NINE SYNTACTIC FORMULAS OF COMLIMENTS (Wolfson & Manes, 1981.Based on their corpus of 686 naturally occurring compliments in American English) 1. NP {is, looks} (really) ADJ (PP) 2. I (really) {like, love} NP 3. PRO is (really) (a) (ADJ) NP 4. You V (a) (really) ADJ NP 5. You V (NP) (really) ADV (PP) 6. You have (a) (really) ADJ NP 7. What (a) (ADJ) NP! 8. ADJ (NP)! 9. Isn’t NP ADJ!

 First three syntactic formulas accounted for 85% of all compliments/  These findings are supported by others.  They provide a useful, not comprehensible, pragmalinguistic source for compliments in American English.

 Miles (1994) provides a useful synthesis of existing categories for compliment responses 1. Acceptance ( Thanks) 2. Agreement ( I like it, too) 3. Disagreement ( No, it’s not really that nice) 4. Self-praise avoidance ( Anyone can do this) 5. Return compliment ( You look good, too) 6. Comment history ( My mother gave it to me)

NationalityPreferencePercentage Native AmericansRejection12.7 Native Mandarin Chinese Rejection95.73 Native BritishAcceptance57 Cantonese-BritishAcceptance65 Native CantoneseNon-acceptance59 Mandarin ChineseRejection13.5 There is a conflicting evidence for ‘Asian’ languages. More research is needed to make conclusions about cultural differences in complement preferences.

 Decoo’s modalities of induction and deduction A continuum with five modalities; Actual deduction Subconscious Induction Modality A - Actual deduction: the grammatical rule or pattern is explicitly stated at the beginning and the students move into the application of this. Modality B- Conscious induction as guided discovery: the students first encounter various examples. The conscious discovery of the grammar is then directed by the teacher by asking key questions.

 Do learners benefit from instruction in compliments and compliment responses in a foreign language context?  Are there differential effects of instruction for inductive and deductive approaches to the teaching of compliments and compliment responses in a foreign language context?

Paticipants All participants were undergraduate students. Research indicated that gender is an important variable in the use of compliments and compliment responses.

 Self-assessment questionnaire Situation 1: Alex is a business major. He has an interview today for a part time job with a large investment company, so he is wearing his best suit. You compliment him on his appearance. Rating: I think what I would say in this situation would be Very unsatisfactory Completely appropriate It measures participants’ level of self-confidence in their pragmatic abilities.

 Metapragmatic assessment questionnaire Situation 1: Alex is a business major. He has an interview today for a part time job with a large investment company, so he is wearing his best suit. You compliment him on his appearance. You: “Wow, Alex, you look really great.” Alex:____(a) “Do you really think so?” _____(b) No response ______(c) “Thanks- I have a big interview today.” ______(d) “My mother helped me pick out this suit.” Students rank order 1-4 the possible responses from the most to least appropriate.

 Discourse completion questionnaire Situation 1: Alex is a business major. He has an interview today for a part time job with a large investment company, so he is wearing his best suit. You compliment him on his appearance. How do you think he would response? You:_____________________________ Alex:___________________________

 Control group: received no treatment but took all the questionnaires.  Experimental group: took six lessons of 30 minutes.  Topics: Cantonese compliments Cantonese compliments responses English compliments English compliments responses Comparisons of all

InductiveDeductive No metapragmatic information Film segments Additional examples Questions for discovery First of all, metapragmatic information Film segments Additional examples

Do learners benefit from instruction in compliments and compliment responses in a foreign language context? SAQ and MAQ results suggest that learners do not benefit from instruction. However DCT offer some evidence that instruction was effective.

Are there differential effects of instruction for inductive and deductive approaches to the teaching of compliments and compliment responses in a foreign language context? DCT results for compliment responses revealed a positive effect only for the deductive group, deductive instruction may be more effective in developing sociopragmatic proficiency. It may be necessary to provide explicit information to develop sociopragmatic proficieny in the target language, as inductive instruction was found to have a negative impact on sociopragmatic development by raising difficult issues without providing clear-cut solutions. Guided discovery could create more confusion than comprehension.

This may be because of the formulaic nature of American English compliments which are easy for any sort of instruction.Thanks