Exploring Judges' Compliments and Criticisms On American

Journal of Pragmatics 160 (2020) 44e59
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Exploring judges’ compliments and criticisms on American,

British, and Taiwanese talent shows
Chih-Ying Lin
Foreign Language Center, Feng Chia University, No. 100 Wenhwa Rd., Taichung City, 407, Taiwan
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Whereas previous research on talent shows has investigated exclusively either criticisms
Received 26 November 2018 or compliments, this study explores both speech acts of judges to provide a more
Received in revised form 10 February 2020 comprehensive picture of their commenting behaviors. Sixty comments from American,
Accepted 12 February 2020
British, and Taiwanese talent shows respectively were selected and analyzed with regard
Available online 5 March 2020
to compliment strategies (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005; Yuan,
2002) and criticism strategies (Chen and Rau, 2015; Nguyen, 2005, 2008, 2013; Tang,
Keywords:
2016). In addition, Spencer-Oatey's (2000, 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2008) framework was
Talent show
Reality television
applied to explore how the judges managed rapport with their contestants. The findings
Compliment strategy indicated that the American judges produced a great number of compliments on successful
Criticism strategy and unsuccessful performances to achieve relational goals and attended to the contestants'
Rapport management quality face and association right. On the other hand, the British and Taiwanese judges
were more oriented to transactional goals but in different ways. The former opted for clear
evaluations by offering significantly more explicit than implicit compliments and more direct
than indirect criticisms. The latter expressed significantly more direct statements of problems
and preferred indirect suggestion criticisms to demonstrate their social identity face as
experts in the entertainment industry.
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Reality television (RTV) programs have been under academic scrutiny since 2000 (see Collins, 2009 for a review), primarily
in the fields of media, cultural, and business studies. Recently, an increasing number of studies (Coyne et al., 2010; Culpeper,
2005; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013) have examined the linguistic resources of participants (e.g. experts, hosts, and contes-
tants) in RTV. The existing literature has placed more focus on the use of impoliteness by participants to attract the audience's
attention to fulfill the entertainment purpose of RTV (Garce s-Conejos Blitvich et al., 2013; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013;
Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013). The several types of RTV include game shows (e.g. Big Brother and Survivor), dating shows (e.g.
90 Day Fianc e and Are You The One?), and talent shows (e.g. Pop Idol and America's Got Talent). Some popular types of RTV
“have concentrated on putting people in difficult, often emotionally challenging, situations. Audiences have come to cate-
gorize this specific type of reality TV as ‘humiliation TV000 (Hill, 2007:197). In this sense, RTV in general has been associated
with impoliteness.
Such impoliteness has been observed in English judges' comments on contestants on singing competition programs. Based
on previous studies on English versions of the Idol show (Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Livio, 2011; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013), it
E-mail address: cyinglin@fcu.edu.tw.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.02.008
0378-2166/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
C.-Y. Lin / Journal of Pragmatics 160 (2020) 44e59 45
was evidenced that judges were likely to offer critical comments to contestants. By examining the politeness and impoliteness
of judges' verbal and nonverbal behaviors on American and British talent shows, Culpeper and Holmes (2013) stated that
American judges provided more supportive politeness to unsuccessful contestants and British judges expressed more critical
remarks. This variation between American and British judges’ commenting behaviors reveals that, despite speaking the same
language, judges from different regions might produce different language performances. As evidenced in variational prag-
matics research, pragmatic variations have occurred in varieties of the same language (Barron, 2008; Placencia, 2008; Warga,
2008).
In addition, within the RTV studies on language analyses (Coyne et al., 2010; Culpeper, 2005; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013),
the majority of the works have looked closely at English-speaking cultures, with little attention paid to Chinese-speaking
ones. Among the limited studies on judges’ comments in Chinese-speaking cultures, Tang (2016) focused exclusively on
criticisms by American and Taiwanese judges, and Chen and Rau (2015) investigated both compliments and criticisms on
Taiwanese programs. Chen and Rau (2015) found that nearly half of the comments (46%) were compliments. In other words,
the Taiwanese judges did not seem to be very critical in comparison with the English judges, as mentioned earlier.
In light of the above variations in commenting behaviors, more studies are needed to explore if cross-cultural variations in
judges’ comments exist between English-speaking and Chinese-speaking cultures and even among English-speaking cultures
themselves. To bridge the gap, the current research examines three singing competition programs, namely American Idol from
the U.S.A., The X Factor from the U.K., and Top Million Star from Taiwan. The formats of the three talent shows were similar and
thus comparable. That is, in the initial stage, contestants were selected by a panel of experts or judges and successful can-
didates proceeded to the next stages until a winner emerged.
This study investigates judges' comments on singing competition programs, specifically in relation to compliments and
criticisms, two common speech acts in judges' comments on contestants’ performances (see Section 2.1). Previous works have
essentially focused on either criticisms or compliments. The present study examines the two speech acts together, hoping to
shed light on the commenting behaviors of judges on televised talent shows. In comparison with other speech acts (e.g.
requests and refusals), compliment studies have placed little focus on the employment of pragmatic strategies (Ye, 1995; Yu,
2005, 2011; Yuan, 2002). Compliment performance has been essentially analyzed in terms of syntactic and semantic
structures (Creese, 1991; Holmes and Brown, 1987; Manes and Wolfson, 1981). With regard to criticisms, recent studies (Chen
and Rau, 2015; Nguyen, 2005, 2008, 2013) have proposed a few taxonomies to categorize their pragmatic strategies;
nevertheless, how the taxonomy was generated differed from study to study (see Section 2.3), and thus a more systematic
framework is needed. The present research attempts to consolidate the frameworks of compliment and criticism strategies
building on previous works (Chen and Rau, 2015; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Nguyen, 2005, 2008, 2013; Tang, 2016;
Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005; Yuan, 2002) to explore how American English, British English, and Taiwanese judges provide positive and
negative comments on talent shows.
