Say "Thank You" - Or Something

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.When you are complimented, the only response necessary is "Thank you." Don't disparage yourself. If someone admires your dress, don't say, "This old thing, I got it at a bargain basement sale."A simple thank you is sufficient. [Johnson 1979, 43-44] Adult Female: (addressing a five-year old boy) Those sure are nice sneakers you're wearing, Nathan. /pause/ Adult Male: (parent) Nathan, are you deaf? /pause/ Linda said she likes your sneakers. Say "thank you" [simultaneously pokes child in the back]. Child Male: Thank you [no eye contact]. Wolfson 1981 Wolfson , 1983Manes 1983). They noted, for example, that American English compliments display a limited range of syntactic patterns, for example, I like NP (Wow, I really like your hair), That's a ADJ NP (That' a neat jacket), and NP is ADJ (Your eyes are amazingly green). The manifest content of compliments also tends to be drawn from a small repertoire, e.g., personal appearance (especially clothing and hair), results of skill or effort, (new) possessions. Finally, Wolfson and Manes have suggested that the noncreativity in form and content of English compliments is related to their function in discourse. Specifically, they claim that the function of a compliment is to negotiate solidarity with the addressee. That is, speakers offer such compliments as part of a general conversational postulate MAKE HEARER FEEL GOOD (Goody 1978; Lakoff 1975). The formulaic nature of English compliments minimizes the possibility that they will be misinterpreted by addressees; compliments employ recognizable formulae precisely in order to be recognized for what they are: expressions of good will. The structure and content of compliments in American English have been described by Nessa Wolfson and Joan Manes in a series of interesting articles (Wolfson and Manes 1980; Manes and WolfsonSuch functional interpretations of language behavior are increasingly common in the study of language in context. As Garfinkel (1967) noted: it is not what people say that is important but rather what they mean to say. Sociolinguistics, deriving from the tradition of dialect geography, provided a valuable framework in which to study the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, 76 This content downloaded from 128.6.218.72 on Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:20:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions AMERICAN SPEECH 61.1 (1986) treatment here, but there is some evidence that young children's behavior with respect to compliments differs from adults' behavior precisely because children have not acquired adult views and values. Consider, for example Adult Male: That's a nice dress, Kristen. You look beautiful. Child Female: I know.Adult Male: (commenting on child's kindergarten report) Wow, this is a v...

English Compliment Response Strategies on Social Networks by Iranian EFL Learners

“…In conversational mechanism compliments and compliment responses are considered as an adjacency pair and compliment responses have function of maintaining solidarity between interlocutors as well. Compliment responses were classified into different categories (Holmes 1986(Holmes , 1988Herbert, 1986;Pomerantz, 1987). In early studies on compliments, the second part of the adjacent pair of compliments, the response, was taken in to account.…”

On the Pragmatic Patterns of Chinese College English Learners’ Compliment Responses

“…According to Herbert's (1986) studies, people always respond to compliments in twelve different possible ways, they are appreciation token, comment acceptance, praise upgrade, comment history, reassignment, return, scale down, question, disagreement, qualification, no acknowledgement and other interpretations such as request. Herbert also categorized these CR types into three categorizations: agreement, non agreement, and other interpretations.…”

Backward Pragmatic Transfer: An Empirical Study on Compliment Responses among Chinese EFL Learners

“…Compliment functions as a negotiation of solidarity with the addressee (Wolfson and Manes, 1980) (cited in Herbert, 1986), the compliments offered by the speakers are part of a general conversational postulate make hearer fell good (Goody 1978;Lakoff, 1975) (cited in Herbert, 1986). CRs vary with people's cultural and social values (Chen, 1993;Chen, 2003;Gu, 1990;Holmes, 1988;Mao, 1994;Manes & Wolfson, 1981;Pomerantz, 1978;Yu, 2003;Wu, 2006).…”