A Comparative Study of English- Chinese Compliments英语专业毕业论文.doc

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1、A Comparative Study of English- Chinese ComplimentsAbstract: The conversational mode of the compliment and response features with adjacency structure and exhibits certain regularities, namely, compliment and response are in the form of pairs and mutually influenced. Due to different language using e

2、nvironment and cultural background between English and Chinese, such conversational mode demonstrates great differences on concrete occasion. This paper attempts to explore the pragmatic differences from the aspects of complimenting topics and occasions, form of complimenting and the response to com

3、pliment, thus revealing some cultural characteristics between western and Chinese culture to facilitate cross-cultural communication. Key Words: Compliment; responses; Differences between western and Chinese culture; Cross-cultural; Communication . IntroductionIt is universally recognized that langu

4、age is a scientific system on the one hand and a social activity on the other.Though language is actualized through the mind and the mouth of the individual, we should also see the fact that one not only speaks but also speaks to others. When one has the need to get in contact with another person, c

5、ommunication is bound to occur, and language is the best tool to facilitate communication. Deprived of communication, society would have never come into existence or would have ceased to exist. Deprived of society, the need for language is also hardly justified. In this sense, language forms the maj

6、or link between the individual and society, the language of compliment, as a kind of actual communication language, is of great significance in peoples daily life. Its formula varies in respect of age, sex, status, education, and personality, among other things.Text. The theoretical principle and th

7、e simple formula of complimentGenerally speaking, people in Great Britain and the United States attach much importance to the function of the language of praise. They are always pleased to hear words of praise in their presence, and are willing to praise othersas well. The British Linguist Geoffrey

8、Leech advanced six principles concerning politeness based on British culture, three of which is about the principle of praise, namely, to minimize the use of criticism toward others while complimenting them as much as possible. Another linguist Cruse (2000) illustrated this principle from other aspe

9、cts again. He believes that the speakers choose the expressions that depreciate the status of the hearer to the minimum. Nessa Wolfson, the American sociolinguist, after years of careful study on the language of compliment in American communication, concluded that the lack of creativity is typical o

10、f American compliment under the influence of discourse regulations , social norms as well as the requirement of communication , the patterns of praising can be formulated as the following based on its frequency :Sentence Pattern A: NP is/look (really) ADJExample: This soup is delicious.You hair look

11、s nice like that.Sentence Pattern B: I (really) like (love) NPExample: I like you skirt.I love your scarf.Sentence Pattern C: PRO is (really) (a) ADJ NPExample: Thats a clever answer.Thats a very nice briefcaseAfter analyzing the above simple formulas of compliment we may see that, in terms of the w

12、ords used in compliment, adjective is preferred to verb; approximately, eight out of ten words are adjectives. Moreover, such five adjectives as “nice, good, pretty, beautiful and great” are most commonly used as well as other two verbs, namely, “love and like”. On the other hand, as far as the spea

13、ker is concerned, we may find an interesting fact that whenPeople are trying to please someone by means of compliment, in most cases, it is those who are inferior in social status that please the superior ones and women are more easily complimented and at the same time, they are more ready to praise

14、 others.As Goody pointed out that compliments MAKE HEARER FEEL GOOD, and Wolfson and Manes pointed out that “complimenting can thus be treated as a social strategy employed in order to start, establish, or maintain solidarity with the addressee.” Thus, a series of social functions of compliments can

15、 be summarized as follows: creating or reinforcing solidarity, greeting people, expressing thanks or congratulations, encouraging people, softening criticism and starting a conversation or even getting over embarrassment.The social function of compliments could be:(1) To express admiration or approv

16、al of someones work/ appearance/taste.e.g.: I like your hairs hairstyle.(2) To express greeting/ gratitude/ apologies/ congratulations.e.g.: A: I love the turkey. Its really nice.B: Im glad you liked it.(3) To soften face-threatening acts such as apologies, requests and criticism.e.g.: I am satisfie

17、d with what you have done.(4) To open and sustain conversation (conversation strategy). Linguistic features of compliments.1 Lexical featuresAccording to Manes and Wolfson, 80% of all the compliments are expressed by using an adjective. Two-thirds of the adjectival compliments make use of only five

18、adjectives: nice, good, beautiful, pretty and great, of which they are nice (23%), good(20%), beautiful(9.2%), pretty(9.7%), great(6.2%) respectively. The rest compliments are expressed by a few semantically positive verbs like, love, enjoy, admire and be impressed by, of which like and love account

19、ed for 86%.e.g.: This was a great meal.Bill, you look so nice today.You did a good job.I like your haircut.According to Jia Yuxin, Chinese compliments carried by positive words are mainly adjectives (44%), adverbs (41%) and verbs (5%). e.g.: Your room is really good.You are really an experienced tea

