Compliments in Indonesian Cultures: A Literature Review

Abstract

Complimenting can be considered an important communicative event. The use of compliments can be influential in enhancing the quality of interactions especially from social perspectives. This study aims to review several researches about compliments in Indonesian cultures to find out aspects of compliments covered in the studies. Furthermore, this research is intended to investigate which cultures in Indonesia have been covered in the compliment studies. It is found that the study about compliments has been very popular among Indonesian scholars. The researchers have covered several issues, including compliment strategies, compliment responses, and the influence of gender and social status on compliments. Nevertheless, only a few studies refer specifically to certain ethnics in Indonesia. Further investigations are needed to obtain a more systematic description about compliments in Indonesian language, including a detailed description of syntactic patterns. This is considered significant in building more detailed theories about Indonesian language. Finally, the fact that Indonesia consists of many cultures brings a demand for researchers to conduct studies about compliments in various ethnics in Indonesia.