Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
Sachiko Kondo, pp.19-43

Compliments and Responses to Compliments in
L2 and L1 Speakers’ Interaction: A Discursive
Approach
Sachiko Kondo
1. Introduction
Compliments and responses to compliments are among the most widely
studied speech acts in interlanguage pragmatics. A large share of empirical studies
on the speech act of compliments investigates the productions of the speech act ofcomplimenting and compliment responses using the written or oral Discourse
Completion Task (DCT) as a method of data collection. Yet, although DCT allows
us to collect a large amount of data under controlled external contexts, it does notallow us to explore speech acts in situated interaction. The present study takes a
discursive approach (Kasper, 2006) to explore how first and second language (L1and L2, respectively) speakers１ sequentially co-construct compliment activities
by using the methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA).

2. Background
2.1 Compliments and Responses to Compliments
Compliment is a speech act that notices and attends to the hearer’s “interests,
wants, needs, goods” (Brown & Levinson, 1987:102). It is one of the many ways
to express positive politeness２ (Holmes, 1998) discussed in Brown and Levinson(1987).
Holmes (1986) specifically defines a compliment as follows:
A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit
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to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some‘good’ (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by
the speaker and the hearer.
(Holmes, 1986:485)
In their daily conversations, people make many types of assessments. Complimentis one type of assessment, by which one evaluates the addressee positively.
Assessments are social actions in the sense that people display their evaluation ofwhat they are talking about to each other, and make judgments about, agree, ordisagree with each other’s evaluation (Pomerantz, 1975, 1978, 1984).
Responses to compliments, on the other hand, involve complicatedface-work. The recipient of a compliment is faced with the decision of whether toagree with the addresser following the Agreement Maxim or to disagree following
the Modesty Maxim proposed by Leech (1983) in his Politeness Principle.
Pomerantz (1984) points out that “most compliment responses lie somewhere in
between (not at the polar extremes of) acceptances and agreements on the one
hand and rejections and disagreements on the other” (81).

2.2 Applying Conversation Analysis in Speech Act Research: Discursive
Pragmatics
In the field of interlanguage pragmatics, in particular, L2 learners’
compliment responses have been widely investigated (see Shimizu, 2009: 142-152
for an overview). Studies in interlanguage pragmatics investigate L2 learners’communicative competence (Bachman, 1990; Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain,
1980; Hymes, 1972) which resides in the brain of each individual learner. In
pursuit of this cognitive-oriented notion of communicative competence,researchers have mainly explored second language acquisition (SLA) as
individual cognition (i.e., the accomplishment of a single human mind),particularly through experimental data, and their interests have not particularly
included how L2 speakers accomplish sociability through interactions withco-conversants. In the present study, I attempt to analyze learners’ interactional
competence (Hall, 1997; He & Young, 1998; Young, 1999; Young & Miller, 2004)
rather than their communicative competence. I take the stance of viewing language
as socially co-constructed among co-conversants rather than viewing it primarily
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as forms. Similarly, cognition is not exclusively an individual phenomenon; it isalso a socially distributed phenomenon that is observable in members’
conversational behaviors (Schegloff, 1991). I have chosen CA as an approach to
my study because it enables us to observe how L2 speakers socially co-constructinteractions and achieve intersubjectivity, based on detailed transcripts oftalk-in-interactions.
Kasper (2006) advocates discursive pragmatics, the notion of which is to
apply CA to speech act research.
My argument for discursive pragmatics is strongly indebted to antecedent
proposals for a discursive sociology (Bilmes, 1986) and discursive
psychology (Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1992), and to othertheories that view meaning and action as constituted not only in but
through social interaction, specifically Jacoby and Ochs’s theory of
co-construction (1995) and Arundale’s co-constituting theory (1999,2005).
(Kasper, 2006: 282; Italics in original)
Jacoby and Ochs (1955) define the notion of co-construction as “the joint creationof a form, interpretation, stance, action, activity, identity, institution, skill,
ideology, emotion, or other culturally meaningful reality” (p. 171). The theory andmethodology of CA with its analytical principles and practices enable us to
explore how speech acts are co-accomplished with co-conversants in and throughsocial interaction.

