The Speech Act of Compliment Response as Realized by Yemeni Speakers

A speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication such as an apology, request or compliment, etc. The present work is a sociolinguistic study about the compliment responses utilised by Yemeni Arabic speakers. In this study, the researcher tried to find out the types of compliment responses employed by speakers of Yemeni Arabic variety. Since the participants included males and females, the researcher tried to explore the types of compliment responses preferred by both genders. The researcher found out that the males and females of Yemeni Arabic variety did not use all the 12 types of compliment response strategies introduced by Herbert in (1989) such as "Comment History" type. In addition, it was found out that both genders preferred to use the "Appreciation Token" and "Return" compliment response types. The researcher concluded his study by looking at the similarities and differences between male and female speakers of Yemeni Arabic when responding to compliments given by the researcher in the form of a questionnaire.