In addition, in cross-cultural pragmatics research, it has been challenging to capture authentic talk due to the diffi-
culties of (a) controlling the contextual variables under investigation, (b) observing speech acts with relatively low
frequencies, and (c) gathering sufficient samples from speakers of different language backgrounds (Fe lix-Brasdefer, 2010;
Kasper and Dahl, 1991). However, the above difficulties can be overcome by obtaining natural data from RTV or media
discourse, which allows researchers to examine the effects of contextual factors (e.g. social power or distance) on
comparatively infrequent or under-researched speech acts (e.g. responses to criticisms) in various languages or language
varieties. The number of pragmatics studies on media discourse has recently been increasing. By analyzing the judges’
comments on English and Taiwanese talent shows with regard to compliments and criticisms, this study aims to expand
the methodological scope of cross-cultural pragmatics literature. Overall, this study seeks to address four research
questions:
(1) 1.1 What is the overall use of compliments and criticisms by the judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows respectively?
1.2 To what extent do they differ in their choice of compliments and criticisms?
(2) 2.1 What compliment strategies are employed by the judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows respectively?
2.2 To what extent do they differ in their use of compliment strategies?
(3) 3.1 What criticism strategies are employed by the judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows respectively?
3.2 To what extent do they differ in their use of criticism strategies?
(4) How do the judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows respectively manage rapport with their contestants?
This paper begins with an overview of relevant studies on talent shows, compliments, and criticisms, followed by an
introduction to Spencer-Oatey's (2000, 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2008) rapport management theory underlying the judges'
commenting performances. Next, the methodological design of this study is outlined, including coding schemes and data
analysis. The statistical results are then presented and discussed by applying the rapport management theory, followed by the
conclusion and suggestions for future research.
2. Related literature
This section begins with an overview of empirical studies on talent shows (Section 2.1). The compliment and criticism
studies are reviewed in Sections 2.2 and 2.3 respectively with particular reference to pragmatic strategies.
46 C.-Y. Lin / Journal of Pragmatics 160 (2020) 44e59
2.1. Studies on talent shows
This section reviews four studies on English talent shows, three of them comparing British and American Idol shows
primarily in relation to impoliteness remarks (Garce s-Conejos Blitvich et al., 2013; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus
et al., 2013) and the other study, by Livio (2011), examining Idol shows from four nations to explore cross-cultural similarities
and differences in the representations of national identities. Three studies on Taiwanese talent shows (Chen and Rau, 2015;
Jian, 2013; Tang, 2016) are also reviewed.
Non/verbal aggression and impoliteness are features of reality shows (Lorenzo-Dus, 2009). To explore if talent shows
had progressively become more impolite, Lorenzo-Dus et al. (2013) conducted a diachronic study on impoliteness in live
auditions of Idol programs in the U.K. and U.S.A. selected from the 2002-05 and 2006-09 periods, respectively. An increase
in the overall use of impoliteness strategies was observed, suggesting that the discourse of the judges had progressively
become more impolite. It was also evidenced that in general, the frequency of individual impoliteness strategies was
consistent over time. The two most common impoliteness strategies were explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect
and condescend, scorn, and ridicule, which were mainly produced by Simon Cowell through witty expressions to humiliate
contestants publicly. Such use of verbal wit and impolite criticisms by Simon Cowell, as Lorenzo-Dus et al. (2013:211)
explained, revealed “his power over the contestants” and “expert identity”. Simon Cowell's identity construction was
examined specifically in the study by Garce s-Conejos Blitvich et al. (2013), who analyzed 160 interactional sequences from
the U.K. and U.S.A. Idol shows, all of which involved Simon Cowell. Focusing on Simon Cowell's language in relation to his
expert identity as mentioned earlier, the authors identified three identity categories: the authoritative judge, the cruel but
honest judge, and the witty executioner.
Though a tendency of increasing impoliteness was observed on American and British talent shows in general (Lorenzo-Dus
et al., 2013), it was unclear whether both American and British judges demonstrated this tendency. The frequency of
impoliteness strategies used in each time period was examined as a whole rather than analyzed program by program. It might
be plausible that there was a dramatic increase in the employment of impoliteness strategies on one program but not on the
other. In other words, Lorenzo-Dus et al. (2013) did not specifically conduct cross-cultural comparisons between American
and British judges. To explore if cross-cultural variations existed between American and British talent shows, Culpeper and
Holmes (2013) examined the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the judges and contestants on the American and British
versions of the Idol show with regard to not only impoliteness but also politeness. The results indicated that the judges on The
X Factor offered slightly more critical comments than their American counterparts, as evidenced in Livio’s (2011) study, in
which the judges on American Idol were less impolite than their British counterparts on Pop Idol. Furthermore, the American
Idol judges in Culpeper and Holmes' (2013) study tended to provide advice to unsuccessful candidates and applaud successful
ones. In other words, the American Idol judges deployed more supportive politeness and were more encouraging to unsuc-
cessful contestants.
The other cross-cultural study was carried out by Tang (2016) to investigate the criticism strategies employed by
American judges on the show Project Runway and Taiwanese judges on the talent show Super Designer. Results
showed that both the American and the Taiwanese judges preferred on-record strategies over off-record strategies,
possibly due to their roles on the talent shows and obligations to provide comments clearly. Though on-record
criticisms were commonly made by the American and Taiwanese judges, the latter offered more off-record criti-
cisms and mitigated their on-record criticisms more frequently than the former did. These variations in criticism
strategies, as Tang (2016) explained, were attributed to the different cultural backgrounds of the judges. That is, the
Taiwanese judges, being from a higher-context society that stresses interpersonal solidarity, offered off-record crit-
icisms and softened their on-record criticisms more frequently out of concern for group harmony and the face needs
of their contestants. In contrast, the American judges, being from a lower-context society which values individual
independence, may not have had such concerns (Tang, 2016). Taiwanese judges' orientation to the face needs of
contestants was also observed in Chen and Rau’s (2015) research on the judges' comments on a singing competition
program in Taiwan, Million Star. The authors collected 234 comments from the program and focused on the se-
quences of the two speech acts, compliments and criticisms. Compliments and criticisms were further classified as
direct and indirect. Direct compliments were the most common strategy, accounting for 46% of the data. The second
and third most frequent strategies were compliments followed by criticisms (29%) and indirect criticisms (12%),
respectively. The widespread use of compliments reflected the tendency of the Million Star judges to attend to the
contestants' face. As Jian (2013) pointed out, the Taiwanese judges’ comments were kind and instructional rather
than sarcastic, in contrast to those in the abovementioned studies on the comments by English judges (Culpeper and
Holmes, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013).