2.3 Conversation Analysis in SLA
After Firth and Wagner’s (1997) proposal for the reconceptualization of SLA
toward increased attention to social and contextual dimensions of SLA and L2 use(Mori, 2007; Firth & Wagner, 2007; among others for an overview), the number ofdiscussions on the usefulness of applying CA in SLA studies has been increasing
annually (Kasper & Wagner, 2011; Schegloff et al., 2002; Wong & Olsher, 2000).
Firth and Wagner (1997) point out an imbalance between cognitive andmentalistic orientations on the one hand, and social and contextual orientations tolanguage on the other. The former orientation is overwhelmingly dominant in SLA
research. For the reconceptualization of SLA, they proposed the following three
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major changes to redress the imbalance:(a) a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional
dimensions of language use, (b) an increased emic (i.e., participant-relevant)sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and (c) the broadening of the
traditional SLA data base.
(Firth & Wagner, 1997: 286)
A growing number of SLA studies have adopted CA, especially in the past
decade or so, and have contributed to enriching the social and contextual
dimensions of the SLA data base (Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Carroll, 2004;
Gardner & Wagner, 2004; González-Lloret, 2009; Hauser, 2009; Hellermann,
2009; Hosoda, 2006; Ishida, 2009; Kasper, 2004; Kim, 2009; Kondo, 2011;
Kurhila, 2004; Markee, 2004; Mori, 2004; Mori & Hayashi, 2006; Park, 2007;
Seedhouse, 2004; Talmy, 2009; Waring, 2008; Wong, 2004; among others). In
their edited book that specializes in L2 conversations, Wagner and Gardner (2004)
point out that although L2 speakers may not be highly proficient, they are able toengage in quite exquisite activities in their interactions. They further suggest thatL2 speakers are highly versatile in that they can use a variety of interactional
resources even from the very beginning of their L2 learning. Thus, the findings ofthese studies indicate that L2 speakers are not “interactional dopes” (Garfinkel
1967: 68). This contrasts sharply with the way of thinking in traditional cognitive
SLA, which conceives an L2 speaker as a deficient communicator “struggling toovercome an underdeveloped L2 competence, striving to reach the ‘target’
competence of an idealized native speaker” (Firth & Wagner, 1997: 285).

3. Methodology
3.1 Participants
The participants in this study are three Japanese high school students (Kazu,
Fumi and Hide), who attended local high schools and did home-stays for elevenmonths from Aug. 2001 to July 2002 in the U.S. They were in the study abroad
program by American Field Service (AFS). ３ I asked each participant toself-select an interlocutor, with whom they felt very comfortable talking and to22

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audiotape unplanned conversations during their stay in the U.S. The recordings
took place twice, first around October 2001 (Time One) and second around May
2002 (Time Two). Kazu’s interlocutors were Max (host brother) and Linda (hostmother). Fumi’s interlocutor was Kelly (host mother), and Hide’s interlocutor was
Sarah (AFS liaison４). The participants and their native -speaking interlocutors
were encouraged to talk freely on any topic without regard for the fact that they
were being recorded.

3.2 Transcription and Analysis
I transcribed all the recordings from Time One and Time Two using thetranscription convention described in the Appendix, which is a modified versionof the system devised by Jefferson (2004). Turn-by-turn analysis was made onsequences of compliment activity by following the general analytic strategies ten
Have (2007) proposed: turn-taking organization, sequence organization, repair
organization, and the organization of turn-design.

4. Research Questions
In the present study, I explored the following three research questions.
(1) How do compliment activities emerge in conversations?
(2) How do L2 and L1 speakers co-construct compliment activities?
(3) How do L2 speakers sequentially respond to compliments?

5. Results and Discussion
To begin, I will analyze Excerpt 1, in which a compliment activity emerges in
the assessment activity of Kazu’s swimming season. First, Kazu negatively
assesses the beginning of his swimming season and then positively assesses his
improvement in his swimming skills. I will focus the analysis on how compliments
and responses to compliments emerge in line 26, when Max pays a compliment inresponse to Kazu’s self-deprecating assessment that he was not good at first (line25).
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Excerpt 1: [Swimming Season] Time Two
1
2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
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39

→
→
→
→

→
→

→

Linda: now (2) >ok now< we didn’t talk about swimming season yet.
and Alice doesn’t know a lot about your swimming season.
so: what what were some of the (.) highlightsof your swim season.
Kazu: o:kay:. (.) I can express the first month of swimming,with only one ex- only one word. it wa:s terrible.
Linda: terrible?=Kazu: =terrible. every- after every practice, I was exhaust:ed,(.) a:nd (1) very tired, (.) (oh my-) I couldn’t move
I couldn’t talk at a:ll,
Max: °hhhhhh.°
Kazu: oh my go:d, what did I do:
like- (.) I felt so much gravity
after I got off from [ wa:ter, ]Max:[°hhhhhh.°]Kazu: (all) gravity.hhh (1)Linda: hahaha.
Kazu: I can’t walk solidly,
Max: °hhhhhh.°
Kazu: and in th- in meets, (.)(in) the first meet, I got very bad times (.) but after that
I- I had no skill about swimming so: (.)
I: I’m improved very- very good,
Max: um hum,
Kazu: so I got award for most improved,
Max: um hum,
Kazu: but be- but that is because I was not goo:d.
Max: hahahaha but you were good at the end right?
Kazu: yeah, a little bit,
Max: a little bit, [that’s good]Kazu:[ in state ] championshipwe- we got fourth place, in state in (four states)
Max: yeah that’s very good.
Kazu: yeah but there were only five teams.
Max:(.) oh.
Kazu: oh. I [got- ]Max:[still] that’s very good.
Linda: yeah fourth place.
Max: fourth place isn’t bad.
Kazu: in five teams?
Max: ehehhh:.

