View Content #22775

< Go Back
TitleGiving and Receiving Compliments in Spanish
SourceCASLS Spotlight
Body

Valeria Ochoa is a graduate student in the Language Teaching Specialization program at the University of Oregon.

Compliments can be used for a variety of communicative functions. Some of the most common ways compliments are used in Spanish are: as ice-breakers, solidarity building strategies, and to flirt. Meanwhile, compliments in English are usually used to: express admiration of someone’s work/appearance/taste, establish/confirm solidarity, serve as an alternative to greetings/gratitude/apologies/congratulations, soften face-threatening acts, open and sustain conversation, and reinforce desired behavior (Ishihara and Cohen, 2010). This lesson focuses on the ice-breaker and solidarity building functions in Spanish, and compares these to the English functions/strategies. Also, per Brown and Levinson (1987), responding to compliments can be quite complicated since responses can rely on politeness principles within societies. Due to the differences in responses to compliments in English and Spanish, the lesson will also cover pragmatically appropriate ways to respond to compliments in Spanish. It was designed for a university level accelerated first year Spanish course.

Sources:

CARLA. Dancing with Words retrieved from http://carla.umn.edu/speechacts/sp_pragmatics/Compliments/compliments_home.html.

Alba-Juez, L. (2001). Some discourse strategies used to convey praise and/or positive feelings in Spanish everyday conversations. In Campos, H., Herburger, E., Morales-Front, A. & Walsh, T. J. (Eds.), Hispanic Linguistics and the Turn of the Millennium: Papers from the 3rd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 364-80). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Routledge.

Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2001). Compliment responses among British and Spanish university students: A contrastive study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 107-27.

Manes, J., & Wolfson, N. (1981). The compliment formula. Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech, 115-132.

Valdés, G. & Pino, C. (1981). Muy a tus órdenes: Compliment responses among Mexican-American bilinguals. Language and Society, 10, 53-72.

Learning objectives: 

  • Students will be able to recognize the different norms in giving and responding to compliments in English and in Spanish (adapted from Ishihara and Cohen, 2014).
  • Students will be able to give compliments in Spanish using a variety of appropriate pragmatic strategies (this objective was adapted from CARLA Dancing with Words site).
  • Students will be able to appropriately respond to compliments in Spanish using pragmatic strategies (this objective was adapted from CARLA Dancing with Words site).

Modes: Interpersonal Communication

Materials needed: Handout

Procedure:

  1. Introduce the topic of compliments to the class. Pass students the handout. Let students read the directions or go over the directions together.
  2. Play the videos and have students take notes on the handout. Play a few times if needed.
  3. Next have students decide what strategy was employed for each compliment and compliment response they saw using the information on the handout.
  4. Have students discuss their responses with a partner.
  5. Discuss with the class. Talk about if there are times when Spanish and English compliments/responses are alike, and if there are ways in which they seem to be different. Highlight which strategies for compliments and compliment responses are typically seen in both English and Spanish. This can be done as a class and written on the board in the form of lists, venn diagrams, etc.
  6. Extension: Now that they have learned the pragmatic differences between giving and receiving compliments in Spanish and English, and know what is more pragmatically appropriate in Spanish, students create their own dialogues in Spanish using appropriate compliment and compliment response strategies. They are to do this in partners and can begin brain- storming in class, then create the dialogue for homework together. Alternatively students could record their dialogue on either Vocaroo or VoiceBoard.
Publishdate2017-03-13 02:15:03