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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. 99–120

Chapter 4
“Tu masssss ❤ te amo”

Responding to compliments on Instagram among Ecuadorian teenage girls

| Birkbeck, University of London
| Birkbeck, University of London

Complimenting behavior within a group of Ecuadorian teenage girls on Instagram was examined by Placencia (2019). Using the same corpus, in the present study we consider the responses to compliments offered. These responses, while short, are remarkably complex, containing both text and images (emojis) and indeed textual stand-ins for paralinguistic cues such as laughter. Responses were grouped according to Holmes’s (1986) taxonomy and the data shows a distinct preference for accepting compliments given (97.7%), with fewer sub-strategies used compared to other studies. These results are considered in the context of the type of photos examined and the overall function that Instagram appears to fulfil for the group of teenagers in this study. Beyond what might be termed the basic strategies of accepting or rejecting compliments, we also look at the rich and varied sub-strategies used by the girls in this Instagram community, which they employ to express solidarity and show modesty when accepting compliments.

Keywords: compliment responses, Instagram, Ecuadorian Spanish, emojis, teenage talk, social media
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Previous studies on compliment responses in different languages
    • 2.2Compliment response studies in Spanish
    • 2.3Compliment responses on social media
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Main strategies
    • 4.2Modification strategies
      • 4.2.1Emojis and other technology-mediated phenomena
      • 4.2.2Self-praise versus modesty
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.313.04pla
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