The topic proffer question asking Kazu about some highlights of theswimming season (lines 3, 4) is an initiation of the assessment activity of theswimming season. Although Linda formulates her question using the expression“highlights” to elicit a positive assessment of the season, Kazu gives a negative24

Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
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assessment “terrible” about the first part of the season without hesitation (lines 5, 6).
Then he elaborates and explains his assessment by giving details of how exhausted
he was and how he felt gravity when he came out of the water (lines 8-16). He adds
that his swimming time was not good at first (line 19). Although he basically sticks
to his assessment that it was “terrible” in his explanation, he also talks about how
he improved toward the end of the season (lines 20, 21), assessing it as “verygood,” which shows some orientation to Linda’s question that asked for a positive
assessment of the swimming season (lines 3, 4). Kazu follows up his positive
assessment by saying that he received an award for “the most improved” (line 23).
Then, in line 25, he deflects his positive evaluation, which is designed with thecontrast marker “but” and an account of why he received the award with theexplicit account marker “because.” In this explanation, he tactically shifts the priorpositive assessment to a slightly negative assessment to attend to the social norm of
avoiding self-praise (Pomerantz, 1978). Max orients to this shift-down and pushes
it up again using laughter and a positive evaluation in line 26, which is designedwith the contrast marker “but” and the positive assessment expression that Kazu
was “good at the end.” Max seeks agreement by using “right?” with a risingintonation. Kazu agrees immediately with the agreement token “yup” but follows itwith the mitigation “a little bit” (line 27), again deflecting his own accomplishment
so that he does not push up the positive assessment too high. Max orients to thisand repeats “a little bit” to display his agreement, then makes a positive assessment
saying “that’s good” (line 28). Max’s recycling Kazu’s expression “a little bit” andthe following positive assessment displays Max’s alignment with Kazu’s speech. Inlines 29 and 30, Kazu provides another example, that his team came in fourth placein the state championship, to explicate and reinforce positive assessment, to which
Max shows his understanding of Kazu’s account by making a positive assessment
again, “yeah that’s very good.”, this time upgrading his positive assessment with
the intensifier “very” (line 31). Kazu receives it with the agreement token “yeah,”
but again he pushes the positive assessment down with the contrasting marker“but” and providing information that his team was in fourth place among only fiveteams (line 32). In response to this tone-down, Max pushes the assessment up again
by saying that in spite of the fact that there were only five teams, it is still very
good (line 35), which is followed by Linda’s agreement (line 36).
Throughout this long sequence of evaluating the swimming season, which
involves compliments and responses to compliments, Kazu tactically pushes his
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assessment up and down both to align himself with Max and to attend to the social
norm of avoiding appearing too proud of himself. Responding to compliments istruly a complex interactional work (Pomerantz, 1978). Pomerantz explains thathearers are in a dilemma of whether to agree or disagree with compliments because
although agreement is a preferred social action, it is at the same time against thesocial norm of avoiding self-praise. Pomerantz points out the following pattern ofagreement with scale-down as one of the possible types of agreement tocompliments:
A: compliment ↑B: scale-down ↓A: strong positive term↑
In response to A’s compliment as the first assessment, B provides scaled-down
agreements containing more moderate-positive expressions as the second
assessment. Then, A reaffirms the praise with a strong-positive term in the thirdassessment position. Pomerantz notes that the scale-down in the second assessment
position “exhibits features of both agreements and disagreements” (p. 95). The L1
speaker’s upgrade in lines 26, 28, and 31 of Excerpt 1 can be analyzed as the third
place slot in the compliment pattern described above. The data that we have justobserved show that, in the longer compliment sequence, Kazu in B’s position is
actively involved in both scale-down and agreement with compliments given by his
co-participant. Kazu and Max engage in tactful negotiations of the assessments ofwhether Kazu’s improvement is “good” or “not so good.” Max gives a positive
assessment of the improvement as a compliment to Kazu. On the other hand, Kazu
does not go strong about giving a good assessment of himself in trying not toviolate the Modesty Maxim (Leech, 1983; Pomerantz, 1978). However, the two are
in no way opposing each other. Instead, Kazu tactfully balances his way of giving
assessments in order to align himself with the interlocutor. He demonstrates his
sensitivity to the conflicting constraints on compliment responses.
Next, I will analyze another example of compliment activity in theconversation among Kazu, Max and Linda. Prior to the excerpt, they had beentalking about how Kazu’s English has improved over the year. While Kazu
explicates his assessment about his reading ability with detailed information, acompliment activity emerges in line 17.
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Excerpt 2: [Reading Ability] Time Two
1
2
3
4
5
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7
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17 →
18 →
19
20 →
21
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39

