Encountering the Communicative Act

Before learning the pragmatic strategies used to compliment and respond to compliments, it is important to understand the communicative functions of compliment sequences in interaction.

In other words, why are compliments used? As you will see, they are used for many functions, such as flirting or opening a conversation. How many different communicative functions do compliments have in the English language? Try to think of at least four.

As is the case with many pragmatic features, the communicative function of compliments varies among speakers of different language varieties. Even still, there are some commonalities.

Here are some of the most common functions that can be found for compliments in a number of languages:

For example, in an airport, a stranger might compliment someone's article of clothing or a piece of luggage in order to strike up a conversation.

For example, someone compliments a friend's new shirt or his/her stellar performance in a basketball game.

For example, a professor compliments a student's presentation in class to give the other students a model to follow.

Piropos are a classic example in Spanish. There is not a direct correlation in English, but in short, piropos might be what is considered "sometimes polite, flirtatious comments." Piropos are explored further in this module.

Before attempting to select the appropriate strategies for complimenting and responding to compliments in Spanish, we suggest that you check out their communicative function.

See if you can identify the communicative function of the conversations below. Careful...sometimes you might find more than one.