Compliment Response Behaviour on Facebook: A Study with Iranian Facebook Users

Abstract

Although the literature on compliments and compliment responses is abundant, very few studies have examined complimenting behaviour and the influence of gender on complimenting behaviour in Persian language. More scarce is the number of studies that investigated speech act behaviour of Persian speakers in cyberspace in general and in social networking sites such as Facebook in particular. This research on Iranian Facebook (FB) users’ complimenting response behaviour was carried out in order to broaden the scope of studies in pragmatics to include non-Western languages and to extend the scope of speech act studies to cyberspace. The study probed into Iranian FB users’ compliment response behaviour in same-gender and cross-gender interactions. The current research also sought to explore the extent to which compliment response behaviour on Facebook resembles its counterpart in face-to-face interactions. The findings revealed that online medium of communication and technological affordances on Facebook have brought new norms of communication into existence. The findings also suggested that some emerging sociocultural factors such as cyber-feminism might have impacted the participants’ preferences for more egalitarian patterns of language use when responding to compliments from an opposite gender. More importantly, the findings showed how marginalized groups such as women in Iran benefit from virtual spaces such as FB to assert a linguistic identity of self that is not easily possible to share publically in real life settings.

23. Compliments and compliment responses

“…Concerning the rest of the categories, and given the variation in classifications used, it is more difficult to make direct comparisons. Nonetheless, Eslami, Jabbari, and Kuo's (2015) and Maíz-Arévalo's ( 2013) results, both on Facebook but in different sociocultural contexts, are comparable as the former largely based their categorization on the latter. It is striking that Eslami, Jabbari, and Kuo's study shows a much higher rate of acceptance than Maíz-Arévelo's (79.7% vs. 19.7%).…”

“…Concerning compliment responses (Table 2), Placencia, Lower, and Powell (2016) examine interactions on Facebook among Americans. Maíz-Arévalo (2013) also looks at Facebook interactions but among Spaniards, whereas Eslami, Jabbari, and Kuo (2015) analyze interactions in Persian among Iranian users of Facebook. Yusuf and Hoon (2014), mentioned above, look at responses to compliments in Malaysian English on Twitter.…”

“…This seems a likely explanation of the difference. Eslami, Jabbari, and Kuo (2015) classify instances of the 'like' function alone, or in combination with emoticons, as an acceptance of a compliment (2015: 255-256). As such, Maíz-Arévalo's figure for acceptance could possibly be (much) higher.…”

Social Media and Religious Minorities: Analyzing the Usage of Facebook Groups among Christian Minority to Highlight their Issues in Pakistan

“…New technology and online means of interaction has implemented new standards. The language patterns had effect on the language pattern of users, as it had become more inclusive for oppressed groups and they benefit more from virtual space (Eslami, Jabbari, & Kuo, 2015). Facebook groups have not only proved beneficial for Y generation to discover their writing and learning skills but also as an effective tool for pre-writing brainstorming and writing (Yunus & Salehi, 2012).…”

Pragmatic Features of the Speech Act of Compliment in a Turkish TV Drama

“…Since then, compliments and compliment responses have received a great deal of attention from researchers in different parts of the globe. In fact, recent publications show that interest in this speech act has not faded away yet (e.g., Al-Mansoob, Patil, & Alrefaee, 2019;Boroujeni, Domakani, & Sheykhi, 2016;Eslami, Jabbari, & Kuo 2015;Farenkia, 2013;Furko & Dudas, 2012;Monjezi, 2014;Morales, 2012;Negargar, 2015;Salgado & Witten, 2019;Saifi & Sultani, 2017;Salgado & Witten, 2019;Sawadogo, 2018;Shokouhi & Rezaei, 2015).…”