Compliment Speech Act Responses of ESL Senior High School Students: Do They Matter?

Abstract

Compliment responses are naturally occurring speech acts used to show courtesy, kindness, admiration, praise, opinions, or approval, either orally or through action, and even a combination of both. These CRs are highly tangible in a classroom setting where students often exchange compliments as they freely interact with each other in any situation. Hence, this study analyzed the compliment responses (CRs) of ESL Grade 11 Senior High School students using the adapted Holmes’ (1986) Compliment Response Categories on the three macro levels of accept, reject, and evade with their micro-levels. In addition, the study employed the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) postulated by Manes and Wolfson (1981) to elicit students' compliment responses, which proposes the four situational topics of appearance, character, ability, and possession. The result showed that 63% of the compliment responses utilized ‘accept’ strategies, whereas 20% used ‘evade’ strategies, 6 % used ‘reject’ strategies, and 11% combined all of the former with any micro-category strategies. Thus, most of the students made more effort to respond to a compliment, that is, to accept it.