Linda: how about in reading.(.) I remember when you
first ca:me, tha:t you couldn’t readthe newspaper. (.) very well.
(.)
Kazu: ↑I can read. no ↑I could read, (1) for sports paper,
Linda: uh huh,(3)
Kazu: yeah ()[yeah ]Linda:[do you] remember how long it would take you?
Kazu: yeah.
Linda: so what’s changed about your reading.
Kazu: my (.) reading became so faster. (.)
very very very faster. (.) than it used to. (1)eighty- thirty minutes to read newspaper, (1)only one section. (.) but right now it only takes
like thirty seconds or one minute,Max:
hhhhu. that’s very ↑GOOD.
Kazu: yeah. (2) but it’s because of (.) American studies.
Linda: [right.]
Kazu: [they] made me read so: much.
(1)
Linda: do you remember how long it used to take you
to read thee history book?
Kazu: yup,
Linda: how- [how long]
Kazu:
[five hours,] six hours,
Linda: to read how many pages.
Kazu: eight.
Linda: and uh now that we’re at the end of the year,
Kazu: one or thr- one or two, co-=Linda: =one or two what.
Kazu: couple hours,
Linda: to read eight pages?
Kazu: yup,
Linda: uh huh,(2)Max:
well they’re big pages.
Kazu: yeah.
Max:history textbook.

Linda produces a topic proffer statement to specifically talk about Kazu’s reading
ability (line 1). She makes an assessment that Kazu could not read newspapers very
well when he first came to the States (lines 1-3). The action that Kazu takes in thefollowing turn (line 5) is a disagreement. He claims that he could read sports papers.
Then, Linda, after reminding him with “do you remember” how long it would takehim to read, specifically asks what has changed about his reading (line 11). Kazu

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initiates his response to this question with an explicit assessment strengthened byrepetitive use of intensifiers, saying that his reading has become “very very very
faster” compared to before (lines 12-13). Following this positive assessment, Kazu
explicates the assessment of his reading ability in detail (lines 14-16).
In line 17, a compliment by Max emerges in response to the explanation Kazu
gives of his improvement in reading ability. Max makes a positive assessment“that’s very good” (line 17), which is an action of complimenting Kazu at the sametime. He intensifies his compliment with prosodic emphasis on the expression“good,” i.e., stress and high pitch. After an agreement token (line 18), Kazu
explains that his improvement can be attributed to the “American Studies” course(line 18) that had a heavy reading load (line 20).
As we have observed in Excerpt 2, Kazu contrasts the past and the present todemonstrate his improvement in reading. This contrast is “reacted to” (Depperman,
2005: 293) by Max, bringing consequential effects on the sequential development.
Max orients to the positive side of the contrast, and compliments Kazu’s
improvement. In response to Max’s compliment, although Kazu gives anagreement token “yeah,” first, he shifts the merit to the course he took, that is,“American Studies.” Pomerantz (1978) advocates the principle of “referent shifts”(p. 101) as one of the solution types of compliment responses and explains it asfollows:
In a compliment (A1) a recipient is praised either directly or indirectly; inthis type of response, the recipient performs a subsequent praise (A2)which has other-than-self as referent.
A1: A praises B.
A2: B praises other-than-self(Pomerantz, 1978: 101)
In Excerpt 2, in response to the compliment, Kazu reassigns the praise, “shifting
the credit from himself to an other-than-self referent” (Pomerantz, 1978: 102),
namely, the American Studies course. He does this in a contrasting way with thecontrast marker “but” (line 18) as part of his account of why he has improved inreading. This example adds another piece of evidence that Kazu is able to show
sensitivity to interactional norms in responding to compliments, as also discussed
in the analysis of Excerpt 1.
In Excerpt 3, Fumi and Kelly are at first talking about the possible schedule28

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conflict between an AFS conference and a basketball tournament. Then, Fumi
initiates an assessment activity about her basketball skill, in which a complimentactivity emerges (lines 71-72). I will analyze how it emerges and how Fumi
responds to the compliment.

Excerpt 3 [Dance Party & Basketball] Time One
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Fumi:

I think we should have anotherdance party hehehe:.
Kelly: ↑U:. now that would be fu:n,
Fumi: $ yeah:hh.$
Kelly: () maybe they will.
(°maybe they have another dance
party.°)(1)
Kelly: [ and the:n]Fumi: [do you know ] anything about it,
Kelly: nhu-nhu (.) no
they haven’t [sent me ]any information=
Fumi:[why not.]Kelly: =$ yet. heh heh heh:$
Kelly: they will send us
information-, (1) we should get itin the mail probably
in the first week of January.
Fumi: °ok° but- I’m kind of afraid,
beca:use I might havetournament [( at that time)]
Kelly:[oh for basketball.]Fumi: yeah:.
Kelly: hu::m.
Fumi:
so: but I have to be there, because
it’s orientation.
Kelly: yeah.
Fumi: it’s not like para:de.
Kelly: right. yeah. it’s a required thing.
but sometimes, (.) they’ll let you:come later.
Fumi: oh really?
Kelly: so we’ll have to ask. we’ll[find out.]
Fumi:
[
WA:
] ah
$ I don’t wanna miss it.ha::hh. $Kelly: no. you don’t wanna miss any of it,
it’s FU:n. [hhhu:.]
Fumi: [YEAH::]hahaha: I kno:w
Kelly: [ ( ) ] I think it’ll be ok.
you know, am coach is very good about,
Fumi: yeah:.
Kelly: when AFS requires the students to go.

