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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelGiving compliments is one of many speech acts which
people often use from time to time because of their
interlocutors' accomplishment/ability, or new appearance.
However, people from different cultural background, which in
this case Americans and Indonesians - Javanese and Chinese
Indonesians, may sometimes cause a misunderstanding in the
act of complimenting for they do not know the appropriate
way of giving compliments especially in cross-cultural
.
Concerning this, the writer conducted this study in
order to find out whether there are any differences in
giving compliments on appearance and ability between male
and female Americans, Javanese and Chinese Indonesians and
to find whether different status of respondents play a role
in determining the type of compliments. Furthermore, it also
tries to see the dominant types of compliments which are
often used by each group of respondents.
In conducting the research, the writer used two sets of
role-plays consisting of four situations made as close as
possible to the real-life situations. The first set is for
the American respondents and another set is for the
Indonesians. The writer, then, asked her respondents to
respond to the situations by writing in what they said in
order to be analyzed later. The analysis is made based on
Holmes' theory which suggests three kinds of types of
compliments based on personal focus. The writer also adds
the No compliment type to categorize her respondents who did
not give any compliments.
The findings show that the Americans and the
Indonesians have some differences in choosing the
appropriate way of giving compliments. The Americans tend to
be more verbal than the Indonesians. The Americans,
regardless their sexes and statuses, had the 2nd-person
compliment as the most common type in giving compliments on
appearance. In situations of work, The male American of
higher status tend to use the 3rd-person compliment, while
those of lower status used the lst-person compliment more.
In contrast, their female counterparts tend to use the lst-person
compliment in giving compliments on ability
regardless their statuses.
For the Javanese, the No compliment type was commonly
used to give compliments on appearance regardless their
sexes and statuses. However, for the male Javanese of higher
status, the frequency of the No compliment type was still
lower than the Impersonal type (2 and 8). Regarding one's
accomplishment, the Javanese seems to be more verbal than
the Chinese Indonesians that the 3rd-person compliment held
the highest occurrences although those of higher status,
regardless their sexes, used the 2nd-person compliment a
little bit more often than the use of the Impersonal type.
The different gender and status seemed not to play
roles for the Chinese Indonesians in the act of giving
compliments on appearance since the dominant type they used
is the No compliment type. Regarding one's ability, the
Chinese-Indonesian females and male of lower status also
often used the No compliment type. However, for the male of
higher status, it seems that the choice of the types of
compliments based on personal focus is not important since
they shared the same occurrences (3 and 3 and 3).