THE EVIDENCE OF PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES IN ENGLISH CONVERSATION BETWEEN INDONESIAN AND AMERICAN SPEAKERS

This study analyzes the types of agreement mostly used by Indonesian American speakers in responding compliments in their conversation. It is also aimed at finding out the evidence of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses used by Indonesian speakers in responding compliments toward American speakers in English conversation. The data is taken from the face-to-face interaction in natural setting conversation between ten pairs of Indonesians and Americans. Qualitative method is used as a method in analyzing the data. The data is analyzed by using Agreement types in Compliment Responses Taxonomy proposed by Herbert (1990). The result shows that American speakers mostly use Comment Acceptance strategy in responding compliments toward Indonesian speakers. Meanwhile Indonesian speakers also use Comment Acceptance and Appreciation Token strategy as dominant strategy in responding compliments given by American speakers. The result of the analysis also shows that there is an evidence of pragmatic transfer used by Indonesian speakers in responding compliments, which can be seen from the percentage of the use of compliment responses strategy used by both speakers. The uses of those strategies used by Indonesian speaker lead to the pragmatic transfer in responding compliments in which Indonesian speakers use forms of strategy which mostly occur in American utterance in which they tend to use appreciation and approval in responding compliment. This matter is triggered by the influence of American culture in English club where Indonesians like to hang out for talking, sharing, and gaining language about English for a long term. By using those strategies, it is clearly that there is a cultural understanding occur in Indonesian speakers utterances in which they can fit themselves in another culture which is contrastly different with their own culture.