9。 Doubting 6。20 Thank you。 You really like it?

Super strategy

4: Rejecting 12。70

10。 Rejecting and denigrating 12。70 It’s an old sweater。

Table 2 Categorization and distribution of Chinese

Strategy type % Example

Super strategy

1: Rejecting 95。73

1。 Disagreeing and denigrating 50。70 It’s not that nice at all。 The patterns

2。 Expressing  embarrassment 26。10 No。 I’m embarrassed。

3。 Explaining 18。83 No。 It’s an old sweater from my

mother”

Super strategy

2: Thanking and denigrating 3。41

4。 Thanking and denigrating 3。41 Thanks。 But I know I’m older and don’t look nice。

Super strategy

3: Accepting 1。03

5。 Thanking only 1。03

(Chen 53-54)

It can be easily seen from the two tables that the American tend to accept the compliments whereas Chinese people prefer to reject。

The studies referring to the functions of compliment among Chinese scholars are much more similar。 They all agree that the main social functions of Chinese and English compliments accord with each other。 They are all used to promote the social relationship and seek for harmony。 To be specific, they are all used in greeting, respecting, thanking, congratulating, encouraging, apologizing and starting a conversation。 While the differences, shown in Tong Jing’s(2003) study, refer to the fact that English use compliments more frequently because they are more eager to be complimented by others, which is concerned with self-evaluation, while Chinese people just tend to show their respect。 文献综述

In addition, some domestic scholars made further studies on compliments in education like Chen Chenghui and Liu Hao (2015) and they did a research on teachers’ complimenting behaviors。 Some emphasized its positive and effective functions like Chen Chenghui(2003) who designed a questionnaire in order to investigate the perlocutionary effects of critical compliments and concluded that although students show some different psychological characteristics in different age periods, one thing is certain that critical compliments are a kind of highly effective means of teaching and  education for all the students of different ages。 Furthermore, Zhu Guangming (2008) pointed out directly that every child desires to be praised, which enables children to be more open-minded to accept pedagogical influence and find themselves more positive and talented。 Meanwhile, compliment also drives children to transcend themselves。