Compliment is the speaker's praise or flattery of the addressee and the addressee often answer the speaker through the speech act of compliment response. In most speech communities, compliment is a widely used speech act. Foreign language learners with insufficient pragmatic knowledge unconsciously applied pragmatic norms of their native language to foreign language and cause pragmatic transfer from mother tongue to English. On the contrary, learners also transfer the language patterns and politeness principles of foreign language to their mother tongue. Firstly, this thesis reviews relevant studies of pragmatic transfer, pragmatic norms, politeness principles, compliment response strategies and pragmatic transfer in compliment responses. Then, it compares compliment response strategies of English speakers and Chinese college EFL (English as a foreign language)learners. Finally, it comes to the analysis of the pragmatic transfer in compliment responses in both languages, and the discussion of the causal factors for pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Chinese college EFL learners.

Shuhan Yang. Pragmatic Transfer in Compliments Responses by Chinese College EFL Learners. Frontiers in Educational Research (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 12: 139-153. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2024.071221.

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