Overall, the similarities and differences among American, British, and Taiwanese judges were evidenced in the studies
mentioned above. For example, British judges were more critical than American judges were (Culpeper and Holmes, 2013;
Livio, 2011), and judges on English talent shows were harsher than those on Taiwanese talent shows (Chen and Rau,
2015). In addition, most of the research on talent shows has primarily focused on impoliteness rather than politeness.
More studies are required to examine both polite and impolite remarks by judges so as to provide a more comprehensive
picture of their commenting performances.
2.2. Studies on compliments
English is the most widely investigated language in compliment research. Since Manes and Wolfson's (1981) seminal
work, a number of researchers have examined compliments in American English (Herbert, 1990; Knapp et al., 1984; Rees-
Miller, 2011), New Zealand English (Holmes, 1986, 1988, 1995; Holmes and Brown, 1987), and South African English
(Herbert, 1989, 1990). In comparison, much less literature on compliments in Chinese has been published, but a lot of
attention has been devoted to compliment response strategies (Chen, 1993; Chen and Yang, 2010; Shih, 1986). As the current
study focuses on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows, relevant research on American, British, and Taiwan Chinese
compliments is reviewed.
Compliments are generally divided into explicit and implicit compliments. The former contain at least one positive semantic
carrier (Boyle, 2000; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989), whereas the latter do not (Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005). Aside from explicit and
implicit compliments, participants might choose not to offer compliments or produce non-complimentary utterances, as
identified in Yu's (1999, 2011) studies discussed below. The former are classified as opt-outs and the latter involve greetings or
utterances which do not carry complimentary intentions. The present study centers on compliments themselves, that is,
explicit and implicit compliments. Opt-outs and non-complimentary remarks are not within the scope of this study.
While the existing literature is primarily concentrated on explicit compliments (Herbert, 1989; Holmes, 1988, 1995; Wang
and Tsai, 2003; Wolfson, 1989), the implicitness or indirectness of compliment strategies has been discussed in several studies
(Boyle, 2000; Bruti, 2006; Knapp et al., 1984; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Ye, 1995; Yu, 1999, 2005, 2011). Within these
studies, only Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1989) provided a detailed framework to categorize implicit compliments into sub-
strategies, whereas the other studies either did not classify implicit compliments into different strategies (e.g. Knapp et al.,
1984; Yu, 1999, 2005, 2011) or roughly described their common linguistic forms (e.g. Ye, 1995). Compared with other
speech acts (e.g. compliment responses, requests, etc.), the framework of implicit compliments has not been well-developed
and has been even problematic. For example, in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk's (1989) research on American and British En-
glish, implicit compliments were divided into 11 types, including quoting another source, contrasting the speaker with the
addressee, and contrasting the hearer with others. Looking at the examples of these implicit compliments reveals that
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk's (1989) classification was not without flaws. As mentioned earlier, implicit compliments do not
include positive words; nevertheless, in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk's (1989) study, a few implicit compliment strategies were
performed with positive language, as shown in examples (1) to (3) below. There was one positive semantic word (i.e.
underlined words) in each example. Instead of being considered as implicit, these strategies reveal different ways to express
complimentary evaluations explicitly.
(1) Quoting another source: The reviews are more than favorable.
(2) Making a supposition: You must be popular with women!
(3) Increasing a surprise value by violating conventional expectations: I thought that you were intelligent but you are very intelligent.
In addition, there was some inconsistency on the coding of implicit compliments in Ye's (1995) study. It was observed that
implicit compliments were usually realized through requests or questions, but a detailed classification framework was not
provided. The question “When did you learn it?” was considered as an implicit compliment on someone's dancing skill.
However, another similar utterance in the questioning form, “When did you have them [a pair of new glasses] made?”, was
coded as a non-compliment instead of an implicit compliment. In light of the coding problems mentioned above, a more
consistent framework of implicit compliment strategies is thus called for.
In terms of the compliment performance of Taiwanese and American English speakers, Yu (1999, 2005, 2011)
conducted three studies and classified compliment strategies into explicit compliments and implicit compliments. In
his 1999 and 2011 studies, opt-outs and non-compliments were also added to the coding frameworks. It was evident
in the three studies that Americans were more likely to offer compliments than were their Taiwanese counterparts,
aligning with previous studies stating the widespread use of compliments by Americans (Herbert, 1989; Wolfson,
1984). Furthermore, Americans produced significantly more explicit compliments than did Taiwanese speakers. In
addition, in line with Knapp et al.’s (1984) study, which also made a distinction between explicit and implicit
compliments, explicit compliments were the most popular strategy for American native speakers in the three studies,
whereas the most common response for Taiwanese speakers seemed to shift from explicit compliments (Yu, 1999,
2005) to opt-outs (Yu, 2011). In other words, Taiwanese speakers in the 2011 study were not inclined to express
compliments in situations where compliment-giving was socio-culturally appropriate; instead, they resorted to
supporting moves or small talk in order not to appear impolite. However, the author did not explain the reason for
the difference in Taiwanese speakers' complimenting behaviors. More studies are needed to identify the preference
of compliment strategies in Taiwanese culture.
