Compliments: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach

Compliments: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach Manuel Padilla Cruz (University of Seville) In much of the existing literature on compliments it is assumed that the hearer interprets an utterance as a compliment either because he recognises a formula that is conventionalised to a certain extent or because he recognises that a conversational maxim has been violated. The aim of this paper will be to offer an alternative approach to the interpretation of compliments in the light of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995). It will be argued that compliments are utterances used interpretively and, more exactly, that they can be echoic utterances that convey an attitude of acceptance or endorsement. An overview of compliments According to Searle (1976), compliments are expressive speech acts because their propositional content specifies a reaction of the speaker to a situation in which the hearer takes an active or passive part. The majority of authors who have dealt with compliments have underlined that their function is to establish, increase or consolidate solidarity bonds between interlocutors (Chen 1993; Herbert 1989, 1990; Jaworski 1995; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1989; Manes and Wolfson 1981; Wolfson and Manes 1980; Wolfson 1983). Thus, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk states that “They are typically performed to make the addressee feel good by saying something nice to him/her, in this way possibly satisfying the addressee’s expectations rather than expressing a position judgement for a referential or informative reason [...]” (1989: 75). They are social lubricants that create or maintain rapport because they normally refer to something positively valued by participants and attributed to the hearer (Holmes and Brown 1987; Wolfson 1981). Their topics tend to be general and relate to things such as appearance, abilities, skills, possessions, personality or friendship (Herbert 1991; Holmes and Brown 1987). Nevertheless, there is cross-cultural variation as far as topic is concerned and topics-selection depends on the different underlying set of values of sociocultural groups (Herbert 1991; Manes 1983). However, there has also been much confusion in the literature on compliments. Thus, Pomerantz (1978: 107) used terms such as compliments, praise or credit to name them. Herbert (1991: 383), Jaworski (1995: 73-74) and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1989: 79) note that individuals have difficulty when distinguishing between a compliment and a praise, so they suggest considering praises as a wider category within which compliments should be included. In a similar vein, Norrick (1980: 297) also mentioned that compliments can be confused with congratulations, so he proposed that the difference between these two acts is that compliments reflect a personal and subjective judgement, whereas congratulation show a more objective judgement that can be shared by more than one person. The structure of a compliment speech act is that of an adjacency pair in which there is a first turn of initiation, the compliment, and a second turn that responds to it, the compliment response. Manes and Wolfson have shown in several works (e.g. Manes and Wolfson 1981; Wolfson 1981, 1983; Wolfson and Manes 1980) that most compliments are realised by means of a limited set of very predictable semantic-syntactic structures. This led these authors to conclude that compliments can be considered formulae whose interpretation would be relatively straightforward and would not involve much difficulty or effort for hearers. As Herbert puts it, “The noncreativity of the compliment act is a striking fact: these are speech formulae. It is tempting to speculate that such noncreativity is directly tied to a need for easily recognizable formulae in status- and solidarity-negotiating gambits in speech. That is, in making a social move of this kind, the use of a formula decreases the likelihood that the move might be misinterpreted or unnoticed by an addressee” (1991: 390). According to Manes and Wolfson, there are three very commonly used semantic-syntactic structures for the realisation of compliments (1-3), although other six minor patterns can also be appreciated (4-9)1: (1) NP [is/looks] (really) ADJ: That blouse is really nice! (2) I (really) [like/love] NP: I love your cakes! (3) PRO is (really) (a) ADJ NP: This was a great dinner! (4) You V (a) ADJ NP: You did a great job. (5) You V NP (really) ADV: You sang that song really well. (6) You have (a) (really) ADJ NP: You have a beautiful leaving room. (7) What (a) ADJ NP: What a pretty skirt! (8) ADJ NP: Good shot! (9) Isn’t NP ADJ! : Isn’t that ring pretty! These patterns can be considered, in Herbert (1991: 383) or Jaworski’s (1995: 64) terms, direct or explicit realisations of compliments. In addition to them, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1989: 81) has also illustrated that there are other direct formulae for compliments that can be said to have been conventionalised. These formulae resort to stylistic figures, such as metonymy (10), similes and metaphors (11), synecdoche (12), rhetorical questions (13), litote (14), hyperbole (15) or humour (16): (10) You’ve got some brains, haven’t you? (11) You are a Paul Newman. (12) All the angels are demons. (13) Isn’t she pretty? (14) She’s got something, some charm. (15) Wonderful, marvellous, magnificent! (16) For your age, you still look like a boy. As with other speech acts, it must be pointed out that the realisation of compliments is also subject to cross-cultural variation. Thus, Herbert (1991: 391) observes that there are remarkable differences between English and Polish speakers in the focus of the compliment, i.e. the basic semantic-syntactic structure, so it is necessary to differentiate compliments with focus on the first person, on the second person or on the third person. Nelson, El Bakary and Al Batal (1996: 114) have also shown that Arabic speakers use in some cases very conventionalised metaphors and