Writing center tutoring consists of a variety of speech acts involving one’s knowledge and understanding of different norms and traditions of communication popular in that culture in which a concrete instance of interaction takes place (Fujioka, 2012). One such pragmatic aspect implying the existence of different social norms and cultural values is associated with compliments and responses to compliments. As shown in previous research (e. g., Bardovi-Harlig, 1999, 2001; Kuriscak, 2010), not all speakers in their native language (L1) respond to compliments and other speech acts in the same way. Second language (L2) learners also show much variation in how they perceive and carry out their own or react to others’ compliments and other kinds of speech acts. That is why in the course of my work as a writing center tutor, I became interested in investigating various factors (e.g., location of the interaction, age and social status of the interlocutor, the level of familiarity with the interlocutor and the culture of the interlocutor’s home country, various personality measures, study abroad experience, motivation, and proficiency level in the L2) which should probably have some influence on L2 speakers’ production of their own and reaction to others’ speech acts, including their responses to others’ compliments. I also realized that use and interpretation of compliments and compliment responses by writing center tutors and student writers in appropriate ways is one way to ensure effective communication between tutors and students in consultations. This study examines how native-speaking (NS) and nonnative-speaking (NNS) student writers use compliment responses with NS and NNS writing center tutors.

The corpus consisted of 17 transcripts of face-to-face consultations between tutors and students, both groups including NS and NNS individuals, at a writing center of a U.S. university in the south-central part of the country. All those consultations were videotaped in 2014 for conducting the study into the intonation units observed in the tutor and client speech. Each consultation lasted 45–65 minutes (mostly 50–55 minutes). Twenty-seven subjects (10 tutors and 17 students) were involved in this study, including six NS and four NNS tutors (both male and female), and nine NS and eight NNS students (both male and female). All sessions analyzed in this study were divided into four groups: 1) the sessions conducted by NS tutors for NS students, 2) the sessions by NS tutors for NNS students, 3) the sessions by NNS tutors for NS students, and 4) the sessions by NNS tutors for NNS students.

In the process of research, a transcription of writing center consultations retaining the phonological images of words and sociolinguistically relevant information was used. All features of natural speech (including word repetitions, use of interjections and pause-fillers, occurrences of stumbling, etc.) were reflected in the transcription and preserved in the examples cited in this article. The occurrences of compliments and compliment responses used at those sessions were identified and categorized into groups and subgroups following Ishihara’s (2010) classification of different kinds of compliment responses. According to Ishihara, common responses to compliments can be categorized into acceptance, mitigation/deflection, and rejection. Each of these categories includes several subcategories, as follows:

1. Acceptance

• Token of appreciation (Thanks/Thank you)

• Agreement by means of a comment (Yeah, it’s my favorite, too)

• Upgrading the compliment by self-praise (Yeah, I can play other sports well too)

2. Mitigation/Deflection

• Comment about history (I bought it for the trip to Arizona)

•  Shifting the credit (My brother gave it to me/It really knitted itself)

• Questioning or requesting reassurance (Do you really like them?)

• Reciprocating (So’s yours)

• Downgrading (It’s really quite old)

3. Rejection

• Disagreeing (A: You look good and healthy. B: I feel fat.)

4. No Response

5. Request Interpretation

• Addressee interprets the compliment as a request (You wanna borrow this one too?)

This study reveals that the use of compliment responses in the writing center sessions is characterized by some common and varying features. Information about the presence (“+”) or absence (“–”) of certain strategies and substrategies in the compliment responses, which were revealed in certain groups of the writing center consultations, is summarized in Table 1. It also indicates the token frequency of using various forms of compliment responses in all four groups of the sessions investigated in this study.

Table 1. Variety and Token Frequency of Using Different Kinds of Compliment Responses in Writing Center Practice (Click to enlarge)

Note. Percentage indicated in this table reflects the results of calculating the token frequency of using different kinds of compliment responses identified in the corpus of the study. It means that the percentage data used in our analysis refer to the overall frequency of using compliment responses in the transcripts of the study, including the instances of the responses having the same structure and containing the same lexical units. The token frequency of the compliment responses which were identified in the corpus of the study was calculated for enhancing some qualitative data obtained within the present analysis. Based on all these data, it was possible to find various similarities and differences in the ways of using compliment responses at the writing center sessions conducted by NS and NNS tutors for NS and NNS students.

