A Pragmatic Analysis Of Compliments In American Movies

Introduction
The topic of the present research paper is A Pragmatic Analysis of Compliments in American Movies and deals with a pragmatic study of English compliments, their role in conversation management and the impact they have on people.
The reasons for choosing this topic for research run as follows:
• Compliments are very little investigated, though they are very popular communication strategies.
• Compliments are an effective conversational strategy that is applied differently in various situations.
The hypothesis of this paper relies on the fact that complimenting is an important communication strategy which based on the speaker’s communicative goal plays various pragmatic functions.
The aims of the research are the following:
• to

When people converse with other persons, they measure the success of their communication from the outcome (response) they get. Communication is considered successful when the speaker is aware of how he/she uses the language and the hearer is able to recognize the intended speaker’s meaning. By saying something to another person, people perform not only a certain communication purpose, but also a certain speech act.
The study of speech acts is closely interrelated with pragmatics and sociolinguistics. According to David Crystal [7, p. 240], pragmatics is the study of language from the point of view of its users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interactions and the effects their use of language have on other participants in the act of communication. G. Kasper (1993) defines the term as “the study of people's comprehension and production of linguistic action in context” [17, p. 3]. The words action and context, two crucial elements of speech acts in language are included there. Thus, the linguist uses the term linguistic action which defines the learner’s capacity to produce an

Speech act is defined by Oxford online Dictionary as an utterance considered as an action, particularly with regard to its intention, purpose, or effect. In linguistics speech act is an utterance that has the performative function in language and communication. According to J. Searle, speaking a language is performing speech acts, such as making statements, giving commands, asking questions, giving compliments, and making promises [32, p. 16]. G. Yule defines speech acts as an action performed via utterances such as apology, complaint, invitation, promise or request [40, p. 47].
 Speech Act Theory
Speech acts stay at the basis of speech act theory. The foundations of speech act theory were laid by philosophers such as L. Wittgenstein, J. Austin and J. Searle. Although L. Wittgenstein [36, p. 72] made an important contribution to the field of pragmatics by stating that language was a social activity and “the meaning of a word is its use in the language”, it is J. Austin who is generally regarded as the father of pragmatics and speech act theory. J. Austin’s (1962) theory was based on his belief that speakers do not merely use language to say things, but to do things and that thus utterances could be regarded as speech