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Studying Compliment Responses: A Comparison of DCTs

and Recordings of Naturally Occurring Talk

Article  in  Applied Linguistics · March 2003

DOI: 10.1093/applin/24.1.90

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Applied Linguistics 24/1: 90±121 # Oxford University Press 2003

Studying Compliment Responses:

A Comparison of DCTs and Recordings
of Naturally Occurring Talk
ANDREA GOLATO
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article provides a detailed study of the di€erences between compliment

responses collected with two di€erent data collection procedures: naturally
occurring data analysed through conversation analytic (CA) methodology, and
elicited data collected via a discourse completion task (DCT). The DCT was
designed to evoke the same discourse context and preceding cotext observed in
the naturally occurring data. The article demonstrates that these data collection
procedures do not always yield data that speak equally well to given research
questions. It is argued that recording naturally occurring talk-in-interaction
enables the researcher to study how language is organized and realized in
natural settings, whereas responses from data elicitation procedures such as
DCTs indirectly re¯ect the sum of prior experience with language. Additionally,
the article discusses advantages and disadvantages of data collection procedures
including questionnaires, recall protocols, role play, ®eld observation, and
recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. The article concludes by
discussing the feasibility of generalizing ®ndings generated from the afore-
mentioned data-collection instruments.

1. INTRODUCTION
Investigations of phenomena related to talk-in-interaction, or conversation or
discourse features of any kind, are typically based upon an analysis of data. An
element of such investigations which has received relatively little attention
concerns the nature of the data upon which these studies are based.
Presumably, studies of talk-in-interaction use databases that have been
compiled using similar methods of data collection that adequately capture
those features of talk that are to be investigated. Yet one simply has to browse
through any of the journals devoted to the study of discourse in order to see
that there are a variety of data collection procedures and methodological
frameworks available to students of discourse and pragmatics. Even when
limiting oneself to reviewing the body of literature on a single speech event,
for instance compliments, which will be the focus of this paper, it becomes
immediately obvious that they have been studied within various methodo-
logical frameworks, using di€erent tools and methods of data collection
including: (a) discourse completion tasks and questionnaires (e.g. Barnlund
and Akari 1985; Yuan 1996); (b) recall protocols (e.g. Knapp, Hopper, and
 ANDREA GOLATO 91

Bell 1984); (c) role play (e.g. Saito and Beecken 1997); (d) ®eld observation
(e.g. Wolfson and Manes 1980; Herbert and Straight 1989, and many others);
and (e) recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction (Pomerantz 1978;
Wieland 1995; Golato 2002). This may not be surprising since the research on
compliments does not constitute one uni®ed ®eld of research. Compliments
and compliment responses have been studied in detail in eleven di€erent
languages (see Golato (2002) for a detailed list), and in six varieties of English
alone, and they have been studied from a variety of di€erent perspectives as
well (e.g. pragmatics, second language analysis, conversation analysis,
discourse analysis, speech act theory, and speech communication).
Despite coming from di€erent research directions, almost all of these studies
include a discussion section reporting on what people are actually saying/
doing when they are responding to a compliment. Signi®cantly, most of the
studies do not claim to address intuitions concerning compliments, the value
that is placed on them in a given society, etc. Instead, they purport to describe
actual language use: the forms and formats of a compliment response, the
comparison of compliment responses in di€erent languages, and occasionally
the applications of their ®ndings to language teaching. Here, then, the
question of selecting an appropriate method of data collection becomes
crucial. I would argue that many such studies of compliments and
compliment responses do notÐin fact, cannotÐdescribe actual language
use, simply because their analyses are not based upon data that illustrate
actual language use with sucient granularity. In other words, due to an
inappropriate choice of data collection procedure, the claims of many
published articles on compliment and compliment responses may need to
be attenuated.
In this article, within the context of compliment responses, I compare two
methods of data collection in detail, namely the recording of naturally
occurring data and discourse completion tasks (DCTs). The naturally occurring
data for this study were ®rst recorded and analysed. Subsequently, the
discourse completion tasks were designed to mirror those situations in the
natural data in which compliments occurred. In other words, all the situations
described in the DCT actually occurred in the video-taped data. The
questionnaire provided the contextual information and the verbatim compli-
ment that was given in the naturally occurring data. DCT participants were
asked to respond to the compliment. As I will demonstrate, there are striking
di€erences between DCTs and naturally occurring data. My results suggest
caution in using DCTs if one's goal is to describe actual language use.
This article is by no means an attempt to present one data collection
procedure (recordings of naturally occurring data) as being the most suitable
for any and all research questions; nor is it the intent of this article to claim
that DCTs are of dubious value. It is simply argued that compared with data
collection instruments routinely used in conversation analytic (CA) studies,
DCTs are inappropriate for studying actual language use. Moreover, the article
will show that DCTs and other methods of data collection can provide
92 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

interesting, informative results, and thus are legitimate in their own rightÐ
even if they are better suited to addressing di€erent research questions since
they measure phenomena other than (or additional to) actual language use.

2. INSTRUMENTS OF DATA COLLECTION

In the following paragraphs, the advantages and disadvantages of each
method of data collection will be discussed with reference to the study of
compliments and compliment responses.

2.1. Discourse completion tasks and questionnaires

In DCTs and (production) questionnaires, subjects are presented with a
situation in which a compliment (or a compliment response) is believed to be
the next relevant action. Subjects are then invited to note what they would
say or how they would react in this situation. This method of data collection
has many administrative advantages (Billmyer and Varghese 2000), for
example allowing the researcher to control for certain variables (i.e. age of
respondents, features of the situation, etc.) and to quickly gather large
amounts of data (Beebe and Cummings 1985) without any need for
transcription (Johnston, Kasper, and Ross 1998), thus making it easy to
statistically compare responses from native and non-native speakers (Blum-
Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989; this latter topic will be addressed further in
Section 5 below). However, it has been pointed out in the literature that data
collected via this method do not always correspond to natural data (Holmes
1991; Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig 1992; Aston 1995), a criticism that has
been levelled at other forms of elicited data as well (Kasper and Dahl 1991;
Rose 1992; Sacks 1995, part I: 27). Similar to role plays (to be discussed
below), DCTs are in a crucial sense metapragmatic in that they explicitly
require participants not to conversationally interact, but to articulate what
they believe would be situationally appropriate responses within possible, yet
imaginary, interactional settings. As such, responses within a DCT can be seen
as indirectly revealing a participant's accumulated experience within a given
setting, while bearing questionable resemblance to the data which actually
shaped that experience. This suggests that the DCT is a valid instrument for
measuring not pragmatic action, but symbolic action.1
Relatedly, the native speaker intuitions about language collected with
discourse completion tasks do not re¯ect real-time interactional sequences
(see Wolfson (1989: ch. 2) for a detailed discussion of various studies that
address the inadequacy of intuition in pragmatic research). For example,
caretakers can be observed to teach their children to say `thank you' when
they receive a compliment (Herbert 1990: 207), and overtly thanking is
described as appropriate behaviour in manner books. Yet when comparing the
intuitive notion that overt acknowledgement of thanks always follows a
compliment with any of the studies of compliments as they occur naturally in
 ANDREA GOLATO 93

American English, it becomes obvious that thanking is NOT the most frequent
response at all (Pomerantz 1978). It follows that if the intuitive notion of
`Americans say thank you' becomes the base line of comparison for a
sociocultural transfer study of compliments in American and Chinese (Liu
1995), interpreting the results of such a study becomes dicult.
Furthermore, interviews and discourse completion tasks do not show the
interactional facets of a speech event; for example, they do not capture
whether and how multi-turn sequences develop in order to ful®l a certain
speech function (Beebe and Cummings 1985). In addition, research has
shown that discourse completion tasks may be problematic in eliciting
appropriate data from speakers of non-western languages (Rose 1994; Rose
and Ono 1995; Hinkel 1997).
Despite these limitations, discourse completion tasks are widely used in the
®elds of pragmatics, intercultural communication, and second language
acquisition, mainly because their simplicity of use and high degree of control
over variables lead to easy replicability. In order to improve DCTs (particularly
in order to overcome insucient situational background information in the
DCT), researchers have called for enhancing the situational prompts by
providing more contextual and social clues (Billmyer and Varghese 2000).
Additionally, Yuan (1996, 2001) found that orally administering DCTs yields
more naturalistic speech features than the equivalent written DCT. In order to
make the situation more realistic, some researchers have included listener
responses in the prompt. However, it is yet not clear to which extent these
responses are bene®cial (in that they make the situation more realistic) or
harmful (in that they in¯uence the informants' responses; see Johnston et al.
(1998) and Hinkel (1997) for a detailed discussion).

