Compliments in English and German: A pragmatic approach

This book deals with the speech act of compliments. It is based on a comparison between English and Austrian speakers in view of compliments and tries to find out whether differences in this speech act may lead to misunderstandings in cross-cultural conversations. It is organised into two sections, a theoretical and an empirical part. The first section studies compliments from a speech act point of view and contains a general outline of speech acts, several definitions of the term compliment and an approach by means of the analytical tools of politeness, gender and status. It also considers the multi-functionality of compliments, compliments as formulae, a taxonomy of compliment response, the topic, context and sincerity of compliments and finally, cultural idiosyncrasies and outstanding culture-specific characteristics. The second part of the book compares the complimenting behaviour in Austria and England, based on 20 interviews with native speakers. The book shows that British and Austrian speakers hold strikingly similar attitudes as far as compliments are concerned. However, despite a close resemblance, the comparison also reveals some interesting and significant differences.