International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org THE EFFECTS OF PROFICIENCY AND GENDER ON
THE COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENT
RESPONSES MADE BY IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS
Masoud Monjezi
Department of English, Abadan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Abadan, Iran
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
This study reports on the effects that gender and proficiency have on three aspects of
compliments made by students majoring in English in Iranian English as Foreign Language
(EFL) contexts at university level. The aspects studied in this paper included, a) topics of
compliments, b) syntactic structures used to launch compliments and, c) the type of responses
given to compliments. Sixteen EFL learners, aged 20 to 23, were selected out of 57 based on the
results obtained from the speaking and listening sections of the IELTS exam administrated by the
researcher with intra-rater reliability of 0.76; subsequently, the participants were assigned to two
groups of intermediate and advanced levels. In each group there were four male and four female
students. Individuals from the same gender were paired to each other, male with male and female
with female. They were asked to talk about six topics presented by the researcher out of which
three were of significance to this study. Students were instructed to record themselves while
speaking. The data collected from the recording showed that three types of syntactic structures
prevailed. The examination of the data also showed that the compliments were mostly on
appearance, achievements and personal traits with appearance being the most frequent. The
compliment responses were the last aspect that was studied, and appreciation was the most
frequent response type for both male and female students and for both intermediate and advanced
proficiency levels. The results showed that proficiency and gender had an effect on the
compliments and their responses. The findings also substantiates the point made by Celce-Murcia
and Olshtain (2005) that acquisition of pragmatic aspects of language could take several years
although sometimes learners never acquire a native-like pragmatic aspect of foreign language.
KEYWORDS: proficiency, gender, complements, complement responses
INTRODUCTION
Different cultures differ from each other in terms of sociolinguistic norms they have. People in
each society use the interaction rules of their mother tongue in their community each time they
interact with each other (Chick, 1996: 132). However, EFL learners encounter difficulty when
they attempt to interact with the new sociolinguistic norms even if they have sufficient
competence in other components of language like phonetics, syntax and semantics of the
language they are learning. While one source for the failure in communication can be attributed to
the unfamiliarity of the EFL learners to sociolinguistic norms of the language being learnt; the
other source for it might be the transfer of sociolinguistic norms of their mother tongues to the
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org target language. Generally, sociolinguistic transfer is the use of sociolinguistic rules of interaction
of one's mother tongue while interacting in another language (Chick, 1996, P.132; Lewis, 2003;
Holmes, 1987, 2001; Celce-Murcia, 1991; Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989).
Since compliments act as an opening through which we are able to see what people in other
cultures consider as valuable they are quite suited for investigating sociolinguistic transfer (Chen,
1993, Chen, 2003; Herbert, 1990; Holmes, 1987; Mane and Wolfson, 1981; Manes, 1983;
Pomerantz, 1978).
The purpose of the present study is to investigate how proficiency and gender interact in speech
acts of compliment strategies in Iranian EFL learners. It is assumed that by performing this
research it is possible to shed light; hence, gain a better understanding of the issue of gender and
proficiency and their interaction on the speech act of EFL learners.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Holmes (1987, p. 485) defines a compliment as "a speech act which explicitly or implicitly
attributes credit to someone other than the speaker himself, usually the person addressed, for
some 'good' (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and
the hearer." Complimenting is a speech act that is intrinsically polite and it makes its giver able
to use the opportunity to express interest in the hearer.
Wolfson and Manes (1980) and Wolfson (1981, 1983, 1984) collected a corpus of more than one
thousand compliments in different situations in American English. The findings demonstrated
that almost 80% of American compliments can be categorized into three syntactic forms: "I
(intensifier) like/love NP" (e.g., I really love your shirt), "NP is/looks ADJ" (e.g., your room is
very nice), and "PRO is (intensifier) (a) ADJ NP" (e.g., that's a (really) nice car.)
There have also been several comparative studies of compliments in different languages. For
example, Baek (1998) found that in Korean compliments, "I like/love NP" never occurred,
whereas the patterns "YOU VERB (intensifier) ADJ" (51%) and "NP is/looks (intensifier) ADJ"
(24%) were the most frequent.
