A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and Responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

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A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING

COMPLIMENTS and responses IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE
(NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO THOA VĂN HÓA VỀ CÁCH KHEN VÀ ĐÁP LẠI
LỜI KHEN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT )
GRADUATION PAPER
FIELD: LINGUISTICS
Student: TRUONG THI THANH CANH, 47A1

Supervisor: BUI THI THANH MAI (M.A)
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Vinh - 2010
Acknowledgement
I would first like specially to thank Mrs. Bui Thi Thanh Mai (M.A), my
supervisor, for her whole – hearted help and invaluable advice. Without her
guidance, my thesis is far from completed.
I would also like to thank Mrs. Tran Ngoc Yen (M.A) for her kindly support.
She encourages me to have self- confidence to do this research.
I want to acknowledge the help of Miss Sofia for her advice when I conduct the
list of questionnaire. She provides important information that the author uses to
have a suitable survey questions. My gratitude goes to Mr. Tinh (M.A) who teaches
at ASEM Vietnam center for his essential materials and advice.
Last but not least, I give a very special thanks to my family and classmates, who
always stand by me, provide their emotional support through out the process I do
this paper.
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ABSTRACT
Many people who communicate cross-cultural boundaries have experienced

communication breakdowns with people from different first language backgrounds.
It also happens to any one who wants to give compliment on a person from another
country. The main purpose of this thesis is to raise the aware of culture gap. It is
done, focused on the comparison of the ways of giving compliment and responding
to compliments between the English and the Vietnamese. Using the authenticable
data from survey, which is conducted with 30 native speakers in each culture, this
research is carried out with three sub-aims: (1) to find out similarities and
differences between two cultures in the way they perform speech act of
compliment; (2) to investigate the culture factors that have influence on the word
choice of interlocutors; (3) to enrich the knowledge of second language learners
about the importance of culture factor in leaning target language. The result also
illustrates the fact that people in two cultures are very friendly. They tend to give
compliments a lot. However, what they compliment on, how they give and respond
to, it differs. How detailed the information is it? The readers will find the answers in
the next chapters of the thesis.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement i
Abstract ii
Abbreviations iii
Part A: Introduction
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 3
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methods of the study 4
5. Data collecting procedure 5
6. Design of the study 5
Part B: Development
Chapter I: Theoretical Background
1.1. What is Pragmatics? 6
1.1.1 What is Speech acts. 6
1.1.2 Compliment as a speech act. 11
1.2. Cultural communication. 13
1.2.1. Notion of culture 13
1.2.1.1. Cross-cultural communication. 14
1.3 Positive – negative politeness. 14
Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments in
English and Vietnamese equivalents
2.1 .Topics of compliment. 17
2.1.1 .Topics of compliment in English 20
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2.1.1.1 Appearance 20
2.1.1.2. Skill or talents 21
2.1.1.3 Work accomplished. 22
2.1.1.4 Possession 22
2.1.2 Topics of compliment in Vietnam. 23
2.1.2.1 Appearance 23
2.1.2.2 Skill or talents 25
2.1.2.3 Work accomplished. 26
2.1.2.4 Possession 27
2.1.3. A contrasive analysis 27
2.1.3.1 Major similarities 27
2.1.3.2. Major differences 28
2.2. Giving compliment strategies 30
2.3: Compliment response strategies in English and Vietnamese equivalents. 32
2.3.2. English findings
2.3.1. Vietnamese findings
2.3.3. A contrastive analysis 38
2.3.3.1 .Major similarities 39
2.3.3.2. Major differences 40
Chapter III: Some suggestion for giving and responding to compliments in
English and Vietnamese equivalents.
3.1. Some suggestions. 41
3.1.1. What do we compliment on?
3.1.2 How do we give a compliment?
3.1.3 How to respond to compliment.
3.2. Suggested teaching application
Part C. Conclusion
1. Review major findings 48
2. Suggestion for further research 49
References
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APPENDIX
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ABBREVIATIONS
H The hearers
S The speakers
E The English
V The Vietnamese
HA Highly advisable
A Advisable
Y/N Yes or No
IA Inadvisable
CR Compliment response
VoE Vietnamese students of English.
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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Nowadays the increasing diversity of the modern classroom, in which
second language learners form a community, poses the need for language learners
care for enriching the knowledge of the country where their target language is spoken.
To have this knowledge, they have to master many factors such as: language, culture,
economy, biography, history…..Among those elements, culture plays an important
role in widening the knowledge of language in use or context of conversation for the
learners.
Therefore, “language and culture have to be studied together, and have to
be brought into interactive relation in successful discourse” (Radolph Quirk). This
relation leads to the need of improving what we call “communicative competence”,
which contains sub-factors as shown in the following;
Communicative competence
Linguistic knowledge Interaction skill Cultural knowledge

Verbal factors Awareness of predominant Social structures
eatures in context
Non – verbal factors Choice and interpretation of Values and attitudes
forms, suitable to specific
contexts roles and
Stereotypes in specific Communicative strategies in Cognitive diagram
speech events order to gain oriented targets
Possible continuums Acculturation
of variable
Meaning of variables
in specific contexts
Those factors are also represented in following diagram by him.
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That knowledge is so important with language learners. Especially, nowadays,
with opened- door policy, Vietnam enters the global stage, the importance of study
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target language is emphasized more than ever. We tend to direct our teaching and
learning to modern way. However, here and there still exists the traditional method
of learning and teaching language, which focuses on rote memorization of
grammatical and lexical components of language. The fact has proved that, it is not
suitable in the development of modern society. It cannot help language learners
become effective language users.
To promote the knowledge of the learners about this problem there are many
studies of famous theorists on kind of speech act such as: making request, asking
for permission, giving apology....but not many of them focus on speech act of
compliment. This is also the interesting topic attracting the author’s interest because
it requires a great deal of pragmatic insight by the speaker and therefore are often
rich with data that reveal the cultural orientation of language learners. (In many
languages, compliment responses require the language user to walk a delicate line
between appearing too boastful or ungrateful depending on the way s/he responds to
the compliment.)
Hopefully, this paper with realistic data base will provide useful material for
language learners.
2. Data collecting procedure
As one important part of this thesis, collecting data procedure took the author
a rather long period of time to do it. This survey was conducted by 30 native
informants in each culture. In this paper, the term “English” refers to the people
who speak English as their mother tongue such as English, American, New
Zealand, and Australia...
The questionnaire is the combination of open and close ended questions, which
contain three main parts: The first one is to find some general information about
informants which are used to explain some unexpected findings during the process
of writing. The second part, the author asks the participants to rank the topics of
compliment given by researcher into the order from 1 to 4, which stand for four
groups “highly advisable, advisable, yes or no and inadvisable”. And the last is
conducted with the aim to study in specific situations. There are two main situations
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set and ask informants to give their ideas about: How do they give compliment and
respond to it. These compliments focus on two topics are: Appearance and
achievement.
Even though there are some inconveniences when completing this research, it is
valuable and deserved to be considered.
3. Scope of the study
- This research focuses on the cross - cultural study to find out the similarities
and differences between the English and Vietnamese in the ways they give and
respond to compliments. Determined by its aims, this paper tries to find the answers
for three following questions:
*What do people in the two cultures often compliment on?
* How to give a good compliment?
*What kind of strategies do they use to respond to compliments?
- The analysis is only based on the authentic result collected from the
survey.
- Furthermore, it is because of the variety of language, this paper is considered in
relative not restrict standard. Moreover, with the limitation of a graduation thesis,
sometimes some factors can be omitted such as: age, marital statue, area of
living.... They are only taken into account when used to explain some information.
In part two, only four popular topics are suggested, not the entire one in daily
communication. It is similar in part three, the most popular topics in use with
compliment in both cultures are appearance and ability.
Besides, this thesis only focuses on different cultural aspect which aims to
develop communicative skills. It does not go into detail study of paralinguistic and
some other aspects of speech act compliment such as:
- Paralinguistic factors: intonation, pitch...
- Non-verbal language: gestures, facial expression, voice........
- Communicative environment like : place, distance, light......
4. Aims of the study
This paper is carried out with the aims:
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- Through the analysis, the researcher finds out some similarities and
differences between the English and Vietnamese when they choose the ways of
giving and responding to compliments.
- With the difference, this study gives the explanation based on the of cross –
cultural study..
- With the result found, the research emphasizes the importance of studying
foreign language applied in culture context, which is to raise the awareness of
communication breakdown.
- To be as the useful material for second language learners who want to become
fluent speakers.
5. Methodology
To act such purposes, the author uses the following method:
- Firstly, the author makes a survey with a list of questionnaire conducted by
herself. After that, she collects the data and sorts it out into groups of information.
- Secondly, the contrastive analysis method is applied when analyzing the data
from the survey to find out the similarities and differences with the aim as stated
before.
- Thirdly, for the theoretical background, she applies some theory of some
famous theorists to set the base for her research.
- The concluding and summarizing is the last one used to give final
conclusions and suggestions for further study.
6. Design of the study
This thesis includes three main parts and three chapters:
Part A: Introduction
Part B: Development
Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments
in English and Vietnamese equivalents
Chapter III: Some suggestion for gving and responding to compliments in
English and Vietnamese in equivalents.
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Part C. Conclusion
Part B: Development
1.1. 1 What is Pragmatics?

