Compliment responses in Hong Kong: an application of Leech’s pragmatics of politeness

Abstract This paper focusses on compliment responses in the context of group undergraduate student projects, a university Hong Kong. It applies Geoffrey Leech’s model politeness. Although less well known than some other politeness models, it has proved relatively popular studies responses, which are often said to involve clash between Maxim Agreement (achieved by agreeing with complimenter) and Modesty mitigating compliment, thereby disagreeing complimenter). study deploys most recent work responses. Using an innovative variant discourse completion task adapted WhatsApp collect text messages metapragmatic comments from students Kong their messages, reveals that acceptance strategies overwhelmingly frequent type. finding adds small body cultures, and, more generally, cross-cultural pragmatics However, interpretation this result needs attend detail. The key specific strategy our data is expression gratitude, this, we argue, best accounted for through Obligation, maxim proposed work.