2.2. Role plays

Kasper and Dahl (1991) observed that in comparison to other forms of elicited
data, open role plays provide more naturalistic data: `They represent oral
production, full operation of the turn-taking mechanism, impromptu
planning decisions contingent on interlocutor input, and hence negotiation
of global and local goals' (Kasper and Dahl 1991: 228). However, Kasper
(2000) points out that role play (be it elicited conversation, open-ended role
play, or simulation) is predominantly motivated by the researcher's goals
rather than those of the interactants. If one assumes that the purpose of the
conversation is its structuring force, role plays and naturally occurring
conversation cannot be considered to be the same (Kasper 2000: 318). In
addition, although speakers may be interacting with each other, the context of
their interactions within role plays is often imagined, and thus not real
(Wildner-Bassett 1989). For example, consider two subjects (who may or may
not know each other) directed to act out a scene of friends complimenting
each other on items in their possession; the same subjects may then be asked
to role play an interaction between teacher and student, and between
94 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

employer and employeeÐregardless of their actual knowledge or experience

in such settings. Since no correspondence can be objectively established
through this type of data elicitation between how the participants give a
compliment in role play and how compliments are given in normally
occurring interactions, it seems more accurate to say that such participants
are acting out how they imagine someone in these situations might give
compliments. In other words, not only are subjects again providing their
beliefs about interactions, here they may be providing beliefs about roles they
have never played in real life. Even when subjects are supposed to enact roles
they are familiar with, there may be discrepancies between the interactions in
role play and in authentic discourse (Kasper and Dahl 1991).
Moreover, it has been suggested that real roles may be interfering with
imagined roles. Wildner-Bassett (1989) describes this as two discourse worlds
competing with each other, and argues that such role plays must be
interpreted very carefully. She shows that what could be labelled as pragmatic
breakdown/failure/interference can often be explained by the competing
discourse worlds to which subjects in role plays are exposed. In this sense
then, role plays ignore sociolinguistic variables which would otherwise matter
in naturally occurring conversations. Moreover, in stark contrast to
conversations in real life, role plays are problematic in that the verbal
interactions and the actions performed through language have no con-
sequences for the role players. That is, while it does not matter if a role player
is rude (or more direct) in a role play situation, a similar behaviour in real life
might very well in¯uence any future encounters with the coparticipant.
Comparative studies (e.g. Yuan 2001) of role plays and naturally occurring
conversations have indeed shown that what is said and, more importantly,
how it is said di€er drastically in role plays and in actual conversations.
Despite the disadvantages mentioned above, role plays are still widely used
in research on interlanguage pragmatics, mostly because role plays are online
production tasks and thus have features similar to naturally occurring
conversation (i.e. turn-taking, sequencing, hesitation phenomena, etc.), and
because they are easy to administer, allow for comparisons across dyads, and
allow for control of extra-linguistic variables such as power, status, gender,
age, etc. (Kasper 2000).

2.3. Field observation

The majority of studies of compliment responses use ®eld observation with
subsequent statistical analysis of the data collected. The precise procedure
follows a method pioneered by Wolfson and Manes (1980) and it is used
predominantly in sociolinguistics and communication studies. Field workers
are asked to write down the next twenty compliments they observe in their
daily lives, and to note the exact exchange as well as other contextual
information (age, sex of speakers, location, etc.) as soon as possible after the
exchange has taken place. Field workers are allowed to include compliments
 ANDREA GOLATO 95

they received or gave themselves. Obviously, carefully taken ®eld notes, most
widely used in ethnographic studies, allow for the collection of indispensable
contextual information (Kasper 2000). The biggest advantage of this method
of data collection is that it allows the investigator to collect a very large
database from a wide range of speakers and across various settings (Kasper
and Dahl 1991). Having a large enough database allows for statistical analysis,
which serves as support for claims made in the study.
However, there are several potential limitations in such studies. Since most
®eld workers do not audio-tape or video-tape any of their conversations, they
have to rely on their memory and observational skills. Trying to recall
linguistic data several hours after the event will lead to `data that is limited in
both quality and quantity' (Labov 1984: 30). Particularly, research has shown
that hedges, intensi®ers, conjunctions and modi®ers seem to be recalled
markedly less well than words tightly integrated into the clause (Lehrer 1989:
105). All such elements, however, are important in classifying compliment
responses into di€erent categories, as are gestures and head movements (i.e.
nods, etc.). For example, if a ®eld worker observes someone giving a
compliment which is answered with a head nod and a smile, he or she
might classify the response as an acceptance of the compliment. If the ®eld
worker misses the non-verbal clues, however, the compliment response may
be classi®ed as a non-response. The analyst has no way of checking
observations collected this way, either for accuracy or for the presence of
discourse markers or gestures. Kasper (2000: 319) probably provides the best
summary of the immediate drawbacks of this method of data collection:
`There is thus a real danger that memorization and taking ®eld notes will
result in recording salient and expected (or particularly unexpected) facets of
the interaction, at the expense of less salient but perhaps decisive (often
indexical) material.'
A second drawback of many of the studies in which compliments were
collected ethnographically (i.e. via ®eld observations) is that they included
data from very di€erent settings in their analyses. For example, Herbert (1990:
202) states: `The data for the present study were collected ethnographically by
students . . . , who were instructed to collect compliments and responses
within the student community, in places such as classrooms, dining hall, the
student union and so on.' There is a growing body of literature (see for
example the collection by Drew and Heritage (1992); here in particular
Levinson (1992) ) suggesting that task-related interactions in institutional
settings such as the classroom can be sequentially and functionally very
di€erent from interactions in ordinary conversation (i.e. dinner table, dining
halls, etc). Task-related compliments from teachers to students thus may (and
often do) have very di€erent functions from compliments given among
friends (Streeck 1979; Manes 1983). A similar study, although with much
younger children, showed that compliments in the classroom are often used
by the compliment giver in order to encourage a behaviour of the person who
is addressed and/or by those who can hear the compliment (i.e. the other
96 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

students in the classroom). The following compliment, taken from Holmes

(1986: 488), is paid by a primary school teacher to Mary, a student in a class of
5 year-olds:
C: Mary's sitting up nicely.
Holmes notes that as a result of the compliment, the student sat up even
straighter and looked pleased. Holmes observes that this compliment gave
encouragement to Mary but also functioned as an indirect reprimand to the
other students in the class who were not sitting up nicely in the class. Thus,
one cannot simply assume that compliments serve identical functions and
have the same design in ordinary and institutional talk. If compliments (or
their responses) that serve di€erent functions are categorized as being the
same before undergoing statistical analysis, the results of the analysis become
uncertain. As Scheglo€ (1993: 114) put it: `quanti®cation is no substitute for
analysis. We need to know what the phenomena are, how they are organized,
and how they are related to each other as a precondition for cogently bringing
methods of quantitative analysis to bear on them.'
Field notes (if recorded carefully and with sensitivity to the interactional
contexts mentioned above) can be useful methods of data collection when the
researcher is interested in the content of compliment responses (or other
speech events), and the use of syntactic or semantic features (Kasper 2000).
But when the emphasis is on the interactional or discourse features of the
speech event, microanalysis of audio- or video-recorded data is indispensable
(Kasper 2000).