Pragmatics is one of the main branches of linguistics. According to George
Yule (1997: 3), pragmatics is concerned with the study of:
- Speaker meaning
- How more gets communicated than is said
- The expression of relative distance
- Relationships between the linguistics forms and the users of those forms.
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It is difficult to give a correct definition for the question: What is pragmatics?
We only know that it refers to the language in use. And language in use has
connection with the term: “communication”, which is stated: “Communication is,
rather, the successful interpretation by an addressee of a speaker’s intent in
performing a linguistics act” (Georgia M. Green, Natural Language Understanding,
p.1). And “a linguistics act” is controlled by certain rules or norms that suitable
with different societies. This interchange creates the differences of choosing
language among different cultures. However, how does pragmatics vary across-
culture? And how can the learners recognize this variety? Those question will be
answered easier when the term “speech act” is mentioned, because sometimes
talking to pragmatics means talking to speech acts. Therefore, we will continue this
talk with the talk of speech acts.
1.1.1 What is speech act?
As above part, when mentioning pragmatics, we often think of speech acts.
What is speech acts? For over the past years, many theorists have studied this term,
but it has such a complicated scope that it is far from easy to give the satisfied
definition. The pioneer of this theory was the philosopher J.L. Austin (1962) with
his famous book: “How to do thing with words”, and later, were some other well
known theorists such as: Hymes (1964), Searle (1969), Levinson (1983), Brown and
Yule (1983) and Schmidt and Richards (1983)...
From the time speech acts theory appeared, people have tried to think in
different way. At first, people assumed that the business of a “statement”can only
be to “describe” some state of affairs, or to state some facts which is must be do
either truly or falsely”( J.L Austin, How to do thing with words, p.1). In fact, there
are some utterances we cannot decide whether it is “true” or “false”.
For example:
E.g. Giờ muộn thế này mà họ chưa ra nhỉ?
(It is so late, why they did not come)
(Tha ̣ch Lam, Gió lạnh đầ u mùa)
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In this situation, when Mrs. Ti talks to Lien, this question functions not only as
what a question should do but also like a statement. Although she knows why her
guests come late, she still gives that question to keep conversation with the people
in a poor district.
Or in Vietnam, we often ask this kind of question:
E.g. “ Bác đi đâu đấy? (Where are you going?)
Although Vietnamese people do not really want to know where his friend is
going to go, he only asks to tighten relationship with the hearer by showing his care
through that kind of question. Therefore, his question is easily accepted and it is
considered as the Vietnamese greeting routine.
Such types of examples have enhanced the theorists to give the complete
definition of speech acts. It is J.Austin who gave the notion of speech acts firstly,
he stated that:
In general, speech acts are acts of communication. To communicate is to
express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds
to the type of attitude being expressed. For example, a statement expresses a belief,
a request expresses a desire, and an apology expresses regret. As an act of
communication, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, in accordance with
the speaker's intention, the attitude being expressed.
When the notion of speech acts brought out, we have another outlook. Most of
the researchers share the common view that: speech acts are acts performed via
utterances or speech acts are the actions that are involved when one says something
and in English these actions are given more specific labels such as: apology,
complement, invitation, request, promise or complaint…
As mentioned above, speech acts are especially concerned in real life. In other
words, it is language in use. Thus, it is easy to see that there are no one utterance –
one function relationship. It is impossible to know exactly the speaker’s intention if
we only base on his statement without the context.
For example: When a child talks to his mother: “Mum, I’m hungry!” If we
classify this sentence based on grammatical standard, it is a statement. However, in
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this situation, the child wants to ask his mother for something to eat. In this case, it
becomes a request.
This unseparated relationship causes both the speakers (S) and hearers(H)
confused. That is why there are some different classifications of speech acts. At the
beginning, when carrying out the research on this field, J.L. Austin divided speech
acts into three acts: Locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionnary act.
* Locutionary act: Are sentences that conform to the phonological and
grammatical convention of the language. A Vietnamese production of “Bonjour
madam” will not normally be known as a locutionary act because this sound does
not make sense in Vietnamese.
* Illocutionary act: This one refers to the aim or the communicative purpose
that is attacked or achieved by the utterance. Normally, it is what the speakers hope
the hearers recognize. The usual acts are “warn, request, promise...”
* Perlocutionary act: When a speaker utters, he hopes to transform his
intention to hearer and this effect is called perlocutionary act.
Although there is such a classification , those three dimensions are not
separated. They have a close relationship relating to each other whenever an
utterance is produced. An act performed via an utterance is successful if: it is
recognized when being pronounced correctly, felicitously, its purpose is conveyed
and causes the effect to the hearer. In conclusion, it is simple when understanding
speech acts as following ways:
* To say something is to do something
* In saying something, we do something
* By saying something we do something
And it is clear that in terms of speech acts, illocutionary force is the most
important force. This view was shown in Yule’s statement: “indeed, the term
“speech act” is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary
force of an utterance.”
However, the question given here is how this force can be realized easily. There
are many factors that have effect on the way S creates a sentence. Thus it is
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necessary to notice that: “the utterance must be said by the right person to the right
person in the right place at the right time in the right manner” (Jackson and
Stockwell 1996: 140). Nonetheless, in what way we know that our speech are to
right person and in right situation? That is also the question set by many theorists.
At the beginning, Austin divided speech acts into four subtypes: expositives,
exercitives, behavetives, commissives, but it is so confused. There were some
others who also introduced their views about how to sort out speech acts into
subtypes reasonably. The author concerns the one of Austin’ students, Searle (1967,
1969), he claimed there are 5 types as follows:
* Commissives: committing speaker to do something in the future such as a
promise, oaths......
E.g. If you need a favor, I’ll help.
* Declaratives: changing the state of affairs in the world.
E.g. (The Judge to a couple): You are marriaged.
* Directives: getting the listener to do something such as a suggestion, a request
E.g. It is so hot here! What about going around for a walk?
* Expressives: S expresses feeling and attitudes about something, such as an
apology, a complaint, compliment...
E.g. I am interested in the Titanic film because it is so interesting
* Representatives: Describing states or events in the world such as an assertion,
a claim, a report..
E.g. The earth moves around the world.
Besides that, we also have another category of Bach and Harnish’s, which is
not so different in sense from the one of Searle’s. It is shown in following table:
Constatives Directives Commissives Acknowledgement

Assertives Requestives Promises Apologize
Predictives Questions Offers Condole
Retrodictives Requirements Congratulate
Desriptives Permissives Greet
Ascriptives Advisories Thank
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Informatives Bid
Confirmatives Accept
Concessives Reject
Retractives
Assentives
Dissentives
Disputatives
Responsives
Suggestives
Suppositives
Each type of speech act functions differently along with the illocutionary force
of the speaker. In this paper, the author only focuses on the speech act of
compliment. Specifically, compliment belongs to act of “Acknowledgement”
1.1.1.2. Compliment as a speech act