Daikuhara (1986) carried out a study which compared American compliments with those in
Japanese and she found similar results. Findings showed that the pattern of compliment "I
like/love NP" did not appear in the data collected from Japanese. Of course the verbs such as niau
("suit") was observed in the data, as in
"Kosuchumu ga oniai desune."
"That costume suits you well."
But this verb only had a frequency of 2% in the collected data. The reason for the absence of the
word meaning "love" (aishiteru or daisuki) in Japanese was that it was considered to be too strong
to be used is such contexts.
626
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Baek (1998) argues that because compliments act as an evaluation or as an overt statement of
approval, the topic of the compliment should therefore be relevant to values and sociocultural
norms within the society. Manes and Wolfson (1981) reported that, in English, compliments can
be classified in two classes according to the topics they have,
a.
b.
Compliments on appearance
Compliments on ability
Other studies have shown that the topic of compliments can be different cross-culturally. For
example, in Japanese society the most frequent topic is ability and achievement; surprisingly
appearance is not much referred to in this culture; contrary to English in which appearance is
widely complimented on (Barnlund & Araki, 1985; Daikuhara, 1986). In Korean culture
compliments on personality are also more frequent than they are in English (Baek, 1998).
According to her, 'chakhada (good-natured),' 'bujireonhada (diligent),' and 'yeeuibareuda (polite)'
are the most frequent words for complimenting on personality. These compliments, she added,
are offered due to a person's conduct or morality conforming to social norms or expectations
required in certain situations. Polish speakers usually compliment on food and appearance
(Herbert, 1990). Nelson, El-bakary and Al-Batal (1993) investigated the compliments by
Egyptians and found that speakers of Egyptian Arabic favor personality as the topic of their
compliments.
Therefore, language learners must be aware of both the complimentable values and the
appropriate topics of compliments in the target culture; otherwise, there is always the possibility
of miscommunication.
How a compliment should be responded appropriately is also of concern to language learners.
Holmes (1987) classified the strategies of responding to compliments based on her data from
New Zealand English and she discovered 12 strategies and classified them into 3 major types:
a.
b.
c.
Accept
Reject
Deflect/Evade
The data from her study showed that Accept was the most frequent response type. Response
patterns also were very different in different cultures. The rates of acceptance are much higher in
English than those of non-western languages (Baek, 1998). For example, it is reported that
Japanese and Korean people seldom accept compliments. According to Daikuhara (1986), "Ie, ie
(No, no)" or "Sonna koto nai" (that's not true.)" were the most frequent responses to a compliment
in Japanese. This use of "No, no" is restricted to Japanese speakers; whereas speakers of
American English rarely rejected the compliments. When speakers of American English reject a
compliment it is most of the times confined to intimate interactions (Wolfson & Manes, 1980). In
another study, compliment responses of Korean and English speakers were compared by Joen
(1996 cf. Baek, 1998) and the results demonstrated that there is a contrast in the denial of
compliments—Korean (8.8%) vs. American (0.5%). She argues that this happens because more
627
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org negative response strategies are selected by Korean speakers owing to politeness; besides, they
adhered to the ideas of humility and modesty. Baek (1998) reported that 42.75% of the
compliments were deflected in Korean. The single strategy of 'No acknowledgement' accounts for
29.98% of the responses in Korean and only 5.08% in American English. According to Baek,
The reason why the Korean speakers did not respond to the compliments explicitly was that they
were trying to be modest. Silence was considered an aspect of modesty and is a type of
indirectness and therefore highly valued in cultures like that of Korean's.