2.4. Recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction

Researchers working within the methodological framework of CA analyse
talk-in-interaction in order to show how patterns of communication unfold.
CA data consist of non-elicited, audio-taped or video-taped face-to-face
encounters and/or audio-taped spontaneous telephone conversations. The
strength of CA lies in the fact that its methodology allows for the repeated and
detailed analysis of utterances in their sequential context (Atkinson and
Heritage 1984: 4); that is, the analysis of structures as they are used in real
lifeÐand in real timeÐwith the added advantage of looking beyond speech,
since CA also incorporates the study of bodily performance. All studies in CA
investigate how the participants in the talk display understanding and
orientation to the other participants' talk. These studies always begin with
an empirical observation through the analysis of individual cases. Addition-
ally, in the analysis, `no order of detail can be dismissed a priori, as disorderly,
accidental or irrelevant' (Heritage 1984: 241), meaning that every element of
the interaction (hesitation, laughter, silences, eye-contact, body-movements,
etc.) may be incorporated in the analysis. Researchers usually amass a large
number of single cases (all analysed from the perspective of the co-
participants) and describe in detail what these single cases have in common
 ANDREA GOLATO 97

in terms of their structure, associated interactional achievement, positioning

in the sequence, etc. It is true that within this methodology, it is rather
painstaking to collect a large corpus of data samples which display the
phenomenon being investigated (Kasper and Dahl 1991; Kasper 2000); it is
also true that many studies are thus working with a corpus that is too small
for statistical analysis (Yuan 2001), leading to questions of generalizability of
the ®ndings (see Section 5 for further discussion). In addition, the approach
has been criticized because working within this paradigm makes it rather
dicult (if not impossible) to control for extraneous variables such as power,
status, gender, and age di€erences between interactants (Yuan 2001: 275).
Moreover, the presence of the recording equipment may in¯uence the
participants, depending on how much time subjects have had to get used to
having it around (Kasper 2000: 320). Yet another limitation is that many
studies within CA provide little information on the subjects and the contexts
in the tapings (more recent studies, however, do provide such information,
see for example Golato (2002); Taleghani-Nikazm, (in press) ). However, the
method of data analysis allows the analyst to be sure that the instances in a
collection truly represent the same features and characteristics, and that such
features are oriented to by the co-participants (Atkinson and Heritage 1984:
2). Instances that do not display the same pattern as the other data samples
are not discarded, but are regularly analysed in attempts to discern why and
how they might be di€erent (Scheglo€ 1993, 1995, 1996). This close analysis
of the `deviant' cases will often reveal to a researcher what all other cases
have in common.2 As Scheglo€ (1993: 110) states, `the best evidence for some
phenomenon or practice can often be derived from negative cases, which may
display an orientation by the participants to the very practices from which
they depart.'

2.5. Recall protocols

In recall protocols, subjects are asked to remember the last compliment they
received or gave, and to describe the situation/setting in which it occurred and
exactly what was said. While this task does target natural data, researchers
who use it have to contend with limitations in human memory. For instance,
it has been demonstrated that bilingual speakers are not able to accurately
recall which language(s) they used in a given situation (Gumperz 1982: 62).
Psycholinguistic research has shown that verbatim recall of utterances is
faulty, even under the most favourable of circumstances (Lehrer 1989: 105).
Numerous controlled studies have demonstrated that while listeners can
accurately recall the propositional content of a sentence, they will not reliably
recall its syntactic structure unless speci®cally instructed to do so, i.e. at the
outset of the experiment (Anderson 1974; Anderson and Bower 1974;
Graesser and Mandler 1975; Hanson and Bellugi 1982; Johnson-Laird and
Stevenson 1970; Sachs 1967, 1974; Wanner 1974).
In addition to the problems related to memory, researchers using this type
98 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

of data elicitation also have to contend with the problem facing researchers
working with discourse completion tasks: recall protocols also fail to yield the
interactional features related to a particular speech event, and thus lack a
correspondence to natural data. Another problem related to this and other
methodologies is that subjects are selected based on convenience, and not on
principles of random selection (Yuan 2001: 275) which is more easily
achieved with role plays or discourse completion questionnaires.
Having given this overview of advantages and disadvantages of four data
collection procedures routinely adopted for studying language use, I would
like to focus on a comparison of two of these methods in the following
sections, namely DCTs and video-taped naturally occurring data. DCTs are
frequently used in (interlanguage) pragmatics, second language acquisition
research, and to some degree in communication studies. Video-tapings and
audio-tapings are most frequently used in discourse and conversation
analysis. The following databased comparison of these two collection
procedures are meant to provide the reader with insights about the strengths
and weaknesses of the two procedures in gathering information about normal
discourse. To this end, I will ®rst present a taxonomy of compliment responses
based on an analysis of video-taped naturally occurring conversation (Section
3). In Section 4, I will then contrast this taxonomy with one obtained from a
discourse completion questionnaire. As stated above, this questionnaire was
designed based upon the compliment sequences presented in Section 3. In
other words, the situations and compliments on the DCT were drawn from
naturally occurring talk.

3. GERMAN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES STUDIED FROM A

CA PERSPECTIVE
Elsewhere (Golato 2000, 2002), I investigated compliment responses among
friends and family in German using conversation analytic methodology. This
choice was made in order not to mix types of talk, such as mundane
conversation and talk in institutional settings (see criticism above). As stated
in Golato (2002), the data are from a corpus of 6 hours of telephone and 25
hours of face-to-face conversations. Participants were only video-taped (or
audio-taped on the phone) during activities that they would normally
engage in with each other (e.g. dinners, barbecues, get-togethers over drinks
or co€ee and cake, and card games). They were from the middle or upper
middle class, held or were pursuing a university degree (equivalent of a BA
or MA) or held white-collar positions in Germany (for example, accountants,
managers, physical therapists, sales representatives, social workers, teachers,
etc.); two of the twenty-seven participants were housewives at the time of
recording. The speakers ranged in age from 23±70 years, with the majority
being in their late twenties or early thirties. All participants spoke standard
German (some speakers had a pronounced regional accent) and came from
various regions in Germany (northern Germany, eastern Germany (Dresden,
 ANDREA GOLATO 99

Berlin, Brandenburg), central Germany, and southern Germany (both

Bavaria and Baden-WuÈrttemberg)). All in all, the twenty-seven speakers
produced 50 compliment sequences.
Table 1, taken from Golato (2002), displays the di€erent compliment
responses available to speakers of German in informal settings. The left
column includes the response type, while the right column provides examples
of each type of response.
Brie¯y stated, I found three di€erent ways in which Germans accept a
compliment when talking to friends and family (Golato 2002). Data sample 1
presents one form of compliment acceptance in which speaker B gives an
assessment of the compliment in response to the compliment assertion:
(1) A: aber heute abend hier war's schoÈn bei euch
but today evening here was it nice at yours
`but it was nice this evening here at your place'
B: schoÈn.
nice.
`that's nice.'
Thus in sample 1, speaker B does not give a second assessment of it being a
nice evening at B's home, but instead assesses A's compliment itself (see also
note 5).
An alternative way of responding to a compliment, and indeed the most
frequent one in the data, is for the compliment recipient to produce the
particle ja (yes) or some variant thereof. Thus, the compliment respondent
agrees with the compliment assertion by con®rming it. This is illustrated in
data sample 2, where B is complimented on her china:
(2) A: ihr habt ja so en schoÈnes zwiebelmuster hier,
you have m.p.3 so a nice onion pattern here,
`you have such a nice onion pattern here,'
B: joa:
ye:s
`ye:s'
B con®rms the compliment, thereby ending the compliment sequence after
which the speakers' talk attends to other matters (not shown in the
transcript).
A third way of accepting a compliment is for speakers to give a second
assessment of the object/compliment that is being complimented, followed by
a response pursuit marker (Je€erson 1980). Occasionally, the response pursuit
marker is uttered on its own. In German,4 this second assessment was found
to be as positive as the ®rst assessment made by the compliment giver. In the
following data segment, A is the guest and in his ®rst turn he is gazing at B,
the person who barbecued the meat:
100 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

