Understanding Compliments in Multimodal Communication: Speech Act Perception Across Cultures and Media (Advances in (Im)politeness Studies)

This book offers a pioneering investigation into how multimodal speech acts, particularly compliments, are perceived, interpreted, and evaluated across cultural and technological contexts.Introducing the Multimodal Compliment Perception Model, it offers a fresh framework for understanding evaluative practices in everyday interaction. Drawing on pragmatics and (im)politeness research, it examines how factors like culture, age, gender, and personality shape compliment perception, and how different modalities-text, emoji, audio, video, gesture-impact evaluations in digital and face-to-face settings.Using mixed methods and data from over 400 participants across Chinese, Swiss German, and English-speaking backgrounds, the study develops three innovative tools to measure perceptions of sincerity, politeness, and emotional authenticity.The book contributes to multimodal pragmatics by extending facework and relational work into dynamic, culturally sensitive environments.It offers practical too