The results suggest that the smallest range of different kinds of compliment responses was observed in the transcripts of the sessions conducted by NS and NNS tutors for NNS students. A more limited number of the strategies and substrategies used in NNS students’ compliment responses compared to those of NS students can be connected with the fact that, unlike the NS students of the university where this study was conducted, the NNS students have lived in another country for the majority of their lives. Therefore, they may not be familiar with the local traditions of communication and particularly with the pragmatic compliment-related norms preferred in the American culture. As English is the L2 for NNS students and NNS tutors, some limitations in the use of certain forms of compliment responses can also be connected with NNS students’ L2 proficiency, as well as with the actual level of their familiarity with the local traditions of communication.

As can be seen from Table 1, the Acceptance strategy of providing compliment responses (by means of agreement and/or token of appreciation) prevailed in the transcripts of all 17 sessions analyzed in this study. According to the results, in many cases, the NS students resorted to the use of the Acceptance strategy as well (see Table 1). Since both NS and NNS students used the Acceptance strategy in most of their compliment responses, it is possible to assume that that the pragmatic choice of a compliment response may depend on other factors, including social distance, imposition, and social power. For example, in the following fragment of an NS tutor-NS students’ writing center session, the student combines expressing his/her agreement with the tutor’s words with a comment explaining his/her choice complimented by the tutor:

Tutor (T): By the way, it’s hilarious how you’ve renamed these things.
Student (S): Ya, ya, if I like keep the same one, then it replaces the file. I’m like no I don’t want to replace.
T: Ya, ya, please, no, ya. OK. So let’s read the next part, then.

In this fragment, the student agrees with the tutor’s words (“Ya, ya”). This way he/she shows his/her solidarity with the tutor’s opinion. At the same time, he/she explains why he/she wouldn’t like to rename the files with the examples of his/her writing anymore. Interestingly, in the next part of this dialogue, before the tutor and the student continue their discussion, the tutor confirms the student’s wish not to rename his files once again (“Ya, ya, please, no, ya”). However, his second remark does not contradict the compliment expressed in his/her previous remark (“it’s hilarious how you’ve renamed these things”), as in this case he/she just wants to say that, although the student renamed his files effectively last time, it is not worth trying to rename them once again.

Another strategy that was often observed in almost all of the writing center sessions (except the NNS tutors-NS students’ sessions) was the No response strategy, for example:

T: Yeah. Actually, that’s wonderful. Excellent! You have great instincts.
S: [Nodding head to show agreement with the tutor’s words.]
T: Fantastic!

In this fragment of an NS tutor-NNS student’s session, the student does not verbally respond to the tutor’s compliment. He/she just nods her head to show that he/she agrees with the tutor’s compliment about some of her personality traits reflected in her writing. A relatively frequent use of the No Response strategy probably results because, in some cases, tutors’ compliments were followed by their additional explanations, comments, and suggestions. Therefore, in such cases students were more likely to react to those additional explanations and comments but not to the compliments in the initial parts of tutors’ remarks. It is also logical to assume that such factors as the actual level of students’ English language proficiency, their previous communication experiences with American English native speakers, their individual psychological peculiarities and personality traits, and the degree of their familiarity with the pragmatic norms popular in the American culture should also influence their use of the No Response strategy. Finally, NS and NNS tutors’ and students’ expectations about their actual knowledge of the necessary pragmatic norms and about their previous experience of communication in some similar situations could play some role in students’ choice of the No Response strategy as well.

It also follows from the results of this study that some kinds of compliment responses were used only at one or several sessions. In particular, only the NNS students working with NS tutors resorted to the Rejection (disagreeing) strategy and to the Mitigation/Deflection strategy by means of shifting the credit:

T: Great. Oh, yes, yes, – that’s fantastic too.
S: Well, that was actually one of them who said that.

