1.1 The Previous Study 

Scholars abroad have made large number of studies in compliment. One of the famous theories is Politeness principle (Leech, 1983). He classified the politeness principle in terms of pragmatics and interpersonal rhetoric. To be exactly, this principle is composed of six elements, they are: 1. Tact Maxim: to minimize the others’ losses and to maximize the others’ benefits; 2. Generosity Maxim: to minimize one’s own benefits and to maximize one’s own losses; 3. Approbation Maxim: to belittle someone else as little as possible and to praise someone else as much as possible; 4. Modest Maxim: to :minimize praise of self and to maximize dispraise of self; 5. Agreement Maxim: to minimize disagreement between self and other and to maximize agreement between self and other; 6. Sympathy Maxim: to minimize antipathy between self and other and to maximize agreement between self and other. Brown and Levinson (1987) raised the face theory that nobody want to lose their face and hope to be acknowledged and respected, so they have to respect and preserve the face of others. To be brief, if one hopes to be complimented, he or she has to compliment others first. In interpersonal communication, compliment is a behavior that protects faces of both others and selves. To achieve the aimed goal, people are used to take various measures to resonate with what they say, thus reaching a consensus and keeping pace with each other.文献综述

Domestic scholars began to research in this area a little late. Zou Weichen (1990) introduced the language structure and response styles of compliment, as well as how the topics are distributed. Guo Aixian (1998) researched the response principle and impacting factors of compliment. Duan Chengang (2001) compared the Chinese expressions of compliment with those of foreign language. He pointed out some special expressions in Chinese and made three significant conclusions: 1. Compliments in both Chinese and English contexts are very similar, which indicate that compliment structure exists in Chinese and English widely; 2. Cultural differences and sex factors have a great influence on compliment research; 3. Person in Chinese compliment is culture-biased, which is unique in Chinese. Qi Huijing and Chang Tianlong (2009) pointed out that compliment differences are rooted in Cultural differences, which lead to barriers in cultural communication.

1.2 Research Design and Methodology

In this paper, I mainly adopt the method of case analysis. Several typical cases are chosen from our daily life, literary works as well as Internet communications. Some of them are intercultural ones and some are in their single language system. Through the analysis of the content, the target, the form and the response of compliment, by way of phenomenon-to-essence and particularity-to-common, this paper tries to grasp the cultural roots of the pragmatic differences and pragmatic failures of compliment.

The reason why I choose these cases is that these cases are extremely typical and representational. They are very close to our experiences but we are usually not focused on them. From the cases in English or Chinese context, we can respectively analyze the features of compliment in one language. What’s more, we can understand how the pragmatic difference and pragmatic failure of compliment happens from the cases of intercultural communication.

2 Compliments and Pragmatic Failure

2.1 Definition of Compliment

Homles (1986: 485): “A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some good (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer.” Here, it implies that there is direct and indirect way of complimenting. For example:

(1)Context: Rhonda’s old school friend is visiting and comments on one of the children’s manners.