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44
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48
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69 →
70 →
71 →
72 →
73 →
74 →
75
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79

Fumi: yeah:.
Kelly: you just have to tell him (before). (.)
AFS, this is a requirement. I must
go to conference.
Fumi: yeah. but I’m getting better:,
Kelly: °um-hum,°
I got my ￡↑FIRST three point in
the la:st ↑ga::me?￡
Kelly: yee::hy. ((cheering voice))
Fumi: ha[haha::.]Kelly:[hahaha.]Kelly: well maybe it’s because- I know um
Americans play basketball, don’t they,differently?
Fumi: yeah:.
Kelly: =than what you used to?
Fumi: it’s really different.=
Kelly: =and you’re also playing[in a new position] andFumi: [ and they have- ]Fumi: yeah. and they have played more than
thi:rty ga:mes before I joined=
Kelly: =°oh.°=Fumi: =the team.
Kelly: °yeah°. yeah together so- [that,]
Fumi:[I’m ]
so behi:nd,
Kelly: ↑yeah:. but getthing[a three pointer is goo:d.]
Fumi: [$ YEA:: I know $ hahahaha:]
Kelly: that was VE::RY good.
so, hopefully you’ll be able toplay- (.)
Fumi: more.
Kelly: some more as you [go. ]Fumi:[yeah.]

Fumi and Kelly are talking about the dance party that they might have inJanuary. Fumi initiates a new subtopic by saying that the basketball tournament
might fall on the same date as the dance party (lines 19-21). After Kelly and Fumi
exchange turns concerning possible ways to solve the problem (lines 29-47), Fumi
initiates an assessment concerning her basketball ability in line 48. First, she
explicitly assesses that she is getting better (line 48). Then she provides an accountthat she scored her first three points in the previous game (lines 50-51). Her
emphasis on the word “first” implies that she had not been doing very well before
the previous game. Kelly, at first, orients to Fumi’s positive assessment of her
getting the three-pointer by using a cheering voice “yee::hy” (line 52). After the30

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two laugh together (lines 53-54), Kelly then orients to Fumi’s negative assessmentthat she had not been doing well before the last game, by providing accounts of
why Fumi had not been doing well. The first reason that Kelly provides is that
Americans play basketball differently from Japanese (lines 55-59). The second
reason Kelly gives is that Fumi is playing in a new position (lines 61-62). Then,
Fumi participates in co-constructing accounts by providing the third reason that her
teammates had played more than thirty games before she joined the team (lines
63-68). Kelly acknowledges this with a quiet “yeah” token (line 68), and before
Kelly finishes what she initiated to add something, Fumi makes the concluding
assessment that she is so behind (lines 69-70), which is a closure to the smaller
sequence in which both speakers make a negative assessment that Fumi was notdoing well. In response to Fumi’s self-deprecating assessment, Kelly goes back to
the previous positive assessment about Fumi’s getting a three-pointer, which isdesigned with an agreement token to agree with Fumi’s negative assessment that
she is behind (line 71), followed by contrast marker “but” and a compliment withthe explicit positive assessment adjective “good” that has prosodic emphasis (lines
71-72). Fumi makes a second assessment to agree with Kelly, which starts in the
middle of Kelly’s assessment remark (line 73). Here, the speaker’s heightened
participation in the activity of assessment begins before the assessment term itself(Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992: 163). Fumi attends to Kelly’s assessment and aligns
herself with the emerging talk as an assessment even before the assessment term
itself, in this case before the adjective “good” is actually produced. Fumi’s partiallyoverlapped agreement is designed with an emphatic “yeah” and “I know,” whichshows her epistemic stance (line 73). Then Kelly gives a third upgraded assessment,“that was very good,” with the stressed and prolonged intensifier “very” (line 74).
Although the sequence we have just observed is a complex assessment activity
that involves both positive and negative aspects of Fumi’s basketball ability, Fumi
is actively and appropriately participating in it by co-constructing accounts (lines
55-70) and showing agreement using an emphatic agreement token (line 73) in asynchronized way.
What has happened in the compliment sequence from lines 71 to 74 is one
type of praise sequences that Pomerantz (1978) points out. A speaker’s
strong-positive term ( ↑ ) may be responded to with the recipient’s
moderate-positive term (↓), and then the speaker reaffirms the praise with astrong-positive term (↑). Pomerantz shows the following example for this type of31

