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Complimentary language and gender

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Complimentary language is a speech act that caters to positive face needs. Positive face, according to Brown and Levinson, is "the positive consistent self-image or 'personality' (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactions".[1] Many studies examine complimentary language in relation to gender because of the noticeable differences in compliment topic, explicitness, and response depending on gender of the speaker as well as the gender of the addressee. Analysts use these studies to demonstrate their theories about inherent differences between the genders and the societal impact of gender roles.

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Transcription

So let’s talk about differences. Some things are easy to tell apart, like chocolate and broccoli. Others can be hard to differentiate, like violet and indigo. But when it comes to the sounds of language, what you notice and what you don’t is a matter of what you already know. I’m Moti Lieberman, and this is the Ling Space. Every sound that gets used in language is made by moving air through some combination of your mouth, nose and throat. This is what’s known as the vocal tract. When you move your tongue and lips to make a particular sound, that changes the shape of the vocal tract, and in turn, that changes the properties of whatever sound you're going to make. So for example, the difference between a [p] and a [t], which are both sounds where no air can escape the mouth, is that in one, you close your lips, like [p], and in the other, you move your tongue to the alveolar ridge, that raised area right behind your top front teeth, like [t]. So we make different language sounds by having variation in the way we shape our vocal tracts. But how much variation is enough to make a real difference in what we hear? How far do we have to move our tongues around before we get to a new sound of our language, that’s totally different from any other sound? It turns out there’s no universal answer to that question. There’s no target inside your mouth that says “This far! No farther! Or you’ll be a different sound!” The inside of your mouth is a continuous space – there’s no actual dividing line between the different areas, no special gap or marker saying “NOW YOU ARE IN THE ALVEOLAR ZONE”. Every language in the world has to come to its own conclusions about how it can divide up the different ways we can shape the mouth. Every learner, every speaker, needs to know what those meaningful differences are. Those basic sounds a language has, those ones where if you swap one for another, you really notice something has changed? Those sounds are known as phonemes, and knowing what your language’s phonemes are is an essential part of knowing that language. Phonemes are what you use to build words; if you change a phoneme, you get a different word. And I really mean that literally - the simplest way that linguists test whether a pair of sounds are phonemes in a language or not is to see if switching them – and only them – changes the meaning of the entire word. Any pair of words that differ in only one sound, but have their meaning change, is known as a minimal pair. If you can find a minimal pair, then both of the sounds that got swapped have to be phonemes. Let’s look at some examples. Take the two words [blu] and [glu]. Blue glue, right? The only thing that’s different about them is that first sound; one starts with a [b] and the other starts with a [g], but the rest of the sounds are the same. That one change causes the meaning of the whole word to change! Blue and glue are a minimal pair; moving [b] to [g] makes a meaningful difference. And that means that /b/ and /g/ must be different phonemes in English. And we can do this with any pair of sounds in English – those sounds can be at the beginning, like blue and glue; at the end, like cheek and cheat; or in the middle like beat and bit. Those minimal pairs show us that /b/ and /g/, /k/ and /t/, and /i/ and /ɪ/ are all different phonemes in English. And you could go through and find pairs like this for all the basic sounds of English. But like I said before, every language comes up with its own set of phonemes. So that means that some things that are different in one language may be part of the same phoneme in another language. So, take [i] and [ɪ]. As we just saw, those are different phonemes in English; we know this because we have the minimal pair [bit] and [bɪt]. But if you’re a Turkish or a Spanish speaker, those two sounds are part of the same vowel phoneme – the space in your