Gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in the American comedy TV-series Ugly Betty

Gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in the American comedy TV-series "Ugly Betty" Sự khác biệt trong cách thức khen và tiếp nhận lời khen giữa các giới trong tiếng Anh qua bộ phim truyền hình Mỹ "Ugly Betty" Bùi Thị Ánh Ngọc University of Languages and International studies M.A. Thesis. English linguistics: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Ph.D. Kiều Thị Thu Hương Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract. This study examines the differences in compliment behavior and compliment response strategies in American English between males and females. The data were collected from the ten episodes in the first season of the American Comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty”. The analysis of 167 compliment exchanges showed that there were significant differences between males and females in giving compliments and using the response strategies. Nevertheless, they still shared some common features. Regarding compliment frequency, females tended to compliment other females more whereas males complimented females far more than they complimented other males. In this research, except for the topic of appearance, there was no significant statistic difference in the choice of others compliment topics between the two genders. It should be noted that male – female interactions complimenting on appearance took the first place. In terms of functions, females used compliments most often to establish, confirm or maintain solidarity while male compliments more often offered admiration. The findings of the differences in response type frequencies from the two groups revealed that there was more likelihood of non-agreement than agreement. It might be due to the high frequency of no acknowledgement responses. In the light of these findings, several pedagogical implications were drawn. Most importantly, English foreign language teachers should show the learners how to appropriately compliment and respond in communicative situations. Keywords. Giao tiếp; Tiếng Anh; Phim truyền hình Content. INTRODUCTION The introduction states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, scope, methodology, the significance and the organization of the whole paper. Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are set out to work as the guidelines for the whole research. 1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study An effective language user is competent in not only linguistics but also pragmatics. As Yule (1996) put it, “nothing in the use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive” (p. 5-6). To be able to use a target language appropriately in terms of pragmatic competence, language users should employ a variety of speech acts. Complimenting is one of them. Compliments not only express sincere admiration of positive qualities, but they also replace greetings, thanks or apologies, and minimize face-threatening acts (henceforth FTAs), such as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes, 1988a; Wolfson, 1983, 1989). Complimenting is a tool of establishing friendship that creates ties of solidarity in American culture. It is also an important social strategy that functions as an opener for a conversation, allowing meaningful social interactions to follow. Americans pay compliments so frequently that neglecting to do so can even be interpreted as a sign of disapproval (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989; Wolfson & Manes, 1980) and a wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Holmes & Brown, 1987). Each culture requires various kinds of speech act behavior. Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) found that “culturally colored interactional styles create culturally determined expectations and interpretative strategies, and can lead to breakdowns in intercultural and interethnic communication” (p. 30). In other words, when people from different cultures interact, breakdowns in communication may happen due to signaling different speech act strategies that reflect the culture‟s distinctive interactional style. Complimenting is a particularly suitable speech act to investigate because it acts as a window through which we can view what is valued in a particular culture. Thus, it is essential for Vietnamese learners of English to know how to give appropriate compliments and responses in English. Complimenting is inevitably affected by social factors including gender. According to Tannen (1990), gender differences are parallel to cross-cultural differences. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the interactions between men and women, men and men, or women and women exchanging compliments and responses. All those reasons stimulate the researcher to conduct a study on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through the American Comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty”. The people in the TV series are not real people, but the actors are chosen to match the real ones in daily life. What can be assumed is that the data would bare resemblance to real life language. Hopefully, the study will make a contribution to the field which it is envisioned and fill the gaps in previous research. 2. Aims of the study First of all, the study sets out to investigate the gender-based differences in compliment behavior including the frequency of compliments, compliment topics and the functions of compliments. Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments response strategies are explored. The findings will pave the way for several pedagogical and intercultural communication implications. 3. Research questions The research seeks the answers to the following research questions: Research question 1: What are the differences in compliment behavior between males and females? Research question 2: What are the differences in compliment responses between males and females? 