The other issue that is also of significance to compliments is gender. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
(2003) argue that compliments are speech acts that are mostly conceived as gendered, for
example, Holmes (1995) found that women tend to compliment and be complimented more than
men, because compliments are seen by them as a way of being polite. She argued that
compliments are given to make their recipient feel liked and connected with the giver of the
compliment. On the other hand, men compliment to show their authority to appraise the other;
hence it brings face threat. As for responses to compliments, Holmes found that half the
responses were of acceptance type. While compliments have been widely investigated in different
cross-cultural settings; studies in EFL contexts are scanty and they are even scantier in Iranian
EFL contexts. In order to understand the nature and influence of proficiency on the speech act of
compliments and its interaction with gender further studies should be done in such contexts.
The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the way proficiency and gender interact in
speech acts of compliment strategies in Iranian EFL learners—one group is at intermediate level
and the other group is at advanced level, each comprising equal number of male students and
female students. It is assumed that by performing this research it is possible to shed light and
therefore gain a better understanding of the issue of gender and proficiency and their interaction
on the speech act of EFL learners.
In order to research these issues two major questions were raised to be answered.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Are there any meaningful differences between Iranian male and female EFL University
students in the topics they complimented on, structures they use to launch their compliments and
the strategies they use to respond to compliments?
2. Are there any meaningful differences between Iranian intermediate and advanced proficiency
University students in the topics they complimented on, structures they use to launch their
compliments and the strategies they use to respond to compliments?
METHODOLOGY
Participants
There were sixteen students in this study that were assigned to intermediate and advanced groups
after taking a placement test (eight students in each group). These students were studying English
to Persian Translation at Islamic Azad University in Abadan in Iran. All of these students were
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org between 20 to 23 years old. In each group there were four male and four female students, and
there were the total of sixteen students. These students were selected out of 57 Junior and Senior
students who took the speaking and listening sections of IELTS exam. None of these students had
ever been to an English speaking country.
Instruments
1.
In order to assign the participants to the intermediate and advanced levels, the researcher
used the Speaking and listening sections of the IELTS examination. This test enjoys high validity
and reliability, and is developed and administered by the Cambridge University in conjunction
with some other international and cultural organizations.
The listening section was administered, and the standard procedure for scoring based on the
answer keys of the sample was used. For speaking section the researcher scored the taped
interviews twice based on the IELTS standard procedure of scoring that was emphasized by the
administrators as the researcher could obtain them from sample tests that were published by
Cambridge University Press. Intra-rater reliability estimate of 0.76 was obtained for scores.
2.
Four digital sound-recorders were used in order to collect the data. These recorders were
made by Sony. Each pair of the participants was given one recorder in order to carry with them
all the time. They were instructed to record their conversations whenever they talked about the
topics determined by the researcher.
Data collection
The students in this study knew each other due to being classmates and their relationship with
each other as classmates made the data more natural than if they had been otherwise. The
researcher asked the participants to have several conversations on six topics in private and record
their voices. Out of these six topics they conversed on, three are of importance to this study. One
was about the items they had bought recently, the other was about their abilities and
achievements, and the third one was on their personality traits; of course the researcher did not
tell them to compliment on any of them because it was assumed that it would perhaps distort the
data. The reason the researcher asked them to talk about several topics was to give them more
time to feel at home with the presence of a recorder and to neutralize their giving any one topic
unnecessary attention leading to distortion of the data that was being collected. These topics, the
researcher assumed, would probably cause the hearer to give compliments, based on the results of
an earlier pilot study carried out by the researcher in Persian language. Interestingly, this
prediction was confirmed by the data that was collected.
The other three topics were the food they had eaten recently, the trips they had taken, and a new
person they had met. These topics were given to the participants to act as a way of relaxing the
participants with the presence of voice recorder and to promote naturalness as a result of making
the interactions longer. In addition, it helped to take the participants attention away from the main
topics, so they did not know what the main area of interest of the researcher was.
As mentioned above, in each group there were four male students and four female students. The
researcher paired participants of the same gender to see how proficiency level influences the
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org compliment structures and their responses when interaction is between members of the same
gender. Unfortunately the researcher could not pair male students with female students due to
several reasons of which one was lack of intimacy among them.
The participants were instructed not to consult a dictionary or any other resources, and were
asked to only use their own current knowledge of English. They were given two days' time to be
able to record their conversations and deliver them to the researcher.
