, and manyChinese learn to minimize self importance by maximizing the useof the third person pronoun. Most of Chinese people tend toreject compliments. When they accept compliments, Chinesepeople often transfer the eompliment to some third person or tothe object itself. Besides, Chinese speakers have one morestrategyDeterminationExpression to respond to compliment.They tend to express their determinations when they meetcomplimentfrom persons who have higher status. In addition,Chinese speakers employ more diverse sub-strategies to respondto compliments than English speakers. Finally, More Chinese4 / 7speakers tend to give no response when they meet complimentsthan English speakers. Chinese college students tend toaccept compliments much more frequently than other people. Thereason lies in students adaptation to the change of culture whichresults from social development and the influence of foreigncultures. The reason of all these differences can attribute totheir adaptation to different social worlds, which include differenttraditional values,different politeness principles, differentrealization of face, and influence of western culture.The study hassome significance. Firstly, this study helps usunderstanddifferences between Chinese and English compliment responses.Thus, pragmatic mistakes in the cross-cultural communication canbe avoided. Secondly, this study also gives the analysis of theChinese compliment responses which enables more foreigners toknow and accept Chinese communicationcriterions. Finally, itmakes a conclusion that culture and language are interwoven, andthe inclination of communicative choices is closely associated withsocial norms and cultural background.3. Critique of the articleAs summarized above, this is a good article with awell-chosen topic supported by many well-devised studies, whichset a model for the following studies.5 / 7The studies are rigorous in that the deeper research on thissubject from cross cultural perspective. Besides, in the study, thepeer review and comparison among various aspects of Americancompliment and Chineses were taken into consideration. Thisstudy helps us understand differences between Chinese andEnglish compliment responses. The research on syntax betweenEnglish and Chinese shows clearly that there are much differencein oral compliment. Pragmatic mistakes in the cross-culturalcommunicationcan be avoided. The finding that theAmericancompliment resembles the Chinese one in forms, strategies andfunctions in the situation under study. Meanwhile, it also provesthat a great deal of discrepancy emerges in the use of positiveevaluation, of the 1and 3strdperson pronouns and of somediscourse strategies, which are worth studying.In addition, the writers also found that the biggest difference liesin the use of positive evaluation, that is to say the Americanstudents use more positive evaluation. This may be explained bythat many Americans are very active in expressing their ideas andfeelings while more Chinese would like to choose neutral wordsand restrain their feeling, for many of them were taught to beobserved and not to be heard when they were young. This studyalso improves that language is the carrier and mirror of its6 / 7respective culture, which makes the whole research moreconvincing.Moreover, the finding that he American students use more firstperson pronoun and less third person pronouns than their Chinese counterparts has profoundpedagogical implications and opens a new area for furtherresearch.However, there are also some drawbacks in this article.On the one hand, it is not clear on compliment responses.Andthe compliment responses are very few At the same time, studiesof compliment from the aspect of pragmatics are limited innumber. Therefore, this thesis can explore and analyzecomplimentresponses from anothernew perspective and the paper may bemore convincing.On the other hand, though after a couple of studies showedgreat progress, the question why men and women adopt suchwhy men and women adopt suchdifferent evaluationsdifferent evaluations has not been emphasized.To conclude, the studies are still rigorous and this article is stillquite informative, convincing and thought-provokingthoughthere are some shortcomings.This study analyzes the differencebetween Chinese and English compliment from a new perspectiveand a new inspiration can be given to other researchers.7 / 7