Table 1: Compliment responses in German

Response type Example

I. Acceptances:
1. Agreements/assessment of compl. A: aber heute abend hier war's schoÈn bei
A compliments B euch
but it was nice this evening here at your
place
B positively assesses compliment B: schoÈn.
that's nice.
2. Agreements/con®rmation
A compliments B A: ich sach ihr habt ja so en schoÈnes zwie-
belmuster hier,
I said you have such a nice onion pattern
here,
B con®rms compliment assertion B: joa:
ye:s
3. Assessment + agreement-pursuit
A compliments B A: uÈbrigens (.) das ¯eisch exzel[lent
by the way (.) the meat excel [lent
[
B uses same strength adj. + tag B: [super ne?
[super
right?
A compliments again A: exzellent
excellent
B accepts compliment B: joa.
yeah.
II. Rejections:
1. Disagreements
A compliments B A: robert hat es .hhh ( (sni€) )eh- ich hm
w- wie sagt man
robert is .hhh ( (sni€) ) eh- i hm h- how do
you say
das beste g'muÈt und du hoast es beste
feingefuÈhl
the most even-tempered and you are the
most sensitive
B disagrees with compl. assertion B: ach nee: komm,
oh no:: come on,
III. Solution types for 2 con¯icting con-
straints
1. Questions ± neutral stance
A compliments B A: m::m lecker,
m::m tasty,
B questions compliment assertion B: ja:a? ( (high pitch) )
yeah? ( (high pitch) )
A con®rms question/compliment A: uh uhm
uh uhm
2. Evaluation shift (downgrade)
A compliments B A: ahh da sin so viele schoÈne ecken bei
euch.
ahh there are so many nice places where you
live.
B scales down compliment assertion B: jo jo sin schoÈne ecken
yea yea nice places
 ANDREA GOLATO 101

Table 1 (cont.):
Response type Example

3. Evaluation shift (quali®cation)

A compliments B A: du bis en juter zahnarz [det hat immer
you are a good dentist [it was always
B: [ja ja ( )
[yeah yeah ( )
A: spass gemacht sich] von dir
fun when ] you
B: ( (non-committal) )]
A: behandeln zu lassen
treated me
B quali®es compliment assertion B: ja:: is aber noch en weiter weg
ye::s but there's still a long way to go
4. Referent shift (away from self)
A compliments B A: lecker ( (talking about barbecued meat) )
yummy
B compliments other-than-self B: das ¯eisch hat sie gekauft ich hab's nur
gegrillt
she bought the meat I only barbecued it
5. Referent shift (compl. return)
A compliments B A: schmeckt lecker ( (talking about cake) )
tastes yummy
(1.5)
B compliments A B: der is aus dem kochbuch was du mir
mal
it is from the cookbook that you once
zu weihnachtn geschenkt has
gave me for Christmas
6. Comment history
A compliments B A: das klingt gut du. is ja dann lecker
hey that sounds good. is really tasty
B comments on item / gives history B: ja:a. und dann aÈhm hab ich so:: .hh
aÈhm diesmal
ye:ah. and then uhm I like .hh uhm this
time
mal so mirakel wip und majonese
gemischt,. . .
I mixed like miracle whip and mayonnaise
...
7. Reinterpretation
A compliments B A: lecker
yummy
B reinterprets compliment B: da is noch mehr=du kanns gerne noch
en stuÈck essen
there is more=you are welcome to eat
another piece
8. Ignoring
A compliments B A: sieht aber lecker aus
looks real yummy
B ignores compliment (30.0 +)

Source: Golato 2002

102 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

(3) A: uÈbrigens (.) das ¯eisch exzel[lent

by the way (.) the meat excel[lent
`by the way (.) the meat excel[lent'
[
B: [super ne?
[super right?
[`super right?'
A: exzellent
excellent
`excellent'
B: joa
yeah.
`yeah.'
In the ®rst line, A produces a displacement marker (Scheglo€ 1973, 1984,
1987), followed by a micropause, followed by the compliment itself. In partial
overlap with A's turn, B produces the second pair part to the compliment. Here,
the response takes the form of an adjective that is equally positive as the one
that A used, followed by the response pursuit marker ne? (`right?') (Je€erson
1980).5 This response pursuit marker is in e€ect pursuing a speci®c kind of
response (namely an agreement) that has already been given by the
compliment giver. While this response pursuit marker is uttered with rising
intonation, the speaker is not truly questioning the compliment assertion
(Golato 2002). However, as demonstrated by data segment 3, a response
pursuit marker (just like questioning the compliment assertion) can indeed
result in a full second round of compliments. In other words, speakers can be
said to be `®shing for compliments' and thus to be engaging in self-praise.6 This
is surprising since speakers also regularly display an avoidance of self-praise.
The following data segment shows a speaker rejecting a compliment. Note
that ¯at-out rejections of compliments are rare in the corpus. In data segment
4, a mother (speaker A) is comparing her children. Her co-participant (B) is
one of her sons, as is Robert (mentioned in line 1):
(4) A: robert hat es .hhh ( (sni€) )eh- ich hm w- wie sagt man das
Robert has it .hhh ( (sni€) )uh-I hm h- how say one that
`robert is .hhh ( (sni€) ) uh- i hm h- how do you say the
beste g'muÈt und du hoast es beste feingefuÈhl
best temper and you have it best perception/sensitivity
most even-tempered and you are the most sensitive'
B: ach nee: komm,
oh noo: come,
`oh no: come on,'
Pomerantz (1978) showed that when American English speakers are
responding to compliments, they are under two concurrent constraints that
are not simultaneously satis®able: compliments are assessments, and since
 ANDREA GOLATO 103

assessments are usually followed by an agreement with the assessment as a

preferred next turn (Pomerantz 1984), a form of acceptance should follow
after the compliment has been given. At the same time, it has been shown
that when speakers praise themselves, such behaviour is routinely sanctioned
(Pomerantz 1978). The same holds true for German (Auer and Uhmann 1982;
Golato 2002). In both American English and in German, it has been shown
that speakers overcome this dilemma by responding with turns that have
some features of agreements and of disagreements or which are entirely
neutral in stance7 (Pomerantz 1978; Golato 2000, 2002). Examples of such
turns follow below in data samples 5 to 12.
For instance, data sample 5 illustrates one option for Germans reacting to a
compliment assertion. By asking a question in neutral stance, the receiver
usually obtains a con®rmation from the compliment giver:
(5) A: m::m lecker,
m::m tasty,
`m::m tasty,'
B: ja:a? ( (high pitch) )
ye:es? ( (high pitch) )
`yeah?' ( (high pitch) )
A: uh uhm
uh uhm
uh uhm
Here, speaker A utters a compliment, speaker B questions it and in line 3, A
con®rms the compliment.
In data segment 6, we see another solution to the two con¯icting constraints.
Speaker B produces a scaled-down version of a previous assessment. B is
agreeing with the compliment, but is also disagreeing to some extent since the
compliment is downgraded from many nice places to nice places:
(6) A: ahh da sin so viele schoÈne ecken bei euch.
ahh there are so many nice corners at yours.
`ahh there are so many nice places where you live.'
B: jo jo sin schoÈne ecken
yea yea are nice corners
`yea yea nice places'
Yet another way to orient to the two con¯icting constraints is to qualify the
assessment of the compliment. In data sample 7, A is complimenting B, a
resident dentist, on his skills:
(7) A: du bis en juter zahnarz [det hat immer spass gemacht sich
you are a good dentist [this has always fun been oneself
`you are a good dentist [it was always fun when'
[
104 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