mouth where you can make that [i]-ish sound is just bigger, rather than being cut into two. So to them, [bit] and [bɪt] sound pretty much the same. It’s similar for a pair of consonants like [l] and [ɹ]; English might have a minimal pair like [lej] and [ɹej], but Japanese only has one sound like that, like [ɾej]. This is part of why people speaking a language other than their native tongue often sound like they have some kind of foreign accent. They’re using their phonemic inventory and applying it to a language with a different one! And, lest you think English is special, it’s not. Other languages carve up the sound spectrum in a way English doesn’t. So if you’re a French speaker, there’s a difference between [u] and [y], like in the minimal pair [vu] and [vy], which mean you and sight. If you’re an Arabic speaker, there’s a difference between [q] and [k], like in [qalbi] and [kalbi], which are my heart and my dog. English speakers probably had a lot of difficulty telling the difference between those. Now this makes a lot of sense - we don’t make sounds the same way every time. Our tongues hit slightly different points, our mouths close slightly differently… any number of factors could be different. If we had to pay attention to every single detail of every phoneme, we’d never have any time to pay attention to what anyone was saying. It’d be all, “hey, you just said ‘NERV,’ but the last time, you said ‘NERF’ (with a slightly less heavy v), and was that important? Oh man, was that important?” No. This way, you know what’s important, and it’s only the sounds that change meanings. There’s a lot of research out there that shows that we can’t really tell the difference between two sounds that aren’t phonemes in our language. For example, a 2000 study examined responses in the brain to two different syllables, [ta] and [da]. Now, these sounds ranged between [t] and [d] at set intervals. There’s a boundary in how we perceive [t] and [d] – if the vocal folds vibrate later, that’s a [t], and if they vibrate earlier, that’s a [d]. English learners notice changes in how long it takes for that vibration to start only if they cross over that boundary – if it moved the sound from a [t] to a [d], or vice versa. But if it varies a bunch without crossing the boundary, if it stays in [t]-land or [d]-opolis? English learners don’t care. Even their brains don’t care. Or how about this: French doesn’t have an [h] sound, so it's really hard for a French speaker to hear when there’s an [h] in English. A 2011 neurolinguistic study found that English speakers really boggle when they hear the last word in a sentence like “The mechanic filled the tire with hair.” It’s just not right. But French speakers don’t care – to them, it still sounds like the tire got filled with air. Nothing more normal than that! So their brains just process it normally. One last case about what variation we can hear: let’s think about the sentence “Let’s scoop this goop.” Or in particular, let’s focus on “scoop” and “goop.” If you’re an English speaker, that [k] and [g] sound different, right? Except… they’re not. That last pair was exactly the same, except for the [s] at the beginning. Listen again: “goop” and “goop.” But /k/ and /g/ are phonemes in English, right? So we should be able to hear the difference between them there. That’s what phonemes are, right? So how can that work? That’s the work of allophones and variation that’s driven by rules, which will be our topic for next week's video. Cliffhanger! That’s right, we’ve reached the end of the Ling Space for this week. For now, though, if you could hear the difference between my phonemes, you learned that speech sounds are made by changing the shape of our vocal tracts; that there are no universal differences between one sound and its neighbour; that phonemes are what we build words from, because they make meaningful differences; that every language comes up with its own set of phonemes, and that we can use minimal pairs to figure them out; and that we can only hear the differences between sounds that are phonemic in our language. The Ling Space is written and produced by me, Moti Lieberman. It’s directed by Adèle-Elise Prévost, our production assistant is Georges Coulombe, and music and sound design is by Shane Turner. Our educational consultants are Level-Up Learning Solutions, and our graphics team is AtelierMuse. We’re down in the comments below, or you can bring the discussion over to our website, where we have some extra material on this topic. Check us out on Twitter and Facebook, and if you want to keep expanding your own personal Ling Space, please subscribe. And we’ll see you next Wednesday. Go dté tú slán!