similes, whereas in others these are very innovative and elaborated. In a similar way, these authors have mentioned that these speakers quite frequently use proverbs as compliments or enlarge their compliments by adding or repeating adjectives to express their feelings, so that “[...] the more the repetition, the better the compliment” (Nelson et al. 1996: 123). Apart from these conventionalised formulae, Herbert (1991: 381), Jaworski (1995: 64) or Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1989: 77) have explained that it should be convenient to consider other realisations of compliments by means of semantic-syntactic structures that are not so conventional or predictable, which can increase the feeling of spontaneity and sincerity of the compliment. These realisations are indirect, for “[...] [their] value is implied rather that stated directly in the utterance [...]” (Jaworski 1995: 64), and involve a greater degree of indirectness and ambiguity, which results in an increase of hearer’s processing effort, since he will have to carry out more inferences to recover the message the speaker intended to convey (Lewandowska- Tomaszczyk 1989: 77). On the one hand, Boyle (2000: 35) suggests that there are two main types of indirect or implicit compliments: those in which the speaker mentions an achievement of the hearer (17) and those in which the speaker compares the hearer to another person (18): (17) You’ve worked with Elisabeth Taylor! (Boyle 2000: 36) (18) There’s something Karen Carpenterish about your voice on this album. (Boyle 2000: 41) On the other hand, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1989: 83-84) distinguishes the following indirect realisations of compliments, in which the compliment is realised by other speech act: a) By means of a complaint: (19) It’s a pity so few people watched your performance. b) Quoting an opinion different from the speaker’s: (20) The reviews are more than favourable. (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1989: 83) c) By means of supposition: (21) You must be a brain box! d) Violating conventional expectations, increasing, thus, hearer’s surprise about some undetermined aspect: (22) I thought that your house was big, but it is bigger. e) Using indefinite phrases: (23) Who’s playing that relaxing music? f) Asking the speaker’s opinion or advice: (24) I would really appreciate your opinion – how does it taste? g) Comparing the speaker with the hearer: (25) Gee, I’d never have done it! h) Setting contrasts between hearer and other individuals: (26) I’ve never seen anybody with such a nice haircut! i) Asking a question that presupposes something favourable for the hearer: (27) That sweater, did you knit it yourself? (Conveyed message: I know you can knit and that sweater looks extremely good! Either you bought it at a very expensive shop or you are really gifted. I am sure the latter is true). (Lewandowska- Tomaszczyk 1989: 84) j) Setting contrast with the past: (28) Well, now it’s so different! Thank God, things have changed! k) Reducing the amount of verbal stimuli because of the occurrence of enough contextual and paralinguistic elements in the situation: (29) a. Your hair! b. Wow! c. The jumper! One of the problems of the current studies in pragmatics mentioned so far about compliments is that they do not offer any accurate explanation of how and why a hearer interpret an utterance as a compliment. According to their authors, hearers would interpret a specific utterance as a compliment because they recognise the formula used. These studies rely heavily on the classifications that have been established for compliment behaviour, which reflect the regularities observed in the realisations of this speech act. This would imply that those classifications should be revised and reformulated every time a new regularity is perceived. Furthermore, some of these studies propose that hearers interpret an utterance as a compliment as a result of their understanding that a conversational maxim has been violated, an explanation that has been traditionally given since Grice (1975) proposed his Co-operative Principle. The aim of this paper is to give an account of compliments in the light of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995). According to this theory, no classification is needed and no maxim violation is postulated, but a single general principle grounded on a description of human cognition. Therefore, in what follows, I am going to introduce very briefly some of the basic postulates of this theory, paying special attention to its distinction between descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use. When dealing with the case of interpretive utterances, I will focus on the case of echoic utterances, which will be fundamental for the understanding of the proposal outlined in this paper. Finally, I will suggest how both direct and indirect compliments can be interpreted. Relevance Theory Basic postulates of Relevance Theory Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) is based on a definition of relevance and two general principles. On the one hand there is a cognitive principle of relevance, which states that human cognition is geared to the maximisation of relevance. On the other hand, a communicative principle of relevance, according to which every utterance communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance, i.e. it creates expectations of relevance. Relevance is treated as a property of utterances and is defined in terms of contextual effects and processing effort. Contextual effects result from the processing of new information in a context of assumptions selected from the whole set thereof. They can be of three types: strengthening of previously held assumptions; contradiction of assumptions, which can result into the deletion of possessed information; or contextual implications, which is the new information derived only from the union of old and newly received information. The processing of new information requires some mental effort. This effort comes from the construction or selection of a context of assumptions in which to process information