Compliments and Compliment Responses in Saudi Arabia: A Socio-Pragmatic Study

Abstract

This thesis presents a sociopragmatic study of complimenting (C) and compliment responding (CR) in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabic complimenting reflects both universal linguistic features and culture-specific norms. The study aimed to comprehensively examine Saudi Arabic C and CR performance in an authentic context. This study addresses gaps in understanding the sociopragmatic aspects of C/CRs in Saudi Arabia, as prior research has focused on other languages. Unlike previous studies on complimenting and responding in Saudi Arabic that utilized elicitation methods, this study utilizes a corpus of naturally occurring data from 88 hours of audio recordings in informal social events, which serve to maintain and reinforce social ties across familial, tribal, and friendship networks. These events involved participants socializing in recurrent casual encounters and celebratory occasions. This study employed a qualitative approach with descriptive statistics. Thematic analysis was used to identify and categorize the C and CR strategies. The frequency of each identified C and CR strategy was calculated to determine their distributions across the corpus. This approach helped develop Saudi-centred taxonomies that reflect complimenting sociocultural norms. The analysis revealed that physical appearance and personal attributes were the most frequent compliment topics. Explicit compliment strategies predominated over implicit ones. Acceptance with deflection was a prevalent Saudi response strategy. Speaker attributes like gender and dialect (Riyadh and Qassim) impacted strategy choices. Islamic references were commonly featured in mitigation with Cs and appreciation tokens with CRs. The findings from this study contribute to greater awareness of how social values and politeness considerations are shaped by the Islamic faith which governs C/CR sociopragmatic conventions. The findings can help facilitate appropriate compliment and response exchanges between Saudi native speakers and non-native speakers and contribute to the development of educational materials to teach Arabic language learners.