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praise sequence.
[AP:fn]
B:
↑
↓
↑

G:
B:
G:

I’ve been offered a full scholarship at Berkeley and at
UCLA
That’s fantastic
Isn’t that goodThat’s marvelous(Pomerantz 1978: 96)

In the praise sequence by Kelly and Fumi, Fumi first makes a self-deprecatingstatement that she is behind in her basketball ability compared to her teammates,
although B’s statement in Pomerantz’s example is a positive statement about theperson’s being offered scholarships from two universities. Then Kelly praises Fumi
for getting a three pointer in a basketball game with a positive term “good” (↑)(lines 71-72). Fumi shows her agreement with an emphatic yes token and “I know,”which can be considered a moderate response (↓). Orienting to the moderate
response by Fumi, Kelly restates her positive assessment with the intensifier “very”
to strengthen and reaffirm her praise (↑). This shows that Fumi is exposed to thesocial action of strengthening a compliment with an upgraded positive term in
response to a moderate self-praise.
Excerpt 4 provides another example of how an L2 speaker responds to acompliment paid by an L1 speaker. Prior to the excerpt, Hide and Sarah weretalking about the content of an essay Hide wrote after receiving an award in a jazzcontest. Hide has explained that his essay contained the story of how he improvedin playing the piano during his stay in the U.S. Excerpt 4 starts right after theending of Hide’s story-telling about his essay.

Excerpt 4: [Playing the Piano] Time Two
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

→
→
→
→
→
→

Sarah: but- and you did <sSUCH a good jo:b.>that was SO: much fu:n to hear you pla:y.
Hide: (°‘nd that°) it was really fun to pla:yalso because-, (.) I always played solo
so: I’m- I have never played a (2) umm
piano with: other member:s or in a ba:nd,
Sarah: um hu:m,
Hide: I (.) °yeah° except °um° uh:mm (2)32Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
Sachiko Kondo, pp.19-43

9
→
10
11 →
12
13 →
14 →
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29

°what’s that uh:m° accompany?
Sarah: °um hum°,
Hide: accompaniment.
Sarah: °um hum°,
Hide: °yeah°. I did like accompaniment
like every year in um junior high,Sarah: oh did you?
Hide: °yeah°.
Sarah: in Japan.
Hide: °yeah°.
Sarah: A:ND umm,
(1)
Hide: I did third- third grade? (.) was
the first accompaniment.
Sarah: REALLY.
Hide: yeah.
Sarah: oh my go:sh (1) SO: (1) NO:W
when you go back to Japan,
Hide: °um hum°,
Sarah: do you think that you will do more,(.) umm jazz?

In lines 1 and 2, Sarah gives a compliment about Hide’s playing the piano with thepositive expression “you did such a great job,” and she expresses her affective
stance by making an assessment that it was fun for her to listen to him play (line 2).
The compliment emerges as a concluding assessment to Hide’s story-telling about
his essay. Rather than agreeing or disagreeing with Sarah’s compliment, Hideshows his alignment with Sarah by orienting to the affective expression “fun” andshows that it was fun for him to play the piano (line 3). Hide manages to “avoid
self-praise” (Pomerantz, 1978) and shifts the focus away from his self-praise to his
affective stance about playing the piano. In so doing, he displays his alignment with
Sarah by orienting to the affective expression “fun” first used by her, and by using
the expression “also” to emphasize that he shares the same feelings as Sarah. Aninteresting point is that after Hide makes the assessment that it was fun for him toplay the piano, he explicates his assessment in detail, initiated by the explicit
account marker “because” (line 4). He explains that he had only played solo andhad never played with other people or in a band before he began playing in a jazzband in the States (lines 4-6). Then, he initiates an additional explanation that there
is an exception to his not playing with other people, and he further explains that hehas experience accompanying (lines 8-24). Hide’s identity as a language non-expert
locally emerges when he initiates a repair for word search (Goodwin, M. H., 1983;
Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986) in line 9 asking “what’s that” followed by hesitation.
33

Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
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However, he self-repairs by supplying the expression “accompany.” This sequence
indicates that a compliment activity develops into another extended telling prefaced
by Hide’s assessment to avoid self-praise, even though Hide locally displays his
identity as an L2 speaker.

