Perception of compliment responses among young adult speakers from Lombardy
Abstract
• CRs are co-constructed relational acts best explained by Arundale's Face Constituting Theory, not face-threat models. • Politeness in Italian CRs follows generational norms: agreement is polite, disagreement rude, regardless of speakers’ origin. • Respondents show pragmatic self-referentiality, attributing CRs to their own region despite real regional variation. • Irony/joking in CRs is interpretively unstable, shaped by sociocultural norms of humor, solidarity, and shared frames. • Production and perception diverge: regional differences in output are masked by in-group bias and generational identity.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Phonetics and Phonology Research
Linguistic Variation and Morphology
Language
Discourse
Communication Strategies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Pragmatics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Volume
- 261
- Pages
- 132–147
- Publication date
- 26 May 2026
- Language
- EN