Implicit personal compliments
Cordella, Large and Pardo (1995: 235) use the term “implicit compliments” to refer to utterances like (1) in which the participants can infer an intended compliment even if it was not explicitly uttered.
| (1) | I wish I could play the piano like you do. |
The extracts given in (2) to (4) are taken from the British National Corpus (BNC). They contain implicit compliments. In (2), Branson’s trust in the people referred to by “them” is taken as a compliment. In (3), Jay feels complimented because Lucy thinks he is competent enough to help her write an article. And in (4), the use of the address term “Doctor” is perceived as a compliment by the recipient.
| (2) | "By turning record-packers into talent scouts, magazine salesmen into managers, Branson had paid them the compliment of saying "I trust you"." (BNC FNX 785) |
| (3) | Lucy wanted Jay to help her write the article. Jay was delighted with the compliment (BNC A0L 149) |
| (4) | "Goodbye, Doctor." She meant it as a compliment but it made me sound like her GP. (BNC A0F 950) |
These examples were retrieved by searching for the speech act verb “compliment” itself. The method is described in more detail in Field – Corpus: SAV.
For other types of compliments see: