Complimenting on-the-go: Features from colloquial Algerian Arabic

Despite a huge body of literature on compliment and compliment response speech acts in diverse linguacultures (see Section 2), there is still an unmet need in research investigating how compliments are produced and interpreted in talk-in-interaction. In this context, the present study seeks to add to this research lacuna by probing the complimenting behaviour (compliments and compliment responses) as it occurs on-the-go in colloquial Algerian Arabic (CAA). Based on the postulations put forth in conversation analysis, audiotaped naturally occurring face-to-face conversations were transcribed and analysed. The following features have been selected for discussion: complimenting relative to topic progressivity, complimenting in compliment-trigger situations, complimenting as a response to self-deprecation, and the co-occurrence of compliments and divine invocations. The targeted features enabled us to raise some issues that have been under-explored (or sometimes unexplored) in compliment research: on-command compliments, discursive creativity, complimenting as a multi-turn speech event, recycled compliments, and employing self-deprecation and the compliment it triggers as interactional resources. It is hoped that the present study, on a lesser represented variety of Arabic, will contribute to our understanding of complimenting in talk-in-interaction. •Complimenting may or may not affect topic progressivity.•Complimenting can be a multi-turn speech even.•Second compliments can take the form of recycled compliments.•Self-denigration and the triggered compliment have interactional outcomes.•Compliments and divine invocations are intertwined.