Up to now, a number of foreign and Chinese scholars have studied on compliment from various aspects including semantic pattern, word selection, sentence structure, topic distribution, response strategy, social function and so on。

However, most of the former researchers collected compliment corpuses without a classification of specific situations。 No one focused on the effect of compliment on children from the cross-cultural perspective and how do family members use compliment more scientifically and effectively at home。

Thus this thesis aims to do a research on the similarities and differences of American and Chinese compliments used by family members so as to conclude their effect on children’s character and some tips for parents on using compliment more appropriately and efficiently。

1。3 Research Questions

Thus this thesis attempts to answer the following research questions: 

1) What are the similarities and differences of American and Chinese compliments used at home in terms of topic distribution, response strategies and social functions of compliment？

2) How does compliment affect children’s behavior and how to use compliment in a more appropriate way? 

1。4 Research Methodology

This study will collect 200 corpuses from two TV series: Growing Pains (America,1990-1994) and Home with Kids (China,2005-2007), which talk about the daily life of typical Chinese and American families and their language are close to language in real life。 The family structures of the two families are similar with each possessing a father, a mother and three children。 So the compliment collected are given or accepted by characters from different roles such as parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, etc。

Since language and parenting, as parts of lifestyle, changes slowly under a specific culture, and the economy and social development of china between 2005 and 2007 are comparatively similar to that of America in the period of 1990-1994, it’s reasonable to put the two TV series produced in seemingly different decades into comparison。

Qualitative analysis will be used in analyzing the data。 And the similarities and differences will be concluded separately based on the topic distribution, response strategies and social functions。

The following steps are the main research procedure:

Step1: Collecting certain Chinese and American Compliments from the two TV series;

Step2: Analyzing and comparing the topics of Chinese and American compliments;

Step3: Analyzing and comparing the response strategies of Chinese and American compliments;

Step4: Analyzing and comparing the social functions of Chinese and American compliments;

Step5: Making a qualitative analysis of the similarities and differences between Chinese and American compliments for the sake of revealing the underlying effects of different ways of using compliment on children and finding a more appropriate, wise and scientific way to use compliment in parenting。

2。 Literature Review

This chapter will firstly give a brief presentation of some basic knowledge and theories related to this study including the definition of compliment and Austin’s and Searle’s Speech Act Theory。 Besides, both overseas and domestic researches which are relevant to this research are included as well。 

2。1 Definitions of Compliment

According to Oxford Dictionary, compliment is “a polite expression of praise or admiration” (Oxford Dictionary)。 It also has the following functional definitions: “1) an act or circumstance that implies praise or respect; 2) (compliments) Congratulations or praise expressed to someone; 3) (compliments) Formal greetings, especially when sent as a message”。 This is the basic meaning of compliment which is described as a polite expression to praise, admire, respect and greet others。 And when using compliment, we are inclined to say something good of others in order to establish or maintain a harmonious relationship。