The Study of Compliment Responses by English Department Students of State University of Malang Based on Social Distance Differences

This thesis is a pragmatic study about the compliment responses used by English Department Students of State University of Malang in responding the compliments from three people with three different social distances. The social distance here includes an intimate person, an acquaintance, and a stranger.    The compliment responses were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) taken from Al Falasi (2007). Three scenarios were described in which the participants were expected to give respond to the compliment from the speaker on different occasions. The first scenario was giving a response to a compliment given by an intimate person: a sister. In the second situation, the participants had to respond the compliment from a friend as an acquaintance. Finally, they were expected to respond a compliment from a stranger in a department store.   The data found were placed in one of the Herbert‟s taxonomy of compliment responses (1986). If a response could not be classified in that taxonomy, the researcher marked it as a new response.    The result of this study showed that English Department students tended to accept the compliments given. However, the strategy was used differently. For example, in responding to the compliment for a stranger, the participants never added some comment before or after accepting the compliment.  But they usually added some comment if they were responding the compliments from an intimate person and an acquaintance.    By using the acceptance strategy, it can be seen that the responses of English Department students have been influenced by English culture which says that the acceptance strategy is the most appropriate strategy in responding to the compliments. It can be concluded also that they have already had a good level of communicative competence in responding to the compliments given in English since they are able to use their ability in adjusting their choice of language based on cultural context of the situation.    This research only investigated the compliment responses given based on social distance differences and the data for this study were from a questionnaire which did not reflect the naturally occurring speech. Therefore, a more extensive study is needed to contribute more to the real application of pragmatic theory. A study about the influence of social status differences or other social factors in responding to compliments might be interesting