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Part of
Complimenting Behavior and (Self-)Praise across Social Media: New contexts and new insights
Edited by María Elena Placencia and Zohreh R. Eslami
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 313] 2020
► pp. 49–72

Chapter 2
“Gracias pana”

A glimpse into Ecuadorian male compliment responses on Facebook

| Birkbeck, University of London

Compliments and compliment responses are a frequent topic of study in face-to-face interactions (see Chen 2010 for an overview), and are gaining traction in online interactions. This study builds on works on compliment responses online; particularly work by Placencia, Lower, and Powell (2016), by examining compliment responses given by Ecuadorian males on Facebook (FB). The sole focus here is male behavior: how males respond to compliments from other males. Largely ignored in compliment research as a whole, this study demonstrates that Ecuadorian males frequently engage in compliment response behavior on FB, and, appear to be guided by face needs and constraints when responding. Despite the ubiquitous nature of emoticons in online communications, their use in compliment responses by Ecuadorian males on FB was totally absent.

Keywords: compliment responses, Facebook, Ecuadorian Spanish, male talk/complimenting behavior, ‘Like’, social media, computer-mediated communication, technology-mediated discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Face-to-face compliment response studies
    • 2.2Male compliment response studies in face-to-face Spanish-speaking contexts
    • 2.3Compliment response studies in an online context
    • 2.4Social media-specific forms of compliment response
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Ecuadorian male compliment responses in context
    • 4.2The effect of compliment topic on compliment response rates
    • 4.3Compliment response taxonomy
    • 4.4External modifiers
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Ecuadorian male compliment responses in context
    • 5.2‘Like’ and its multiple functions
    • 5.3Compliment upgrades
    • 5.4Internal and external modifiers
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.313.02low
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