B: [ja ja ( ) ( (non-committal) )
[yes yes ( ) ( (non-committal) )
[`yeah yeah' ( ) ( (non-committal) )
A: von dir behandeln zu lassen
by you treat to let
`you treated me'
B: ja:: is aber noch en weiter weg
ye::s is but still a long way
`ye::s but there's still a long way to go'
Germans can also be seen to de¯ect the credit away from themselves either to
an object or, as in data sample 8, to a third party:
(8) A: lecker ( (talking about barbecued meat) )
yummy
`yummy'
B: das ¯eisch hat sie gekauft ich hab's nur gegrillt
the meat has she bought I have it only barbecued
`she bought the meat I only barbecued it'
Since sie (`she') refers to B's wife, B appears to be de¯ecting the compliment to
her, or to at least be sharing it with her. Compliments may also be returned to
the ®rst speaker, as in the following data sample:
(9) A: schmeckt lecker ( (talking about cake) )
tastes yummy
`tastes yummy'
(1.5)8
B: der is aus dem kochbuch was du mir mal zu weihnachtn
it is out of the cookbook what you to me once for christmas
`it is from the cookbook that you once gave me for christmas'
geschenkt has
given have
Another German response type is a non-evaluative comment on, or
history of, the object/feature/talent that has been complimented. Often,
compliment recipients ®rst con®rm the assertion with ja (`yes') before
giving the comment or history. This is the case in the following example,
in which A compliments B on a dish B has made. After con®rming the
compliment, B explained how he made the salad dressing that he has
been complimented on:
(10) A: das klingt gut du. is ja dann lecker
that sounds good you. is m.p.9 then yummy
`hey that sounds good. is really yummy'
 ANDREA GOLATO 105

B: ja:a. und dann aÈhm hab ich so:: .hh aÈhm diesmal mal so
ye:es. and then uhm have I like:: .hh uhm this time m.p. like
`ye:ah. and then uhm I like .hh uhm this time I mixed like
mirakel wip und majonese gemischt, . . .
miracle whip and mayonnaise mix, . . .
miracle whip and mayonnaise, . . . '
Compliments can also be reinterpreted as requests, which can lead to the
recipient's extending an o€er as a next preferred action:
(11) A: lecker
yummy
`yummy'
B: da is noch mehr = du kanns gerne noch en stuÈck essen
there is still more = you can welcome another piece eat
`there is more' = `you are welcome to eat another piece'
Data sample 12 shows that compliment recipients can also choose to ignore a
compliment entirely. Without any verbal or non-verbal reaction, speaker B
simply turned her back on A and began to set the table:
(12) A: sieht aber lecker aus
looks m.p.10 yummy
`looks real yummy'
(30.0 +)

4. GERMAN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES AS EVIDENCED BY

A DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASK
In order to investigate whether DCTs really yield results di€erent from those
in natural settings, I used my naturally recorded data (Golato 2002) in order
to construct my own DCT-questionnaire. The layout of the questionnaire is
patterned after Chen's (1993). The questionnaire itself included a description
of the setting and the compliment given for seven frequent situations in the
data, as well as a prompt for a written response to the compliments (see
Appendix A for a sample of the questionnaire). I administered the
questionnaire to 30 respondents (male and female adults), some of whom
were subjects in Golato's study and had received the compliments in the
naturalistic data.11 The other participants in the DCT study had socio-
economic, educational, and geographic backgrounds similar to the partici-
pants in the naturally occurring data: they were from the upper middle class
and hailed from northern Germany, eastern Germany (Berlin), central
Germany (Cologne area), and southern Germany (Bavaria). Their ages
ranged from 25 to 65 years. Respondents were given enough space to write
down several compliment responses if they felt that more than one was
appropriate. Twenty subjects returned the questionnaire, providing a total of
106 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

217 compliment responses. An analysis of the responses yields some

remarkable similarities between the DCT and the naturalistic data, but also
some noticeable di€erences.
Table 2 illustrates a quantitative comparison of the responses as yielded by
the di€erent data collection procedures. The left-most column describes the
response type, the following two columns show the raw numbers and the
percentages of occurrences in the natural data, while the two right-most
columns show the raw numbers and the percentages of occurrences in the
DCT responses. There were a total of 50 compliment response turns in the
naturalistic data, and 217 responses in the DCT responses. Both forms of data
collection yielded some compliment returns that consisted of more than one
component. For instance, a compliment response could have consisted of a
con®rmation marker and a statement giving the history of an item. Table 2
indicates how often an element appeared anywhere in the compliment
response. For example, 12.4 per cent of all compliment responses yielded by
DCTs contained an appreciation token. That is, in 12.4 per cent of the data, an
appreciation token was either the sole turn component, or else it occurred
somewhere in the turn.
Just as in the naturalistic corpus, the DCT elicited compliment assessments
as a second pair part of the compliment. In other words, A gives a
compliment, and B positively assesses the compliment (A: Mmmh, schmeckt
lecker! B: prima, das ist ja toll. A: `mmmh, tastes yummy!' B: `super, that's
great.'). Interestingly, the DCT resulted in more freut mich, literally `pleases
me/makes me happy' than were present in the naturalistic corpus. Freut mich
is actually an expression/gambit that speakers also use in other routinized
events such as introductions; it can thus be seen as a ready-made, standard
answer.
Similar to the naturalistic data, the DCT also yielded compliment returns
and referent shifts, as well as reinterpretations (compliments were interpreted
as requests, or as tickets to tell a story). Respondents also questioned the
compliment assertion or commented on the object (in either a serious or
humorous fashion) or provided an account thereof. While these accounts
were the most frequent response type of all in the DCT, they were not the
most frequent type in the naturalistic data. Yet another similarity between the
DCT-responses and the naturalistic data was that direct disagreements with a
compliment were extremely rare.
Let me now turn to those categories that were present in both the DCT and
in the naturalistic data, but that none the less display a slightly di€erent
design. To take one example, both the DCT and the naturalistic data yielded
many agreements in the form of con®rmations such as ja `yes'. However, in
contrast to the naturalistic data in which it can either stand by itself or in
combination with other response types, the con®rmation ja `yes' never stood
by itself in the DCT (see Appendix B). Instead, speakers always combined it
with other response types such as providing a history or a referent shift. As a
matter of fact, the combination of response types in the DCT data happened
 ANDREA GOLATO 107

Table 2: Occurrence of response types in compliment turns

Response type Natural data DCTs
(50 compliment (217 compliment
turns) turns)

Raw Percentage Raw Percentage

1. Acceptances
Appreciation token (`thank you0 ) 0 0 27 12.4
Agreements/assessment of compl. 4 8 33 15.2
Agreement / upgrade 0 0 4 1.8
Agreement with compliment 1 2 45 20.7
Agreements/con®rmation 20 40 31 14.3
Assessment + agreement-pursuit 6 12 1 0.5

II. Rejections
Disagreements 1 2 3 1.4

III. Solution types for 2 con¯icting questions

± neutral stance 6 12 5 2.3
Evaluation shift (downgrade) 4 8 4 1.8
Evaluation shift (quali®cation) 2 4 10 4.6
Referent shift (away from self) 4 8 23 10.6
Referent shift (compl. return) 2 4 8 3.7
Reinterpretation 2 4 24 11.1
Ignoring 3 6 0 0.0
History/explanation 5 10 62 28.6
Joke answer 0 0 23 10.6
Answers defying categorization 0 0 1 0.5

(Some turns consisted of several components, thus the percentage exceeds 100).

more frequently than in the CA data (see Appendix B). Speci®cally, while in
the naturally occurring data at most two response types were combined
(usually a con®rmation marker with one other response type and/or a second
assessment with a response pursuit marker), the DCT data yielded far more
combinations. Consider the following responses, all given by di€erent
informants:

(13) Ja, stimmt. Das Service ist ein ErbstuÈck und mein ganzer Stolz.
`Yes, correct. The china is an heirloom and my pride and joy.'
108 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

(14) Ja, das ®nde ich auch, dass er gut eingekauft hat.
`Yes, I think so too, that he shopped well.'

