A Contrastive Study on American and Chinese Compliments in Parenting Practice

AbstractCompliment is a type of commonly-used speech act in both American and Chinese daily communication。 A certain number of overseas and domestic scholars have studied on compliments and focused on linguistic form, semantic pattern, topic distribution, response strategy, social function and so on。 However, most of them collected compliment corpuses without a classification of specific situations。 And no one focused on the effect of compliment in parenting。 Thus this thesis will collect altogether 200 corpuses from the two comparable TV series: Growing Pains and Home with Kids, and study on Chinese and American compliments used by family members from the cross-cultural perspective。90059

The thesis aims to find answers for the following questions: 1) What are the similarities and differences of American and Chinese compliments used at home in terms of topic distribution, response strategies and social functions of compliment? 2) How does compliment affect children’s behavior and how to give compliment in a more appropriate way? The result shows that the topics of Chinese compliments are more limited to ability and personality。 As for response strategies, both American and Chinese people would like to accept compliment but Chinese are not in the habit of accepting compliment directly, which reveals their modesty。 As for social function, American compliments tend to compliment what is truly a fact while Chinese might give insincere compliments to win the favors of each other。 The study also demonstrates that the proper compliments serve to develop the good value and positive mindset, improve the parent-child relationship and build a harmonious family atmosphere。 Additionally, Chinese parents are expected to compliment more widely, practically, timely and impartially。

Key words: American and Chinese compliments; compliments study; parenting; response strategy 

中美家庭教育实践中称赞语的跨文化对比研究

摘 要称赞语是一种在中美日常交际中普遍使用的言语行为。相当一部分国内外学者已经对称赞语在语言形态、语义模式、话题分布、回应策略、社会功能等方面有所研究，但是他们大都没有对收集到的语料按照具体情况进行分类，而且未曾有学者把研究重点放在家庭教育上。因此，本文将从《成长的烦恼》和《家有儿女》这两部家庭剧中搜集200条语料，从跨文化角度对比研究中美称赞语在家庭教育方面的使用。

本文将研究探讨以下问题：1) 家中使用的中美称赞语在话题分布、回应策略和社会功能方面有什么相同点和不同点？2）称赞语会给孩子留下什么影响，家长应该如何更恰当地使用称赞语？研究结果显示：在话题分布方面，中国家长相对局限于对能力和品格的称赞；在回应策略上，中美双方都乐于受到称赞，但是中国人回应比较谦虚婉转，不习惯直接接受；在社会功能上，美国家长更加实事求是，而中国家长经常为了保持关系说一些“假话”。最后，研究表明正确恰当的称赞语有助于孩子形成正确的价值观和积极的人生观、促进亲子关系以及形成融洽的家庭氛围。另外，作为中国家长，可以从扩大称赞范围、学会接受称赞、避免过分称赞、及时给予称赞、做到公平称赞等方面来更有效、科学地使用称赞语。

毕业论文关键词：中美称赞语； 称赞语研究； 家庭教育； 回应策略 

Contents

1。 Introduction 1

1。1 The Significance of the Study 1

1。2 The Background of Research 2

1。3 Research Questions