Apart from compliment strategies, the functions of compliments in various cultures have been widely discussed and found
to be either positive or negative. That is, compliments in most societies, such as the American, British, and Taiwanese cultures,
have positive effects on interpersonal relationships by, for example, establishing, maintaining, or reinforcing affiliation with
an addressee (Boyle, 2000; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Wang and Tsai, 2003). Furthermore, compliments can serve to
ameliorate the threat of a potential face-threatening act (Holmes, 1986) or to enhance an addressee's confidence (Holmes,
1988, 1995; Wolfson, 1989). However, in some cultures, such as Samoan culture, compliments might be interpreted as
indicating a speaker's desire to have what a listener possesses and thus threatening his/her face (Holmes, 1986, 1988), leading
to a negative effect on group harmony.
2.3. Studies on criticisms
The body of literature on criticisms in Taiwan Chinese is much smaller than that of English criticisms (Chen and Rau, 2015;
Tang, 2016). Chen and Rau's (2015) and Tang's (2016) studies on Taiwan Chinese criticisms have been reviewed in Section 2.1;
thus, this section presents an overview of empirical studies involving criticisms in English. Nguyen (2005, 2008, 2013) has
carried out three studies thus far to investigate the interlanguage criticisms of Asian learners of English. Criticisms in the 2005
and 2008 studies were classified into direct and indirect strategies. Variations between the EFL learners and English native
speakers were evidenced in terms of their strategy use and linguistic features (Nguyen, 2008). Australian English speakers
provided more direct criticisms and more modifiers to soften criticisms. When the native speakers and the EFL learners
employed the same criticism strategies, their linguistic realizations and mitigating devices were different from each other.
In Nguyen's (2013) study, criticizing strategies were classified as (a) direct criticisms, (b) requests for change, (c) hints, and
(d) opt-outs. It was found that apart from opt-outs, the native speakers employed the other three strategies regularly, whereas
the learner group tended to offer direct criticisms and requests for change. The two groups differed from each other in not only
criticism strategies but also linguistic features as well as the propositional content of the criticisms. For example, the criti-
cisms by the native speakers were identified as more detailed and elaborate, while those by the ESL learners were relatively
vague, without explanations.
An examination of criticism strategies in Nguyen's (2005, 2008, 2013) studies reveals differences in the coding schemes.
Nguyen (2005, 2008) initially divided criticisms into direct and indirect ones based on whether a listener's problem was
explicitly or implicitly mentioned. The scheme was modified later in her 2013 study, in which criticisms were classified into
the four categories mentioned above. Requests for change and hints were originally sub-strategies of indirect criticisms in the
early framework (Nguyen, 2005, 2008) but were later elevated to the same level as direct criticisms, i.e. superordinate cat-
egories with sub-strategies. Adopting Nguyen's (2005, 2008) early scheme, Chen and Rau (2015) also made a distinction
between direct and indirect criticisms. Following the framework of other speech acts (e.g. requests and refusals), criticisms in
this study were also analyzed by the direct-indirect distinction.
3. Rapport management theory
Building on previous work (Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Goffman, 1967; Leech, 1983), Spencer-Oatey
(2000, 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2008) presents rapport management theory involving not only face management but also the
management of both interactional goals and sociality rights and obligations. The three components are connected with one
another, as illustrated in Fig. 1. The theory overcomes the culturally-biased limitation of Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987)
notion of face, which primarily focuses on individual freedom and ignores social relationships (Fukushima, 2000; Matsumoto,
1988; Yu, 2003), and thus provides a broadened framework to redress the balance “between self and other” (Spencer-Oatey,
2008:12).
Following Goffman (1967), face in the rapport management theory is defined as “the positive social value a person
effectively claims for himself [sic] by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Spencer-Oatey,
Fig. 1. The bases of rapport (Spencer-Oatey, 2008:14).

2008:13, emphasis in original) and consists of three elements, (a) quality face (a desire for others to acknowledge our personal
qualities), (b) social identity face (a desire for others to recognize our social identities), and (c) relational face (a desire for
others to appreciate our relationships with them) (Spencer-Oatey, 2002, 2008). In line with other theorists (Brown and
Levinson, 1978, 1987; Leech, 1983), Spencer-Oatey (2000, 2008) considers face to be a universal concept in that everyone
has face concerns. The second component, sociality rights and obligations, is composed of two sociopragmatic interactional
principles, equity and association. Equity sociopragmatic interactional principle refers to the belief in one's entitlement to be
treated fairly by others. Association sociopragmatic interactional principle indicates the belief in one's entitlement to be
involved socially with others. The management of sociality rights and obligations therefore specifies the management of the
social entitlements mentioned above that an individual claims for him/herself when interacting with others. The third
component of rapport management, interactional goals, refers to relational (relationship management) or transactional (task-
oriented) goals that a person has in his/her interactions with others (Spencer-Oatey, 2005a, 2008).
Rapport management theory is applicable to the current study, for the theory accounts for both polite and impolite
language use. Unlike Leech's (1983, 2007) theory, which focuses on the maintenance or enhancement of harmonious re-
lationships, rapport management examines how language is used to promote, maintain, or threaten social relations. That is,
rapport is established or threatened by the management of face, sociality rights and obligations, or interactional goals. In this
study, judges on talent shows were expected to provide positive and/or negative comments on contestants' performances, i.e.
compliments and criticisms. Compliments in American, British, and Taiwanese cultures usually have a positive influence on
interpersonal relationships (Wang and Tsai, 2003; Wolfson, 1984), as discussed in Section 2.2. In this sense, compliments
might be performed to fulfill sociality rights and obligations, in particular, the association sociopragmatic interactional
principle. Furthermore, compliments may be provided by judges to attend to the quality face of contestants and their social
identity as talented singers, which could be threatened by criticisms. It is a thorny task for judges to handle such face sen-
sitivities in a public context and at the same time fulfill their obligations. This is why the current study was carried out to
investigate how judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows manage rapport with their contestants.
4. Methodology
4.1. Data collection
The current research aims to investigate the performances of the complimenting and criticizing actions in American
English, British English, and Taiwan Chinese based on three singing competition programs: American Idol Season 14 from the
U.S.A., The X Factor Season 12 from the U.K., and Top Million Star Season 1 from Taiwan, which were all broadcast in 2015. The
feedback from the judges of other language varieties, such as Keith Urban on American Idol (who is from New Zealand) and
William So Wing Hong on Top Million Star (who is from Hong Kong), was excluded.