(15) Ja, das ®nde ich auch. Ich habe mir viel MuÈhe gegeben bei der
`Yes, I think so too. I was very careful in selecting the

Rezeptauswahl und denke, dass es mir gelungen ist.

recipe and I think that I succeeded.'
The compliment response in data sample 13 consists of a con®rmation marker
and an assessment of the compliment, followed by two accounts. Data sample
14 consists of a con®rmation marker, an agreement, and an elaboration, while
data segment 15 includes a con®rmation marker, an agreement expression, an
account, and yet another assessment. Leaving aside the fact that most of the
responses sound a bit stilted, it remains that the compliment responses in the
DCT experiment contained far more turn-construction units (here, a
combination of compliment response types) than were present in the
compliment responses in naturally occurring data. Consequently, the
responses in the DCT experiment were usually longer as well. This is a
rather interesting ®nding since other studies have criticized written DCTs for
yielding shorter responses than researchers expected to ®nd in compliment-
ing, thanking, and requesting behaviour (Beebe and Cummings 1996;
Bodman and Eisenstein 1988; Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig 1992; Rintell and
Mitchell 1989; Yuan 200112). One possible explanation for the observations in
the current study would be that, since they do not have an interlocutor when
®lling out the questionnaire, subjects orient to this fact when writing their
responses (for a similar explanation, see Yuan (2001) ). In naturally occurring
conversation, a co-participant might come in and take a turn at talking; when
a co-participant is not forthcoming with their turn, a speaker might select to
extend his or her own turn (Scheglo€ 1995). In a written task of this kind
where it is impossible for a co-participant to take a turn, the informant might
compensate in a similar fashion by continuing to add another turn containing
a constructional unit to their spate of talk/writing.
Similar to the CA-style data, the DCT data revealed an orientation by the
respondents toward the two con¯icting constraints placed upon a speaker
when receiving a compliment. Thus, respondents also chose downgrades and
quali®cations even with written responses to compliments. However, in the
DCT data, a downgrade was never done as a second assessment with a weaker
adjective. This was instead done with a qualifying statement such as Naja, das
ist aber auch oft GluÈckssache `Well, there is also often luck involved' in response
to a compliment on some wonderfully barbecued meat.
The most striking di€erences between the DCT responses and the
naturalistic data include the following.
None of the DCT respondents chose to ignore a compliment despite the fact
that they were told to leave lines blank if they deemed it appropriate. Many
DCT respondents chose to accept the compliments with danke `thank you' or a
 ANDREA GOLATO 109

combination of an appreciation token and another compliment response

(such as an assessment, history, reinterpretation, or referent shift). These
appreciation tokens are never found in the naturalistic data, yet they occur 27
times in the DCT data. Rather than actual language use, this type of response
instead seems to re¯ect what speakers believe they should say as a response to a
compliment. This result lends further support to Kasper's (2000: 329)
observation: `production questionnaires are useful to inform about speakers'
pragmalinguistic knowledge of the strategies and linguistic forms by which
communicative acts can be implemented, and about their sociopragmatic
knowledge of the context factors under which particular strategic and
linguistic choices are appropriate. Whether or not speakers use exactly the
same strategies and forms in actual discourse is a di€erent matter'. While
questions remain concerning the present ®nding (for instance, would a larger
corpus of naturally occurring data also include this element?), its surprising
nature certainly invites further study.
Another very striking di€erence between the DCT and the naturalistic data
is the way in which respondents claim to agree with compliments, and how
they actually do so in naturally occurring discourse. I demonstrated earlier
that when they agree with a compliment by uttering a same strength
adjective, Germans always include a response pursuit marker that then
triggers a second round of compliment giving. By contrast, respondents to the
DCT simply agree with the compliment by using a same strength adjective or
an upgrade (Ich ®nde das Fleisch traumhaft gut `I ®nd the meat to be
spectacularly good' in response to uÈbrigens das Fleisch, exzellent / `by the way,
the meat, excellent'), or by an overt expression stating agreement (®nde ich
auch `I think so too'). The response pursuit marker occurred only once in the
DCT data (as a ®nal component of a compliment response consisting of several
components (see Appendix B). This means that the response-pursuit marker
was not even present in the DCT data from subjects who had used a response
pursuit marker in the non-elicited recordings! I mentioned earlier how
research (Lehrer 1989) has shown that elements not tightly woven into the
semantics of a sentence can `drop out' more easily in recall tasks. This is what
might have happened in the DCT.
Other striking elements of the DCT responses included one that I could not
classify at all, namely Aha `Oh' in response to a compliment on the wonderful
meat. In one situation (situation 2), one informant also misunderstood the
situation entirely and thus gave a response that was inappropriate in content.
In naturally occurring conversation, this type of misunderstanding would
probably have been the source of a repair initiation, possibly providing the
compliment recipient with a second chance to respond to the complimentÐ
which of course could never happen with an introspective paper-and-pencil
task.
110 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

5. IMPLICATIONS FOR METHODOLOGY

The preceding section has demonstrated that while DCTs provide researchers
with data rather quickly, that data can be very di€erent from naturalistically
collected data. The fact that DCTs and recordings of naturally occurring data
yield di€erent results has already been stated by Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig
(1992) in their investigation of rejections in American English. They too
found that while some categories and responses were identical in both data
collection methods, there were enough di€erences between the data sets to
con®rm that DCTs do not provide reliable examples of what speakers are
actually doing when interacting with co-participants. Thus, if one is interested
in ®nding out how speakers react to compliments in real-time interactions, if
one wishes to discern the underlying interactional `rules' and patterns of
actual language use (in this case, how compliments are responded to), then
DCTs are clearly inappropriate. A preferred method of data collection would
involve the audio- and video-taping of spontaneous, naturally occurring data.
If one is interested in how speakers are using language to create meaning, or
in how certain speech events (such as compliments) are organized in their
natural settings, then one's data should as closely as possible correspond to
`naturally occurring interactional environments which seem to be the natural,
primordial home for language use' (Scheglo€ 1996: 468). In criticisms of
recordings of naturally occurring data, the observer's paradox ®rst noted by
Labov (1972; see also Labov 1984) is frequently cited (Kasper 2000). Yet as
Kasper (2000) notes, Duranti's (1997) extended experience with this method
of data collection shows that the presence of the recording equipment
becomes less of an obstacle over time, once subjects have gotten used to it.
This of course means that a `prolonged engagement in the ®eld' (Kasper 2000:
320) is advantageous.
A further observation is that subjects complained about the DCT while
®lling out the questionnaire, saying that they felt funny and that it was hard
to imagine what one would say. One subject even wrote on the questionnaire
itself: Auf Komplimente reagieren ist schwer. Die Frage ist immer, ist das Kompliment
berechtigt? z.B. Frage 6: Ist der Kuchen wirklich gut? `To react to compliments is
hard. It's always a question whether or not the compliment is rightly given.
For example, question 6: is the cake really good?' Clearly, this subject spent
some time thinking about the task at hand and realized that the DCT did not
provide as much context as a naturalistic setting would. In addition, this
statement also makes clear that a DCT is not an on-line task in which a person
uses language spontaneously and without consciously focusing on linguistic
output, but is instead an o€-line task in which a person has time for
introspection. This crucial distinction in task typesÐand more importantly,
the very di€erent types of data they yieldÐhas implications for the study of
naturally occurring speech. As we saw above in the comparison of DCTs and
CA-style data, written responses certainly do capture elements of the online
organization of speech. However, for collecting data of an exclusively on-line
 ANDREA GOLATO 111

