Compliments as gendered discourse among Lubukusu speakers.

Abstract

A compliment is a speech act that explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker for some good which is positively valued. Compliments are among the most common speech acts that facilitate interaction by fostering solidarity, reducing social distance, and promoting harmony. Context plays a pivotal role in the interpretation of the role of a compliment this means that one compliment can be used as a token of appreciation in one context but in another it is interpreted as Face Threatening Act. This study investigated the role of pragmatic contexts specifically gender in the use of compliments among Lubukusu speakers in Bungoma County. The study adopted an ethnographic approach using purposive and simple random sampling to select respondents. Data was collected through field notes and audio recordings, yielding 200 naturally occurring compliments. The analysis was guided by Brown and Levinson’s Politeness and Austin’s Speech Act theories. Findings revealed that Lubukusu compliments relied on a restricted set of lexical items with adjectives being the most dominant followed by adverbs, nouns and verbs. The study also noted that women tended to use longer and more elaborate compliment structures compared to men. The study therefore concludes that Lubukusu compliments are formulaic, context-sensitive and serve an important role in face management. The findings contribute to scholarship in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and politeness theory while offering practical insights for educators, policymakers, and learners of Lubukusu