Though the three programs seemed to have different selection processes, they all included two main stages, i.e. auditions
(at the end of which top 24 contestants were chosen) and finals; thus, the data were comparable. To ensure a comprehensive
examination of commenting behaviors on talent shows, 30 comments from auditions and finals of each program respectively
were selected, resulting in a total of 180 comments. Within the 60 comments from each program, half were collected from
successful performances and half from unsuccessful performances. The major concern was that there might be more com-
pliments on successful performances and more criticisms on unsuccessful performances. The data would be biased if the
comments were collected mainly from either successful or unsuccessful performances. Moreover, equal numbers of com-
ments were selected from the judges on each talent show (two American judges on American Idol, four British judges on The X
Factor, and two Taiwanese judges on Top Million Star) to avoid any biased findings caused by unbalanced numbers of com-
ments from the judges. Each comment consisted of the feedback provided by one judge directly to a contestant (or group of
contestants) in terms of his/her (their) singing talent, appearance, stage presence, or dancing performance (Chen and Rau,
2015; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013). In other words, any comments that were not offered in the presence of contestants were
excluded from the data analysis. Overall, equal numbers of comments were selected from (a) auditions and finals, (b) suc-
cessful and unsuccessful performances, and (c) the judges on each program. Furthermore, all comments were offered to
candidates face to face.
It was common that one judge offered more than one compliment and/or criticism in one comment, as illustrated in
examples (4) and (5), which were taken from The X Factor and Top Million Star respectively. In example (4), two explicit
compliments were given to applaud the contestant, and example (5) began with a third-party explicit compliment, followed by
a direct statement of problem. It was evident that multiple compliment/criticism strategies were employed in one comment.
(4) Comment 83 from The X Factor

Havva, seriously, you are so likable. I thought it was a good audition.
(5) Comment 124 from Top Million Star

其實盧苑呈的聲音是滿有特色的，但是就是基本功都差一點點，就是很可惜，不管是她節奏，或者是音準上面。
nch
Qí shí Lú Yua eng de sh
eng yın shì mǎn yǒu t
e s n shì jiù shì jı b
e de, da ng do
en go yı diǎn, jiù shì h
u cha en k ji
e xı, bù guǎn shì ta u, huo
e zo zh
e shì yın zhǔn
ng mia
sha n.
‘Actually, Yuan-Cheng Lu’s voice is quite unique, but her fundamental skills are a bit weaker, like her rhythm and intonation. It’s quite a pity.’
4.2. Coding
The compliments and/or criticisms in the comments were first identified and classified into pragmatic strategies. The
definitions of the two speech acts and their coding schemes are provided below. First, a compliment is “a speech act which
explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some ‘good’
(possession, characteristic, skill etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer” (Holmes, 1988:446). Following
this definition, compliments in this study were categorized into explicit and implicit compliments. Explicit compliments contain
at least one positive semantic word (Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005; Yuan, 2002), for instance, “That was possibly the most energetic
performance I've seen”. On the other hand, implicit compliments do not include positive words (Ye, 1995; Yu, 2005) and were
further classified into sub-strategies based on previous works (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Yuan, 2002) and the data of
the current research. In other words, the definitions of the compliment strategies in Table 1 were adapted from the relevant
studies to fit the nature of the data, with examples selected from the data underlined.
Table 1
The coding scheme of implicit compliment strategies.
Type Definition & Example
Comparison To praise a hearer by comparing him/her with someone or something else or to indicate a hearer's improvement by comparing his/her
past and present performances, e.g. Nothing substitutes for an earnest young man like yourself, looking out to whatever you're thinking about,
and singing a beautiful ballad. There has never been and will never be a substitute for that. (American Idol, comment 53)
Double To praise a hearer with a compliment using double negation, e.g. 我覺得在你身上, 我看不到做不到的事情。Wǒ ju i nǐ sh
e de za ng, wǒ
en sha
negation n bú da
ka o zuo bú dao de shì qíng ‘I feel I can't see anything impossible for you to achieve.’ (Top Million Star, comment 179)
Evaluation To give a complimentary evaluation to recognize a hearer's performance or past effort, e.g. You had the whole audience with you. You had
me with you. (American Idol, comment 55)
Suggestion To suggest future action to approve a hearer's quality or performance, e.g. So you have to have a word with your mentor and say, ‘Turn me
into a pop star, not someone who just performs on a talent competition.’ (The X Factor, comment 97)
Want To show a speaker's want, wish, or interest in the complimented topic, e.g. I wanna see you one more time in Hollywood! (American Idol,
statement comment 13)
Second, criticizing refers to “negative evaluation on the hearer's (H) actions/choice for which s/he may be held respon-
sible”, hoping to change H's future behavior for his/her improvement as perceived by the speaker (S) or to express S's
dissatisfaction with H's actions “but without the implicature that what H has done brings undesirable consequences to S”
(Nguyen, 2013:106). Nguyen (2008, 2013) sets out the preconditions in which a criticism takes place. Briefly, the speaker feels
dissatisfied with the hearer's inappropriate actions/choice, which might bring unfavorable consequences to the hearer or the
public, and without the speaker's criticisms, the hearer will not change his/her future action or behavior.
The classification of criticism strategies was built on the frameworks in Nguyen's (2005, 2008, 2013), Chen and Rau's
(2015), and Tang's (2016) studies. That is, criticisms were first coded as either direct or indirect criticisms. Direct criticisms
refer to utterances which explicitly state a hearer's problem or contain negative evaluation of his/her actions; on the other
hand, indirect criticisms imply the problem with a hearer's actions. Both direct and indirect criticisms were further classified
into sub-strategies depending on the data. The definitions and examples of the sub-strategies are provided in Table 2.
