Formal Instruction on the Speech Act of Giving and Responding to Compliments

This paper introduces instructional techniques on the speech act of giving and responding to compliments for intermediate learners in a second language context in the U.S. The instruction utilized relevant research literature and included awareness-raising activities where learners compared their L1 complimenting behavior. The instruction also facilitated learners' outside-of-class observation and interaction with other speakers of English. Learners collected their own notebook data by giving appropriate compliments considering contextual factors. Thirty-one adult learners enrolled in a university ESL program participated in the instruction which was integrated into the oral skills curriculum. The paper also describes learners' response to the instruction and reports their enhanced awareness and performance over an extended period of time. Introduction Use of language is so closely and uniquely tied to the culture and often rules of speaking vary across languages. According to these implicit cultural rules, we constantly alter our language use depending on the situation and the interlocutor. For example, not only are compliments and compliment responses linguistically different, but when and where compliments are used, who gives compliments, who receives them, and what is complimented on vary across cultures. With such complexity, sociocultural or pragmatic use of language is a challenging area for language learners. Without varying language use according to the situation, a second language speaker could totally fail to communicate their intentions, even with a good grasp of grammar and lexical items. Although faulty grammar or mispronunciation 1 Speech acts are speech functions that are realized by way of words (Yule, 1996). They are functional units in communication such as apologies, requests, complaints, invitations, and compliments. This study attempts to investigate not merely the single speech act of complimenting but rather include responses to compliments in sequences of interactions. Compliments and responses to compliments are a set of communicative acts that serves a particular function consisting of sets of strategies (i.e., speech act set, Cohen, 1996).