This chapter will include the background of the research and the significance of studying American and Chinese compliments used by family members from a cross-cultural perspective。

1。1 The Significance of the Study

Nowadays, with the development of economy, information technology and globalization, Chinese people have more and more opportunities to be exposed to other cultures and compare almost everything like lifestyle, food, movies, transportation, health care, housing, education, language and so on。 By comparing to another culture，in this case，American culture，we will develop a better understanding of the merit and demerit in our culturally-embedded behaviors，and then provide suggestions for improving the behavior pattern。 Thus the comparative study on American and Chinese is significant，

Compliment, a kind of speech act, occurs frequently in daily conversation。 It is named as “lubricant in communication” and contributes a lot to successful communication。 What’s more, it is also highly valued by the receiver and leaves positive effects。 While among speakers from different cultural backgrounds, the uses of compliment vary from each other and sometimes even cause misunderstandings and embarrassment, which to some extent means that we can borrow the advantages of compliment-using from other countries。 For example, there is a case: 

An American official (A) and a Chinese official (C), accompanied by their wives, met with each other。 A praised the wife of C immediately: 

A: Your wife is beautiful indeed!

C: (Effected by the Chinese culture) 哪里，哪里

I (Interpreter): “Where? Where?” 

A: (Astonished and awkwardly) everywhere!

Although it is just a joke, we can obviously see the cultural differences of American and Chinese compliments: American prefer to give compliments on appearance on first acquaintance, while Chinese prefer to reject the compliments so as to behave humbly。 That makes it meaningful to dig out the advantages and disadvantages of American and Chinese compliments so that the benefits can be borrowed and learned by each other。 Thus it is necessary to know firstly about the similarities and differences of American and Chinese compliments。

Besides, since compliment possesses some special social functions like promoting interpersonal relationship, reinforcing solidarity, encouraging others, etc。 It is beneficial for language users to know how it works and how to use it properly in daily life。 While for parents of one or more kids, they are supposed to not only use compliments properly but also know how they function on children。 After they understand the inner mechanism of both American and Chinese compliments, they may find a more appropriate way to cultivate the next generation。

Last but not least, family education, out of school education and social education, nowadays is paid more and more attention because parents are the first teachers of a kid and how they behave, speak and think would affect their child and even be closely modeled。 Therefore, studying on how different compliments affect children is definitely beneficial for parents who strive to keep a good relationship with children and provide a better growth environment。 

1。2 The Background of Research源Q于W优E尔A论S文R网wwW.yOueRw.com 原文+QQ75201,8766

The history of compliment study is not so long which was initiated by western scholars。 Since 1950s, pragmatics became a comparatively new branch of linguistic study and then aroused great interests in language scholars。 After the contribution of John Austin’s speech act theory and John Searle’s classification of speech acts, people found that the function of language was no longer limited to description and statement but included several speech acts such as commitment, suggesting, swearing and compliment。 Then compliment began to come into notice。 In the 1970s, other scholars made different researches on compliment including Pomerantz(1978), Walfson(1980), Herbert(1986), etc。 In China, the study on compliment started in the 1990s by the pioneers like Zou Weicheng (1990) and Chen Rong (1993)。