A Sociopragmatic Contrastive Analysis of Compliment Responses between Native American and Native Persian Chatters – A Web-Based Study

• Main Author: Sepideh Motamedi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vesnu Publications 2018-10-01
• Series: International Journal of Body, Mind and Culture
• Subjects: Compliment responses; Medium of interaction; Cultural values; Text-talk features
• Online Access: http://ijbmc.org/index.php/ijbmc/article/view/131

<p><strong>Background</strong><strong>:</strong> Online social networking has reduced the distance between people with different languages and cultures through allowing individuals in distant geographical locations to form interpersonal relationships. Adopting the Internet as the medium for online interactions, the current study aimed to compare and contrast Native American and Persian speakers’ compliment responses in this environment.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Data were collected from online social networks by saving archived conversations of 15 chat participants who were selected through snowball sampling from each group of English and Persian chat users. The conversations were produced from January 2009 to May 2012. The compliment exchanges made by the two groups were examined and contrasted with each other in terms of compliment response strategies.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> Chi-square test and z-score results indicated that the two groups of participants differed significantly in adopting strategies for responding to compliments.</p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> American speakers employed acceptance significantly more than Persian speakers. This is while Persian chat participants used self-praise avoidance significantly more than their American counterparts. Comparing the results of the study with other studies on compliment responses realization, it is suggested that communicative acts which take place in anonymous social networks mirror the cultural values of the language community of text-talk users and the medium of interaction did not restrict participants' cultural preferences in complimenting responses. However, they used some text-talk features in the online environment which indicates the need for using compensatory strategies due to the mode of interaction.