or from the psychological complexity of utterances. Other things being equal, the more contextual effects the processing of an utterance produces, the more relevant it will be; and the more cognitive effort required to process it, the less relevant it will be. Therefore, the optimal relevance of an utterance lies on an adequate balance between processing effort and contextual effects. Every utterance attracts the addressee’s attention towards a set of assumptions the speaker wants to make manifest, some of which are essential for a correct understanding of her utterance. Those assumptions can be communicated either explicitly or implicitly. In some circumstances the addressee can determine the set of implicit assumptions in a very exact way because the speaker has made strongly manifest that she expects him to use them to process her utterance. However, in others the addressee has to run the risk of determining it, since some of those assumptions are only weakly manifest2. This might lead him to use assumptions the speaker might not have intended him to use, so that the responsibility of understanding an utterance in a particular way lies heavily on the addressee’s selection of a context for interpretation. Descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use Within the framework or Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) a very important distinction is that between descriptive and interpretive dimensions of language use. In appropriate conditions, any natural or artificial phenomenon in the world can be used as a representation of some other phenomenon that it resembles in some respects. Utterances can be used as representations, not in virtue of resembling some phenomenon, but in virtue of having a propositional form that is true of some actual or conceivable state of affairs. Since utterances are also phenomena, they can be used to represent something they resemble. In this case, Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 228) argue that the representation is a description, or that it is used descriptively. In addition to this, utterances can represent some other representation that has also a propositional form in virtue of a resemblance between the two propositional forms. In this second case, Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 228) state that the first representation is an interpretation of the second one, or that it is used interpretively. Moreover, Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 230) suggest that there is a more essential interpretive use of utterances, since every utterance can be used to represent a thought of the speaker’s. One of the assumptions a speaker intends to make manifest to the hearer is that she is entertaining some thought with some particular attitude, and on this ground the hearer may be led to entertain a similar thought with a similar attitude. Therefore, verbal communication involves a speaker producing an utterance as a public interpretation of one of her thoughts and a hearer constructing a mental interpretation of her utterance, and hence of the original thought of the speaker’s. An utterance is an interpretive expression of a thought of the speaker’s, on the basis of which the hearer makes an interpretive assumption about the speaker’s informative intention. But when an utterance is used interpretively, it can also be an interpretation of some attributed thought or utterance, or it can be an interpretation of some thought that is or would be desirable to entertain in a certain way. Echoic utterances As has been said, interpretive utterances can be interpretations of a thought of someone other than the speaker. These utterances are second-degree interpretations of someone else’s thoughts. An utterance used as an interpretation of someone else’s thought is always an interpretation of the speaker’s understanding of that person’s thought. These utterances achieve relevance by informing the hearer of the fact that the speaker has said something or thinks something similar to that other person. In other cases, these interpretations achieve relevance by informing the hearer of the fact that the speaker has in mind what that person said and has a certain attitude to it. When interpretations achieve relevance in this way, Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 232) say that they are echoic. The most frequently mentioned example of echoic utterances is irony. It echoes the thought of a certain person, or of people in general. The attitude expressed by it is invariably of the rejecting or disapproving kind. The speaker dissociates himself from the opinion echoed and indicates the she does not hold it herself. The recovery of these implicatures depends, first, on a environment they share. But the speaker must also be conveying at the same time her attitude of endorsement. Therefore, we do not need any classification of commonly used semantic-syntactic patterns for some types utterances to be interpreted as compliments, nor do we need to think that a conversational maxim is being violated. What we need is a single general principle about human cognition and an understanding of three possible ways in which utterances can achieve relevance. Notes 1 See Wolfson and Manes (1980) and Manes and Wolfson (1981) for a more detailed presentation of the most usual verbs, adjectives and adverbs in compliments. Herbert (1990) also discusses sex-based differences in compliment behaviour; Holmes and Brown (1987) mention the social factors influencing it, mainly age and status, and Valdés and Pino (1981) analyse the different patterns used among intimates and non-intimates. 2This is the basis for Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) distinction between strong and weak communication. Works cited Boyle, R. 2000. ‘“You’ve worked with Elizabeth Taylor!”: Phatic functions and implicit compliments’. Applied Linguistics 21/1: 26-46. Carston, R. and S. Uchida (eds.). 1998. Relevance Theory. Applications and Implications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chen, R. 1993. ‘Responding to compliments. 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