C (complimenter):What a polite child!

  R(recipient)    : Thank you. We do our best.来~自^吹冰论+文.网www.chuibin.com/

(2)Context: Ray is the conductor of the choir.

  C: The choir was wonderful, you must be really pleased.

  R: Yes, they were good, weren’t they?

(Holmes, 1995: 117)

2.2 Structure of Compliment

The compliment speech event has the common feature of the adjacency pair (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 296). This means that a compliment is usually composed of two parts, one is the compliment sentence, and the other is response sentence. If someone offers a positive comment to us, we may answer it in three ways generally. The first is to accept or agree. For example:

Xiao Ming: You did a good job in this examination. That’s great of you!

Xiao Wang: Thank you! I tried my best.

The second is to reject or disagree:

Xiao Ming: You did a good job in this examination. That’s great of you!

Xiao Wang: You must be joking! I’ve never done such a bad job.

The third is to avoid talking about this topic (actually it’s to some degree a kind of rejection or disagreement):

Xiao Ming: You did a good job in this examination. That’s great of you!

Xiao Wang: It’s time to go to class, let’s go.

Compliment Sentence Typical Methods Response Style

Give A Positive Comment NP+ BE/LOOK+ ADJ