To establish inter-rater reliability, 20% of the 180 comments (i.e. 36 comments) were randomly selected and coded by two
research assistants. The researcher and the assistants agreed on 82% of the coding and discussed coding discrepancies until
consensus was reached.
4.3. Data analysis
To address the first three research questions, the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (e.g. frequency and per-
centage), dependent t-tests, and one-way MANOVA. First, descriptive statistics were used to explore the similarities and
differences in the overall use of compliments and criticisms by the American, British, and Taiwanese judges (RQ1), and to
account for their employment of compliment and criticism strategies specifically (RQs 2 and 3). Second, dependent t-tests
were conducted to identify the statistical significance of within-program differences (e.g. within the American program itself)
in the overall performance of compliments and criticisms (RQ1.1) and the use of compliment and criticism strategies (RQs 2.1
and 3.1). Third, one-way MANOVA was carried out to examine whether between-program differences (e.g. American versus
British programs) were statistically significant in the frequencies of compliments and criticisms (RQ1.2) and compliment and
criticism strategies respectively (RQs 2.2 and 3.2). If the results of multivariate tests were significant, post hoc comparisons of
Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) tests were performed to analyze the differences between each pair of programs.
The probability value was set at p < .05.
Drawing upon statistically significant findings of the first three research questions, RQ4 was addressed to illustrate cross-
cultural similarities and differences in the judges' rapport management with their contestants. That is, the American, British,
and Taiwanese judges’ management of interactional goals, face concerns, and sociality rights and obligations was analyzed by
the frequency of compliments and criticisms and their preference for particular compliment (e.g. explicit and implicit com-
pliments) and criticism strategies (e.g. direct statements of problems and indirect suggestion criticisms).
Table 2
The coding scheme of criticism strategies.
Type Definition & Example
Direct criticism To explicitly state a hearer's problem or a negative evaluation of his/her actions
Expression of negative To express a speaker's negative or different attitude (e.g. disapproval, disagreement, or dislike) towards a hearer's actions/
attitude choice, e.g. It was one of the worst performances. (The X Factor, comment 63)
Statement of problem To state an error or a problem found with a hearer's actions/choice, e.g. You're having trouble singing a capella. (American Idol,
comment 9)
Indirect criticism To imply a problem with a hearer's actions
Comparison To indicate that a hearer is not as good as others or that his/her current performance is not as good as his/her past
performance, e.g. 我覺得我還是喜歡你唱那時候曉琪姊的那首歌, 那是我最喜歡的。Wǒ ju e de wǒ ha i shì xǐ huan nǐ cha
ng na
shí
shǒu g
u Xiǎoqí zǐ de na
ho shì wǒ zuì xǐ huan de. ‘I feel I still like your performance of Xiaoqi's song most. That's my favorite.’ (Top
e, na
Million Star, comment 166)
Explanation To describe the negative aspects of a hearer's performance, e.g. Your eyes were closed. You were looking down a lot tonight.
(American Idol, comment 45)
Expression of To express a speaker's uncertainty to raise a hearer's awareness of the inappropriateness of his/her actions/choice, e.g. I'm not
uncertainty sure that song in that way was moving me. (American Idol, comment 38)
Indication of standard To state a collective obligation rather than an obligation for a hearer personally or a rule which a speaker thinks is commonly
agreed upon and applied to all, e.g. 合唱不應該是比大聲。H e cha ng bù yıng ga
i shì bǐ da
sheng. ‘Singing in harmony shouldn't be a
competition of loudness.’ (Top Million Star, comment 159)
Question To ask a rhetorical question to raise a hearer's awareness of the inappropriateness of his/her actions/choice, e.g. 為什麼假音會
呈現那種狀況? W ei sh
en me jiǎ yın huì ch n na
eng xia zhǒng zhua ng kuang. ‘Why did you sing falsetto in that way?’ (Top Million
Star, comment 121)
Sarcasm To raise a hearer's awareness of the inappropriateness of his/her actions/choice using humor, exaggeration, or ridicule, e.g.
That was terrible. You look like something out of a zombie movie or something right now. I mean, it's not working. There is no
chemistry. I'm not even sure if you like each other. (The X Factor, comment 90)
Suggestion To suggest changes or improvement in a hearer's actions/choice, e.g. You work on those vocals a little more. (American Idol,
comment 13)
Want statement To give a want statement to encourage changes or improvement in a hearer's actions/choice, e.g. Here's my only thing, which I
would be doing with you now if I were your mentor, is that you have to bring out your individual personalities much more now. At
the moment, it's so tight, the four of you. I kind of want to get to know you as individuals. (The X Factor, comment 103)
5. Results and discussion
To address the four research questions, this section presents and discusses the complimenting and criticizing perfor-
mances of the judges on American, British, and Taiwanese talent shows. Specifically, for the first three research questions, the
within-program and between-program statistical analyses of the two speech acts performed by the judges are reported (see
Sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3). Next, to answer the fourth research question, Spencer-Oatey's framework (2000, 2002, 2005a,
2005b, 2008) is applied to examine how the judges managed rapport with their contestants on the three talent shows
(see Section 5.4).
5.1. RQ1: overall use of compliments and criticisms
A within-program examination of the frequencies of the compliments and criticisms showed that the American, British,
and Taiwanese judges all offered more compliments than criticisms, especially the American judges (American judges: 222
compliments versus 73 criticisms, British judges: 158 compliments versus 64 criticisms, Taiwanese judges: 144 compliments
versus 114 criticisms). In line with previous studies on compliments (Herbert, 1989; Wolfson, 1984), the Americans were more
likely to express their positive intentions. Based on the results of dependent t-tests, statistical significance was identified in
American Idol, t(59) ¼ 5.74, p < .05, and The X Factor, t(59) ¼ 3.50, p < .05. That is, the American and British judges expressed
significantly more compliments than criticisms. Nevertheless, the mean difference between compliments and criticisms in
Top Million Star was not significant, t(59) ¼ 1.25, p > .05. In other words, while the American, British, and Taiwanese judges
tended to offer compliments when giving comments, the Taiwanese judges also criticized their contestants frequently.1 In the
American and British cultures, where interpersonal relationships are more equal between judges and contestants, compli-
ments were offered more frequently by the judges to reduce the distance between them. On the other hand, on Taiwanese
talent shows, judges are normally called teachers, representing an authoritarian identity typical of Chinese paternalistic
culture (Jian, 2013). This means that the power distance between judges and contestants is relatively high on Taiwanese
programs. Due to these hierarchical relations, the criticisms from Taiwanese judges are expected to demonstrate their
paternalistic leadership, and thus criticisms might not constitute impoliteness in the genre of RTV.
