A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and

Compliment Responses in Conversation

Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

Abstract :
This article examines previous studies of compliments and compliment
responses in different cultures and languages. Compliments are speech
acts that are used to negotiate solidarity in daily conversation, which
are related to the concepts of face work in politeness theory (Brown
and Levinson, 1978; Herbert, 1986; Holmes, 1986). They are formulaic
since particular positive verbs and adjectives tend to be used (Holmes,
1986; Manes and Wolfson, 1981; Wolfson, 1981).
However, practices associated with giving and receiving compliments
differ across cultures, and this can become a source of cross-cultural
miscommunication. For example, Western speakers tend to use and
accept compliments more often than Asian speakers. In addition, some
speakers might compliment different objects; for example, Polish
people tend to give compliments on possessions while Americans tend
to compliment people’s characteristics, especially in conversation with
someone close to the speaker (Barnlund and Araki, 1985; Herbert,
1991). Japanese tend to give compliments on the ability and work
of acquaintances rather than people with whom they have a close
relationship (Barnlund and Araki, 1985; Daikuhara, 1986). Therefore,
this article emphasizes the importance of understanding different uses
of compliments among cultures because speakers might misunderstand
each other in cross-cultural communication.

Key words: compliment, compliment response, cross-cultural

comparison, discourse analysis, Japanese conversation

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

1. Introduction
People in different cultures might misunderstand each other because
they express themselves differently and might misread what others have
said. In order to clarify these differences, discourse analysis has been
carried out to study the meanings of speech interaction and written texts.
In this approach, differences in the ways people give and respond
to compliments cross-culturally, and the use of compliments in
conversation, have been examined across cultures since the 1980s.
For example, Herbert (1986) studied American and South African
data, Chick (1996) analysed South African compliments, Holmes and
Brown (1987) examined New Zealand data, and Wolfson (1981, 1983)
compared American compliments with other cultures. In addition to
cultural differences, speakers’ different social backgrounds, including
gender, might also show disparate compliment behaviour.
Therefore, this article will examine previous studies of compliments in
speech interaction. First, the previous literature on compliments across
cultures will be discussed. Second, compliment behaviour in Japanese
conversation will be examined in order to determine differences of
compliment behaviour across cultures. Politeness might work differently
depending on the society, culture, and speech situation. Many previous
researchers have claimed that these aspects can cause misunderstandings
among speakers.

2. Compliments in conversation
Compliments are used to negotiate solidarity with an addressee in
order to make people feel good (Herbert, 1986). Holmes (1986, 1995:
117) states that ‘a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or
implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the
person addressed, for some ‘good’ (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.)
which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer’. Additionally,
Herbert (1986: 77) claims that compliment responses seem to express
that recipients acknowledge the kindness and/or offer of solidarity in the
compliment.

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

A compliment is often described as a face-threatening act in previous

studies. Lorenzo-Dus (2001) explains that compliments are a type of
speech act and relate to the theory of linguistic politeness proposed
by Brown and Levinson (1978). In this speech act, speakers have to
decide whether to foreground either positive or negative politeness
when giving and/or receiving compliments. There are both positive
and negative aspects to using compliments. For example, compliments
can attend positive politeness by giving positive comments or can
cause embarrassment to interlocutors, including a face-threatening act
(Lorenzo-Dus, 2001). Holmes (1986: 487) explains that compliments
can be used as a positive politeness device when a speaker pays
attention to a listener’s interests, needs, and wants, while a compliment
can work as a face-threatening act when they are understood as a cause
of embarrassment. Holmes (1988) defines the function of compliments
as a positive speech act that serves to increase solidarity between
speakers and addressees. She also adds that almost every act has the
potential for being perceived as a face-threatening act because of the
diversity among cultures. Thus, responding to a compliment poses a
dilemma for speakers (Pomerantz, 1978) since they have to balance
two conflicting conversational principles, such as agreeing with one’s
conversational co-participants and avoiding self-praise (Herbert, 1989).

3. Giving a compliment
The way in which people give compliments is generally formulaic,
since particular verbs, syntactic forms, and adjectives, which describe
positive evaluations, are often used (Manes and Wolfson, 1981).
Wolfson (1981: 120) states that American Compliments reveal a total
lack of originality and include many repetitions. In the study, 80% of
her data used adjectives to show positive semantic value, and the top
five adjectives were ‘nice’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’, ‘pretty’, and ‘great’
(Wolfson, 1981). Example sentences from her data are shown below :

(1) Your apartment’s nice.

(2) That’s a good question.

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

(3) You have such a beautiful baby.