"I can live for two months on a good compliment."
- Mark Twain
Compliment is universal in all societies and languages, it is considered as major
part of our daily communication. It also plays an important role in moral life of
people. Giving a compliment is thought as giving a valuable verbal gift. Everyone
likes to receive compliment because it makes them happy, comfortable and self-
confident. However, not all of them have clear definition of compliment. So, what
is compliment?
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There are many notions being given. According to Alle Patrica Wall,
“compliments are expressions of admiration, respect or praise” or another more
specific one of Holme’s: “compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly
attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for
some “good” ( possession, characteristics, skill, etc..) which is positively valued by
S and H (1998a: 485). She also points out that even when a compliment appears to
refer to a third person, it may well be indirectly complimenting the addressee as
following example:
R’s(recipients) old school friend is visiting and comments one of the
children’s manners:
C. (complimenter): What a polite child!
R. (recipient) : Thank you. We do our best.
Most of theorists share the same idea that compliment belongs to the most “sensitive”
area of language. People apply it for many purposes such as: to break ice at the first
meeting, to praise, to encourage someone, or to suggest something...etc. This also reflects
its variable functions. As Wolfson claimed, the major function of a compliment is ‘to
create or maintain solidarity between interlocutors”, and another one is “to reinforce
desired behavior, for instance in a classroom situation”. It is used to replace other speech
acts such as apologies, thanking, especially, to soften criticism with usage of “but” or
“though”, for example:
Teacher wants to remind student’s bad writing in his/her easy, he can say:
- “Your content is good but your writing is difficult for me to read”
The important roles of compliment cannot be denied. However, it is not
always good whenever giving it. Because, to give an appreciate compliment, it is
necessary to answer those questions: When, why, to whom we will give
compliment. There are also many factors affecingt on this process such as: culture,
age, sex, gender, social power…
Cross-culturally, giving and responding to compliment is affected by many
cultural factors such as religion, value, taboo, norm, and lifestyle.... For example,
the Vietnamese often give compliment on other appearance at the first meeting like:
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“You look very beautiful”, but in Western nations, it is uncomfortable when
someone compliments them like that. And this is one of the factors create
miscommunication, communication breakdown or culture shock.
Linguistically, compliment is regarded as a speech act. In table 1, the
classification of Bach and Harnish’s, it belongs to “acknowledgments” area,
“congratulates” group. This group includes: congratulate, compliment and praise.
Their function mainly shows attitudes, feeing of the speaker to the hearer.
In the point of view of cross-cultural pragmatic, compliment also changes
among different countries, different circumstances. Therefore, with second language
learners, it is not enough if they only learn structures. They should know how to
apply language in real situations because language without culture, it will die.
1. 2. Cultural communication
1.2.1. Notion of culture
In above section, we mentioned term “culture”, What is culture? According
to many theorists, culture is a special phenomenon which is controversial topic..
There are many definitions were given by the linguists but it is difficult to decide
which is a the most ssatisfying one. For example, in 1952, Alfred Knoeber and
Clyde Kluckkhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of culture. Among them, the
author sets her interest in the definition of Mr. Edword B.Taylor’s : “Culture is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom and any
other capabilities and habit acquired by man as a member of society”. From above
definitions, we can see that culture is something that appears, exists and connects
closely to human life. It exists despite of distance of time and space. It is reflected
through much aspect of human life and especially language. Thus, it also has the
close relationship with the values. Similar to culture, each country has its own
culture and value systems, among them, people live. This type of system is
summarized in the list of rules or norms which control people behavior.
1.2.1.1. Cross-cultural communication

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It is normal if we mention the relationship between language and culture in one
country because individual was taught how to fit their society’s norms when he was
a little child. But what will happen if s/he goes abroad or contacts with person who
comes from a totally different culture? This is time for the need of knowledge of
cross-cultural communication to appeare. By understanding and knowing how to
use this term: “cross-cultural communication”, people all over the world become
closer and closer to each others. And Clarke and Sanchez gives us a useful way to
understand this term by explaining from what is “cross- culture” to “cross-cultural
communication” as following:
“The term ¨cross-culture¨ implies interaction with persons of different cultural,
ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and age and class
backgrounds. ¨Cross-cultural communication¨ is a process of exchanging,
negotiating, and mediating one's cultural differences through language, non-verbal
gestures, and space relationships. It is also the process by which people express
their openness to an intercultural experience”.
(Clarke and Sanchez, 2001)
1.3. Positive – negative politeness
In any conversation, interlocutors tend to try their best to keep a good
relationship with each others. That is the way of showing politeness of people all
over the world. Since that, politeness has a close-knit relationship with the term
speech acts. From above subparts, we know that speech acts is a kind of act which
performs via utterance. The most important purpose of any utterance is creating
illocutionary force, and this force can get its power or not, it is based much on how
polite the speaker is. What is politeness? There were many linguists gave their
definitions for it, however, similar to speech acts, there is no satisfying one. We
only apply some aspects of them as references. As the first ones who investigated
this field, Brown and Levinson (1987:66) stated that: “Politeness is a battery of
social skills whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction”.
And it expresses as the practical application of good manners or etiquette. In other
words, being polite, it means S is keeping her/ his face. To understand more clearly
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about this phenomenon, we study the notion of “face”. Also in their leading theory,
Brown and Levinson claimed that: “Face is something that emotionally invested,
and that can be last, maintained or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in
interaction”. Another one gave his view, which modified this theory is Yule.
According to Yule, “face means the public self-image of a person”. It refers to that
emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and aspects everyone else to
recognize”. To make it easier to be recognized, we have two subtypes of face:
Negative face and positive face. Positive face is “the need to be accepted, even liked
by others, to be treated as member of the same group”, and to know that his or her
wants are shared by others. Whereas, negative face is “the need to be independent,
to have freedom of action”. From that we have two types of politeness: Negative
and positive politeness.
Positive politeness is a kind of strategies which are attempts by S to treat the
listener as a friend or as some one to be included in discourse. For instance, we
compliment other: “You look very nice today!”
Negative politeness is an attempt by S to save H’s face by engaging in some
formality or restraint. For example: when your friend asks you that” “Do you like
my presentation? you answer: “I like it a lot, it is perfect!” although you think that it
is not good.
Even though we have such classification, it is so difficult to categorize it, so we
direct our attention to a more detail saying of Leech (1983).He developed a list of
rules or politeness Maxims to help classify speech. They are:
● Tact maxim: Minimize cost and maximize benefit to other
● Generosity maxim: minimize benefit and maximize cost to self
● Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other
● Modesty maxim: praise and maximize dispraise of self
● Agremeny maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agrement
between self and other
● Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between
self and other.
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Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to
compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents
2.1. Topics of compliment

