A comparative study of perceived compliment responses among Chinese and Filipino university students

This study aimed at understanding compliment response strategies among Chinese and Filipino university students. A total of 720 compliment responses was gathered using a Discourse Completion Test. Follow-up interviews were conducted to substantiate claims obtained in the DCTs. Results show that there is a tendency for Chinese and Filipino university students to share similarities and differences in compliment responses strategies. Chinese participants seem to be prone to employ the amendment strategy at a much higher frequency, taking up more than half of the Chinese responses. This may be a manifestation of the influence of Confucianism, which emphasizes modesty and humility whereby Chinese people initiate communication and maintain social solidarity. Compared with the Chinese, the higher frequency of the acceptance strategy that occurred in Filipino data seem to reflect Filipinos gratifying and appreciative attitudes to the complimenters, this probably being a reflection of the value imbibed by them such as high regard for close family ties and their strong faith in the Creator. An almost equal frequency in the combination strategy, agreement strategy, question strategy and transfer strategy among Chinese and Filipino respondents seems to show their awareness of the interlocutors face needs, thus maintaining social harmony. An additional point observed in this paper is the interaction between genders in responding to compliments. Moreover, it was also observed that the respondents tended to value compliments coming from the opposite sex more than those offered from the same gender. Females appeared to accept far more compliments than males