摘 要
恭维语是一种运用频率较高的积极地言语交际行为，是交际的“润滑剂”。本文主要从电影，电视剧，以及一部分著作中收集了各种英汉恭维语的例子，然后对英语和汉语恭维语的形式、话题、应答、以及社会功能诸方面进行了对比，并分析其异同的内在文化因素，旨在寻找不同文化背景下如何恰当给予和接受恭维语的有效途径。
英汉恭维言语行为之间的具体差异充分反应了英汉文化的差异。对这些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恭维语的能力。
关键词：恭维语；跨文化交际；英汉差异
ABSTRACT
Complimenting, said to be a social “lubricant”, is a positive and frequently used speech act. Nearly all the compliment cases including compliment responses in this paper come originally from Chinese and English movie clips and TV series, a few from some famous linguist’s works. This study focuses on compliments from a cross-cultural perspective, comparing and analyzing compliment speech act in English and Chinese cultures in terms of syntactic level, semantic level, compliment topic, compliment response, along with implied cultural factors. These studies aim to provide a good understanding of how to perform and accept compliments appropriately in different cultural backgrounds.
The cultural differences between Chinese and English contexts are fully reflected by the differences between the two compliment sets, which helps people understand the different cultural backgrounds better, hence to improve their intercultural communicative competence, especially that of how to give and receive compliments properly on intercultural occasions.
Key words：compliment; cross cultural communication; cultural differences
Contents
1．Introduction 1
2. Overview of compliments from the perspective of theory 2
2.1 Austin’s speech act theory 2
2.2 Politeness principle 3
2.2.1 Brown &Levison’s politeness principle 3
2.2.2 Leech’s politeness principle 4
3. Contrastive study on English compliments and Chinese compliments 6
3.1 Compliment linguistic forms 6
3.1.1 Syntactic formula 6
3.1.2 Semantic formula 9
3.2 Topics of compliment 11
3.2.1 Topics on appearance 11
3.2.2 Topics on ability and trait 12
3.2.3 Topics on possession 12
3.3 Compliment responses 13
3.4 Social functions 16
4．Conclusion 17
Acknowledgements 18
References 19