Because of culture boundaries, sometimes the misunderstanding happens
funnily and thoughtfully. In his study about compliment,Wolfson gave an example
that becomes more and more popular nowadays when people learn others’ culture:
This is unexpected situation: in a small restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, a
complete male stranger addressed one of the women on his way out of the
restaurant, saying “I have been watching you all through lunch. You have a
beautiful smile. It lights up the whole room” (Wolfson, 1984, p. 242). It is a nice but
not right compliment. The problem here is not that compliment itself, it is depended
on the addressee. It is normal and popular in English that a man can compliment on
a girl’s beauty. In contrast, a Chinese girl, especially, a strange girl, that is
impossible. The Chinese is famous for it’s Confuctional belief and they are
influenced by the proverb: “men and women should keep distance in case of the
occurrence of love affairs”.
Compliment is one of the most sensitive areas in communication. When a
compliment is produced, the speaker has to think a lot of the relationship with the
hearer. This is in line with the aim of the speaker to make sure that their
compliments to the right person in the right situation.
And this research will give you the answer that in English speaking countries
like England, New Zealand, Australia.....what they often like to compliment on and
whether it is similar in Vietnam. The answer will be studied, based on the result of
realistic survey by native speakers. In the first part, the informants are required to
fill in the suitable column with their own idea which standed for by “highly
advisable(HA), advisable(A), yes or no(Y/N) (means: we can give compliment or
not), inadvisable(IA)” equivalent to the topics: appearance, skill or talents, worked
accomplished, possession”. It should be noticed that, topic of communication is
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such a large term, therefore, only four typical topics are studied. Some illustrations
are detailed below:
* Appearance: refers to one’s looks, including haircuts, clothing, and
ornaments, such as necklace and so on
* Skill or talents: refers to the “quality of something produced through the
addressee’s skill or effort: a well-done job,
a skillfully played game, a good meal (Manes, 1983, p. 101)”.
* work accomplished: refers to one’s acquired skill,
esp. social; completion; thing achieved.
*Possession: refers to homes, furniture, automobiles, and other material
possession
The data of the survey is shown in the following table:
Column 1 means “highly advisable”
Column 2 means“advisable”
Column 3 means“yes or no”
Column 4 means “inadvisable”
25
Table 1: The different choice of topic compliment by English and
Vietnamese.
Situations 1
V E
I: S/he has a lovely smile or beautiful eyes 57% 37%
Appea S/he has soft voice 57% 33%
rance s/he looks well-built though her/his ages (above 30) 20% 0%
s/he is a sexy girl 0% 13%
S/he has a new hairstyle 7% 7%
II: S/he is good at some kinds of sports like football,
Skill volleyball… or some kinds of instruments like guitar, 43% 10%
or piano…
talents S/he is good at communicating 50% 14%
S/he can earn money easily 27% 0%
S/he is humorous 30% 20%
III: S/he gets a scholarship for a well known university or a
good job 80% 47%
Work
accom S/he is promoted 23% 50%
plishe S/he passed an important exam or presented successfully
d 67% 43%
at a meeting
IV: S/he has a nice house or car 23% 10%
Posses S/he has lovely pets. 13% 13%
sion S/he has a nice necklace or shirt.. 10% 7%
Her husband is kind, handsome and intelligent 7% 3%
His wife is kind, beautiful and intelligent 10% 3%
His/her children are successful at school or at work 40% 10%
26
2.1. 1. Topics of compliment in English
It is said that, the English are so enthusiastic in giving compliment. They can
compliment on a girl’s beautiful smile, her body....However, this does not mean that
there is no exception. Surrounded by individual culture norms, they also have the
taboo that interlocutors should avoid mentioning such as compliment on age,
possession.... Those findings will be illustrated more specific in the next sub-
sections
2.1.1.1. Appearance
As being seen from the survey, “appearance” refers to one’s looks, including
haircuts, clothing, and ornaments, such as necklace and so on. In general, The
English consider the appearance as the thing can be easy to give a compliment.
Statically, the result shows that, the English take care of some characteristics such
as lovely smile, beautify eyes (37% HA, 60% A), soft voice(33% HA, 53% A) or
new hair style (7%.HA, 50% A) They are ones which get the highests rate of
compliment in daily conversation.
E.g. "Tóc gì tuyê ̣t diê ̣u, dày, mề m mại và chói rực lạ thường!”
(Quoted in “Tiế ng chim hót trong bụi mận gai”, Pha ̣m Ma ̣nh Hùng)
(How equivalent her hair! It is thick, soft and so bright.)
(Colleen McCullough, “The thorn bird”)
As regard the point: “She is a sexy girl”, it also receives the marks for “HA”
(13%) and “A” (57%). It is rather so surprising to the author because at first, she
thought that it is one of the most ‘sensitive” point that S avoids recommending to.
In contrast, the point “s/he looks well-built though her/his ages (above 30)” is
not so popular ( 0% “HA”; 3% “A”; 40% “Y/N”; 57% “IA”)when complimenting.
This can be understood when standing at the view of culture concept of English,
which stated clearly by Esther Wanning (102, 78): People think that when they
belong to the elder group of community, they seem to do nothing for society.
Especially, in a society where achievement is highly acknowledged, all of the elder
become redundant. As he claimed, in the individual environment like English,
people suppose that when they are old they had better go to live in Special Health
27
Care. That is why, they are afraid of age, they do not want to tell about their age
(especially when they are above 30). This finding is also proved by a real concept:
The English like holding birthday party, on their cake they often put the same
number of candles to their age, but this behavior will be omitted when they are
above 30.
2.1.1.2. Skill or talents
The second type of topic that the author does research is “skill or talents”. In
this case, most of the criteria are “HA” or “A” except the point that: “s/he can earn
money easily”(“A”: 10%; “IA”: 54%). Those percents reflects the fact that, the
English like talking about their skills or talent such as playing instrument (“HA”:
10%, A: 67%; “IA”:0%) or “good at communicating”(“HA”: 14%, “A’: 43%, “IA”:
0%) not about their money. It is easy to understand because we know that the
English are the ones who are so consistent in individual values. They think that
asking them about their salary, their work are such personal questions. That is why,
there are up to 54% of ideas are “IA”. However, 10% ideas of “A” appeare.
Looking the information of the informants, the author sees that, most of the subjects
of those ideas are male, who are above 30 and live in urban area. Although most of
the English do not like mentioning their money, sometime it is acceptable with men
because they want to show their achievement.
One more remarkable notice here is the subtopic: “s/he is humorous”. There
are up to 53% informants support for the idea of complimenting others humour, no
one considers it as “IA”.
From above analysis, it is clearly to see that, beside the topics of working
day, if the speaker acknowledges their friend’s skill they can compliment on.
Remarkably, this is one of the ways to solid relationship between interlocutors.
2.1.1.3. Work accomplished
This is only one topic receiving no ideas “IA” for the whole subtopics: gets a
scholarship for a well known university or a good job, is promoted, passed an
important exam or presented successfully at a meeting , and the highest rate of
‘HA”. Generally speaking, English speakers tend to compliment on the addressee’s
28
achievement which was obtained through efforts. For example: “Well done! You
did very well”. Therefore the point that “s/he is promoted” has highest percentage
of “HA”(50%).
Over all, work accomplished is a safe topic for searching words to compliment
English speakers.
2.1.1.4. Possession
The topic of possession here seems to be a “sensitive” one because people do
not like talking about it as much as the “work accomplished”. The possession such
as “having a nice house or car” or “having lovely pets” becomes neutral speech.
As seen from data, they have many approval ideas for ‘A”. The others such as her
husband is kind, handsome and intelligent or his wife is kind, beautiful and
intelligent, are avoided when complimenting others, because there are 40% and
30% informants put their choices on column of “IA” for the two of them in order.
2.1.2. Vietnamese findings