nature, DCTs are poorly suited: they are in a sense `noisy' tasks in that by
design, they also unavoidably yield o€-line, metapragmatic data. Put
di€erently, DCTs are better suited to the study of `what people think they
would say' than to the study of `what people actually do say' in a given speech
setting. If the subject of investigation concerns o€-line or emic issues (Kasper
2000), for example people's beliefs or values with respect to culture, then
DCTs may very well be a good starting point, followed by detailed interviews
with subjects and informants. However, in the context of examining real
conversation, there is an inevitable diculty with DCT data which cannot be
resolvedÐthat is, not unless the data are compared with audio- and video-
taped data collected during actual speech events. It should be clear at this
point that DCTs do not cleanly and reliably inform us as to how talk-in-
interaction is organized and realized in natural settings (for a similar
conclusion, see Hinkel 1997). As Moerman (1974: 55) put it when discussing
language use, `folk beliefs have honorable status but they are not the same
intellectual object as scienti®c analysis'.
Possible questions with regard to CA methodology and, more generally, to
®ndings obtained using data from recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-
interaction, concern the generalizability of their results. As I will argue, such
questions are appropriate, but only when they are asked in their proper
context. For instance, such questions are legitimate when asked with respect
to ®ndings from language-related behavioural studies conducted using
experimental methods, for example psycholinguistic studies. By design, such
studies are interested not so much in the performance of the participants
being tested, but to whether the ®ndings obtained are reproducible; that is,
whether the behaviour observed in a controlled setting would resemble the
behaviour of comparable samples taken from the same or similar populations.
In such studies, behaviour is very often measured in experiments in which
participants (grouped according to, for instance, their ®rst language) are
instructed to perform various kinds of tasks which require a response (often a
button-push) upon the detection of a visually or auditorily presented stimulus
item (often a linguistic construct such as a morpheme, syllable, phoneme,
clausal boundary, etc.). Response latencies to successful stimulus detections
are analysed using inferential statistics (e.g. t-tests and analyses of variance).
Assuming appropriate methodology (including but not limited to: adequate
sample size, proper instrumentation, use of controls or blinding, behavioural
measures which yield interval-ratio data, clearly speci®ed procedures for the
identi®cation and handling of statistical outliers, etc.), such studies allow
psycholinguists to make inferences, or probability-based assertions, about the
e€ect of various participant- or stimulus item-related variables (here, a
participant's ®rst language, or the linguistic status of a stimulus item,
respectively) upon a task-related measure of performance (in the present
example, response latency). Put di€erently, such studies allow researchers to
make general statements about the language processing abilities of a
population (e.g. the population of bilingual German±English speaking
112 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

adults) based upon a small sample of that population (e.g. 30 adult German±
English bilingual participants).
In contrast to psycholinguistic and other psychometrically oriented studies,
CA methodology is similar to other qualitative research agendas in that its
primary objective is not to make probability-based assertions. Rather, its goal
is to comprehend the (sequential) organization of talk-in-interaction (Schegl-
o€ 1993, Markee 2002). Accordingly, within CA methodology, data are
collected not through having participants perform experimental tasks under
controlled conditions, but through careful observation of interactants as they
freely engage in conversation within natural settings. As a result, and in
further contrast to psychometric studies, CA data consist of detailed records of
conversational interactions in the form of video and audio tapes and
transcripts thereof. Crucially, the `behaviours' noted in the transcripts bear
no resemblance to the task-related, interval-ratio data collected by
psycholinguists under laboratory conditions. On the contrary, in CA and in
other qualitatively oriented research, interactants are not given instructions
on, for instance, how they should interact, whom they should interact with,
for how long, what they should say, how they should phrase what they wish
to say, etc. Were they to be used, such manipulations would only serve to
ensure that the data collected did not represent naturally occurring talk-in-
interaction!13 Therefore, in experimental methodological terms, there are no
controlled conditions within CA, and no manipulations of participant- or
item-related variables. In fact, CA methodologists have yet to determine
what, if anything, constitutes a theoretically relevant `variable' in the
psychometric sense within instances of talk-in-interaction (for a detailed
discussion of this point, see Scheglo€ 1993). Additionally, within CA there
are no tasks to perform, and thus no measures of behaviour to be collected
and analysed using inferential statistical procedures. Consequently, with
respect to CA and other qualitatively oriented work, questions concerning
generalizability of results are entirely misplaced since they mistakenly
presuppose an approach to data collection and analysis used neither within
CA, nor within many other qualitative research methodologies.
A further clari®cation to be made regarding experimental methodology
and conversation analytic methodology concerns the treatment of outliers
(or `deviant cases', in CA parlance). While performing an experimental task,
a participant can be observed to generate responses which are demonstrably
di€erent from those of others in the same group (i.e. which are statistical
outliers), or to commit errors (i.e. to generate responses in the form of misses
and false alarms, or fail to follow task instructions). While procedures in
experimental studies vary concerning the treatment of statistical outliers,
data representing errors is never analysed together with data representing
successful trials, but is instead removed prior to any statistical analyses. Error
removal is a methodologically sound practice: errors represent instances in
which a participant was not performing the task of interest to the researcher.
By contrast, within the context of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, no
 ANDREA GOLATO 113

data segment can be reasonably conceived of as an error. In experimental

methodological terms, to the extent that they represent actual samples of
conversational interaction, all data from naturally occurring speech represent
successful trials; therefore, none of them can be discarded. This means that the
presence of innumerable samples cannot undo the fact that in one instance,
members oriented to an item as doing something di€erent (Scheglo€ 1993).
Stated di€erently, although they are not concerned with questions of
generalizability and causality, `it is incumbent on [CA] analysts to make
sense of members' behaviors, even if these do not ®t the majority pattern'
(Markee 2002: 5).
In their e€orts to comprehend the organization of interaction, conversation
analysts have instead adopted an ethnomethodological perspective. For
conversation analysts, this means that having a `signi®cant ®nding' refers
not to the probability that the event in question occurred by chance, but
rather that the participants in an interaction have put signi®cance on that
particular eventÐthat is, that the participants have demonstrated that the
event is relevant to them. It follows that if conversation analysts want to claim
that a linguistic item can perform a particular action, they must demonstrate
that the participants in a given setting orient to this particular item as doing
this action. However, bearing in mind the di€erences between experimental
methodology and CA methodology, the fact that within naturally occurring
talk an item performs a particular action within a particular setting does notÐ
in fact cannotÐimply that the same or similar items within the same or
similar settings will necessarily also perform that particular action. Yet
conversation analysts do not view interpersonal interactions as totally
random events. Instead, CA's largely descriptive, data-driven focus is more
accurately seen as indicating the ®eld's e€orts to achieve an adequate level of
description of the organization of talk-in-interaction (see also Scheglo€ 1993).
Viewed again from the perspective of experimental methodology, the heavily
data-driven approach of CA represents a prudent ®rst step in the development
of a causal theory of conversational interaction.
(Revised version received July 2002)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my thanks to Irene Koshik for inspiring me to write this article, and to
Brigitte Vlatten, Tobias Barske, and Carsten Wilmes for their help with data collection. I am
grateful to my husband, Peter Golato, for extensive comments and feedback. I owe much of the
discussion on `generalizability' to our numerous conversations which served to sharpen my
appreciation of issues related to psycholinguistics, experimental design, and data analysis. My
thanks also to the Language and Culture reading group at the University of Illinois for feedback on
an earlier version of this article. Finally, I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and the
editors for their helpful and insightful comments. All remaining errors are, of course, my own.
114 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

