Gender Differences in Using Compliment Responses Strategies: A Case Study

This study intended to investigate the English compliment response strategies as used by gender groups, to find out if there are significant differences in responding to compliments according to gender variable. One hundred students (50 female, 50 male) from the undergraduate Arabic students of Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) participated in the study. In order to collect the data of the study, a borrowed Discourse Completion Test (DCT) consisting of 10 situations was used as an instrument of data collection. Mainly, the situations of the DCT were designed to collect responses to compliments addressed by the same and the opposite gender of the respondents. The situations of the DCT covered two main compliment topics, appearance and performance. In order to answer the research questions: what are the most feaquent CR strategies used by male and female Arabic undergraduate student of EMU to respond to compliments addressed by the same and the opposite gender? And are there any significant gender-based differences in using CR strategies between Arabic undergraduate students of EMU? The collected responses were coded and classified according to Herbert’s (1986) taxonomy of Compliment Responses (CRs). Then, SPSS program was used to calculate the frequencies of the responses and a cluster of independent-sample t-tests were done in to order to find any significant statistical gender-based differences in using compliment responses. The findings of the study showed that both female and male Arabic students of EMU preferred to show agreement with compliments addressed by both the same and the opposite gender. Also, findings of the study showed that there are significant statistical gender-based differences among Arabic students of EMU in using CR strategies. Analyses showed a significant female superiority in the use of CR agreement strategies, and that females showed more acceptance to compliments on both appearance and performance than males did. On the other hand, male students used more disagreement in responding to compliments on appearance addressed by males. These findings can be taken in consideration by English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and syllabus developers in order to raise awareness of communicative language teaching and using. Keywords: Gender Differences, Compliment Speech Act, Compliment Responses.