Pragmatic Transfer in Compliment Responses by Chinese Learners of English

Abstract

This paper reports a study on the pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Chinese Learners of English. It has three aims: (1) to discover similarities and differences in compliment responses between the American English speakers (AES) and Chinese Learners of English (CLE); (2) to provide empirical evidence for or against existing theories of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses and (3) to reveal differences of social values between the two groups. The results of this study are compared with those of R. Chen who made a similar study in 1993. The changes in the past ten years are discussed at the end.