APPENDIX A

Fragebogen
Anweisungen: Bitte reagieren Sie auf die folgenden Situationen. Bei einigen der
folgenden Situationen kann es sein, dass Sie mehrere Antworten/Reaktionen als
passend emp®nden. In diesem Fall schreiben Sie bitte alle Ihre Reaktionen auf die
vorgegebenen Zeilen. WaÈhrend Sie den Fragebogen ausfuÈllen, diskutieren Sie ihn bitte
nicht mit anderen Personen.
1. Sie haben Freunde zu einem gemuÈtlichen Abendessen eingeladen. Bei der
Verabschiedung sagt einer Ihrer Freunde: ,,Heute abend hier war's schoÈn bei euch!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
2. Sie sind gerade in ein Eigenheim umgezogen. Ihr Haus liegt in einer wunderbaren
Gegend.
Eine Verwandte sagt zu Ihnen ,,Ahh, da sind so viele schoÈne Ecken bei euch!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
3. Eine Bekannte hilft Ihnen beim AufraÈumen nach einem Fest. Sie stellt unbenutztes
Geschirr in den Schrank und sieht dort ein altes Ka€eeservice und sagt: ,,Ihr habt ja so
ein schoÈnes Zwiebelmuster hier!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
4. Sie und Ihr Partner/ Ihre Partnerin haben Freunde zum Grillen eingeladen. Als alle
anfangen das Fleisch zu essen, sagt ein Freund: ,,UÈbrigens, das FleischÐexzellent!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
5. Freunde und Verwandte sind zum Geburtstagska€ee bei Ihnen. Alle essen Kuchen
und trinken Ka€ee und jemand sagt uÈber den Kuchen, den Sie gebacken haben:
,,Schmeckt lecker!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
6. Sie haben Freunde zum Mittagessen eingeladen. Sie sind dabei, das Essen
vorzubereiten bzw. aufzutragen und eine Freundin sagt: ,,Sieht aber lecker aus!''
 ANDREA GOLATO 115

Sie antworten darauf:

a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
7. Sie haben Freunde zum Grillen bei sich. Das Fleisch ist besonders zart und saftig und
jemand sagt: ,,Mmmmh! Lecker!''
Sie antworten darauf:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________

Translation of the German Questionnaire

Directions: Please react to the following situations. In some of the situations, you may
®nd more than one response/reaction appropriate. In this case, please write down all
the appropriate responses on the lines provided. Please do not discuss this
questionnaire or your responses with others while you are ®lling it out.
1. You have invited friends over for a casual dinner. At the end of the evening (when
leaving your house) one of your friends says: `It was a nice evening!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
2. You have just moved to a new house which is located in a beautiful area. A relative
says to you: `Oh, it's such a nice area here!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
3. A friend is helping you clean up after a party. While putting away dishes, she spots
some pieces of antique china and says: `Your china has such a lovely pattern!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
4. You and your spouse have friends over for a barbecue. When everybody starts
eating, a friend says: `By the wayÐthe meat is excellent!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
5. You have some friends and relatives over for co€ee and cake that you baked.
Someone says: `Tastes yummy!'
You answer:
116 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
6. Some friends are over at your house for lunch. As you are bringing it to the table, a
female friend says: `This looks great!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________
7. Friends are over at your house for a barbecue. The meat is especially tender and
juicy, and someone says: `Yum, yummy!'
You answer:
a) _________________________________ b) _________________________________
c) _________________________________ d) _________________________________

APPENDIX B

Table 3: List of compliment response turns. Listed according to response types

Response type CA-Data DCT-Data
n = 50 n = 217

Appreciation token alone: 0 6

Appreciation token + assessment: 0 7
Appreciation token + agreement: 0 1
Appreciation token + referent shift (away from self) 0 1
Appreciation token + compliment return 0 1
Appreciation token + reinterpretation 0 1
Appreciation token + history 0 8
Assessment alone: 3 12
Assessment + appreciation token 0 1
Assessment + assessment 0 2
Assessment + agreement 0 1
Assessment + reinterpretation 0 3
Assessment + history 0 4
Assessment + question 1 0
Assessment (Upgrade) 0 4
Agreement alone: 0 18
Agreement + compliment return 0 1
Agreement + reinterpretation 0 2
Agreement + history 0 3
Con®rmation marker alone 12 0
Con®rmation marker + agreement 0 9
Con®rmation marker + agreement + reinterpretation 0 1
 ANDREA GOLATO 117

Response type CA-Data DCT-Data

n = 50 n = 217

Con®rmation marker + agreement + history 0 4

Con®rmation marker + agreement + history + agreement 0 1
Con®rmation marker + agreement + quali®cation 1 0
Con®rmation marker + referent shift 0 4
Con®rmation marker + history 4 6
Con®rmation marker + history + history 0 1
Con®rmation marker + question 0 1
Con®rmation marker + question + disagreement + history 0 1
Con®rmation marker + question + history 0 1
Con®rmation marker + downgrade 2 1
Con®rmation marker + quali®cation 1 0
Con®rmation marker + joke 0 1
Agreement pursuit: 6 0
Disagreements 0 1
Questions (neutral) 5 3
Question + appreciation token + assessment 0 1
Question + disagreement 0 1
Question + history 0 1
Question + question 1 0
Downgrade 2 3
Quali®cation 2 9
Referent shift away from self 2 8
Compliment return 2 6
Reinterpretation 2 16
Reinterpretation + agreement 0 1
History 1 30
History + agreement 0 1
History + pursuit 0 1
History + quali®cation 0 1
History + sharing 0 1
History + history 0 21
Ignoring 3 0
Joke 0 22
Not sure about response type (`Aha' / Oh) ) 0 1
Misunderstood situation 0 1
118 STUDYING COMPLIMENT RESPONSES
NOTES
1 I am grateful to one of the editors for this
observation.
2 For a clear example of this principle, see
Silverman's account (Silverman 1998: 110±
11) of Scheglo€'s work (Scheglo€ 1972) on
telephone openings. Alternatively, see
Egbert's study on the role of eye-gaze and
the repair initiator bitte? (`pardon?') (Egbert
1996). Egbert found that Germans use this
particular general repair initiator when
there was no eye-contact between the
participants during the production of the
repair construction. The production of the
repair initiator re-establishes repair
between the participants. In her study, the
single instance in which the repair
sequence between a non-native speaker of
German and a German native speaker was
di€erent from all other instances in her
collection led Egbert to consider the role of
eye-gaze (Egbert, personal commun-
ication).
3 m.p. = modal particle.
4 For a comparison of German and American
English compliment responses, see Golato
(2002).
5 Note the di€erence between data segments
3 and 5: in data segment 5, speaker B gives
an assessment of the compliment assertion
while in data segment 3, speaker B gives an
assessment of the compliment. For a more
detailed discussion of this di€erence, see
Golato (2002).
6 I would like to thank the editors for
pointing out the following alternative read-
ing of this compliment response: the re-
sponse can be seen as minimizing the
degree of imposition of the compliment by
transforming the compliment into a state-
ment of fact, to which the recipient simply
acquiesces with another factual statement.
One could say that the response is an
avoidance of self-praise by changing the
nature of the original act through its
perlocutionary e€ect.
7 Providing the history of the object of the
compliment (i.e. where or how one
obtained it) would be an example of a
compliment response that is neutral in its
stance.
8 B has her mouth full and is chewing the
cake.
9 m.p. = modal particle.
10 m.p. = modal particle.
11 Approximately 6 months to one year had
elapsed between the original recording and
the distribution of the questionnaire, thus it
seems unlikely that subjects remembered
the speci®cs of the situation in which they
were given the original compliment.
12 Interestingly, in all of these studies, a longer
response is always depicted as a better
response, without any critical re¯ection of
why that should be so.
13 There is potentially a more serious problem
related to adopting an experimental meth-
odological approach to analysing transcript
or DCT data. If such data are in the form of
frequencies (i.e. counts or tallies of instances
of behaviour; e.g. the number of compli-
ments given of a particular turn shape, the
number of instances in which someone
responded `das Fleisch, exzellent', etc.),
then statistically speaking they lack true
numerical status. One of the assumptions
of inferential statistical analyses (e.g. t-tests
and analyses of variance) is that the data
being analysed are true numbers of an
interval nature (e.g. ounces, seconds,
temperature, voltage, etc.). Analysing raw
frequency data with a statistical procedure
designed for interval data is methodo-
logically unsound, since it leads to uninter-
pretable (not to mention ungeneralizable)
results. For a clear discussion of these and
related issues with speci®c reference to
research in applied linguistics, see Hatch
and Lazaraton 1994.

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