Abstract

This paper endeavors to explore English (mostly American English) and Chinese compliment response strategies in a cross-cultural perspective, on the basis of review of previous study on speech act theory and politeness theory. It aims to probe into the similarities and differences of compliment response strategies．Due to globalization and developing culture , there must be some changes of Chinese and English compliment responses .The effects of social factors on the use of compliment response strategies are also examined．Hopefully this paper is expected to help people understand the different cultural backgrounds better，hence to improve their intercultural communicative competence，especially that of how to receive compliments properly in intercultural communication.

Keywords   Compliment Response   Compliment Response Strategy   Conversational Principle   Politeness  Principle

这篇论文将回顾Leech的礼貌准则和H.P.Grice 的合作原则，将收集到的语料进行归纳和分类，对比分析汉英称赞语应答语策略的类型，探讨造成差异的文化因素。近三十年来，对称赞语应对策略的研究较少，并且大多基于英语文化，对汉语文化语境下的研究还不够充分。同时，当今的社会处于全球一体化的时代，汉英文化的相互冲击影响了人们尤其青年一代的社会文化价值观，因此汉英称赞语策略很容易发生变化，本文企图探讨汉英称赞语的变化趋势及造成差异的因素。对这些文化差异的认识将有助于人们有效地提高跨文化交际的能力，尤其是提高在跨文化交际场合中恰当地给予和接受称赞语的能力。

关键词  称赞语   称赞语应对策略   应对模式   合作原则   礼貌原则

1 Introduction
Compliment, as a polite speech act, frequently occurs in our vocal interactions. It makes a great contribution to maintaining and developing interpersonal relationship among each member of a speech community. However, compliment responses often turn out to be problematic in Intercultural communications, because people from different cultural backgrounds would give different understandings and make extremely diverse responses. This paper aims to reduce misunderstandings and conflicts in intercultural occasions, and improve people’s intercultural communicative competence, especially help those who major in English to receive compliments in a much better way.