Analysis
To be able to carry out the analysis, the data on tapes were transcribed and all the compliments
and their responses were extracted. The data were then analyzed in terms of three broad
categories of a) types of compliments, b) topics of compliment c) types of responses as mentioned
above. These categories were later divided into narrower subcategories (table 1).
Table 1: Framework for analysis
Topics of compliment
Types of compliments
Types of responses
NP is (intensifier) ADJ
Appearance/clothing
Appreciation (e.g., Thank you)
I (intensifier) like/love NP
Neighborhood
Return compliment
NP looks/seems (intensifier) ADJ
Personal traits
No response
How ADJ
Ability/achievement
Denial
-----------------------
-----------------------------
Question
Praise upgrade
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Analysis of the data showed that compliments were not very frequent. There were 47
compliments in the data. Remarkably female students, as predicted by Holmes (1995),
outnumbered male students in giving compliments even in EFL context across proficiency 32 to
15 (nearly two times more than the number of male students' compliments).
Structures of compliments
Three types of structures emerged from the data for both groups. The related frequency of the
structures that were observed in the data is presented in the following table (table 2).
Structures
Table 2: The syntactic structures of the compliments
Frequency
Proficiency
Female
Male students
students
Total
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
NP is
ADJ
No.: 36
%: 76.59
Intermediate
14
43.75
7
46.66
21
44.68
Advanced
10
31.25
5
33.33
16
34.04
NP Looks/seems
(intensifier) ADJ
No.: 9
%: 19.14
Intermediate
0
0
0
0
0
0
Advanced
6
18.75
3
20
8
17.02
I
(intensifier)
like/love
NP
How ADJ
No.: 0
%:
0
Intermediate
0
0
0
0
0
0
Advanced
0
0
0
0
0
0
No.: 2
%: 4.25
Intermediate
0
0
0
0
0
0
Advanced
2
6.25
0
0
2
4.25
32
68.08
15
Subtotal
(intensifier)
47
33.36
Basically, the structure 'NP is (intensifier) ADJ' was the most preferred structure in the corpus
collected. This structure comprised 76.59% of all the structures in the data. The Female Students
in Intermediate group used this structure more than any other group (15 times or 43.75%).
Interestingly female students in intermediate group did not use any other structures at all. The
same results were obtained for male students in intermediate group with the frequency of 7
(46.66%). Male students in intermediate group did not use any other structure, either; this led the
researcher to the conclusion that the intermediate groups did not have the knowledge to construct
other forms to perform the function of complimenting. Female students in advanced group also
used the structure 'NP is (intensifier) ADJ' more than any other structures with frequency of 10
(31.25%); however, they used other structures, too. Female students in advanced group used the
structure 'NP Looks/seems (intensifier) ADJ' 6 times (18.75%) and 'How ADJ' 2 times (6.25%).
By way of comparison, male students in advanced group (from now on BA) used the structure
'NP is (intensifier) ADJ' 5 times (33.33%) as the most frequent. They also used the structures 'NP
Looks/seems (intensifier) ADJ' 3 times (20%) but did not use other structures, namely, 'How ADJ'
and 'I (intensifier) like/love NP'. The findings demonstrate that in general female students
compliment more in EFL contexts than the male students do which is in line with the findings
from native contexts (Holmes, 1995). However, findings from this study also demonstrate that
intermediate and advanced students cannot compliment using certain structures.