The abovementioned results presented a picture of the commenting behaviors of American, British, and Taiwanese judges
unlike those of previous studies. First, RTV or talent shows have been characterized as humiliating, since participants are
1
It might be plausible that individual judges had their preferences for compliment and/or criticism strategies; however, individual variations are beyond
the scope of the present study.
s-Conejos Blitvich et al., 2013; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Livio, 2011; Lorenzo-Dus et al.,
frequently insulted by judges (Garce
2013). As observed in Lorenzo-Dus et al.’s (2013) diachronic study, British and American judges showed a tendency to be more
impolite. Nevertheless, the talent shows in the current study were not unpleasant in nature, as evidenced by compliments
outnumbering criticisms on each program. Moreover, the American and British judges in this study did not appear to be
impolite; instead, they were more complimentary than their Taiwanese counterparts. One plausible explanation for the
inconsistency between previous works and the current study might be that the former focused more on impolite verbal/non-
verbal behaviors, while this study investigated both compliments and criticisms, aiming to provide a more comprehensive
examination of the comment-giving performances of judges on talent shows. Second, unlike the Taiwanese speakers in Yu's
(2011) research, who chose to opt out instead of offering compliments whenever appropriate, the Taiwanese judges in the
present study preferred to compliment contestants on their good performances.
Turning to between-program differences in the overall production of compliments and criticisms, the American
judges offered more compliments than did the British and Taiwanese judges. On the other hand, the Taiwanese judges
expressed more criticisms than did their American and British counterparts. One-way MANOVA was conducted to
examine the mean differences in compliments and criticisms among the three programs. Pillai's trace indicated a sig-
nificant difference among the American, British, and Taiwanese judges, V ¼ .09, F(4, 354) ¼ 3.93, p < .05. The univariate F
tests showed a significant program effect on compliments, F(2, 177) ¼ 4.52, p < .05, and criticisms, F(2, 177) ¼ 3.86,
p < .05. Post hoc comparisons of Tukey's HSD tests revealed that the American judges offered significantly more com-
pliments than did the Taiwanese judges. Moreover, the Taiwanese judges produced significantly more criticisms than did
the British judges. Examples (6) and (7) below are explicit compliments by an American judge and direct criticisms by a
Taiwanese judge respectively.
(6) Comment 1 from American Idol

J: I like you. I certainly like you enough to want to see you again.
C: Thank you.

J: 楚琳，我覺得你的嗓子真的要顧一下喔!我覺得這一次，這個禮拜這樣還是沒有改善，剛才你整首歌的假音都不見了。
Chǔ-Lín, wǒ ju e de nǐ de sǎng zị zh o gù yí xia
en de ya wo! Wǒ ju
e de zhe yı cì, zh i zh
e ge lǐ ba ng ha
e ya i shì m n, ga
ei yǒu gǎi sha ng tsaí nǐ jh
eng shoǔ g
e de jiǎ
n le.
yın dou bú jia
‘Chu-Lin, I think you should take care of your throat. This time, I feel your voice hasn’t improved yet. Your falsetto for the entire song was missing.
C: ((點頭))2
((Diǎntoú))
((Nodding))
5.2. RQ2: use of compliment strategies
In this study, compliments were coded as explicit or implicit and implicit compliments were further classified into five
sub-strategies (cf. Table 1). A within-program analysis demonstrated the American, British, and Taiwanese judges’ prefer-
ences for explicit over implicit compliments. The explicit compliments by the British and Taiwanese judges were roughly
double the number of their implicit compliments (British judges: 112 explicit compliments versus 46 implicit compliments,
Taiwanese judges: 102 explicit compliments versus 42 implicit compliments). The variation was more substantial on the
American program; that is, the explicit compliments (f ¼ 178) by the American judges outnumbered their implicit compli-
ments (f ¼ 44) by a factor of four. Significant differences between explicit and implicit compliments existed on the three
programs, i.e. American Idol, t(59) ¼ 6.49, p < .05, The X Factor, t(59) ¼ 4.52, p < .05, and Top Million Star, t(59) ¼ 4.44, p < .05.
That is, the American, British, and Taiwanese judges offered significantly more explicit than implicit compliments. As in
previous studies, American, British, and Taiwanese speakers favored explicitness over implicitness when giving compli-
ments (Yu, 1999, 2005, 2011).
In terms of the employment of implicit compliment strategies (cf. Table 3), the most widely used strategy on the three
programs was evaluation (e.g. You are the first person I didn't want to and I couldn't take my eyes off through your whole song),
accounting for 63% of the implicit compliments in The X Factor, for example. The American, British, and Taiwanese judges also
offered implicit want statements and comparison compliments frequently. Implicit comparison compliments have been noted in
previous research (Boyle, 2000; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989) and in the present study. It seems that using comparison is
a common way to express positive intentions implicitly. For example, in interactional sequence (8) below, one British judge
began her evaluation with an implicit comparison compliment (i.e. There's no one like you in this competition), followed by
several explicit compliments in the same turn and across turns. This implicit comparison compliment, though lacking any
positive words, implied that the contestant's great performance and unique quality were not observed in the other partic-
ipants' performances. By contrast, the American, British, and Taiwanese judges rarely provided implicit suggestion compli-
ments. The findings indicated that the judges of the three programs showed similar preferences for their realizations of
implicit complimentary force.
2
Double parentheses enclose descriptions of non-verbal actions.
