by Didi Sukyadi Fiftinova Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

1. SOCIOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENTS RESPONSE: THE CASE OF AMERICAN AND INDONESIAN IDOL by Didi Sukyadi Fiftinova Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

2. Background • Cultures and gender are suspected to influence the nature of compliments presented. • American and Indonesian Idols are entertainment programs in which compliments to distant relationship frequently happen. • Different from traditional format, in Indonesian and American Idol format, judgment is explicitly given.

3. Compliments • are influenced by social status • from someone higher in position goes in the form of encouragement • From someone lower in position tends to be in the form of appearance

4. Gender differences • Women are frequent recipient possession of compliments regardless of their status. • Holmes (1988) states that women give and receive significantly more compliments to each other than they do to men or men do to each other

5. Compliments are used: • for establishing solidarity, replacing greetings or apologies, opening and sustaining conversation, or reinforcing desired behavior. • to soften face-threatening acts such as apologies, requests and especially criticism (Brown & Levinson 1978).

6. Responding to compliments • can be verbal and nonverbal behavior (facial expression, gesture, or body language) such as smiles (Holmes, 1987). • In Indonesian culture smile shows pleasure, acceptance, friendliness and situation-shooting. In American culture it shows friendliness. • Verbal compliment responses may include acceptance, rejection, mitigation, no response, and request interpretation

7. Methodology • Population: American Idol season 7 and Indonesian Idol season 5 both the commentators and the contestants. • Participants: 3 commentators of each program (American and Indonesian Idols) and the top 8 contestants (4 males and 4 females) • Length of observation: two weeks of performance. • Data: all utterances of the commentators and the competitors. • Data: from the recorded video which was downloaded from www.i-tune.com and from watching and audio taping the show every Friday on 8 p.m. in RCTI. • Non-verbal behavior such as smile, body language and gestures that support the compliments and responses were observed and noted.

8. Findings • American tends to give more compliments and more expressive than their Indonesian counterparts.

9. Expressiveness

10. Types of Compliments • Most of commentators gave compliments to the contestant’s ability such as “Great performance”, “You’re fantastic” or “That was the best performance I’ve ever heard”. • The emergence of two other topic compliments (appearance and personality) was not so often used by the speakers because Idols program is merely a singing competition. • This reality is different from daily life context in which the topic of appearance will come first.

11. No difference in compliment topic

12. Topics of Compliments

13. Appearance • Female American commentators offer more compliments on appearance • Male American commentators seldom give comments of one’s appearance but on contestant’s ability. • Female American commentator compliments not only woman’s appearance (“You look beautiful”) but also man’s appearance (“I like your hair cut”).

14. Compliment response:Indonesian • Indonesian people have a tendency to accept compliments. • “Thank You” (Appreciation Token) • “Okay, okay” (Comment Acceptance); • “Saya akan berusaha keras lagi (Comment Acceptance); • “Ini yang saya nanti-nanti” (Comment Acceptance). • ”Gara-gara Mas Andy Riyanto, keren banget aransemennya” (Comment History). • smile and gestures when responding to compliments.

15. Compliment responses: Indonesian (Mostly acceptance) • (Appreciation Token) to each compliment they got. Also, saying thanks like this is a part of Indonesian culture in which politeness becomes the priority in establishing relationship. However, this acceptance can be in the form of other utterances like “Okay, okay” (Comment Acceptance); “Saya akan berusaha keras lagi (Comment Acceptance); “Ini yang saya nanti-nanti” (Comment Acceptance). The contestants would also mitigate the compliments by stating, ”Gara-gara Mas Andy Riyanto, keren banget aransemennya” (Comment History). In addition, they also show smile and gestures when responding to compliments.

16. Compliment responses: American • They did not choose acceptance only (“Thank You”). • reject (“I thought no, that’s not good”), • give return (“Your hair looks great Paula”) • give no response. • Similar to Indonesian, more expressive nonverbal gestures found in American Idol are smiling, jumping, punching hands, or other kinds of body language.

17. Gender Differences • The commentators do not show any gender differences on the types of topic chosen when complimenting. • They offer compliments to woman in the same way they do to man (the capability of each contestants). • women are the ones who usually give compliment to one’s appearance. Male commentators seldom do this both American and Indonesian Idols. • Both female and male American Idol contestants give the same number of compliment responses to female or male commentators. • Indonesian Idol contestants do not consider any sex differences of commentators when responding to compliments.