Same-gender compliments

Compliment patterns appear to be quite different when the complimenter and complimentee are the same gender from when they are different genders, and differences between males and females still arise even within same-gender interactions. In data from New Zealand,[2] it was noted that women tended to compliment each other considerably more often than men complimented each other. This statistic is reflected in further data that showed that women gave two-thirds of the recorded compliments and received three-quarters of them. Compliments between men comprised a mere 9 percent of the data.[3] Similar patterns have been noted in studies of English speakers from other regions as well.

In written discourse, too, such patterns arose, as women tended to compliment other women more often than they complimented men, and more often than men complimented either each other or women. In one study,[4] compliments between women numbered almost 250, while compliments between men did not even reach 50.

Janet Holmes[3] suggests that the discrepancies in male-male and female-female complimentary language may be due to differences in perception concerning the purpose of compliments. The hypothesis is that women use compliments to build affiliations, while men use compliments to make evaluative judgments. Deborah Tannen[5] attributes female linguistic behavior to the purpose of rapport-building, so, assuming compliments are being used as such a means, the data of complimentary language between women seems to suggest this tendency to create and strengthen affiliations is strongest between women.

Compliments are usually classified into one of four categories, depending on what they refer to: appearance, ability and performance, possessions, or personality. In New Zealand data,[2] it is shown that women tend to compliment each other based on appearance most often. While 61 percent of the compliments between women were found to be appearance-based, only 36 percent of the compliments between men were found to compliment each other based on appearance. Additionally, only 22 percent of the compliments based on appearance that were received by men were also given by men.

Men were found to compliment each other based on possessions more often than they compliment women based on possessions. Men rarely complimented each other based on appearance in both the New Zealand and American data, but in the American data it seemed compliments based on appearance were less commonly received by men from women than in the New Zealand data.[6]

Also in New Zealand data,[3] apparent variation between the genders was noted among English-speakers. While women are found to use the compliment pattern, "What [noun phrase]!" (as in, "What a nice shirt!") more often than men, men are found to use a more minimal pattern of, "[adjective] [noun phrase]" (as in, "Nice car."). Thus, it is not surprising that compliments between men very rarely are found to adhere to the "What [noun phrase]!" pattern. In data of American English,[7] only women were found to use the emphasized form, "I love…" rather than, "I like…" and this pattern was most prevalent when women were complimenting other women. Women also used intensifiers such as "really" and "very" in their compliments more than men, and women primarily used these intensifiers when addressing other women.

A study of Mandarin-speakers in Kunming, China[8] indicated that men tend to use implicit compliments more often than women, and women tend to provide explanations and justifications for their compliments. Another study of Chinese-speakers[9] found similar results. At 80.5 percent, women opted for explicit compliments with other women, while 57.2 percent of the compliments paid by males to other males were explicit. Conversely, men used implicit compliments for other men, at 9.5 percent, while women used implicit compliments for other women only 2.3 percent of the time. Men also chose no response, rather than accepting or declining a compliment, 28.5 percent of the time, while women chose no response only 12.8 percent of the time.

Opposite-gender compliments

Studies that use data from American interactions show that male-female compliments are significantly more frequent than female-male compliments,[10] following the general pattern that women receive the most compliments overall, whether from other women or from men. Much attention has been given to the pronounced difference in compliment topic in male-female versus female-male compliments. A particular study done on a college campus found that men gave women almost twice (52%) as many compliments on physical appearance as women gave men (26%).[11] This tendency to praise physical attractiveness (as opposed to "skill, possession, etc.") was attributed to several theories:

  1. Women were more wary of giving compliments, especially those regarding physical appearance, for fear of being interpreted as too forward and romantically assertive.
  2. Alternately, men readily gave more obvious compliments. Male initiation of romantic relations is more socially acceptable, so a misinterpreted compliment would not be viewed as unnatural.
  3. Men are less accustomed to respond to or expect admiration related to physical appearance that is not an expression of romantic interest. This is attributed to the relative rarity of the sincere male-male compliment in comparison to the near-ubiquitous female-female compliment.
  4. There is an expectation among both genders that women place greater significance on physical appearance than do men, and would therefore be more likely to give and receive compliments based on this quality.
  5. An additional explanation from Wolfson[12] posits that in the "American pattern", since men rarely give/receive appearance-related compliments from other men and rarely receive appearance-related compliments from women, the topic of physical attractiveness is not an appropriate topic for compliments from either men or women. She notes that such compliments only occur when the male is much younger than the female.

Robin Lakoff's famous work on "women's speech" has been evaluated by Brower, Gerritsen, and DeHaan,[13] and they found that the inventory of words that had been labeled as characteristically "women's speech" were actually used by both genders when addressing women, especially in complimentary language. What had previously been categorized as adjectives primarily used by women ("adorable", "charming","sweet", "lovely", "divine", as opposed to the neutral words "great", "terrific","cool", "neat") were found in numerous examples of men referring to or addressing women. Though still unproven, this type of "unusual" discourse further emphasizes a distinction between complimentary and regular language.

Studies that discuss opposite-sex compliments in specialized environments include Lauzen and Dozier's study[14] on compliments on primetime sitcoms. Though by no means as natural as everyday interactions, the number and type of appearance comments between female and male characters both mirror and conflict with data from real-life studies. Most realistically accurate was the fact that female characters were twice as likely to be recipients of appearance-based comments. Conflicting facts include the balanced number of male-female and female-male compliments based on physical appearance, as opposed to others' findings that show a clear disparity, with a higher occurrence of male-female compliments. Relatedly, the study also examined insults, in which they found that although male-male insults are more likely than male-female insults, females-female insults (and compliments) are just as frequent as female-male ones. The other specialized study concentrated on gender relations in the corporate workplace.[13] Wolfson found that male professionals felt little hesitation in making personal compliments to female co-workers, especially as jokes. These "sexist compliments" are more frequent when the woman is the subordinate position (i.e. male boss to female secretary). However, they found no occurrences of male subordinates being spoken to in this way, either from female or male superiors.