4. Scope of the study There are four seasons in this TV-series with the total of 85 episodes. However, due to the size and limitation of a preliminary research, the dialogues in the episodes one to ten in the first season are used with the development of the story. Every episode takes about 40 minutes. Totally, this study will analyze ten episodes of around 400 minutes. The compliments among 18 characters balanced in gender, 9 females and 9 males, are chosen. Some compliments are excluded from the present study: compliments to a place or an object that does not belong to interactants, compliments to speakers themselves or to a group of people, compliments from a group to a particular thing or a special person. Furthermore, a compliment may be sincere or insincere. Mills (2003) stated: The hearer might consider that the speaker is being insincere and is only complimenting because he/she wants something – i.e. that it is serving some longer term goal; or it might be interpreted as suggesting that the person does not look good at all, but the speaker is being kind. (p. 220) Also, compliments can have an ironic meaning (Holmes, 1995, p. 119). For instance, if the interlocutors are enemies, the compliments between them have ironic meanings. Within the scope of an M.A. thesis, only sincere compliments are analyzed. 5. Methodology Quantitative and qualitative methods are both used in this paper with priorities given to the quantitative one. In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are based on the analysis of the empirical studies and statistics processed on Stata 10, a software program commonly used in social sciences. In addition, such methods as descriptive, analytic, comparative and contrastive are also utilized to describe and analyze, to compare and contrast the database so as to find out gender-based differences in compliments‟ frequency, topics and functions and types of compliment response strategies. 6. Significance of the study The present study is conducted to find out the influences of gender on compliment behavior and compliment response strategies in English. It will add to the research on compliments and second language acquisition. Regarding researchers who share the same interest in the topic, they could rely on this paper to get useful information for their future studies. Besides, the study could help Vietnamese learners of English to be aware of sociolinguistic aspects of English and thus to improve their pragmatic competence. As for teachers of English, the findings from this paper may have crucial pedagogical implications for practice of teaching English as a foreign language. 7. Organization of the study After the Introduction, the rest of the paper includes the following parts: Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the background of the study including the definitions of key concepts and the discussions of related studies. Chapter 2 (The study) describes the procedures to conduct the research, presents, analyzes the results and discusses the findings the researcher obtained according to the two research questions. Conclusion summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, provides some implications and points out the limitations of the research as well as proposes several suggestions for further studies. Following this part are References and Appendix. References. ENGLISH Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. New York: Oxford University Press. Baek, G. (1998). A cross-cultural study of compliments and compliment responses in English and Korean. Seoul National University, Seoul. Barnlund, D. & Araki, S. (1985). Intercultural encounters: The management of compliments by Japanese and Americans. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 16(1), 9-26. Berger, C. R. (1985). Social power and interpersonal communication. In M. Knapp & G. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 439-499). London: Sage. Blum-Kulka, S. (1989). Playing it safe: the role of conventionality in indirectness. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 37-70). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Request and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. Brown, P. (1980). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (Eds.). Women and language in literature and society. New York, Praeger. Brown, P. (1983). Gender, politeness and confrontation in Tenejapa. In D. Tannen (Ed.) Gender and conversational interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York and London: Routledge. Cameron, D. (2002). Working with spoken discourse. Sage Publications. Canary, D.J. & Dindia, K. (Eds.) (1998). Sex differences and similarities in communication : Critical essays and empirical investigations of sex and gender in interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers Cedar, P. (2006). Thai and American responses to compliments in English. The Linguistics Journal, 1(2), 6-28. Celce-Murcia, M. (1991). Discourse analysis and grammar instruction. In W. Grabe (Ed.), Annual review of Applied Linguistics (pp. 135-151). New York : Cambridge University Press. Celce-Murcia, M. & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching: A guide for language teachers. Cambridge University Press. Chambers, J. C. (1992). Linguistic correlates of gender and sex. English World Wide, 13, 173-218. Coates, J. (2004). Women, men and language – A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. Harlow: Longman. Coates, J. & Cameron, D. (Eds.) (1989). Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex. New York: Longman. Crawford, M. (1995). Talking difference on gender and language. SAGE Publications Ltd. Crawford, M, & MacLeod, M. (1990). Gender in the college classrooms: an assessment of the „chilly climate‟ for women. Sex Roles, 23, 101-122. Daikuhara, M. (1986). A study of compliments from a cross-cultural perspective: Japanese vs. American English. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 2(2), 103-134. David, B. (2008). Compliment responses across gender. Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication, 1(2), 76-87. DeFrancisso, V. (1991). The sounds of silence: how men silence women in marital relations. Discourse and Society, 2, 413-423. Dubois, B. & Crouch, I. (1975). The question of tag questions in women‟s speech: They really don‟t use more of them. Language in Society, 4, 289-294. Dunham, P. (1992). Using compliments in the ESL classroom: An analysis of culture and gender. MinneTESOL, 10, 75-85. Eagly, A. H. & Johnson, B. T. (1990). Gender and leadership style: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 233-256. Eakins, B. & Eakins, G. (1976). Verbal turn-taking and exchanges in faculty dialogue. In B. L. Dubois & I. Crouch (Eds.), The sociology of the languages of American women. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University. Eakins, B. & Eakins, G. (1983). Verbal turn-taking and exchanges in faculty dialogue. In Dubois, B. L. & Crouch, I. (Eds.), Proceedings of the conference on the sociology of the languages of American women (pp. 53-62). San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press. Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003). Language and gender. Cambridge University Press. Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1979). Children's verbal turn-taking. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 391-414). New York: Academic Press. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Fishman, P. (1978). Interaction: the work women do. Social Problems, 25, 397-406. Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219-236. Gajaseni, C. (1994) A contrastive study of compliment responses in American English and Thai including the effect of gender and social status. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gender, women and health. World Health Organization. Retrieved September 28, 2010, from http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/ Gorila, M. (2007). Ugly Betty – First season subtitles. Retrieved September 22, 2010, from http://subscene.com/english/Ugly-Betty-First-Season/subtitle-89132.aspx Greif, E. B. (1980). Sex differences in parent-child conversations. Women’s Studies International Quarterly, 3, 253-258. Grice, P. (1968). Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard. Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237-257. Hall, J. A. & Veccia, E. M. (1990). More “touching” observations: New insights on men, women, and interpersonal touch. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1155-1162. Halliday, M. A. K. (1991). The notion of “context” in language education. In T. Le & M. McCausland (Eds.), Language education: International developments (pp. 4- 26). Hare-Mustin, R. & Marecek, J. (1988). The meaning of difference: gender theory, post- modernism, and psychology. American Psychologist, 43, 455-464. Hatch, E. (1992). Speech acts and speech events. In E. Hatch, Discourse and language education (pp. 121-163). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Henley, N. (1973-1974). Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 18, 1-26. Henley, N. (1977). Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Herbert, R. K. (1986). Say “thank you” – Or something. American Speech, 61, 76-78. Herbert, R. K. (1989). The ethnography of English compliment and compliment responses: A contrastive sketch. In W. Oleksy, Contrastive pragmatics (pp. 3- 36). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Herbert, R. K. (1990). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. Language in Society, 19, 201-224. Herbert, R. K. (1998). Sex-based differences in compliment behavior. In J. Cheshire & P. Trudgill (Eds.), The Sociolinguistics Reader 2: Gender and Discourse (pp. 53- 75). Arnold, London. Herbert, R. K. & Straight, H. S. (1989). Compliment-rejection vs. compliment avoidance. Language and Communication, 9, 35-47. Holmes, J. (1984). Women‟s language: A functional approach. General Linguistics, 24(3), 149-178. Holmes, J. (1988a). Compliments and compliment responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics, 28, 485-508. Holmes, J. (1988b). Paying compliments: A sex-preferential positive politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 455-465. Holmes, J. (1991). Language and gender. Language Teaching, 24(4), 207-220. Holmes, J. (1992). An Introduction to sociolinguistics. London. Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. Longman Publishing, New York. Holmes, J. (1998). Women‟s talk: The question of sociolinguistic universals. In J. Coates (Ed.), Language and Gender: A Reader (pp. 461-483). Oxford. Holmes, J. & Brown, D. F. (1987). Teachers and students learning about compliments. TESOL Quarterly, 21(3), 523-546. Jones, D. (1980). Gossip: notes on women‟s oral culture‟. In C. Kramarae (Ed.), The voices and words of women and men (pp. 193-198). Pergamon Press, Oxford. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1987). La description des échanges en analyse conversationnelle: L‟exemple du compliment. DRLAV – Revue de Linguistique, 36-37, 1-53. Kiều, T. T. H. (2006). Disagreeing in English and Vietnamese: A Pragmatics and conversation analysis perspective. Unpublished paper submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Knapp, M. L., Hopper, R., & Bell, R. A. (1984). Compliments: A descriptive taxonomy. Journal of Communication, 34(4), 2-31. Kollock, P., Blumstein, P. & Schwartz, P. (1985). Sex and power in interaction: Conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review, 50, 34-46. Kramarae, C. (1981). Men and women speaking. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Kramer, C. (1977). Perceptions of female and male speech. Language and Speech, 20, 151-161. Lakoff, R. (1972). Language in context. Language, 48(40), 907-927. Lakoff, R. (1973). The social context of language use. Lecture delivered at the Linguistic Summer Institute. Ann Arbor. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and women’s place. New York: Harper and Row. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman: Essex. Leet-Pellegrini, H. M. (1980). Conversational dominance as a function of gender and expertise. In H. Giles, W. P. Robinson & P. M. Smith (Eds.), Language: social psychological perspectives. Oxford: Pergamon. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (2004). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2001). Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(7), 127. Maltz, D. & Borker, R (1982). A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In J. Gumperz (Ed.) (1998). Language and Social Identity (pp. 281-312). Oxford. Also in J. Coates (Ed.) (1998): Language and Gender: A Reader (pp. 415-434). Oxford. Manes, J. (1983). Compliments: A mirror of cultural values. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd. (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 88-95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Manes J. & Wolfson N. (1981). The compliment formula. In F. Coumas (Ed.) (1994), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 115-132). The Hague: Mouton. [...]... Talking shop: Sex and status as determinants of floor apportionment in a work setting In J Coates & D Cameron (Eds.), Women in their speech communities: New perspectives in language and sex (pp 141-157) New York: Longman Ye, L (1995) Complimenting in mandarin Chinese In G Kasper (Ed) Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language University of Hawaii, USA Yoko, U (1995) Japanese Compliment Responses: ... Meaning in interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics USA, England: Longman Thorne, B & Henley, N (1975) Difference and dominance: An overview of language, gender and society In B Thorne & N Henley (Eds.), Language and sex: Difference and dominance (pp 5-42) Rowley, MA: Newbury House Trudgill, P (1972) Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British dialect of Norwich Language and. .. (2006) Compliment topics and gender Women and Language, 29, 21–28 Pinker, S (2007) The evolutionary social psychology of off-record indirect speech acts Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(4), 437-461 Pomerantz, A (1978) Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints In J Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversation interaction Academic Press Pridam, F (2001) The language... Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 411-432 Nelson L G., El Bakary, W & Al Batal M (1993) Egyptian and American compliments: A cross-cultural study International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 17(3), 293-313 Nguyễn, H (2000) An introduction to discourse analysis Vietnam National University Press Norrick, N (1980) The speech act of complimenting In E Hovdhaugen (Ed.), The Nordic languages and modern linguistics... everyday talk: Reflections on parent-child interaction Social Problems, 24, 521-529 West, C & Zimmerman, D (1987) Doing gender Gender and Society, 1, 125-151 Wolfson, N (1981) Compliments in cross-cultural perspective TESOL quarterly, 15 Wolfson, N (1983) An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English In N Wolfson & E Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition Rowley, Massachusetts:... view of sex roles Applied Linguistics, 5(3) Wolfson, N (1988) The bulge: A theory of speech behavior and social distance In J Fine (Ed.), Second language discourse: A textbook of current research (pp 2138) Norwood, NJ: Ablex Wolfson, N (1989) Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL Rowley, MA: Newbury House Wolfson, N., & Manes, J (1980) The compliments as a social strategy Interactional Journal of... Texts and contexts in second language learning McGraw Hill Searle, J R (1975) Indirect speech acts In P Cole & J L Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (pp 60-61) New York: NY: Academic Press Searle, J R (1969) Speech acts Oxford: Cambridge University Press Searle, J R (1976) A classification of Illocutionary acts Language in Society, 5, 1-23 Searle, J R (1979) Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory... (1978) Sex-related cognitive differences: An essay on theory and evidence Springfield, IL Smith-Hefner, N (1988) Women and politeness: the Javanese example Language and Society, 17, 535-554 Spender, D (1980) Man made language London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Spender, D (1989) The writing or the sex New York: Pergamon Press Stern, H (1983) Fundamental concepts of language teaching London Oxford: Oxford University... Hall, J A (1984) Gender differences in touch: An empirical and theoretical review Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 440-459 Tannen, D (1987) That’s not what I meant! How conversational style makes or breaks relationships New York: Ballantine Tannen, D (1990) You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation New York: Ballantine Books Tannen, D (1994) Gender and discourse Oxford... Communicative needs in foreign language learning” In Wolfson & Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language Acquisition Newbury House Publishers Richards, J C (1985) The context of language teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sadker, M & Sadker, D (1994) Failing at fairness: how America’s schools cheat girls New York: Scribners Savignon, S (1997) Communicative competence theory and classroom practice: . gender-based differences in compliment behavior including the frequency of compliments, compliment topics and the functions of compliments. Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments. stimulate the researcher to conduct a study on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through the American Comedy TV-series Ugly Betty . The people. of the American Comedy TV-series Ugly Betty . The analysis of 167 compliment exchanges showed that there were significant differences between males and females in giving compliments and using