(4) You look pretty today.
(5) That was a really great meal.
(Wolfson, 1981: 121)

In Wolfson’s (1981) data, two particular verbs, ‘like’ and ‘love’,

frequently occurred. Moreover, 86% of compliments used positive
verbs, and 56% of compliments used simple syntactic patterns, such
as ‘is’ and ‘looks’. In another study, Manes and Wolfson (1981) also
showed that nearly 90% of compliments used positive verbs such as ‘like’
and ‘love’ in their data.

(6) I like your bookcase.

(7) I love your outfit.
(8) Your tie is really beautiful.
(Wolfson, 1981: 121-122)

Comparing Wolfson’s American data and Holmes’ New Zealand data,

it is clear that four common syntactic patterns are used (see Table 1).
Moreover, the most commonly used adjectives in New Zealand English
were ‘nice’, ‘good’, ‘lovely’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘great’ (Holmes, 1986),
and similarly, five common adjectives in American English were used:
‘nice’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’, ‘pretty’, and ‘great’ (Wolfson, 1981).

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

Table 1. Syntactic Patterns of Compliments

Syntactic formula NZ USA
a. NP BE (INT) ADJ
e.g. Your hair is really great.
1 41.4% 53.6%
b. BE LOOKing
e.g. You’re looking terrific.
I (INT) LIKE / LOVE NP
2 15.9% 16.1%
e.g. I simply love that skirt.
a. PRO BE a (INT) ADJ NP
e.g. That’s a very nice coat.
3 13.0% 14.9%
b. PRO BE (INT) (a) ADJ NP
e.g. That’s really great juice.
(INT) ADJ (NP)
4 7.7% 1.6%
e.g. Really cool earrings.
TOTAL 78.0% 86.2%
1
(Holmes, 1986)

4. Receiving a compliment
Compliment responses have also been widely studied among
different cultures. This chapter discusses American and South African
compliment responses. Pomerantz (1978) investigated compliment
responses and stated that two conditions need to be achieved, which are
agreement and acceptance. To accomplish this, compliment receivers
are required to produce modest responses by using rejections and
disagreements in order to avoid self-praise such as saying ‘Thank
you’. Pomerantz (1978: 88) explains: ‘if self-praise is performed by a

1
 P means noun phrase; ADJ means adjective; INT means intensifier; and PRO
N
means pronoun.

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

speaker, that is, if a speaker does not enforce upon himself self-praise
avoidance, a recipient may in the next turn make notice of the violation
and enforce the constraints’ (see Example (9) below).

(9) K : . . Y’see I’m so terrific,

A: Y’see folks, he is very vain, an’he realizes his mature
talents compared to our meagre contents of our mind.
(Pomerantz, 1978: 89)

Herbert (1986) categorized compliment responses by Pomerantz

(1978) into three groups: A, B, and C (see below). This categorization
differs from Chick (1996), whose categorizations consist of accepting,
deflating, deflecting, rejecting, questioning, ignoring, and reinterpreting.

Response Type Example

A. Agreement
I. Acceptances
1. Appreciation Token Thanks; thank you ; [smile]
2. Comment Acceptance Thanks, it’s my favorite too.
3. Praise Upgrade Really brings out the blue in my eyes,
doesn’t it?
II. Comment History I bought it for the trip to Arizona.
III. Transfers
1. Reassignment My brother gave it to me.
2. Return So’s yours.
B. Nonagreement
I. Scale Down It’s really quite old.
II. Question Do you really think so?
III. Nonacceptances
1. Disagreement I hate it.
2. Qualification It’s all right, but Len’s is nicer.
IV. No Acknowledgement [silence]
C. Other Interpretations
I. Request You wanna borrow this one too?

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

(Herbert, 1986: 79)

Under this categorization, Herbert (1986) claimed that one-third of

compliment responses are acceptances, approximately 66% of responses
are agreements, and over 31% of responses are non-agreements in his
data collected from undergraduate students at the State University of
New York.
Moreover, compliment responses can differ according to speaker’s
race. Chick (1996) studied compliment responses at the University of
Natal in Durban, South Africa, and found that approximately 40% of
compliment responses by Indians and Whites were acceptances, while
only 27% of responses by Blacks were acceptances. In addition, to
show disagreements, Indian students (10.4%) used more disagreements
than Whites (3.6%) and black students (3.1%). As such, this difference
could lead to intercultural miscommunication among different races of
speakers.
For example, Indian disagreements tended to be very direct while
the white speakers tended to use hedges for solving a conflict among
speakers (see Examples (10) and (11) from Chick (1996)). The Indian
speakers’ overt disagreement in (10) might be interpreted as being rude
although the speaker does not intend offense (Chick, 1996).

