2 Literature Review 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Theoretical Review 2.2.1 Speech Act Theory 2.2.2 Politeness Theory 2.2.3 Variation Theory 2.3 Review of Empirical Studies 2.3.1 Previous Work on Compliments 2.3.2 Previous Work on Compliment Responses
3 Methodology 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Field Work 3.2.1 Data Collection 3.2.2 Participants 3.2.3 Task 3.3 The Lab Work 3.3.1 Coding Scheme for Compliments 3.3.2 Coding Scheme for Compliment Responses 3.3.3 Coding Scheme for Sociolinguistic Factors 3.3.4 Inter-rater Reliability Study 3.4 Data Analysis
4 Findings 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Compliments 4.2.1 Topics of Compliments 4.2.2 Gender of Complimenters and Receivers 4.2.3 Personal Focus of Compliments 4.2.4 Social Status of Complimenters and Receivers 4.3 Compliment Responses 4.3.1 Distributional Analysis 4.3.2 Multivariate Analysis
5 Discussion 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Macro and Micro Level Compliment Responses 5.3 Politeness Theory 5.4 Language Contact Theory 5.5 Variation Theory
Appendices Appendix Ⅰ Record of the Complement Event Data Appendix Ⅱ Figure o{ Chinese Social Class Hierarchy Appendix Ⅲ Samples of Coding Strings o{ Compliment Responses Bibliography
摘要
There arises a big problem that Austin and Searle's speech act theory cannotbe used to solve， namely， the multiple functionability of a speech act. BothAustin and Searle recognized that a speech act can "do" more than one thing at atime. Searle （1969） especially discusses the concept of "indirect speech acts". Toput it simply， an indirect act is an act which means something else other than what the sentence literally says. Although the speech act theory recognizes theimportance of the context in which a speech act occurs， it does not provideexplanations as to what communicative elements of a context help communicatorsidentify the meaning of a particular act.Hymes （1962） introduces the "ethnography of communication" or"ethnography of speaking" into the study of linguistics （Hymes， 1962）.According to Fukushima （1990）， this approach of study to linguisticcommunication considers language to be social behavior and its speaker as a socio-cultural entity. The speaker's knowledge of a language， therefore， includesknowledge of rules recognized by a particular culture for encoding and decodingboth the sentence meaning and the social meanings of what is being said. That is，the meaning of a language expression depends on the contextual information.In order to understand how language functions in various contexts， Hymes（1962） divides a specific communicative context into a taxonomy of units， amongwhich the largest unit of a communicative context is the speech situation wherespeech may occur， such as a meal， a meeting， or a party. The next is the speechevent， which is a type of social activity "directly governed by conventional rules or social norms of the use of speech" （Hymes， 1962， p. 56）， such as a Sunday morning sermon or a classroom lecture. And the smallest unit consists of speechacts， usually defined through their illocutionary forces， such as a complaint， aquestion， or a compliment. For example， a party is a speech situation; aconversation with a friend at the party is a speech event; the greeting， aquestion， an answer， and a compliment during the conversation are constituents of the conversation. ……
