English and Japanese compliments in book reviews of academic sociolinguistic journals

Compliments have been previously examined along with linguistic politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987) as an important speech act for creating solidarity among speakers. In written texts, writers need to negotiate a relationship with readers and thus maintain a level of concern about politeness. Book reviews in academic journals publicly display both positive and critical evaluation, and reviewers need to create solidarity with authors and readers alike. Therefore, this study examines the way in which compliments are used in English and Japanese book reviews in sociolinguistic journals in order to reveal the cultural differences in written compliments between the two languages as well as their similarities. In this paper, previous studies of compliments in written texts, particularly in academic book reviews in English and other foreign languages, will be discussed first. Second, the methodology of this study will be introduced. After the findings of English and Japanese compliments in book reviews are revealed, similarities as well as differences between English and Japanese compliments in sociolinguistic book reviews in written texts will be discussed along with linguistic politeness. In both languages, compliments were used to positively evaluate a book and its authors and to make authors and readers feel good. However, the way in which reviewers in English and Japanese express compliments towards a book sometimes differed between the two languages. Reviewers in English tended to compliment more directly to the authors and the book itself, including contents and analysis, than reviewers in Japanese. Instead, the benefits to readers and style of the book tended to be more emphasised in Japanese book reviews. Moreover, compliments in the closing section of the reviews were used twice more in book reviews written in English than in Japanese. These results suggested that compliments used in academic book reviews culturally differ among languages.

compliments

book reviews

written discourse

Japanese language academic writing