Politeness strategies of bruneian malay youths in compliment speech acts

Abstract

Compliments are complex multi-functional speech acts which aim to establish, maintain and consolidate social relationships. Holmes (1986) defined a compliment as a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, for some ‘good’ possession, characteristic, or skill which is valued by both the speaker and the hearer. Brown and Levinson (1987) refer to compliments as positive politeness strategies which are directed at approving the appearance, personality, possessions and needs of people and at their desire to be treated as members of a group rather than as individuals.