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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 28:1 (2018) ► pp.139–156

The concept of complimenting in light of the Moore language in Burkina Faso

| Ouaga I Pr Joseph Ki-Zerbo University, Burkina Faso

This paper sheds light on the concept of complimenting, based on its practice in the Moore language spoken in Burkina Faso, West Africa. It revisits Holmes’ (1986) definition of “compliments” and proposes a model which gives new insight into the concept of complimenting behaviour across languages and cultures. The proposed model may have implications for our understanding of politeness strategies as proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), particularly with the urge to integrate third person in the model, as a close examination of data from Moore would suggest. The data analyzed were collected in naturally occurring discourse.

Keywords: compliment, complimenting, complimenter, complimentee, Moore, implicit, politeness strategy, third person/party
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.What is complimenting?
  • 4.Some terminological issues
  • 5.Implicit compliments in Moore
  • 6.Implications for politeness strategy
  • 7.Complimenting as one leg of the deontic evaluation tripod
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 13 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.00005.saw
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