A comparative study of compliment responses in Russian and Turkish

Responding to compliments is particularly of great importance for researchers because they require a great deal of pragmatic knowledge. Strategies used in responding to a compliment vary from culture to culture. In order to master a foreign language, to be fully competent in a foreign language it is helpful for students to learn the social values and rules of that society. Not knowing the sociolinguistic rules of the language being used may cause pragmatic failure. This in turn may cause communication breakdown. In the light of these assumptions comparative and contrastive studies of languages can serve to ease the task of comprehending both the linguistic and pragmatic features of a language and the differences between native and the foreign languages. The present study investigates compliment responses (CR) among Russian and Turkish speakers. The data were collected through the use of written Discourse Completion Tasks (DTC), with 12 questions on 4 topics (appearance, ability, possession and personality). Total 30 university students participated in the study