In above section, we have just studied the topics of compliment in English
through the work of sorting out subtopics based on criteria of “HA, A, Y/N and
IA”. The next one will be done with the same form but different subjects. The
informants are Vietnamese. The findings will be observed in specific situations:
2.1.2.1. Appearance
The first sub-topic which is so popular to give comment here is appearance.
It can be observed from the table that the personal characteristics such as: “a lovely
smile or beautiful eyes or soft voice”tend to get the highest support from the
speakers, 57% highly supportive ideas for each. This numeral reflects the fact that
the Vietnamese are very interested in some outstanding features like “smile” or
“tone of voice”. It is their opinion that the way people smile, the way they speak are
the inflections of their fates.
29
Affected deeply by traditional values, the Vietnamese care much for people
who luckily have lovely smile or beautiful eyes or soft voice. Thus, it is easy to
understand that most of participants chose the column of “HA”(50%) and
“A”(37%), no one chose “Y/N” column or “IA” one.
In the second subtopic: “s/he looks well-built though her/his ages (above 30)”,
there are 20% of people show that it is “HA”, 57% of “A” and 23% ones suppose
that can give compliment or not, and no one think that it is not a good
complimenting topic. Different from the English, the Vietnamese regard the
longevity as one of the luckiness that they have because of their honest, kind life.
Thus, it is common when asking: “How old are you?” at the first time of meeting.
However, seven informants give another idea that there is need to mention the age.
They are:
- They are young, above 20
- Most of them are female and live in a city.
This difference by chance indicates the development of our society. The
female in urban are afraid of the age because they think that if they get older and
older, they will be less beautiful, become ugly with wrinkles, spots.... Nevertheless,
general idea is that we can mention other’s age or wish them longevity.
With the idea of complimenting a person because “she is a sexy girl”,
informants divide into 3 main groups: 20% people say that it is “A”, 40% are
neutral “Y/N” and the last is “A”. This is the first time that one suggested subtopic
gets only 20% “A” and the highest proportion of disapproval (40%). Although the
Vietnamese like seeing the beauty, they can not express directly whe
complimenting a girl that she is a sexy one. Surrounded by traditional concept, most
of Vietnamese women are standarded with their four characteristics: work, beauty,
speech, personality (Cong, dung, ngon, hanh) cannot receive such kind of that
saying. However, not all the participants ticked on “IA” column. There are six ones
think that we can give comment. One more time, it is taken into account the
biography of those supporters. They are:
- Age: above 20
30
- Gender: most of them are female
- Marital statue: Single
- Area of living: Urban
- Occupation: Student
Those features explain the reason why it sounds strange to the author.
Looking at present society, there a lot of the changing, especially with the young
generation, they have been affected deeply by foreign culture such as: Korean,
Western...through films, magazines, internet... Their thought also interchange along
with the changing of sociosociety.
Finally, it is friendly if S compliment on others’ beautiful smile, eyes, or soft
voice. But it should be taken into account if the compliment is she is a sexy girl
because it becomes a taboo to with a strict person.
2.1.2.2. Skill or talents
It is clearly stated in the table of observation that a vast of participants
choose the column of “HA” and “A”. Some one who can play sports like football,
volleyball; instruments like guitar, piano; is good at communicating and specially,
humorous, a compliment given is natural.
There are some noticeable points such as: the idea of “s/he is good at
communicating” stands out in the column of “HA” with 50% of participants’
choices . One more time, we mention the affect of culture on the Vietnamese
behavior. There is a famous proverb: “Lời nói chẳ ng mấ t tiề n mua, lựa lời mà nói
cho vừa lòng nhau”(words cost nothing, selects suitable words to please other). It
emphasizes the ways in which people choose suitable words to communicate. Even
though, knowing the importance of “choosing suitable words”, not all of us
successed. That is also regarded as the gift of God to some lucky people. Knowing
that, the Vietnamese tend to compliment the ones who have that kind of special
ability.
To be good at communicating, the speaker has to have many characteristics,
and being humorous is one of them. In Vietnam, the country which had a long
history of fighting and protecting homeland, the sense of humour plays an important
31
role in ritual life. It is obviously to see that the percentage of HA and A for this
subtopic are very high (30% and 46%).
In situation: the person who can earn money well, should we compliment
him/her? As seen from the table, the ideas of informants deliver in four columns,
the largest proportion is for “A” and “Y/N”column (30%) and ranks at the second is
“HA” (27%), the least for “IA” (13%) one . In daily communication, it is not so
impolite if we compliment other on their earning ability. On one hand, earning
money well is also one of the ways to show out one’s social power status. On the
other hand, it is not so important that we have the idea of “HA”, so there is the need
for looking at informants’ parameters. Most of the one who choose that ideas are:
- Age: above 20
- Gender: men
- Marital status: Single
- Living area: Urban
- Occupation: Student
The statistics indicate the reason why those informants have that ideas.
Being students, they are very young and ambitious. In addition, in modern society,
they want to do some thing to identify them. The author supposes that, having a
good job, earning money well are the ways help those people achieve their purpose.
The above analysis shows that: compliment on skill or talents are suitable when
S want to open a conversation with some one they want to.
2.1.2.3. Work accomplished
As a matter of topic: work accomplished, there is a general viewpoint that it
is also a safe topic when complimenting others. This is proved in the above table:
0%“IA”. The approval choices focus on “HA” and “A” column with statistics are:
s/he gets a scholarship for a well known university or a good job (80% and 20%);
s/he is promoted (23% and 60%) and s/he passed an important exam or presented
successfully at a meeting (67% and 23%). It is obviously that someone who is
intelligent is admired.
32
E.g. - “ Ông dạy quá lời. Tôi xin nhắc la ̣i để ông nhớ rằ ng trong nghề viế t
̣ tôi chỉ là mô ̣t câ ̣u ho ̣c trò rấ t vu ̣ng.
kich
- …nhưng ông rấ t thông minh”
(You are upgrading me! I have to remind you that I am only a young student in
writing career.
-…but you are verry intelligent!)
(Thuý Na -Tràng Kiề u, “Tiế ng võng đưa”)
2.1.2.4. Possession
As regard this topic, the majority of decisions fall into the ‘A” and “Y/N”
columns. The subtopics such as: s/he has a nice house or car, his/her children are
successful at school or at work are the ones which have the higher percentage of
“HA” (23%, 40%) and “A”(47%, 47%) comparing to the rest ones.
2.1.3. A contrastive analysis

2.1.3.1. Major similarities
In the light of the data result, there are some similarities between two
cultures, where focus on different topics of compliment. Based on the above
mentioned result, it is best to look at the following three interesting observations.
Firstly, it is noticable that both speakers in two countries like giving
compliment. They want to show their friendliness and politeness through the way in
which they interact with others. As seen from the data, the proportion of four main
types of topics: appearance, skill or talents, work accomplished, possession vary.
Secondly, the result table also indicates that the safest topic is work
accomplished, there is only one which has no idea of “IA”, very few ones on “Y/N”
one (27% in English and 17% in Vietnamese). And rank in the second position is
skill or talents with more than half of ideas are “HA” and “A”.
Thirdly, “appearance” and “possession” are advisable topics if the S do not
mention the too personal features. The Vietnamese as well as English like to
compliment on other’s outlook such as beautiful smile, new hairdos...The sweet
talks about this characteristics will make H feel good and self- confident.
33
2.1.3.2. Major differences
Beside the similarities, there are some remarkable differences about what the
English and Vietnamese compliment on. Generally speaking, these differences
reveal the unique of each nation.
At first, when complimenting on outlook of someone, it is necessary to know
that the English does not want to hear anything which is too personal. They think
that the addressor is “putting their nose on other’s work”. So, with the compliment:
S/he looks well-built though her/his age, it only receives 3% “A”, and up to 43%
“IA”. Whereas, in Vietnam, it is a popular topic because people think that it is one
of the great things that they have in their life. It is said that the longevity is a gift for
people because of their honest life. That is the elder’s happiness when they are from
70, their younger generations hold a big celebration for them.
Another difference is complimenting on a sexy beautiful girl. Most of
English think that it is normal to mention this beauty (15% are “HA”, 57% “A’ only
7% are “IA”). Whereas, the Vietnamese suppose that it is impolite when
complimenting like that(0%, 20% and 40% respectively). Most of us do not like this
word – “sexy”- even though it has not bad meaning. When using this word , the
English consider it as “beautiful word” to show their emotion to the beauty:
E.g. “There was something sexy about your voice. Anything you say makes me a
beautiful noise”
(Shayne Ward, “ No U hang up” song)
In contrast, most of the Vietnamese regard it as a taboo because they refer it
to such kind of meaning:
E.g. “ Con bé nhà ai kháu thế ? – Gớm cái ngực, đầ m quá đi mấ t”
(That girl is so attracted! She looks sexy!)
( Nguyễn Tro ̣ng Phu ̣ng, “Hạnh phúc của một tang gia”)
Therefore we often regard this word as a taboo in any conversation. Thus,
when a listener hears someone say “you look sexy today!”, the addressee thinks it is
not good saying and S is impolite.
34
The other difference is located in money topic. In daily conversation, if S ask
an English (who are not close friends): “How much do you earn?” immediately we
will be considered as an impolite person. That is why, it is not good when you want
to compliment some one who lives in England that s/he can earn a lot of money.
But it is possible in Vietnam. This thing is easy to see from the data table: only 13%
of Vietnamese do not like complimenting on and up to 57% of English have
opposite ideas.
One more difference is topic of ability and work accomplished. With their
own features, the English notice to some one who gets achievement through a
process of doing something such as “is promoted” (50% are “HA”) while the
Vietnamese think much of talent or ability such as “good at communicating”(50%
“HA”).
2.2. Giving compliment strategies
We have just taken a look at what we should and should not give compliment
on. In this part, we will have some knowledge of “How to give a good
compliment”. This question covers a rather large area of linguistics research.
Therefore, the author only investigates some notices based on what seen from the
data. In the survey, there are close and open answers, the informants can choose
available ones or write down their answer. The answer for the question: “How to
give a good answer?” is collected from two representative situations:
The first situation: How would you verbally compliment the following person
when s/he wears a new shirt?
The second one: How would you verbally compliment the following person
when s/he has given a great presentation?
We have the findings:
- In Situation 1:
Table 2: Giving appearance compliment strategies in English and Vietnamese.
Expressions Vietnamese English
You look very nice today 7% 20%
You look very nice today. This colors suit you well. 20% 23%
35
Beautiful shirt! Where did you get it from buddy? 47% 30%
(Surname), you look different every time I see you 6% 7%
You must have spent a lot of time choosing this shirt. I
10% 13%
love it.
Other(e.g: I like your shirt!) 10% 7%
- In situation 2:
Table 3: Giving work achievement compliment strategies in English and
Vietnamese.
Options
Expressions
Vietnamese English
You did very well in there 20% 20%
Well done! Your presentation was very good. 30% 27%
Well done! I want to listen to your presentation again. 23% 24%
(Surname), you have been so skilled. 10% 10%
You must have spent a lot of time preparing that
10% 12%
presentation. I like it.
Others( e.g. You did verry well!) 7% 7%
It can be observed from the survey that most of the expressions used here are
direct compliments on the object which the speaker suppose that it should be
focused on. And directness is one of the positive politeness strategies. For example,
in situation 1, the compliment like “You look very nice today. This colors suit you
well.”(20%V- 23%E) have vast ideas of participants. Or speaker can compliment
“H” and then attack comment to what they talk about such as: “Beautiful shirt!
Where did you buy it, buddy? (47%V-30%E) or “Well done. Your presentation is
very good” (30%V- 27% E). This strategy cover the main proportion of chosen
expressions in both two cultures.
From that result, the author comes roughly to the suggested idea that: usually,
when compliment someone or something, we should speak directly and give
36
comment after that. By this way, you can show your sincerity that you really want
to comment him/her; that what you are saying is honest. If the compliment gets its
forces, it can encourage H on what they have or they are doing. However, to give a
good compliment, S have to think of many others factors such as the relationship
with listener, the setting...All of them will discussed in chapter III:
2.3 Compliment responses strategies
As being mentioned above, compliments are one of the universal speech acts.
When mentioning the act of compliment, we cannot omit its response. The reason
is: the aim of the writer is to find out the variety of different cultures in different
countries. Many the theorists such as Homes, Yule… have proven that compliment
responses reveal “rules of language use in a speech community” and “critical
elements of face maintenance devices”. Therefore, studying compliment responses
can “enhance our understanding of a people’s culture, social values, social
organization, and the function and meaning of language used in a community”
(Yuan, 2001, p. 273).
It is because of the importance of compliment response, there were many
attempts were taken into consideration. For example: Herbert, 1986; Permorantz,
(1978) indicated that American speakers exhibit great ingenuity in avoiding the
simple acceptance of compliments; Homes (1980, with her New Zealand data,
identified 12 strategies and classified these into three broad types: Accept, Reject,
and Deflect/Evade. Her analysis showed that Accept was the most preferred
response type (61% of all the responses). It is interesting to see the response
patterns vary greatly across cultures. In non-western languages, the acceptance rates
are much lower than those in English speaking communities (Baek, 1998). This is
one of the reasons that enhances the author does this research. Although there are
many types of compliments strategies given by famous researchers, the author is
only interested in the one of Herbert:
37
1. Agreements
* Appreciation Token
E.g. Thanks/ thank you.
* Comment Acceptance
E.g.: - I like your hair long.
- Me too. I’m never getting it cut short again.
* Praise Upgrade
E.g.: - I like that shirt you’re wearing.
- You’re not the first and you’re not the last.
* Comment History
E.g.: - I love that outfit.
- I got it for the trip to Arizona (p. 13).
* Reassignment
E.g. - That’s a beautiful sweater.
- My brother gave it to me.
* Return
E.g.: -You’re funny.
- You’re a good audience.
2. No agreements
* Scale Down
E.g. - That’s a nice watch.
- It’s all scratched up. I’m getting a new one
* Disagreement
E.g. - Nice haircut.
- Yeah, I look like Buster Brown.
- Your haircut looks good.
- It’s too short.
* Qualification
E.g. - Your portfolio turned out great.
38
- It’s alright, but I want to retake some pictures.
*Question/ Question Response
- Nice sweater
- You like it?
- Yeah
- Why?
* No Acknowledgement
-That’s a beautiful sweater.
- Did you finish the assignment for today?
3. Request interpretation
- I like your shirt.
- You want to borrow this one too?
The frameworks of CR(compliment response) categorization by Pomerantz
(1978) and Herbert (1989) have been widely used with or without adaptation. It is
difficult to give a universal framework for the complement response because of a lot
of different characteristics of different cultures. The author does not use them as the
main database to do research; she only takes them into of account as reference.
There is another one which claimed by Saito and Beeken:
1. Gratitude: Thank you; appreciate it.