20、cher.You study hard and make progress very rapidly.A special feature is that many of the Chinese compliments begin with the Pronouns “you” or “your”, while in English compliments, the pronoun “I” (as in “I love it” and “I like it”) is more frequently used. .2. Syntactic featureManes and Wolfson foun

21、d that compliments are remarkably formulaic speech acts:“Compliments, as a kind of expression of linguistic communication, are generally formulaic in its structure.” Data collected fromAmerican middle class by Manes and Wolfson has demonstrated that there exists a considerable amount of patterning a

22、t both syntactic and the lexical levels. After analysis, they reached the following conclusion:(1) NP is / looks (really) ADJ. (53%)e.g.: Your blouse is beautiful.(2) I (really) like / love NP. (16.2%)e.g.: I really like your hardwood floors.(3) PRO is (really) (a) ADJ NP. (14.9%)e.g.: Thats really

23、a beautiful car.These three sentence patterns account for 85% of the collected data. In addition, they found six other sentence patterns.(4) You V (a) (really) ADJ NP. (3.3%)e.g.: You did a good job.(5) You V (NP) (really) ADV. (2.7%)e.g.: You really handled that situation well.(6) You have (a) ADJ

24、NP! (24%)e.g.: You have such a beautiful hair.(7) What (a) ADJ NP! (16%)e.g.: What a lovely baby you have!(8) ADJ NP! (16%)e.g.: Nice game!(9) Isnt NP ADJ! (10%)e.g.: Isnt your ring beautiful! (Wolfson, 1989: 111)And Chinese scholar Jia Yuxin also conducted a research on Chinese peoples use of compl

25、iments and found that although basic syntactic-semantic formulas of the conventional complimenting utterances may be similar or even identical (except for the lexical level) in many language”, there are some different syntactic patterns in Chinese and American.English in performing compliments. He p

26、resented his result in the following table for comparison. Another special feature is that for English-native speakers, the pattern“NP is (really) ADJ” is nothing more than a comment on an object, while thePattern “I like / love NP” is just an expression of the speakers opinion about an object. Resp

27、onses of complimentsResponses are the words we reply when we get the compliment from other people in social communication. It is known to all that all the language and actions are certainly constraint to pragmatic rules, which is a kind of intrinsic constraint and always has close relationship with

28、the local culture. Therefore, it is reasonable that we come to the conclusion that the language is closely related to the basic situation of social environment, human relation of the specific country or region, different cultures are representing different cultures. On the one hand, compliment of di

29、fferent countries and regions are quite diverse due to the culture difference, on the other hand, the difference of compliment responses can indicate the culture difference of different countries and regions. The difference on the country culture and language application between the China and the Un

30、ited States have created come obstacles and barriers when a Chinese is learning the English or an American wants to learn the Chinese, every learner should pay attention to the culture difference if he or she really wants to master the target language, which is no matter Chinese or English. This pap

31、er makes research on the frequently used compliment topic that people used in the social communication; it is the money, the friendship, the weight, and the appearance. In the social life and communication in China according to the traditional culture, we often hear that some one make compliments on

32、 the wealth of the other part, such as Your family are so rich, Your family finance is in good state, or You come from a really wealthy family and so on, this is considered as a certain and polite compliment except in some special occasion and situation, for the compliment responses, Chinese people

33、often make reactions by It is not true or We are not so rich, just as common as other people. From the perspective of Chinese culture background, it is very natural and normal to make compliment on the family wealth in China, which will show respect to the counterpart in the conversation and communi

34、cation. However, making compliment on the family wealth is not common in America, if you make compliment on the personal wealth of American people, he or she will be very happy to accept, while if you make compliment on the wealth of his or her family, the American people will be repulsive on this c

35、ompliment, and they will tell you, family wealth is belong to the family, he or she owns their own wealth. Under the influence of American culture, people prefer winning other peoples respect by their own effort, and be a self-made man or self-made women who are recognized by the counter partners in

36、 the social life. At the same time, this does not mean that money is not the success symbol for American people; the reason is that American people are more likely to have people recognize their success arising and coming from their own effort instead of the influence and wealth of their family behi

37、nd. It is a saying that God helps those who help themselves. In America, people are confident that they can be successful if they try hard enough given the good and free market environment. Every one can be famous and rich even if you can only start with scratch. Under the background of market econo

38、my, it is common that we judge a man is successful or not is simply see how much money he or she has and how wonderful life they are living, which is the general rule in many parts of the world. A man without enough money to support his family or social status will not be regarded as successful at a

39、ll. So the most important is that they also want to be complimented on the wealth, but the wealth should be made his own ability and effort, not just lending or get support from his wealthy parents and family. ConclusionAfter reviewing the past research on compliments both in Chinese and English, it

40、 is easy to conclude that compliments, as a way to show ones politeness, are remarkably formulaic in specific culture, although there do exist differences. Therefore, differences of compliments, to some extent, are determined by the differences of cultural values. In addition, particular situation a

41、lso influences the form of compliments. Therefore, in intercultural communication, we should pay special attention to different contexts of situation and different contexts of culture in order to achieve success in dealing with people.References1李瑞华.语用的最高原则- 得体, 英汉语言文化对比研究M.上海外语教育出版社, 1999.9.2 谢贤德.

