| A Gender-oriented Analysis of Compliments in Online Communication |
| Paper ID : 1084-ICIL |
| Authors |
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Laya Heidari Darani * No. 9/6, Alborz Complex, West Baharestan Str., Alikhani Sq., Malek Shahr, Isfahan, Iran |
| Abstract |
| Abstract This study intends to explore how gender is realized in compliments made by male and female Persian native speakers. Moreover, it probes how compliment is made in online communications in female-female, male-male, female-male and male-female contexts. To this end, a corpus composed of 800 compliments made by male and female users of Instagram as a social networking application was collected. Such compliments were made on pictures shared by both popular figures and close friends. The corpus was analyzed using Manes and Wolfson's (1981) classification according to which compliments can be classified into 3 categories: appearance/possession, performance/skills/abilities, and personality traits. The frequency and percentage of each category were calculated. The analysis revealed that females made more compliments than males and compliments made by females particularly in female-female and female-male contexts were concerned with appearance/possession and personality traits rather than performance/skills/abilities. Furthermore, results showed that females received more compliments from females than males. On the other hand, males tended to use compliments more on performance/skills/abilities than appearance/possession and personality traits. It can be concluded that women make more compliments presumably to show more affection, solidarity, and politeness. |
| Keywords |
| compliments; gender; Instagram; online communication; speech act |
| Status: Accepted |