(10) Disagreement by an Indian speaker

A: Your hair looks nice today.
B: It’s a mess.
A: No, it’s not.
(Chick, 1996: 335)

(11) Disagreement by a white speaker

A: You look very bright today.
B: Well, I don’t feel very bright.
(Chick, 1996: 335)

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

5. Compliment behaviour among different cultures

Previous research on compliments has been widely carried out among
cultures including the previous examples of America, New Zealand,
and South Africa. In addition to English-speaking cultures, German,
Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and Japanese languages have also been
investigated. In this section, previous studies of compliments will be
examined in order to determine any differences among languages and
cultures.
In the literature, South African and New Zealand English have been
compared in terms of compliments and compliment responses. For
example, Herbert (1986) originally examined university students in
South Africa and Britain, and found similar results, in which one in four
speakers gave agreement responses while non-agreements accounted
for 12% of the responses by both South Africans and British university
students (Herbert, 1986).
However in a different study by Herbert and Straight (1989), South
Africans were less willing to offer compliments than Americans, as they
considered compliments less necessary than Americans. South African
students tended to mildly reject nearly a quarter of the compliments they
received in order to avoid engaging in self-praise (Herbert and Straight,
1989).
In Holmes’ (1995) study conducted in New Zealand, New Zealanders
tended to accept compliments (60%), and approximately 30% were
deflections (evasions) and only 10% were rejections. She also analysed
compliments in relation to several social characteristics including
gender, social status, and intimacy, between speakers and addressees.
In her data, a relationship between speakers and addressees, and the
degree of speakers’ intimacy, accounted for the rejections after receiving
compliments. This was the case because people were honest with others
who they had an intimate and close relationship with, and solidarity
overrode differences in social status (Holmes, 1995).
German compliment responses were analysed by Golato (2002) in a
study of conversational data from German speakers ranging in age from
23 to 70 years old. In the results, Golato (2002) claims that German

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

native speakers overwhelmingly accepted compliments; however, they

did not use appreciation markers such as ‘Thank you’. Instead, they
simply accepted by saying ‘Yes’, which suggest Germans did not tend
to disagree with the compliments they received. Golato (2002) states
that the Germans in the study only offered compliments when they
really admired addressees and/or objects because the truthfulness of
compliments was important. Consequently, they offered compliments
much less than Americans did (Golato, 2002).

(12) A: ihr habt ja so en schönes zwiebelmuster hier,

you have m. p.2 so a nice onion pattern here,
you have such a nice onion pattern here,
B: joa :
ye: s
ye: s
(Golato, 2002: 557)

Compliment responses differed between Spanish and British university

students (Lorenzo-Dus, 2001). Lorenzo-Dus (2001) states that Spanish
students offered compliments in a more direct way than British students
did because Spanish students explicitly showed their emotions. British
and Spanish students liked humour and they often returned compliments
ironically; however, Lorenzo-Dus (2001) suggested that different uses of
ironic responses could lead to misunderstandings. For example, Spanish
male speakers tended to use ironic compliments too frequently and they
further continued with three or four different compliment responses
(Lorenzo-Dus, 2001). On the other hand, British students provided only
one or two socially appropriate compliment responses, thus Lorenzo-Dus
(2001) concluded that British people would misunderstand Spanish
speakers as they were exceedingly confident and boastful.
Polish compliments were studied by Herbert (1991) using data

2
m.p. = modal particle. (Golato, 2002: 557)

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

collected from university students in Poland. His study showed that

over half of compliments were adjectival compliments, such as ‘nice’,
‘great’, and ‘lovely’, and these type of compliments appeared among
Polish speakers less frequently than Americans. Moreover, Polish
speakers often gave compliments on possessions, which accounted
for approximately 50% of the data, whereas only 11% of the data
were in the same category as Holmes’ (1995) data from New Zealand.
Herbert (1991) explained that the acquisition of goods in everyday
life was regarded as an accomplishment for the Polish, and the
complimenter personally expressed admiration for the object and the
addressee’s judgment in choosing to acquire it (see Examples (13) and
(14)). However in response, Polish people tended to disagree with the
compliment and tried to avoid self-praise more so than Americans did
(Herbert, 1991).

(13) To piękny dom.

That’s a beautiful house.
(Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989: 74)

(14) To nowa koszula? Ladna.

