Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate compliment responses (CRs) produced by Malaysian Chinese undergraduates. The data of this study was collected from 30 Malaysian Chinese undergraduate students in one of the public university in Malaysia. The data was collected by role-play scenarios which consisted of 8 situations that were recorded and transcribed by Dongmei Cheng's (2011) framework. The findings of the study show that Malaysian Chinese undergraduates' CRs are greatly influenced by social distance and they tend to use Acceptance strategy at the macro level. At the micro level, the most preferred strategy is Appreciation which is under macro strategy of Acceptance. On the contrary, Rejection and Offering have been the least preferred CRs strategies.