Abstract
Compliment behavior reflects cultural values in its pertaining society. It is one of the linguistic abilities of language users and learners to know how to compliment appropriately in relating contexts. The dissertation studies and compares the compliment behavior of Hanren and Atayal inhabiting in Hsinchu area. The research aims to investigate the collective notion of politeness of compliment and the linguistic manifestation of compliment behavior. 140 subjects, aged 15 through 60, are interviewed with questionnaires and asked to record the linguistic data of their daily compliments. Statistic computing is performed to analyze the corpus. The first portion of the results presents a universal similarity between the concepts of politeness of compliment of the two groups; however, specific preferences of compliment subjects and topics are also recognized. Cultural specificity is believed to lead to the differentiation — The speech act of compliment carries a higher degree of FTA in Atayal than in Hanren; The sexual distinction is clearer in Atayal than in Hanren; The notion of property is different between Atayal and Hanren cultures. The second portion of the results displays the analysis of the speech act of compliment: compliments and compliment responses. The lexical and syntactic patterns of compliments of the two groups are found almost identical. The sub-topic of “clothes” is preferred by Hanren, while “skill” is by Atayal. As to the compliment strategies relating to manipulating “facework,” Hanren adopts more compound strategies than simple ones; Atayal, on the other hand, uses single strategies more. Additionally, the frequently adopted strategies of “face-amending” in compliment responses of Hanren supports the idea that the “face” notion weighs more in Hanren than in Atayal society. A general tendency of acceptance towards compliments is found both in two groups in direct and explicit responses. However, in responses with an indirect and implicit manner, Atayal shows a negative acknowledgement, disagreement, more than Hanren. The interaction between compliment behavior and social factors such as sex and age is examined in the final section of the discussion chapter.