Exercise 6: Responses to Compliments
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Responses to
Compliments and Strategies Used
|
Dialogues |
Responses to compliments |
Strategies for responding to
compliments |
|
1 |
¨ いえいえ、まだ勉強中なんですよ。
Ieie, mada benkyouchuu
nandesuyo. ‘Oh, no, I’m still
studying it.’ ¨ もうアメリカに行って4年になりますから。Mou amerikani itte yonenni narimasu kara. ‘I’ve been in the |
¨ Refusing (disagreeing) +
Deflecting (downgrading) ¨ Deflecting (Offering background
information) |
|
2 |
¨ いやー、いや、そんなことないんですよ、全然。
Iyaa, iya, sonnakoto nain
desuyo, zenzen. ‘Oh, no, not at
all.’ ¨ いや、でも、しょっちゅう間違えるんですよ、ほんとにもう。
Iya, demo,
shocchuu machigaerun desuyo, hontoni mou.
‘Well, but I often make mistakes.’ |
¨ Refusing (disagreeing with a
compliment) |
|
3 |
いや、そんなことない。川島さんの方がうまいじゃないですか。
Iya, sonnakoto nai. Kawashima-sanno houga umaijanai
desuka. ‘Oh, no. Your English is better, Kawashima-san.’ |
¨ Refusing (disagreeing with a
compliment) + Deflecting (Returning a compliment) |
|
4 |
英語だけは、意外にまあまあなんだけど、他がねえ。
Eigodakewa, igaini
maamaa nanda kedo, hokaganee. ‘Unexpectedly
my English alone is fairly good, but other (subjects) are (not).’ |
¨ Accepting + downgrading* |
|
5 |
とんでもない。
Tondemo nai. ‘Not
at all.’ |
¨ Refusing (disagreeing with a
compliment) |
|
6 |
ほんと？ありがとう。そう言ってもらえると嬉しいな。
Honto? Arigatou.
Sou itte moraeruto ureshiina. ‘Really? Thanks.
I’m glad to hear that.’ |
¨ Deflecting (Expressing surprise +
questioning) + Accepting (providing positive comments) |
* With dake ‘only,’ igaini ‘unexpectedly,’ and the stress on the particle wa, it indicates that the speaker is only
good at English, which is unexpected and that s/he is not as good in other
subject areas. While accepting the
compliment, the speaker provides negative information about him/herself to
appear humble.
View Transcript for Dialogue 1
View Transcript for Dialogue 2
View Transcript for Dialogue 3
View Transcript for Dialogue 4
The
speakers here sometimes do accept the compliments they receive. However, note that except in instances of
outright refusal to accept the compliment (as in Dialogues 2 and 5), the
recipient has used some strategy or other for mitigating the force of the
compliment. The following exercise
focuses on these strategies and provides more examples.
Whereas in English,
compliments normally help to build solidarity between the speaker and the
recipient, in Japanese compliments may also be sometimes considered to create
distance between the two. This is because the speaker attempts to place the hearer higher in a
more respectable position than him/herself by giving compliments (Daikuhara, 1986). Therefore, the hearer may sometimes feel the
need to downgrade or refuse the compliments so that both parties are back to
equal. The key strategy here is to know the cultural
norms for complimenting exchanges and interpret compliments and responses to
compliments accordingly.
Using an appropriate
level of politeness is a key strategy in responding to compliments, just
as it is in performing other speech acts.
Other
possible responses to compliments:
- 上手ってわけじゃないけど、すきなんです・言葉を覚えるのはたのしいですね。 Jouzutte
wake ja nai kedo, suki nandesu/kotobawo oboerunowa tanoshii desune. ‘It’s not that I am good, but I like
it/I enjoy learning language.’
Wereas jouzu ‘good,
well’ involves a positive value
judgment, suki ‘like’ and tanoshii ‘enjoy’ does not. Therefore, replacing jouzu with more descriptive words like suki or tanoshii helps
avoid self-praise.
- そんなことないけど、語学は得意な方なんです。(3) Sonna
koto naikedo, gogakuwa tokuina hou nandesu. ‘I don’t think so, but I am sort of better at languages
(than other subjects).’
Here, the speaker also replaces the word, jozu with tokui ‘good at.’ Although jozu implies an objective judgment that
the speaker is better than other people, tokui
suggests a comparison of subjects that the speaking is studying. This also helps downgrade the compliment.
- すばらしい先生に習ってたので。 Subarashii
senseini naratteta node. ‘A
wonderful teacher taught me.’ 学校が英語に力入れてたから。 Gakkouga
eigoni chikara ireteta kara. ‘My
school focused on good English education.’
By means of responses such as these, the recipient of the
compliment is implicitly accepting it, but shifting the credit to others, such
as a good teacher or the school that provided good English education.
(Terao, 1996)
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