Responding to Compliments: An Interlanguage
Study of Indonesian Non-native Speakers of English
Diyah Bekti Ernawati
This chapter reports a study aimed at investigating
the strategies of Indonesian non-native speakers of English in responding to
compliments. The study also examined how the strategies were different from the
norms of responding to compliments by native speakers of Indonesian and
English. Data were collected from students of the University of
Canberra, Australia, using a discourse completion task (DCT). The findings
suggest that Indonesian non-native speakers of English used ‘accepting’ as the
most frequent strategy in responding to compliments. However, the distribution
of ‘rejecting’ as a strategy is relatively high. This indicates that while
Indonesian learners of English are attempting very hard to employ strategy
which is closer to the target language, they remain highly influenced by their
native norms such as ‘rejecting’ the compliments instead of accepting. The
native speakers of English and native speakers of Indonesian were found to
employ similar strategies in responding to compliments. ‘Accepting’ was the
most frequent choice among the subjects of both groups. The findings have
broken to some extent the myth that Indonesians are more likely to reject
compliments. The use of ‘accepting’ by native speakers of Indonesian is
considered a cultural adaptation of the subjects during their stay in
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Ernawati, D. B. (2004). Responding to compliments: An interlanguage
study of Indonesian non-native speakers of English. In B. Y. Cahyono & U. Widiati (Eds.), The tapestry of English language teaching and
learning in
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