Overall Discussion
How compliments emerge in sequential contexts
Observations of Excerpts 1 to 4 show that compliments emerge in various
assessment contexts.
・ Excerpt 1: A compliment by Max emerged in response to Kazu’s
self-deprecating assessment about his swimming season.
・Excerpt 2: A compliment by Linda emerged in response to Kazu’s telling about
how he has improved his reading skills.
・Excerpt 3: A compliment by Kelly emerged within an assessment activity of
Fumi’s basketball skills.
・Excerpt 4: A compliment by Sarah emerged as a concluding remark orienting to
Hide’s story-telling about his improvement in piano skills.
The compliments we have found in the present study are likely to occur in naturalconversations, where participants generally construct all aspects of their turns andtalks in orientation to their co-conversants. Heritage (1989) explains the notion of“context-sensitiveness” that any participant’s communicative action is “doubly
contextual, in that the action is both context-shaped and context-renewing” (p. 2).
These compliments sharply contrast with the kinds of compliments that are elicited
in many of the studies in interlanguage pragmatics by using written or oral DCTs orrole-plays in controlled settings ５ . Bu (2010) lists six compliment response
strategies she found in her role-play data. See the following three examples that
illustrate the compliments and compliment responses elicited in her data.
(1) Compliment Upgrade: The complimentee agrees with and increases thecomplimentary force.
A: Nice T.V set!
B: Thanks. Brand new.
(5) Compliment Downgrade: The complimentee qualifies or downplays the34

Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
Sachiko Kondo, pp.19-43

compliment force
A: It’s a really nice car.
B: Oh no. It looks like that but actually it has a lot of problems.
(6) Disagreement: The complimentee thinks the compliment is overdone, andtherefore directly disagrees with it.
A: You’re looking brilliant .
B: Oh. No, I don’t think so.
Bu (2010: 12; numbers are as in the original)
These examples in Bu (2010) show a compliment in one turn and its response in thenext turn. Although the data from DCTs and role-plays in controlled settings areuseful in quantitative studies, the present study indicates that compliment activities
emerge from certain contexts and are shaped and renewed (Heritage 1989) in andthrough contexts. In other words, while traditional speech act studies treat context
as external variables, such as power, distance, and rank of imposition (Brown &Levinson 1987), in CA context is “interaction-internal” (Kasper 2006:304). Most
importantly compliment activities are sequentially co-accomplished by bothspeakers in multiple turns.

How L2 and L1 speakers co-construct compliment activities
The present study reveals that the conversation participants constantly orient
to what and how their co-participants contribute to the interaction. For example, astory-telling is reacted to with a compliment, which displays the recipient’s
understanding of the story (Excerpt 4). Self-deprecating assessments are oriented towith compliments (Excerpts 1 and 3). Compliments are oriented to by the action of
avoiding self-praise (Excerpts 1, 3, and 4) and by the action of shifting the object ofpraise (Excerpt 2). The conversants co-construct accounts for both positive andnegative assessments (Excerpt 3). A complimenter upgrades her compliment byrestating the positive assessment orienting to a moderate agreement by acomplimentee. The sequential analysis enables us to observe how “interactants areconstantly monitoring, determining, and responding to as interaction unfolds”(Jacoby & Ochs, 1995: 176). Compliments and compliment responses are part ofsuch co-accomplished assessment activities as social actions.

How L2 speakers sequentially respond to compliments
The findings in the present study indicate that L2 speakers are not
35

Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal 34(2014)
Sachiko Kondo, pp.19-43“interactional dopes” (Garfinkel 1967: 68). This contrasts sharply with the way of
thinking in traditional cognitive SLA, which conceives an L2 speaker as a deficient
communicator “struggling to overcome an underdeveloped L2 competence, striving
to reach the target competence of an idealized native speaker” (Firth & Wagner,
1997: 285). The L2 speakers in the present study have interactional competence todisplay their awareness of social norms of agreement, disagreement, and avoiding
self-praise. They constantly orient to their interlocutors’ particular conduct andco-accomplish whatever activities they are involved in at the moment the conduct
is produced. Sequential analysis enables us to observe how L2 speakers tactfully
achieve “in between-ness” in compliment responses.
From the CA perspective, membership identities such as L1 vs. L2 speakers
and non-native vs. native speakers are only relevant when participants display theirconcerns to such identities in interaction (Kasper, 2004, 2009; Hosoda, 2006;
Kondo 2011). Although Kondo (2011) in her larger developmental study including
the same L1 participants as the present study demonstrates that identities oflanguage-expert and non-expert become locally relevant in their conversations with
their L1 co-participants especially in Time One, in the excerpts analyzed here, we
do not see much orientation by the participants to their language expertise, except
one case of word search in Excerpt 4. The noticeable phenomena, however, wasthat only the L1 speakers acted as complimenters and the L2 speakers ascompliment-receivers. I would argue that this is not related to language expertise
per se, but to their social roles in particular topics in their conversations. In thepresent study, the L2 speakers were high school students who were studying abroad
and were under the care of their host family members and AFS liaison, who
happened to be L1 speakers. The care-takers were more likely to play the socialrole of complimenters who praised their younger co-participants’ development ofcertain skills such as swimming and playing the piano, not necessarily their
linguistic skills.

