“Saying ‘thank you’ or something more than lip service”: a variational analysis of the influence of gender and social status on responses to congratulations on Chinese WeChat

Abstract

Existing studies on responses to congratulations to date have displayed a general culturally-bound finding that Chinese speakers prefer to take a detour approach. However, the effect of social constraints on response strategies have not received the attention it deserves. Drawing on a variational pragmatic approach, this study explores the constraints of gender and social status on the pragmatic variation of Chinese WeChat users’ responses to congratulations. Building upon an integrative data set of congratulatory interactions in actual online messages, the findings suggest that gender and social status overlap in complex ways, but with a clear tendency: both men and women significantly tend towards an acceptance strategy when responding to congratulations on WeChat, while social status influences the sub-strategies used in accepting congratulations across both male and female groups. The findings challenge previous stereotypes about Chinese language variation in responses to congratulations. The current results suggest that Chinese speakers have already made a transition from following the Modesty Maxim to using the Agreement Maxim, and have also incorporated the Obligation Maxim. Chinese speakers also consider rapport and reciprocity when responding to kind congratulatory remarks.