In this case, when the tutor compliments an idea reflected in the student’s writing, the student does not accept or reject the tutor’s compliment but shifts the credit to another person who, from the student’s point of view, was the first person who suggested that idea and who thus, in his opinion, deserves this compliment more than he/she.

It is also important to mention here that, unlike the three other kinds of sessions, no use of the No Response strategy was observed at the NS tutor-NNS students’ sessions. At the same time, only NS students working with NS and NNS tutors resorted to upgrading the compliment by self-praise or to questioning or requesting reassurance:

T: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I think it’s pretty good. En. Er. It expands and reviews the most important things…
S: OK. So reviews?
T: Yeah.

In this case, the NS student is complimented by the NNS tutor on the content and the ways of developing his/her ideas in the paper discussed during that writing center session. However, the use of the question “So reviews?” in the student’s response indicates his/her doubts about one of the aspects mentioned in the tutor’s compliment. So in his/her response to this compliment, the student wants reassurance that the tutor’s words are true and that the quality of his/her paper is good.

As was shown earlier, all aforementioned peculiarities observed only in one or two certain groups of the writing center consultations investigated in this study can probably be connected with the influence of students’ L1 and their home country culture as well as with the level of NNS students’ L2 proficiency. The degree of their familiarity with the local traditions of communication in different social situations might have influenced their pragmatic choices as well. Finally, some psychological and social factors, including social distance, social power, and imposition—as well as the differences in understanding of the principle of modesty peculiar to different cultures—might have had much impact on choosing or not choosing certain strategies of providing compliment responses. According to Wolfson (1983), lack of pragmatic competence can easily lead to a negative interpretation of the interlocutor’s personal traits and stereotypes of other cultures. It is logical to conclude that the aforementioned factors need to be considered in the system of training writing center tutors so that they can use and react to different forms of these and other speech acts in appropriate and effective ways.

In addition, the findings obtained in this study may also have some importance in terms of planning the content and purposes of EFL/ESL, business English, introduction into speech, and other classes for university students connected with the questions of language use and communication. Because compliments and compliment responses reflect positive values underlying different cultures, instruction regarding the use of these speech acts can enhance students’ cultural literacy as well as their linguistic control of these speech acts. Besides, compliments and compliment responses can also serve as a conversational tool to help writing center tutors and clients as well as L2 learners to establish solidarity in the process of communication with NS and NNS speakers of a certain language (Ishihara, 2010). Through proper training or instruction, writing center tutors and L2 learners can become better prepared to provide and interpret others’ compliments and compliment responses. Ultimately, such preparation should contribute to the enhancement of intercultural communication and cross-cultural understanding in today’s globalizing world.

References

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1999). Exploring the interlanguage of interlanguage pragmatics: A research agenda for acquisitional pragmatics. Language Learning, 49, 677–713. doi:10.1111/0023-8333.00105

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? InK. K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 13–32). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Fujioka, M. (2012). Pragmatics in writing center tutoring: Theory and suggestions for tutoring practice. Kinki University Center for Liberal Arts and Foreign Language Education Journal, 3, 129–146.

Ishihara, N. (2010). Compliments and responses to compliments. Learning communication in context. In A. Martinez-Flor & E. Usó-Juan (Eds.), Speech act performance. Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues (pp. 179–198). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Kuriscak, L. M. (2010). The effect of individual-level variables on speech act performance. In A. Martinez-Flor & E. Usó-Juan (Eds.), Speech act performance. Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues (pp. 23–39). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Wolfson, N. (1983). An empirically-based analysis of complimenting in American English. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 82–95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Olga Muranova is currently a fourth-year Ph D student majoring in TESOL/linguistics and a graduate teaching/research assistant in the English Department at Oklahoma State University. Her research interests include text linguistics (especially the language of popular science texts), discourse and genre analysis, stylistics, intercultural bilingualism, English for specific purposes teaching, and teaching ESL/EFL writing.