A Contrastive Analysis of Compliment Responses among Kurdish and Persian Speakers based on Language and Gender

Compliments are positive expressions or evaluations, which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone for something valued positively by the speaker and the hearer and even the whole speech community (Holmes, 1986 ; ye, 1995). The present study aimed at examining the effect of language, age, gender, and level of education on the compliment responses. Totally, 92 subjects consisting of 46 native speakers of Persian and 46 native speakers of Kurdish, who were chosen randomly, participated in this study. A discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit the compliment response strategies employed by participants. The findings based on the descriptive and inferential statistical techniques revealed a rather significant effect of language on compliment responses. However, gender of respondents was not found to have a significant effect on compliment responses. Results indicated also that Appreciation Token and Formulaic Expressions were the two major compliment response strategies most often preferred by respondents. Moreover, Scale Down , Return , and Reassignment as the items of modesty application for self-praise avoidance, are the next most frequently used response strategies.

Keywords:

contrastive analysis(CA) , speech acts , compliments , compliment responses (CR) , sociolinguistic norms