Responses of children to compliments : a sociolinguistic study

Other Title(s)

استجابات الأطفال لضروب الثناء : دراسة لغوية اجتماعية

Dissertant

al-Faqir, Husayn Khalid

Thesis advisor

Kanakri, Mahmud Ali

Comitee Members

al-Sakarnah, Ahmad Khalaf
al-Jarrah, Muhammad Ali
al-Salman, Mahmud Ahmad

University

Mutah University

Faculty

Faculty of Arts

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

University Country

Jordan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2006

English Abstract

This study provides a preliminary analysis of children's responses to compliments in Jordanian Arabic from a sociolinguistic point of view.

The study approaches the pragmatic and sociolinguistic characteristics of children's responses based on a corpus of 418 compliment responses by the use of Brown and Levinson's model of politeness theory (1978, 1987).

The study aims to explore the strategies used by children in responding to compliments, compare compliment responses strategies of children with those of adults, discover similarities and differences in responding to compliments between boys and girls, examine the influence of gender, family, friends, and the like on the type of response a child gives, and inspect the child's ability to indicate whether a compliment is sarcastic or sincere.

The complimenting behavior of children has been investigated, by the use of Fergal and Al-Khatib's (2001) scheme of compliment responses, in terms of simple vs.

complex responses.

Results of the study indicate that children employ simple responses more frequently than complex responses.

Results also show that one of the most salient fractures of children's language is the extensive use of non-verbal responses.

The body of compliment responses recorded from children's data in the present study indicates the rich variety of children's complex responses.

Results point to boys' tendency to construct and initiate competitive discourse and girls' tendency to initiate language that can be described as caring and affectionate.

Results also indicate that most children between 6-9 years old have no problems in understanding literal compliments.

But, some problems appear with respect to understanding ironic compliments.

In the case of children who are 10-12 years old, there seems to be no problems as most of these children comprehend literal compliments and ironic compliments like adults.

Main Subjects

Social Sciences (Multidisciplinary)
Psychology

Topics

• Psychology
• Children
• Evaluation
• Behaviour
• Jordan
• Dialects
• Arabic language

No. of Pages

120

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-304403