2. Affirmative explanation: I have confidence; I’m good at cooking.
3. Agreement: Yes; I know.
4. Acceptance: I’m glad you like it.
5. Joke: You need to practice ten more years to beat
me.
6. Avoidance/Topic change: Really?; Let’s play again.
7. Mitigation: It happened by chance.
8. Return: You’re good, too.
9). Denial: No; I’m not good.
(Saito and Beecken, 1997, p. 370)
39
In this paper, the author will analyze the data from survey to find out the
most common compliment strategies used by the English and Vietnamese speakers.
From that, to find the answer for the questions: Are there any similarities and
differences? Whether those findings can reveal something about the culture of the
two countries? Is it helpful to the second language learners who are trying their best
to get over communication boundaries? With those purposes, the result will be
analyzed as following:
2.3.1. English findings
Chart 1: Compliment response strategies in English

As shown in the Chart 2, the major ideas of participants are acceptance 55%%.
Besides, the praise upgrade has rather high voters for agreement (17%). It is
defferent fromVietnamese’s, in English, there are only 13,5% of comment
acceptance and 8,5% of scale down used. The least percentage of choices belongs
to the question strategies.
This statistic evidence has proved that there exists the difference between
English and Vietnamese in the way they respond to compliments. Since
communication varies culturally, with each different culture, each different topic,
the hearer has different ways of responding to. The next part will reveal more
specific information about this problem.
2.3.2 Vietnamese findings
As summarized from the data, we have following result:
40
Chart 2: Compliment response strategies in Vietnamese
Having a cursory glance at the chart 1, we have a general idea that the
Vietnamese tend to scale down the compliments (43,5% of ideas). Downgrades or
refusals which put the receiver of the compliment in a situation where they could
appear unappreciative of having received the compliment. When they are used, it
means that receivers of compliments do not want to appear proud or boastful.
It seems that when receiving a compliment, most of us tend to scale down it
because we think that is simple of modesty. However, not all the time we refuse or
scale down because we can accept if it is acceptable.
There are also 11,5% ppreciations strategy used. Appreciations are often
short and grammatically simple. The most common one is ‘thanks’. The listeners
use it when they do not want to talk much about the speakers’ compliments.
Looking back at the information of informants, it seems that most of people who
choose this kind of response are students, who are above 20. They like to use it
because of its simple construction. But it is a small number in comparion with the
total of agreement group. This is because of habit of the Vietnamese.
In general, the Vietnamese scale down or refuse compliments, in some case,
they accept it but they tend to attack comment with agreement signal. For example:
“Cảm ơn! Rấ t vui vi bạn thích nó!(“Thanks! Glad you like it!”) .
One theorist stated that the Vietnamese compliment sequences rather long
contain many words and seem to continue beyond the initial compliment and
corresponding response. This interaction between the speakers relate to sincerity of
41
the compliment and the compliment response. The longer interaction is, the greater
the sincerity is.
The third dimension of responding to compliment is joking, which has 13,5%
choices. This fact is corresponding to what we found in part I, the Vietnamese like
joking. Sometime it is for fun but sometime like another way of refusing for polite
refusal.
From the table of data, there is appearance of the strategies “praise upgrade”
(5%). Praise upgrade can put the person who receives the compliment in a position
where they are potentially showing pride. This is a characteristic that many
language communities try to avoid, especially in the country which praises modesty
like Vietnam. This is time for the researcher to look at the survey to find
information about participant. It is shown that most of them are students, living in
urban area. They are young (above 20). It seems that they live in urban so they can
be affected by foreign culture which connected to individual value. They can pride
on what they have.
Question strategy has the same pecentage to praise upgrade one (5%)
In summary, it seems that, the Vietnamese use many strategies to respond to
compliments and the dominant one is scale down. This is the way that they show
their modesty and politeness.
2.3.3 A contrastive analysis

