Describe the project that Nelson, Al-Batal and Echols carried out, saying briefly: a.

what their hypothesis/theory was; This project was set out to study the differences between Syrian Arabic speakers' and American English spear's spoken responses to compliments by another person. More specifically, this study was made in order to better grasp the strategies used by both speakers (Syrian and American), differences and similarities between the two groups' compliment responses, and how these findings can add to the overall knowledge of second language acquisition/teaching. b. what method they used; The method they used resulted in what Nelson claims as naturalistic, yet comparable, data without ethnomethodology. As for the American group, data was assembled through video recorded interviews. Those interviewed were graduate students taking Applied Linguistics at an fairly large scale urban college in the southeast. Eighty-seven people were interviewed (47 were female, 40 were male) with basic questions such as Where in the United States did you come from? All eighty-seven participants were complimented by their appearance, a personality trait, or on a certain skill or well done job. Due to these compliments being throw out to the participants as an aside within the interview, it can be said that the compliment responses were natural. Lastly, the recordings were transcribed (in English) and included basic personal information of the person interviewed (age, gender, relationship towards speaker). As for the Syrian data, it varied a little from the way the data was collected from the American pool of participants. This is due to the fact that the Syrian interviewers felt it would make the participants feel uncomfortable and uneasy (because of cultural points such as Syrians not often being studied sociologically or sociolinguistically). To improvise for this, during the interview when a compliment was made, the response would be immediately wrote down after the interaction was made. Furthermore, to make sure that the transcriptions were correct as possible, the interviewers were trained by one of the researchers through several meetings and progress report sessions. c+d. what their results were / how they interpreted the results The results found between the American and Syrian compliment responses had many similarities, as well as differences. One of the main similarities between how the two groups responded to compliments was by how they both were more likely to either accept or mitigate the compliment rather than flat out deny it (95% of Americans and 100% of the Syrians in the study behaved this way). Also, both groups on the whole used many of the same response types (Agreeing utterances, Deflecting/Qualifying Comments, etc.). Thus, indicting that both Americans and Syrians may be on the whole more willing to accept or indirectly deny a compliment than be straightforward and reject it. In addition, the difference between male and female responses in both groups was practically the same (in that there was no difference), in exception to the fact that Syrian female interviewees did not use Agreeing Utterances at all as a response type. As for differences, the Americans were more likely than the Syrians to use what is called Appreciation Tokens (like thank you) in response to a compliment (29% American interviewees compared to 2% Syrians). This was interpreted as a part of American culture in that thank you can be a sufficient wayto respond to a compliment, whereas if thank you in Arabic (Shukran) was used

between two Arabic speakers, it may become uncomfortable for the complimenter due to it possibly signaling the end of a verbal exchange. One final difference noticed was the difference in the length of responses between the Arabic and English speakers. The Arabic responses to compliments were observed as considerably much longer than the English ones (Iaa, muu kill hal'add ma inni ta'baane l-yuum compared to Thanks). This was concluded to be a possible source of miscommunication between a native speaker of English trying to speak Arabic to a native Arabic speaker by Nelson. For example, if an American tries to directly translate Thanks from their native tongue into Arabic, it would come out as Shukran. As previously explained, this short phrase would be interpreted by the listener as a signal for the conversation to stop, and there To explain further, culturally, compliments in Arabic are commonly given with lush vocabulary, many metaphors andof course longformulaic expressions. as to deepen the sincerity between the two people talking. Hence, if someone just says Thanks in Arabic, it can come off as insincere and ultimately rude. Conversely, if a native Arabic speaker attempted to converse with a native English speaker in English, he or she might end up with pragmatic failure due to using too many words. The English native would think that the other person is inappropriate and phony. In conclusion, Nelson theorizes that in this case, for second-language learners to avoid pragmatic failure and achieve pragmatic competence, they need to learn the responses that are similar in both languages in regards to compliments, as language is more than just direct translation of words, but interpreting behavior and knowing how to respond correctly. Carry out a similar project to compare the compliment responses of two groups. You may not necessarily want to look at two different nationalities or cultures. You could investigate how people of different genders, classes, and ages, respond to compliments. I carried out a small project to determine whether or not men were more likely than women to accept a compliment than women rather than reject it. I complimented a total of 30 people, all native English speakers, who were 15 women and 15 men. All people were college students at ICU and presumably around ages 18 to 23. The compliments I gave the thirty students were all related to appearance or personality (I like your shirt or You're really hard-working). Data Accepted compliment Rejected compliment Men 12 3 Women 14 1

As seen here, more men than women were likely to reject my compliment given in the midst of a normal conversation than women (12/3 : 14/1). So in accordance to my hypothesis, I can conclude that (at least for young adult, native speakers of English) men are less likely to accept a compliment (based on personality and appearance) than women. However, due to the small amount of people asked in this study, and an inability to get a true random sample, these results do not hold 100% reliability. To improve this test, the scale would need to be larger and more controlled in terms of possibly having participants being complimented in the same place and time of day with an interviewer who is aware of what kind of bias his or her speech might affect on the interviewee's compliment response.