Is that a new shirt? Nice.
(Herbert, 1991: 392)

Chinese compliments have been also widely analysed. Yu (2005)

collected conversational data in Taipei and Boston, and he found
differences between Chinese and American compliments and
compliment responses. In his result, both Chinese and Americans offered
compliments directly rather than indirectly, although the Chinese used
them less than half frequently than the Americans did. For the Chinese,
supportive moves and small talk were important for Chinese politeness
behaviours and face concerns (Yu, 1999). Therefore, Chinese speakers
often gave compliments as part of supportive moves and/or small talk,
while the Americans did not use many compliments in supportive moves
and/or small talk (Yu, 2005). The Americans used compliments in order

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

to show their friendliness, while the Chinese tended to find compliments

embarrassing and consequently used them much less frequently than
the Americans did. Compliments reflected genuine admiration among
the Chinese people rather than solidarity, and as a result, they tended
to compliment on the ability and/or performance of addressees (Yu,
2005). Yu (2005) also emphasized that addressees’ social status was an
important factor for Chinese speakers, and they often gave compliments
to friends and colleagues who were in the same position as the speakers.
Consequently, there were more downward compliments than upwards
compliments among the Chinese speakers, suggesting that sociocultural
meanings in society influenced the use of Chinese compliments. Thus,
Yu (2005) concluded that the influence of cultural norms could never be
ignored. As a result, the words ‘like’ and ‘love’ were not usually used
in compliments by the Chinese, suggesting that the meaning of these
words were not equivalent and they were not used in the same way in
the Chinese and English languages (Yu, 2005).
The way in which Chinese people use compliments has been changing
since the early nineties. Chen and Yang (2010) compared previous
studies of compliments in the Chinese language, including Chen (1993)
and Yu (2003), and suggested that the drastic change in responding
to compliments was a result of the influence of Western cultures. For
example, in the study conducted by Chen in 1993, acceptances of
compliments represented only 1.03% of the data and rejections were
95.73%. Meanwhile, in the study in 2010, acceptances increased to
62.60% and rejections decreased to 9.13%. These differences suggested
that the notion of self-image and self-confidence had significantly
changed because of contact with Western culture. As a result, Chen and
Yang (2010: 1960) state that Chinese people have given up much of
their modesty for the sake of agreeing with others when responding to
compliments.

6. Previous studies of Japanese compliments

Japanese compliments have also been investigated and compared
to the English language. For example, Barnlund and Araki (1985)

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

conducted questionnaires and interviews among 56 American and

Japanese university students, and their results indicated that compliment
behaviour was culturally different and that Japanese students tended to
offer compliments nonverbally and indirectly.
In their study, American and Japanese students used compliments
for different purposes and different types of addressees. American
students tended to give compliments on appearance (34%) and personal
traits (33%), whereas Japanese students tended to give compliments
praising one’s skills (31%), work and study (19%), and appearance
(19%). Americans tended to praise their partner’s personal traits
(33%), while Japanese people did so less frequently and less directly
commented on the personality of their associates (11%). Furthermore,
Americans tended to give compliments to close friends (49%) rather
than acquaintances (15%) while Japanese people tended to offer
compliments to acquaintances (34%) rather than to close friends (16%).
Thus, Daikuhara (1986) claimed that Japanese compliments showed
strong cultural values that are related to formal attributes in modern
Japanese society, such as going to famous schools, coming from well-
bred families, and owning money. Therefore, Japanese people rarely
gave compliments to their spouses, and avoided self-praise and showed
disagreement (over 70%) (Daikuhara, 1986).
To what extent speakers show their feelings with compliments
also differs between American and Japanese people. For example,
Barnlund and Araki (1985) found that Americans used a larger variety
of adjectives and many superlatives, such as ‘fantastic’ and ‘great’,
while Japanese often used limited vocabulary to praise, and they were
less confident and more humble than Americans. Daikuhara (1986)
also found that Japanese people used simple words when giving
compliments, such as ii (good), sugoi (great), kirei (beautiful and clean),
and kawaii (pretty and cute), and over 80% of adjectival compliments
included these words in her study.
In addition, previous studies showed that Japanese people tend to
praise acquaintances and prefer to respond to compliments nonverbally
or with questioning and denying, while Americans prefer to praise

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

people explicitly in their close relationship (Barnlund and Araki, 1985).

Example (15) shows types of Japanese compliment responses when a
compliment receiver finds it difficult to accept the compliment, denies it, and
returns another compliment. Only a few cases in Daikuhara’s (1986) study
showed an appreciation, such as saying ‘Thank you’, and she proposed
that showing one’s deference to someone by giving compliments was a
politeness strategy that helped create harmony and solidarity.

