COMPLIMENTS * Mahmood Hashemian
6. Conclusion
The present study aimed to underline the importance of sociopragmatic competence for L2 learners. The importance of this research has practical relevance to the speech communities under study by providing guidelines for the use of CRs. It is useful for pedagogical purposes, helping L2 learners to respond to compliments in a culturally appropriate manner. Depending on L2 learners’ needs and
goals, L2 teachers should come up with a well-thought methodology and practically full-fledged syllabus to teach the miscellaneous recurring speech acts as well as their realizations. Materials developers should look into the ambiguous and potentially problematic areas faced by L2 learners in order to design appropriate and comprehensive enough materials for their pragmatic development. The findings of cross-cultural pragmatic studies have beneficial implications for language testing, too. They can help test writers to have a better understanding of socioculturally appropriate speaking behaviors in a given context and to provide more authentic context; ultimately, it will help them to evaluate the spoken language proficiency of L2 learners more effectively. So, replication with great participation would assist in opportunities for better generalization of the results. Naturalized role- plays, as a different method of data collection, are suggested to elicit more authentic data. More ethnographical studies are also needed in the PNSs’ community on compliment topics, responses, and functions between males and females, as well as between people with different age, social status (high vs. low) of the interlocutors, social distance (friends, acquaintances, or strangers), and situations.
REFERENCES
Allami, H., & Montazeri, M. (2012).Iranian EFL learners’ compliment responses. System, 40, 466-482. Allen, Dave. (2002). The Oxford placement test. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Al Falasi, H. (2007). Just say “thank you”: A study of compliment responses. The Linguistic Journal,
2(1), 28-42.
Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. London, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beebe, L. M., & Takahashi, T. (1989). Sociolinguistic variation in face-threatening speech acts: Chastisement and disagreement. In M. Eisenstein (Ed.), The dynamic interlanguage: Empirical studies in second language variation (pp. 199-218). New York: Plenum.
Beebe, L. M., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990).Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. C. Scarcella, E. Andersen, & S. C. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language
(pp. 55-73). New York: Newbury House.
Billmyer, K., (1990). I really like your lifestyle: ESL learners learning how to compliment. Penn Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 6(2), 31-48.
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989).Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Too many words: Length of utterance and pragmatic failure.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8, 165-179.
Boori, A. A. (1994). Semantic and syntactic patterning of Persian compliments and compliment responses: A sociolinguistic study with pedagogical implications.Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Isfahan, Iran.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987).Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bu, J., (2010).A study of pragmatic transfer in compliment response strategies by Chinese learners of English.Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(2), 121-129.
Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.
Chen, R. (1993). Responding to compliments: A contrastive study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers.Journal of Pragmatics, 20(1), 49-75.
Cheng, D. (2011). New insights on compliment responses: A comparison between native English speakers and Chinese L2 speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 2204-2214.
Chiang, B. & Pochtrager, F. (1993).A pilot study of compliment response of American-born English speakers and Chinese-born English speakers.(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED356649)
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.L. Press. Farghal, M., & Haggan, M. (2006). Compliment behavior in bilingual Kuwaiti college students.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism,9(1), 94-118.
Golato, A., (2005). Compliments and compliment responses: Grammatical structure and sequential organization. London: John Benjamin.
Herbert, R. K. (1986). Say “thank you” or something. American Speech, 61(1), 76-88.
Herbert, R. K. (1990). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior.Language in Society, 19, 201-224.
Holmes, J. (1988). Paying compliments: A sex-preferential politeness strategy.Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 445-465.
Hymes, D. (1971). On communicative competence. In J. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 46-63). London: Penguin.
Hymes, D. (1972). Models of interactions of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics (pp. 35-71). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer.Second Language Research, 8(3), 203-231.
Kasper, G. (1993). Interlanguage pragmatics. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
Kasper, G. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics. In J. Verschueren, J. O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.),
Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 1-17). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kasper, G. (2001). Four perspectives on L2 pragmatic development.Applied Linguistics, 22(4), 502-530. Kasper, G., & Blum-Kulka, Sh. (1993). Interlanguage pragmatics: An introduction. In G. Kasper, & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 3-18). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. (1999).Pragmatics and second language acquisition.Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81-104.
Leech, J. (1974). Semantics. London: Penguin.
Leech, J. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman: London.
Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2001). Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 107-127.
Morris, C. W. (1946). Signs, language, and behavior. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Nelson, G. L., Al-Batal, M., & Echols, E. (1996). Arabic and English compliment responses: Potential for pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 411-432.
Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A. D. (1989). Speech act behavior across languages. In H. W. Dechert & M. Raupach (Eds.), Transfer in language production (pp. 53-67). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Pomerantz, A. (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the cooperation of multiple constraints. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 115-132). New York: Academic Press.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sharifian, F. (2005). The Persian cultural schema of “shekasteh-nafsi”: A study of compliment responses in Persian and Anglo-Australian speakers. Pragmatics & Cognition, 13(2), 337-361.
Talleraas, T. (2014).A comparative study on compliment responses from Norwegian English foreign language learners and native speakers of English with a focus on pragmatic competence and idiomatic expressions.Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Oslo, Norway.
Tang, C. H., & Zhang, G.Q. (2009).A contrastive study of compliment responses among Australian English and Mandarin Chinese speakers.Journal of Pragmatics, 41(2), 325-345.
Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure.Applied Linguistics, 4, 92-112.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Longman.
Tran, G. Q. (2007). The Nature of pragmatic and discourse transfer in compliment responses in cross- cultural interaction. Linguistics Journal, 2(3), 167-205.
Wolfson, N. (1981). Invitations, compliments, and the competence of the native speakers.International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 8, 7-22.
Wolfson, N. (1983). An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English.In N. Wolfson, & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 82-95). Newbury House: Rowley, MA.
Wolfson, N. (1989). Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Newbury House: New York.
Yu, M. C. (2003). On the universality of face: Evidence from Chinese compliment response behavior.
Journal of Pragmatics, 35(10-11), 1679-1710.
Yu, M. C. (2004). Interlanguage variation and similarity in second language speech behavior.The Modern Language Journal, 88(1), 102-119.