Back-handed compliment in the genre structure of interpersonal communication
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article examines backhanded compliment, its place in the structure of speech genres, correlation with politeness and linguistic characteristics. It is shown that, from the perspective of intentionality, it is represented by two types: 1) awkward compliments indicating the speaker’s linguistic or emotional incompetence; 2) ‘insults in disguise’. The tactics used in delivering a backhanded compliment include: expressing doubt about the addressees’ merits or achievements; discrediting their actions; comparisons that diminish the merits of the addressees or those they are compared to; compliments through self-deprecation; excessive exaggeration; suspicious compliments indicating ulterior motives; and sarcasm disguised as a compliment. The linguistic features that make it possible to identify a backhanded compliment include: the combination of a secondperson pronoun (you) with an evaluative predicate (“You are X”); focus on some aspect of personal identity (gender, age, occupation, appearance); the use of auxiliary words such as for, even if (and), but, also, despite, in spite of, if it weren’t for; the speaker’s misunderstanding of the word’s inner form and its connotations; the use of inappropriate allusions, qualifiers that turn the compliment into its opposite, and implications that suggest a negative evaluation; the use of metaphors and comparisons not typical of the given culture. It has been identified that in response to an ambiguous statement, addressees may: 1) accept it as a compliment; 2) laugh it off; 3) challenge the interlocutor; 4) do nothing (ignore the statement).
Author: Olga A. Leontovich
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414995697
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