Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of Multiple Constraints

Giving a compliment involves offering a positive assessment of an attribute, action, or accomplishment for which the recipient is seen to be responsible. In responding to compliments, recipients are subject to multiple, conflicting constraints. Recipients may accept the compliment as a “gift” with a “thank you” and/or they may agree or disagree with the assessment. Quite regularly recipients do not simply accept compliments. Yet either agreeing or disagreeing with a prior compliment poses problems: If recipients agree, they are praising themselves, which is a sanctionable action. If recipients disagree, they fail to acknowledge the compliment as a gift and engender a disagreement sequence. Responses to compliments illustrate the complexities inherent in this sequential environment. The conflicting constraints and complexities as well as the various ways of responding to compliments are analyzed.