(15) JJ1 : Iie. Ano sukoshi murishite katta n desu kedo…

(denial-mitigation)
(No. Well, I bought (his house) although it was a little more
than I could afford but…)
JJ2 : Iie. Sensei mo nakanaka umai desu yo. (denial-return)
(No. You (Professor) are pretty good, too. )
AJ1 : Ie ie. (denial)
(No, no.)
AJ2 : Sonna koto nai desu. (denial)
(Not really.)
(Saito and Beecken, 1997: 372)

These differences among American and Japanese people would make

it difficult for them to acquire pragmatic competence in the target
language. In fact, the different strategies used for compliments by
Japanese speakers and Americans have influenced the way in which
American learners use compliments in the Japanese language (Saito
and Beecken, 1997). Saito and Beecken (1997) found that American
learners of the Japanese language showed pragmatic transfer when
offering compliments in the Japanese language. For example, American
learners of the Japanese language tended to accept compliments rather
than avoid agreeing with compliments from both teachers and friends,
when the compliments matched with their own self-evaluation. Saito
and Beecken (1997) concluded that both pragmatic transfer and a lack
of language proficiency influenced this result.
Furthermore, Wolfson (1981) provided an example with Americans and

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 Kayo Fujimura-Wilson

Japanese speakers where compliments could not be fully comprehended

by addressees who had a different cultural background. She explained
that American people could not understand why Japanese people used
money and school as compliments, and why these topics related to
someone’s attractiveness (see Example (16) below). She claimed that
some Japanese compliments would not be considered complimentary by
speakers of American English (Wolfson, 1981: 119).

(16) S: Your earrings are pure gold, aren’t they?

A: Yes, they are. They must be pure gold when you put them on.
S: Money is a necessary condition to become attractive, indeed.
A: I think so too.
(Wolfson, 1981: 119)

7. Conclusion
This article has illustrated the diverse studies on compliments and
compliment responses in different languages and cultures. Since
Pomerantz (1978) first investigated compliment responses, the study of
compliments and compliment responses has been widely carried out in
American English, British English, South African English, New Zealand
English, German, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and Japanese. Compliments
have been said to be formulaic, since compliments often contain similar
verbs, such as ‘like’ and ‘love’, and positive adjectives, such as ‘nice’,
‘beautiful’, and ‘great’ in English (Holmes, 1986; Manes and Wolfson,
1981; Wolfson, 1981). Compliment receivers tend to behave in a certain
manner because they hesitate or do not give self-praise when they
receive compliments in speech interaction (Herbert, 1986; Pomerantz,
1978).
However, both giving and receiving compliments differ culturally,
and people in Asian countries, such as Taiwan and Japan, generally
receive compliments far less than people in Western countries (Barnlund
and Araki, 1985; Chen and Yang, 2010; Daikuhara, 1986; Yu, 1999,
2005). They tend to behave humbly and reject compliments, while
Germans tend to say ‘Yes’ when receiving compliments (Barnlund

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 A Cross-Cultural Study of Compliments and Compliment Responses in Conversation

and Araki, 1985; Chen and Yang, 2010; Daikuhara, 1986; Golato,
2002; Yu, 1999, 2005). Spanish and British students tend to use ironic
statements differently and Spanish students tend to persist in giving
more compliments compared to British students (Lorenzo-Dus, 2001).
Moreover, the objects of compliments have been also culturally
disparate, and Polish people tend to give compliments on possessions
while Americans tend to offer compliments on personal characteristics,
especially to people with whom they are in a close relationship with
(Barnlund and Araki, 1985; Herbert, 1991). Japanese people tend
to use less variety of adjectives when giving compliments, and they
give compliments to acquaintances rather than close family members
(Barnlund and Araki, 1985; Daikuhara, 1986).
These cultural differences have often been pointed out since cross-
cultural miscommunication might occur among speakers (Chick, 1996;
Herbert, 1986, 1991; Holmes, 1986; Saito and Beecken, 1997). In fact,
pragmatic transfer has been observed in the study of American learners
of Japanese when receiving compliments; Americans speaking Japanese
accepted compliments more often than Japanese people did (Saito and
Beecken, 1997; Wolfson, 1981).
Pragmatic transfer can be seen in everyday cross-cultural
communication, since speakers’ speech patterns and behaviours are
highly influenced by their own habits and cultural background. Although
speakers and learners may not pay much attention to pragmatic factors
in their native language when communicating with people in different
languages, this aspect needs to be highlighted in order for speakers to
fully acquire a target language and its use. Understanding pragmatics
transfer is also important for achieving successful communication with
people across the world.

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