Compliment responses

Complimentary responses are governed by two contradictory conditions that must be met simultaneously, according to Pomerantz (1978).

  1. Agree with the complimenter
  2. Avoid self-praise

While trying to meet one condition, the complimentee will inevitably conflict with the other. Pomerantz divides American compliment responses into acceptances, agreements, rejections and disagreements.[15]

Herbert (1986) discovered, in his analysis of 1,062 compliment responses, that not all Americans adhere to Pomerantz's conditions. Speakers were "almost twice as likely to respond with some response other than acceptance." Based on these findings Herbert questions whether native speakers of other varieties of English follow the same patterns. He compares American English with English speakers in South Africa. He found that there was a one-in-three chance of an acceptance response being used by an American speaker as opposed to a three-in-four chance of an acceptance response from a South African English speaker. Herbert and Straight (1986) base the reasoning for this difference on the respective social systems of each group. Americans tend to give more compliments in an attempt to establish solidarity; Americans then tend to refuse compliments they receive, stressing equality. In the society of South African English speakers on the other hand, solidarity among status-equals is assumed. They do not need to work to establish something that they already have, so it is easier for them to accept compliments given to them.[16]

Just as there are differences of compliment responses among separate cultures, there are also differences among men and women within the same culture. American women tend to give and receive more compliments than men do. The idea that women's speech activity works much differently compared to that of men can be observed through compliment responses, as women often work at creating and reaffirming solidarity with compliment response strategies. Wolfson found that elaborate responses to compliments among women occur between intimate, status-unequal, and status-equal acquaintances, and that a majority of elaborate responses occurred between status-equal women.[16]

There are major differences in how men and women perceive compliments that are given by the other sex. Shotland and Craig (1988) concluded that both sexes can differentiate between friendly behavior and sexually based behavior but that men perceive situations more sexually than women. They hypothesize that this difference in perception is due to the difference between the thresholds of sexual intent of men and women. Therefore, women misjudge interested behavior as friendly behavior because they have a high threshold of sexual intent. Men, on the other hand, misjudge friendly behavior as interested behavior because they have a low threshold for sexual intent.[17] This difference in threshold levels affects the subject matter of compliments given between men and women as well as how they respond to the compliments given.

Cross-cultural overview of compliments

There is much variation regarding how compliments function and are performed in different societies. Compliments as an expression of approval is just one general description; however, as discussed above, how such politeness strategies are exhibited can vary according to the values of the society in which they are performed. The different notions of gender roles within a given society seems to have a bearing on both the frequency and style of compliments delivered in conversation.

American English

According to studies carried out by Manes and Wolfson, compliments in American culture are expressed quite frequently in conversation in attempt to achieve and maintain successful social relationships with others. Often for those whose first language is not American English, they find American English speakers rude or overbearing with giving compliments, particularly when coming from a society where humility is highly valued. Across society, men and women compliment each other freely and seemingly often about an array of topics and in various social contexts.

Spanish speakers

Many studies have looked at the use of piropos carried out by Spanish-speaking men to compliment a woman's physical beauty and attributes. Zena Moore[18] concluded that to many American English speakers these speech acts are seen to be sexist and closely related to machismo. Despite the negative perception among American English speakers, the term and its usage are widely recognized in Hispanic culture. There is no direct translation into English for the term, but an example of its use may be as explicit as commenting on a woman's sexual desirability, or may be poetic in nature, often focusing on a woman's eyes. Moore highlights that piropos are embedded in long cultural traditions and generally received with positivity by Hispanic women.

Turkish speakers

Studies of compliments in Turkish again draw attention to compliments as a politeness strategy that helps maintain social relations. A study by Arin Bayraktaraglu and Maria Sifianou[19] described compliments in Turkish as formulaic and occurring mostly in friendly situations. Age and marital status seems to have a great bearing on compliments given. Men who are married and above 40 years old compliment women more on accomplishments and personal attributes, whereas young adult men compliment women more on appearance and physical attributes. The results of this study were consistent with Holmes's[3] previous findings that women compliment and are complimented more, particularly on appearance, which accounted for 58 percent of the compliments women received.