6. Conclusion
The present study analyzed how L1 and L2 speakers sequentially co-constructcompliment activities. Using CA as a theoretical and methodological foundation,
the study has demonstrated (1) how compliment activities emerge in sequential
36

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Sachiko Kondo, pp.19-43

contexts, (2) how L2 and L1 speakers co-construct compliment activities, and (3)how L2 speakers sequentially respond to the compliments paid by theirinterlocutors.
Compared to traditional interlanguage pragmatic speech act studies in which
L2 speakers meta-pragmatic awareness is investigated by analyzing their choice of
conventional speech act strategies, CA analysis enables us to observe how actions
are co-constructed by the participants in conversations, and how actions are part ofL2 speakers interactional competence (Kasper, 2006).
Pedagogically speaking, it is important that the dialogues in textbooks reflect
authentic language use (Golato, 2002). In order to develop authentic materials forteaching about speech acts such as compliments and responses to compliments,
apologies, refusals, and requests, it would certainly benefit us to turn more to
discursive pragmatics, including the sequential analysis of how such speech acts
emerge and develop contingently and how conversants co-accomplish them.

Notes
１

The identities of native /non-native speakers, L1 /L2 speakers, or language
experts/non-experts are not predominant identities themselves in conversations(Gardner & Wagner, 2004). These are identities that speakers can adopt locally inconversations, or they may not adopt them at all. From CA perspective, theseidentities become relevant only when speakers orient to them, for instance, byinitiating repair of linguistic forms or correcting pronunciation. Based on thisnotion of identities, I adopt the term “L1 /L2 speakers,” which is more neutral than“native /non-native speakers” (Gardner & Wagner, 2004:16).
２

Brown and Levinson (1987) identify two categories of politeness strategies inFace Threatening Acts (FTAs) on record with redressive action: positive politeness(roughly, the expression of solidarity) and negative politeness (roughly, theexpression of restraint).
AFS is one of the world’s largest not-for-profit volunteer-based organizations;
it has a 90-year history. It offers international exchange programs in more than 50
countries through local AFS organizations. AFS provides intercultural learningand volunteer opportunities for students, young adults, teachers and families
through international exchanges.
３

Hide’s interlocutor, Sarah, is an AFS Student Family Liaison, whose primaryrole is to maintain regular contact with her assigned AFS student and host family
４37

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and provide support when needed.
５

See Golato (2003) for a comparison of DCTs and CA analysis using recordingsof naturally occurring conversation to study compliment responses in German.

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Appendix: Transcription Conventions
Based on the Jefferson Transcription System
http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssjap/transcription/transcription.htm
SymbolMeaning[

Square brackets mark the start and end of overlapping speech. They arealigned to mark the precise position of overlap.

]↓

Vertical arrows precede marked pitch movement, over and above
normal rhythms of speech. They are used for notable changes in pitch
beyond those represented by stops, commas and question marks.

→

Side arrows are used to draw attention to features of talk that are
relevant to the current analysis.

Underlining

indicates emphasis; the extent of underlining within individual words
locates emphasis and also indicates how heavy it is.

CAPITALS

mark speech that is hearably louder than surrounding speech. This isbeyond the increase in volume that comes as a by product of emphasis.

°I know it,°“Degree” signs enclose hearably quieter speech.

that’s r*ight.

Asterisks precede a “squeaky” vocal delivery.

(0.4)

Numbers in round brackets measure pauses in seconds (in this case,four tenths of a second). If they are not part of a particular speaker’s
talk they are on a new line.

(.)

A micropause, hearable but too short to measure.

((stoccato))

Additional comments from the transcriber, e.g. about features ofcontext or delivery.

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she wa::nted

Colons show degrees of elongation of the prior sound; the more colons,
the more elongation.

HhhAspiration (out-breaths); proportionally as for colons.

.hhh

Inspiration (in-breaths); proportionally as for colons.

Yeh,“Continuation” marker, the speaker has not finished; marked by
fall-rise or weak rising intonation, as when delivering a list.

y’know?

Question marks signal stronger, “questioning” intonation, irrespectiveof grammar.

Yeh.

Full stops mark falling, stopping intonation (“final contour”),
irrespective of grammar, and not necessarily followed by a pause.

bu-u-

Hyphens mark a cut-off of the preceding sound.

>he said<< he said>“Greater than” and “lesser than” signs enclose speeded-up talk.
Occasionally they are used the other way round for slower talk.

solid.= =We had “Equals” signs mark the immediate “latching” of successive talk,whether of one or more speakers, with no interval.
heh heh

Voiced laughter. Can have other symbols added, such as underlining,
pitch movement, extra aspiration, etc.

sto(h)p i(h)tLaughter within speech is signaled by h’s in round brackets.

(

Empty parentheses indicate that the transcriber was unable tounderstand what was said. The length of the parenthesized spacereflects the length of missed speech.

)(word)

Parenthesized words and speaker designations are especially dubious.

Additional notations$$

surrounds “laughing” voice.

￡￡surrounds “smile” voice.

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44