Who/where/when – Armchair – Philosophical
Philosophers can speculate about the nature of a compliment, about the difference between sincere and insincere compliments, for instance, but speculations about who pays compliments and who receives them in which situation seem to be very unreliable. Obviously speakers have everyday experiences and intuitions about such matters, but researchers need more reliable empirical investigations for such questions. It seems possible that speakers have slightly better intuitions of their own usage than of the usage of the entire speech community. If this is true, the researcher can only speculate on his or her own usage, which would have very little informative value, or he or she could investigate the speculations of a large number of native speakers of their respective usages (Who/where/when – Armchair – Interview).