The absence of the structure 'I (intensifier) like/love NP' and the scantiness of the other structure '
How ADJ' in the data prove this point. This inability to construct native like compliment
structures might be attributed to two reasons. First, it might be attributed to a lack of necessary
knowledge needed to perform this task (grammatical lack of knowledge). Another reason might
be due to the potential sociolinguistic transfer from L1. What the precise reason is will be very
difficult to find out, however. For instance, the prevalence of the structure 'NP is (intensifier)
ADJ' can be attributed both to limited grammatical knowledge as it is a very simple structure and
therefore easy to construct and to sociolinguistic transfer, as well, because this structure is the
commonest structure for complimenting in Persian. It is more understandable if we compare it
with the total absence of the structure 'I (intensifier) like/love NP' in the data collected. The
absence of this structure cannot be attributed to the lack of grammatical knowledge owing to its
very simple structure and vocabulary. However, such structures are almost very rarely used in
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Persian to compliment. The rarity of such structures might have been transferred to sociolinguistic
norms of English from L1 causing this structure to sound inappropriate and thus never used. The
use of the words 'like and love' in compliments will probably require the complimentee to get
involved in the ritual act of 'offering the item complimented more seriously to the complimentgiver' as it is the custom in Persian culture. Therefore, the compliment-giver avoids these words
on the assumption of this ritual in Persian culture and other sociolinguistic norms.
Compliment topic
The topics of compliments were also investigated in this paper. The participants talked about six
topics but the researcher only examined three of the topics in the data because other topics did not
comprise topics with potentials to be complimented on. The reason for their inclusion was
mentioned in section 2 above. The examined topics in this study were appearance/clothing,
achievement/abilities and personal traits. These topics and their related frequency for the groups
are presented in the table 3.
Topic
Table 3: Frequency of the topics of the compliment for each group
Female students
Total
No.
Male
Total for
for females
students
male
Intermediate
Advanced
Intermediat Advanced students
e
Total
for all
No.
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No
%
No
%
No.
%
No.
%
Appearance/
clothing
8
53.33
9
52.94
17
53.12
1
14.28
1
12.5
2
13.3
3
19
40.42
Achievement/
ability
3
20
3
17.64
6
18.75
4
57.14
5
62.5
9
60
15
31.91
Personal
traits
4
26.6
5
29.41
9
28.12
2
28.57
2
25
4
33.3
13
27.65
Total
15
31.91
47
17
32
68.08
7
8
15
In this study, as mentioned before, female students gave more compliments than male students
did (32 to 15). 53.12% of the compliments given by female students were on appearance and
clothing; while only 13.5% of the compliments by male students were on clothing and
appearance. The findings in this study supported Janet Holmes (1995) study of compliments in
which female students generally compliment more than male students.
Contrary to the compliments given by female students, the most frequent type of compliments
given by male students was on achievement and ability which comprised 62.5% of all of their
compliments. Female students' portion of compliments on achievement and ability was only
18.75% of all of their compliments. The percentage of compliments on personality traits was
again larger for male students than it was for female students (33.33% to 28.12%); however the
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org number of compliments made by female students was higher in comparison to those made by
male students.
The interesting finding was that proficiency did not influence the number of compliments in the
data, i.e., the number of compliments did not increase as a function of proficiency level. The
findings of this study in EFL context are in line with the findings of studies by Baek (1998) and
Manes & Wolfson (1981) which found the same results. It can be said that female
students'/women's language has certain characteristics different from that of men's, and the topics
they select for their compliments are probably one of the specific features. It can be stated that
women select the same values cross-culturally to give compliments on which are different from
those of men's, and this is observed even in Iranian EFL context regardless of their proficiency
levels.
Compliment responses
The responses made to compliments in this study could be categorized in 5 classes. The responses
given and their related frequencies for each type are presented in table 4 below.
Type
response
of
Appreciation
Return
compliment
Denial
Question
Offering
the
item
to
complimentor
Total
Table 4: Compliment responses
Female studentss
Total
for
Male students
female
Intermediate
Advanced
Intermediate
Advanced
students
Total
for
male students
No.
7
7
%
35
35
No.
6
5
%
37.5
31.25
No.
13
12
%
36.11
33.33
No.
6
2
%
50
16.66
No.
4
2
%
44
22.22
No.
10
4
%
47.61
19.04
1
3
2
5
15
10
0
3
2
0
18.78
12.5
1
6
4
2.7
16.66
11.11
0
2
2
0
16.66
16.66
0
1
2
0
11.11
22.22
0
3
4
0
14.28
19.61
20
16
36
12
9
21
On the whole, female students gave more responses to compliments than male students did;
nonetheless, it can be argued that the higher number of responses was due to the higher number of
compliments they had received from each other rather than other factors. The interesting finding
was that the number of responses was higher than the number of compliments. This was due to
the use of multiple types of responses given to a single compliment out of politeness. Of course, it
is assumed to be higher if the conversations had been performed in Persian (this is merely a
conjecture made by the researcher which has to be investigated and proved independently).
Appreciation was the most frequent form of response to a compliment both for female students
and male students. Neither gender nor proficiency seemed to affect the frequency of this response
type. This finding supports previous findings by Diakuhara (1985) research on compliment
response types in EFL contexts. Furthermore this is also in line with Holmes (1988) study in
which she investigated the response types of native speakers of English and found appreciation as
the most frequent response type. It seemed that both female students and male students are
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org equally apt to appreciate for the compliment if they receive one in EFL context. 'Return
compliment' was the second most preferred response to compliments for female students. Again,
proficiency did not seem to interact with this type of response.
There were two responses for the male students that were preferred as the second most preferred
response type. One is 'return compliment' and the other is 'offer the item complimented to
compliment-giver (this was not observed in English culture) but was transferred by Iranian EFL
learners (evidence for sociolinguistic transfer). For male students, the increase in proficiency level
increased these types of responses. The reason why the number of 'offer the item complimented to
compliment-giver' increases by proficiency despite the fact that it does not exist in English might
be attributed to the lack of syntactic resources in intermediate learners to create a sentence for this
function, i.e., they want to use this, but they do not have the capacity to construct the appropriate
structure for it. While advanced learners in this study use this structure probably because they
have attained the resources which enable them to construct such a structure. The problem,
however, is that advanced students have failed to acquire the appropriate sociolinguistic norms of
the target culture. That is why they have used it as their second favorite response type beside
'return compliment' (further evidence for sociolinguistic transfer).
For female students, 'offer the item complimented to compliment-giver was the least used
response type. This might be due to the topics they conversed about, because this response type is
popular in contexts where the compliment is on an item bought recently by the complimentee.
Then the complimentee offers it to the compliment-giver by saying sentences such as "you can
have/take it". The third frequent type of response was 'question'. For female students its frequency
was 6 and for male students it was 3. Proficiency did not affect the number of 'question responses'
to compliments.
CONCLUSION
In this study, 47 compliments and 57 responses were collected and analyzed to find out how
gender and proficiency influence their structures and if there is sociolinguistic transfer of
sociolinguistic norms in Iranian EFL context. The data demonstrated that some of the male
students' strategies for making compliments and responding to them were different from those of
female students. Also proficiency seemed to impact the strategies that were chosen by different
groups in the study; however, it did not affect the strategies as heavily as gender. In addition, it
was possible to see that some of the strategies that were used by the EFL learners participating in
this study were sociolinguistic transfer from L1 rather than being learned from the target
language.
This supports the point made Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2005) that acquisition of native-like
speaking ability by EFL learners will take several years if at all it is possible, because the
sociolinguistic and cultural norms cannot be learned or are at least very difficult to learn in EFL
contexts. The teachers, therefore, should provide a learning environment enriched with
opportunities for students to learn to express themselves and interpret others with appropriate
sociolinguistic conventions of the target language. Both the teachers and the students should be
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (1), January 2014; 625-­‐636 Monjezi, M ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org aware of these rules and should also know that knowing grammar and vocabulary is not enough to
be able to communicate in another language.
This study was limited first by the observer's paradox which refers to idea that the presence of the
researcher and the recorder will influence the language that is produced by the participants. This
effect is believed to have distorted the naturalness of the data; however, the absence of the
researcher through the design of this research by giving the participants time to record their
interactions on their own contributed to the naturalness of the data.
One interesting are for further research can be the investigation of the interactions between male
and female students to find out how the compliments and their responses would be. However, due
to the limitations in this study the researcher was not able to perform that.
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