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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelStrategies used in responding to compliments play an important role for a
person who receives a compliment since he or she is expected to say something in
response to the compliments given. Misunderstanding may occur between people
from different cultural background, in this study Americans and Indonesians
because these Americans and Indonesians have different norms in responding to
the compliments.
Concerning this, the writer conducted this study in order to find whether
there are any differences in responding to compliments on appearance and ability
between male and female Americans and Indonesians and to find whether sex of
the respondents play a role in determining the type of compliment response
strategies used. Furthermore, it also tries to see the dominant types of compliment
responses which are often used by each group of respondents.
In conducting the research, the writer used two sets of role-plays
consisting of two 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 Indonesian
respondents. The writer, then, asked her respondents to respond to the situations
by writing in what they said in order to be analyzed latter.
The analysis is made based on Herbert's theory which distinguishes 12
types of compliment responses. They are Appreciation Token, Comment
Acceptance, Praise Upgrade, Comment History, Reassignment, Return, Scale
Down, Question, Disagreement, Qualification, No Acknowledgement, and
Request Interpretation.
The writer finds that Indonesian and American have indeed some
differences in responding to compliments. For the Americans, Appreciation Token
has the highest frequency while for the Indonesians, it is the Question type who
has the highest frequency. Besides, the findings show that sex is a determining
factor in choosing particular compliment responses for both among Americans
and Indonesians.