Chinese speakers

Speakers of Chinese seem to have a very deflective approach to praise and compliments, and in comparison to American English speakers, may compliment one another in conversation less frequently. Chinese culture highly values the group over the individual, as well as modesty.[20] As a means of reinforcing one's humility, Chinese speakers tend to respond to a compliment by rejecting it or lowering themselves by returning the compliment back to the original speaker. Wolfson (1984) noted that it is often inappropriate for a man to compliment a Chinese woman on her physical attributes, especially if they do not have a close relationship. A study by Gabriele Kasper[21] found that over 80% of Chinese speaking women from her sample gave more explicit compliments and responses in comparison to less than half of the men.

Notes

  1. ^ Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ a b Holmes, Janet. 1996. The role of compliments in female-male interaction. Using English: From conversation to canon. ed. by Janet Maybin and Neil Mercer. London: Open University. ISBN 0-415-13119-7
  3. ^ a b c d Holmes, Janet. 2003. Complimenting: A positive politeness strategy. Sociolinguistics: The essential readings. ed. by Christina Bratt Paulston and G. Richard Tucker. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-22717-2
  4. ^ Johnson, Donna M.; Roen, Duane H. (1992). "Complimenting and involvement in peer reviews: Gender variation". Language in Society. 21 (1). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 27–57. doi:10.1017/s0047404500015025. ISSN 0047-4045.
  5. ^ Tannen, Deborah (1990). You just don't understand: women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-07822-5. OCLC 20755312.
  6. ^ Wolfson, Nessa. 1983. An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English. ed. by Nessa Wolfson and Elliot Judd. Sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House. ISBN 0-88377-269-8
  7. ^ Herbert, Robert. 1990. Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. Language in Society 19.2. 201-224.
  8. ^ Yuan, Yi (1998). Sociolinguistic dimensions of the compliment event in the Southwestern Mandarin spoken in Kunming, China (doctoral thesis).
  9. ^ Sun, Zhihui (2002). A study of gender differences in compliments and compliment responses in Chinese context (Unpublished master's thesis).
  10. ^ Golato, Andrea; ref: Holmes, Janet. 2005. Compliments and Compliment Responses: Grammatical Structure and Sequential Organization. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.. ISBN 1-58811-599-2
  11. ^ Wogan, P. "Compliments and Gender". Archived from the original on 2008-12-04. Retrieved 2009-03-28.
  12. ^ Maybin, Janet and Mercer, Neil; ref: Wolfson, Nessa. 1996. Using English from Conversation to Canon. London: Open University. ISBN 0-415-13119-7
  13. ^ a b Wolfson, N. (ref: Brower, Gerritsen, DeHaan 1979). (1984). Pretty Is As Pretty Does: A Speech Act View of Sex Roles. Applied Linguistics 5(3):236-244 doi:10.1093/applin/5.3.236 http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/citation/5/3/236
  14. ^ Lauzen, Martha M.; Dozier, David M. (2002-06-01). "You Look Mahvelous: An Examination of Gender and Appearance Comments in the 1999–2000 Prime-Time Season". Sex Roles. 46 (11): 429–437. doi:10.1023/A:1020417731462. ISSN 1573-2762.
  15. ^ Ziu, Zhanrong (2004), The Speech Event of Complimenting in Chinese
  16. ^ a b Wolfson, Nessa (1990). "Intercultural Communication and The Analysis of Conversation" (PDF). Working Papers in Educational Linguistics. 6 (2). University of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2005-09-08. Retrieved 2009-03-29.
  17. ^ ""Ah, excuse me…I like your shirt": An examination of compliment". studyres.com. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  18. ^ Moore, Zena (1996). "Teaching Culture: A Study of Piropos". Hispania. 79 (1): 113–120. doi:10.2307/345624. ISSN 0018-2133.
  19. ^ Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries: The Case of Greek and Turkish. John Benjamins Publishing. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58811-040-4.
  20. ^ Lin, An-Kun (2008). "On English and Chinese Compliments". US-China Foreign Language. 6 (1): 65–68.
  21. ^ Kasper, Gabriele (1995). Pragmatics of Chinese as Native and Target Language. Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. ISBN 978-0-8248-1733-6.
This page was last edited on 13 September 2023, at 09:50
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