To show clearly the similarities and differences between the two cultures in the
ways they respond to compliments, the author illustrates the result on the chart
below:
42
2.3.3. 1. Major similarities
Firstly, it is noticeable that, most people in the two cultures are very friendly.
They often respond to compliment as well as give it. It is observed from the Chart 1
that, the responding strategies used by the people from two cultures variably with
six main ones are: Appreciation taken, Comment acceptance, Praise up grade,
Scale down, Joke and Question. Obviously, in each culture, they tend to focus on
one main strategy and the others play as support ones such as in English 55,% of
choice are acceptance and in Vietnam is 43,5% are scale down.
Secondly, the proportion of using question strategies is small compared to the
whole number. Therefore, this strategy is considered as not popular one
43
2.3.3.2 Major differences
It is clearly to see that each culture likes to use different main strategies: the
English prefer appreciation token (55%) and Vietnamese is scale down (43,5%).
This difference refers to the division of negative and positive politeness. The
English use agreement acceptance like the way they want to be acknowledged by
others for what they have. It is kind of positive politeness. Meanwhile, the
Vietnamese often refuse the compliment although they deserved. The reason for this
difference is the Vietnamese follow the norms of modesty in their belief. This way
of thought belongs to negative politeness. It is also reflected in daily conversation.
Whenever hearing another compliments, they often reply that: Ồ, cũng bình thường
thôi mà! Hoă ̣c là: Cái này cũ rồi mà, không phải mới đâu! (“Oh! It normal” or “it is
rather old, not exactly a new one)
With the response strategy appreciation token, the number users in
Vietnamese is much smaller that that in English, which count the percentage 11,5%
and 55% respectively. This is because of the difference in belief between two
cultures. One follows collectivism and other’s is individualism. In addition,
Vietnam is a developing country while the English speaking countries belong to
developed ones where the space of life is more rapid than that in Vietnam. Western
countries incline the usage of short form and quick answer. Whereas, Vietnamese
tend to extend conversation to keep close relationship and to prove that they care
about speaker.
Another interesting result is a noticeable difference in scale down strategy.
The Vietnamese use this kind of response is much more popular than the English.
(43, 5% vs 8,5%). As many Vietnamese participants said that this is signal of
humbles as their traditional concept.
The last finding is that the imbalance in the use of joking in responding to
compliment. The proportion of this strategy in Vietnamese is larger than that in
English (13,5% and 5%). This result indicates the fact that the Vietnamese are
very humorous. They tend to show this characteristic in any situation.
44
Chapter III:
Some suggestions for giving and responding to compliments in
English and Vietnamese equivalents.
3.1 Some suggestions

3.1.1 What do we compliment on?
From the result of the study, it is necessary to notice that the Vietnamese
people, who live in neighborhood relationship and collectivism, compliment topics
are abundant (except complimenting on a girl sexy beauty). Meanwhile, the English
living in their individualistic environment, they avoid mentioning the personal
topics such as age, money...
The second noticeable point is that if S want to compliment on English’s
ability, they should emphasize on achievement or work accomplished which was
obtained through efforts. And when talking with a Vietnamese, the compliment on
talent is highly appreciated.
3.1. 2 .How do we give a compliment?
We have just taken a look at what we should give compliments on. However,
would all compliments we pay to the beautiful women have the best effect? Would
all the compliments we pay to the ones who are successful in work are highly
appreciated? In fact it depends not only on what we comment on, but also on many
other factors like the way we making it or the outside factors such as setting. And
this part will help you answer the question “How to make a good compliment?”
With the factor of the speaker himself, whether he is in Vietnam or in Western
countries, it is very important that he should show his sincerity. Sincerity is the key
to give compliments. Voicing his favorable perception or reaction to someone or
something is usually best simply stated. A true compliment comes from the giver’s
heart and impacts the receiver’s heart. Compliments are often remembered long
after they are spoken. They can lift, heal, and inspire great things. In addition, in
45
Western culture, they highly evaluate the compliment which uses the first personal
pronoun “I”. For example: “A beautiful shirt! I like it a lot”.
Moreover, it is necessary to notice to the addressee’s information and
environment; the outside factors have effect on the process of receiving compliment
of H. Besides, compliments should be appropriate with the setting. For instance: S
should tell some one who has just presented successful in a meeting that “Well
done! Your presentation was very good”. One more notice, S should acknowledge
his relationship with the person he is complimenting. For example, comment on his
boss' new hair color only if two are long-time friends.
Last but not least, S should choose words carefully because a compliment in
good taste and the right words at the right time is always welcome.
3.1.3. How to respond to compliment.
Because the compliment’s variety depends on cultural concept, it is
necessary for the speaker to focus on cultural factors. Vietnamese addressees like to
show the modesty and humble so that rarely they accept the compliment for the first
time. If they do, they also often scale down it or attack some comments after that.
Whereas, it is normal when accepting compliment in English. Therefore, if H is a
Vietnamese, we should know how to speak to avoid being considered as a boastful
person. If he/she is an English, the directness is really highly evaluated.
3.2 Suggested teaching application
Compliment plays an important role in our life. Everyone likes to hear
compliments. Compliments make people feel good about themselves, and we all
need that at times. As second language learners, it is very useful to help them to
improve language skills. In modern language class room, many methods have been
applied. Teachers tend to emphasize the role of communicative skills by providing
cultural factors in lesson. There are some suggestive activities for teaching English
by teaching students how to give and respond compliments.
1. Activities
* Activity 1: Role-play
46
Step 1: Provide some expressions of paying and responding to compliment
for student practice speaking individually.
Expressions
a. Giving complements
That’s a very nice ...(dress).
Great job on the …(presentation).
You look very good in … (that new hair-do).
This dish is delicious, my compliments to the chef.
That … (tie) looks great on you.
b. Responses to compliments
How kind of you to say so.
Thank you.
I’m glad you like it.
It was nothing really. (an expression of modesty and humility)
Step 2: Provide top three compliment formulas (Manes and Wolfson 1981, pp.
120
1. Noun Phrase + is/look + (really) + Adjective
E.g. Your blouse is really beautiful. Your hair looks great!
2. I + (really) + like/love + Noun Phrase
E.g. I really like your dress. I love your new apartment.
3. Pronoun + is + (really) + Adjective + Noun Phrase
E.g.That's a really nice rug. That's a great looking car.
* Additional six formula examples:
4. You have such beautiful hair.
5. What a lovely baby you have!
6. Isn't your ring beautiful!
7. You (really) did a good job!
8. You (really) handled that situation well!
9. Nice game!
Step 3. Provide sample dialogue for students to practice in pairs.
47
Dialogues
Staff: What a beautiful dress, Ms. Elliot.

Guest: Thanks, I'm glad you like it.
Staff: Your new hair-do looks absolutely gorgeous, Mrs. Simpson.

Guest: How kind of you to say so.
Guest: My compliments to the chef. This linguine is superb.

Staff: Thank you ma’am. I’ll be sure to let the chef know.
Guest: Your English is very good.

Staff: Thank you very much.
Staff: Excellent game Mr. Johnson. You really gave me a workout.