42、试析compliment在英汉文化中的差异J. 淮北煤师院学报(社会科学版), 1998, (01) .3杨劼,李芳. 英汉称赞语及应答语之跨文化比较J. 广西右江民族师专学报, 2001, (01) . 4 施家炜. 汉英文化称赞语对比分析J. 汉语学习, 2000, (05) .1 Li gang. How to make complimentM.China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Corporation, 1997.2 Jia Yuxin. The communication in cross -cultural

43、 M.ShanghaiForeign Language Education Press, 1997.3Manes, Joan. Compliments: A mirror of cultural values .Sociolinguistics and Language. 1983, .4Wolfson N. Compliments in cross-cultural perspective.J TESOL. Quarterly, 1981,15, 15 (2) :117-124 . 生命列车The Train Of Life1. 不久以前，我读了一本书。书中把人生比作一次旅行。2. 人生一世

44、，就好比是一次搭车旅行，要经历无数次上车、下车; 时常有事故发生; 有时是意外惊喜，有时却是刻骨铭心的悲伤 3. 降生人世，我们就坐上了生命列车。我们以为我们最先见到的那两个人-我们的父母，会在人生旅途中一直陪伴着我们。 4. 很遗憾，事实并非如此。他们会在某个车站下车，留下我们，孤独无助。他们的爱、他们的情、他们不可替代的陪伴，再也无从寻找。 5. 尽管如此，还会有其他人上车。他们当中的一些人将对我们有着特殊的意义。 6. 他们之中有我们的兄弟姐妹, 有我们的亲朋好友。我们还将会体验千古不朽的爱情故事。7. 坐同一班车的人当中，有的轻松旅行。8. 有的却带着深深的悲哀 还有的,在列车上四处奔

45、忙，随时准备帮助有需要的人 9. 很多人下车后，其他旅客对他们的回忆历久弥新 但是，也有一些人，当他们离开座位时，却没有人察觉。10. 有时候，对你来说情深义重的旅伴却坐到了另一节车厢。你只得远离他，继续你的旅程。11. 当然，在旅途中，你也可以摇摇晃晃地穿过自己的车厢，去别的车厢找他 12. 可惜，你再也无法坐在他身旁，因为这个位置已经让别人给占了 .13. 没关系。旅途充满挑战、梦想、希望、离别 就是不能回头。因此，尽量使旅途愉快吧！14. 善待旅途上遇见的所有旅客，找出人们身上的闪光点。15. 永远记住，在某一段旅程中，有人会犹豫彷徨，因为我们自己也会犹豫彷徨。16. 我们要理解他人，因

46、为我们需要他人的理解。17. 生命之谜就是：我们在什么地方下车？坐在身旁的伴侣在什么地方下车？我们的朋友在什么地方下车？我们无从知晓 18. 我时常这样想：到我该下车的时候，我会留恋吗？我想我还是会的。和我的朋友分离，我会痛苦。让我的孩子孤独地前行，我会悲伤。 我执著地希望在我们大家都要到达的那个终点站，我们还会相聚 19. 我的孩子们上车时没有什么行李，如果我能在他们的行囊中留下美好的回忆，我会感到幸福。20. 我下车后，和我同行的旅客都还能记得我，想念我，我将感到快慰。21. 献给你, 我生命列车上的同行者, 祝您旅途愉快!1. Not long ago, I read a book, i

47、n which a mans life was compared to a journey.2. The life of a man is just like a hitchhiking，during which many times we go up and down. Now and then things will happen accidently, some of which are to be unexpected excitement，while some heart-breaking sorrows. 3. When first embraced the world，we ar

48、e already on the train of life. We take it for granted that the first two persons, our parents, whom we are encountered with, will accompany us all the way.4. Sadly，things do not go on as we thought.Our parents will get off the train at a certain station，leaving us, bereft and helpless.Their love and emotion to us and their irreplaceable company can be found in nowhere.5. However，there will be somebody else who will get on the train. Some of them will have special meaning to us.6. Some of them may be our siblings , relatives and friends, and we wil