Guest: Thanks, I guess all those private lessons are finally paying off.
Guest: I really appreciate all the extra work you did on helping us solve that
problem. It truly went above and beyond. My compliments to your work ethic.
Staff: Thank you sir, how kind of you to say so.
Step 4: Practice using the above expressions by having a dialogue similar to the
ones above
With a partner, one partner takes the role of the guest and the other the role
of the staff. For additional practice, switch roles.
Practice the dialogue several times, trying to use all of the expressions noted
above.
*Activity 2: Use visual aids to teach such as Audio video
- Teacher uses video of native speakers to teach students more
effectively.
48
- Using pictures to show how to use non-verbal language when giving and
responding compliment.
2. Suggested compliment lesson plan for English speaking class.
Hope to provide a useful material for English learners; the author suggests a
lesson plan to apply in classroom.
Purpose:
This lesson encourages children to think of the feelings of others. Students discover
that it feels good to make others feel good.
Duration:
One Forty five -Minute Class Period
Objectives:
The learner will:
- state what they like about a classmate.
- respond appropriately when receiving a compliment.
Materials:
- Paper and pencils
- Three faces drawn on the chalkboard or large paper (see Anticipatory Set)
- A jar containing a slip of paper for each student on which the teacher has
written a specific a compliment
Instructional Procedure:
* Draw three large faces on the chalkboard or large sheets of paper, one face
should be a "happy face", one a "straight mouth face" and one a "sad face". Have
the faces displayed so that they are spaced apart. Ask students to remember how
they felt walking into the classroom on the first day of school, were they a little
frightened or worried that they wouldn't know anyone? Then ask the students to
look at the faces and to go stand by the face that best shows that feeling. Take some
49
time to ask several students to tell why they choose that face. Then ask them to
move to the face that shows how they feel about being in that classroom today.
(Presumably, several students will move from the "straight" or "sad" face to the
happy face. If everyone begins at the happy face, that's wonderful, just skip the next
question and go on.) Now ask, what things happened in the classroom that caused
the change? What makes this classroom a good place to be? Are there things
students can say that will also make them appreciate each other?
* Ask students if they know what it is called when someone says something
nice about a person. Explain that the word is called a compliment. Discuss the
meaning of the word "compliment."
- Discuss how it feels to receive a compliment. (Often compliments will
cause persons to smile and they will feel happy.)
- Remind students to say, "Thank you," after they have received a
compliment.
* The teacher should write a compliment to each student on a slip of paper and
put it into a container. (Try to identify something unique and specific about each
student.) To practice receiving compliments, the teacher will randomly pull
compliments out of the container and give the compliment to the intended person.
The teacher should remind the students to respond appropriately to the compliment.
* The teacher should then write each student's name on a piece of paper and
place it in another container. Students may pull names out of the container,
making sure not to get their own names. Students should write or draw a
compliment to the person whose name they drew. Remind students that a
compliment is something nice that will make a person feel good. Allow time for
students to formulate compliments. Some students may require compliment
starters such as:
o I like you because…
o You are a friend because…
o Thank you for….
50
- Have students take turns paying compliments to each other in front of the
class and thanking each other for the compliments.
- Ask students how it felt to receive a compliment. Ask students how giving a
compliment to someone made them feel.
51
Part C : Conclusion
1. Some major differences in the way the English and Vietnamese giving and
responding to compliments.
Living in society that the globalization is changing so quickly, people have to
deal with many challenges when communicating with the one who from another
country. In reality, the biggest problem that prevents the interchange among
countries is the culture gap or communication breakdown. Acknowledging this
problem, most of language teaching classroom in Vietnam today have been
changing their traditional method, which emphasizes the dominant role of teacher in
class into a new one which focuses on the role of learners. This method emphasizes
the role of the learners by encouraging them to turn what they learn into language in
use.
The present study also proves that studying what is applied in real context is
very important. With the realistic evidence of survey, this thesis reveals some
interesting differences between the ways the English and Vietnamese giving and
responding to compliments. One must bear in mind that the speech event of
complimenting and responses are “dependent on shared beliefs and values of the
speech community coded into communicative patterns, and thus can interpreted
apart from social and cultural context”. (Saville-Troike, 1982:44).
As indicated in the introduction, the first part of this paper has tried to give a
brief review of some theorical background. The second part presents some of the
results of data analysis on both cultures’ compliments, in which the answers for
three questions :What, how to compliment on and how to response it are given;
then, there are the suggestions for applying compliment in real life and suggested
teaching application. The last, the conclusion summarizes the main findings of the
research.
As analyzed above, the safest topic in both cultures is work accomplished and
then talent and ability. When S want to compliment on other appearance, there are
some notices such as: the Vietnamese can compliment on almost everything in
daily life, except something belongs to what we call “taboo” such as the word
52
“sexy”; the English does not want to mention anything which is so private like age,
salary for example. This difference can not illustrate that the English or Vietnamese,
who are more friendly, it is only because of the cultural context.
It is not enough when we only know what to compliment on, sometime, our
sweet talk does not get its illocutionary force because we lack of the sincerity in
what we are saying. This problem calls for the need to mention the way of giving
compliment, too. There are many requirements but the most important thing that the
speaker should pay attention to is ‘complimenting to the right person in the right
context”.
The difference between two cultures does not only exist in what they give
compliment on but also in the way they respond to. The result from chapter 2
indicates that English speakers tend to accept the compliments while the
Vietnamese speakers prefer to reject them. It is because of the different concept of
the two cultures. In English-speaking society, the norm seems to be to receive the
compliment ‘gracefully’, that is, to accept it. This norm has two aspects. One is to
meet complimenter’s positive face needs and the other is to think positively about
oneself. This kind of reaction relates to the idea of positive politeness.The norm of
Vietnamese society, on the other hand, is to be modest. All they need to do is to
appear humble and it shows their thinking in the way of negative politeness by
contrast.
In a nutshell, in small scope, it can not be denied tha “compliments are
positive expressions, which are directed either explicitly or implicitly to someone
for something valued positively by the speaker and the hearer, and even the whole
speech community” (Holmes, 1986). Therefore, with target language learners, it is
necessary for them to know how to use this speech act successfully in realistic
language. The writer hopes to provide a dimension to find out the variable language
and culture of the countries in which English and Vietnamese are spoken as mother
tongue.
2. Suggestion for further research.
Because of the limination of graduation thesis, this paper only study partialy
the act of compliment of English and Vietnamese.
53
The further research will focus on “A contrastive study of the ways of giving
and responding to compliments by Vietnamese and Vietnamese students of
English”. This one will provide the language learners a useful material to
understand their changing during the period of leaning English . From that, they
know what they should do to improve their language skills.
:
54
IV: References
I: Books
A. English
1. Austin, J.(1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press.

2. Beak, G.(1988). Asross-cultural study of compliment and compliment response
in English and Korean. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Seoul.
3. Brown, G.&Yule, G.(1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press
4. Chen, R.(1993). Responding to Compliment: A contrasitive Study of Politeness
Strategies between American Engish and Chiness speakers. Journal of
pracmatics 20, 49-75
5. .Daikuhara, M.(1986). A Study of Compliments from a cross – cultural
perspective Japanese vs. American English. Working papers in Educational
linguistics.
6. Georhia M.Green. (1989). Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding.
University of Illinois.
7. Herbert, R.K.(1986). Say “thank you”- or something. American speech, 61,76-
78.
8. Homes, J.(1988a). Compliment and compliment response in New Zealand.
Anthropological Linguistics, 28(4), 455-508.
9. James.C.(1998). Language and Culture. Oxford University Press
10. Leech.G.(1983). Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman Inc.
11. Levinson,S.(1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
12. Mannes, J., and Wolfson, N. (1981). The compliment formula. In F.Coulmas
(Ed.), Conversational Routine, (pp 115-132). The Hague, Mouton.
13. Pomeantz, A.(1978). Compliment responses: Note on the co-operation of
multiple constraints. In J.Shenken(Ed), studies on the organization of
conversational Interaction (pp 79-109). New York: academic Press.
55
14. Savignon, S.J. (1972). Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign
Language teaching. Philadelphia, PA: Center for Curriculum Development
15. Thomson.N.(2003). Communication and Language. Palgrave Macmillian
16. Yule, G. (1997). Pracmatics. OXford University Press.
B. Vietnamese
1. Cẩ n.Nguyễn Tài. (1981). Một số vấ n đề về Ngôn ngữ học Viê ̣t Nam. NXB Đại
ho ̣c và Trung ho ̣c chuyên nghiê ̣p
2. GS.TS.Châu.Đỗ Hữu.(2003). Đại cương Ngôn ngữ học – Tập hai. NXB Giáo
du ̣c.
3. Kim Liên. Đỗ Thị. (2003). Giáo trình Ngữ dụng học. NXB. Đa ̣i ho ̣c Quốc gia
Hà Nô ̣i
4. Tiế n.Trầ n Bá .(2004). Luâ ̣n văn tha ̣c si ̃ : Nghiên cứu giao thoa Văn hoá Việt -
Canada về cách thức xin phép. Mã số : 50409. Đa ̣i ho ̣c Vinh.
5. Khôi.Phan.(2009). Sông Hương, tuầ n báo ra ngày thứ bảy. NXB lao Đô ̣ng,
Trung tâm Văn hoá Ngôn ngữ Đông Tây.
6. Thảo.Pham Minh.(1996).Nghệ thuật ứng xử của người Viê ̣t. NXB Văn hoá
thông tin Hà Nô ̣i.
7. Thêm.Trầ n Ngo ̣c.(2000). Cơ sở Văn hoá Viê ̣t Nam. NXB Giáo du ̣c.
II: Websites:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2160300_give-good-compliment.html
http://hoctienganh.info/english/2009/03/video-learning-english-lesson-21-
compliments/
56

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and Responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

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VINH UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING

Student: TRUONG THI THANH CANH, 47A1

Many people who communicate cross-cultural boundaries have experienced

Linguistic knowledge Interaction skill Cultural knowledge

Those factors are also represented in following diagram by him.

1.1. 1 What is Pragmatics?

Constatives Directives Commissives Acknowledgement

1.1.1.2. Compliment as a speech act

1.2.1.1. Cross-cultural communication

2.1. Topics of compliment

2.1.2. Vietnamese findings

2.1.3. A contrastive analysis

1. Gratitude: Thank you; appreciate it.

Chart 1: Compliment response strategies in English

2.3.3 A contrastive analysis

3.1 Some suggestions

Staff: What a beautiful dress, Ms. Elliot.

Staff: Your new hair-do looks absolutely gorgeous, Mrs. Simpson.

Guest: My compliments to the chef. This linguine is superb.

Guest: Your English is very good.

Staff: Excellent game Mr. Johnson. You really gave me a workout.

2. Suggested compliment lesson plan for English speaking class.

One Forty five -Minute Class Period

The learner will:

- state what they like about a classmate.

- respond appropriately when receiving a compliment.

- Paper and pencils

1. Austin, J.(1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press.

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