Table 3
Frequency and percentage of implicit compliment strategies by program.
American Idol The X Factor Top Million Star
f % f % f %
Evaluation 19 43.18% 29 63.04% 13 30.95%

Want statement 11 25% 6 13.04% 12 28.57%
Comparison 12 27.27% 6 13.04% 8 19.05%
Double negation 2 4.55% 3 6.52% 8 19.05%
Suggestion 0 0% 2 4.35% 1 2.38%
Total 44 100% 46 100% 42 100%

J: Reggie ‘n’ Bollie, okay. So really simple, you know? There’s no one like you in this competition. Your entertainment is great. You know, you always entertain,
and I’m always looking forward to it, but you know what I love the most? You appreciate being on that stage.
C: ((Nodding))
J: You know what I mean? And you really, really, are grateful for how far you got, and we’re at the semifinals at this point. So you know what, it wasn’t the
best, but it was decent. It was okay.
C: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Next, a between-program examination of explicit and implicit compliments indicated that explicit compliments were
produced more commonly by the American judges than by the British or Taiwanese judges, whereas the frequencies of
implicit compliments were similar on the three programs. The MANOVA result using Pillai's trace indicated a significant
difference in the performance of compliment strategies based on the programs, V ¼ .15, F(12, 346) ¼ 2.36, p < .05.
Univariate testing revealed that the program effect was significant on explicit compliments, F(2, 177) ¼ 6.18, p < .05. The
results of Tukey's HSD tests indicated that the American judges offered significantly more explicit compliments than did
the British and Taiwanese judges, suggesting the American judges' inclination to be straightforward when expressing
compliments.
Compliments by judges reflect what is valued on talent shows. American Idol has been viewed as a platform which offers
equal opportunities for people with talent to achieve success, or fulfill their American Dream, through perseverance (Wei,
2016). This success myth (Dyer and McDonald, 2008), in which achievement is rewarded to those with talent and deter-
mination, has driven other versions of Idol programs or talent shows, including The X Factor and Top Million Star. An analysis of
the explicit and implicit compliments on the three talent shows revealed that the two merits (i.e. talent and hard work) were
recognized by the American, British, and Taiwanese judges. For example, the contestants' exceptional singing abilities were
clearly pointed out in some explicit compliments, such as, “you are very talented”, “your voice is really really great”, and “你的歌
聲很獨特 Nǐ de ge sheng h en dú t
e ‘your voice is very unique’”. Moreover, the value of hard work was also appreciated by the
American, British, and Taiwanese judges, as indicated in the implicit evaluation compliments (e.g. You always want to push it,
push it, push it, musically from a performance point of view. You're always stretching and pushing) and implicit comparison
compliments (e.g. 那車志立你, 請你去看你今天的表現, 你多了很多細節, 感情的細節。Na Che Jhìh-Lì nǐ, chǐng nǐ chyù ka
n nǐ jin tian
n, nǐ duo le h
de biaǒ sia en duo sì ji
eh, gǎn chíng de sì ji
eh ‘So Jhih-Li Che, you, please review your performance today. You added
many details, emotional ones’) to recognize the candidates' efforts to produce better performances. It seems that the values of
the American Dream have pervaded not only American Idol but also British and Taiwanese programs and hence are repre-
sented in the judges' compliments explicitly or implicitly.
5.3. RQ3: use of criticism strategies
In the current study, criticisms were first categorized as direct or indirect. Direct criticisms consisted of two sub-strategies
and indirect criticisms included eight sub-strategies (cf. Table 2). First, examining the in/directness of negative comments on
each program revealed that the American, British, and Taiwanese judges were all likely to be direct (American judges: 37
direct criticisms versus 36 indirect criticisms, British judges: 44 direct criticisms versus 20 indirect criticisms, Taiwanese judges:
65 direct criticisms versus 49 indirect criticisms). Indirect criticisms were also commonly offered by the American judges,
revealing no significant mean difference, t(59) ¼ .12, p > .05. There was no significant difference in Top Million Star, either,
t(59) ¼ 1.44, p > .05. The British judges, however, were found to produce significantly more direct than indirect criticisms,
t(59) ¼ 2.72, p < .05.
Next, when giving direct criticisms, it was evident that the American, British, and Taiwanese judges all tended to identify
the problems of their contestants (American judges: 10 expressions of negative attitudes versus 27 statements of problems,
British judges: 20 expressions of negative attitudes versus 24 statements of problems, Taiwanese judges: 1 expression of negative
attitude versus 64 statements of problems). The British judges also criticized their candidates frequently by expressing their
negative attitudes, resulting in no significant mean difference between the two direct criticism strategies, t(59) ¼ .55, p > .05.
By contrast, significant differences were identified on the American, t(59) ¼ 2.54, p < .05, and Taiwanese programs,
t(59) ¼ 6.16, p < .05. That is, the American and Taiwanese judges offered significantly more direct statements of problems than
direct expressions of negative attitudes. For example, there was merely one direct expression of negative attitude on the
Taiwanese program, whereas there were 64 statements of problems.
Moving on to indirect criticisms, Table 4 shows the frequency and percentage of each strategy use by all the judges. Offering
suggestions was the most popular strategy employed by the judges on the three programs to criticize their contestants
indirectly. Over half of the indirect criticisms by the American (58.33%) and Taiwanese judges (55.1%) were expressed by giving
suggestions. The second most common strategy for indirect criticisms was expression of uncertainty, accounting for around 10%
of indirect criticisms on the American and Taiwanese programs and 20% on the British program. The British judges also
criticized their contestants indirectly by sarcasm (20%); however, this strategy occurred only once on the American and
Taiwanese programs respectively. The other indirect criticism strategies were relatively less frequent on the three programs.
Table 4
Frequency and percentage of indirect criticism strategies by program.
American Idol The X Factor Top Million Star
f % f % f %
Suggestion 21 58.33% 6 30% 27 55.1%

Expression of uncertainty 4 11.11% 4 20% 5 10.2%
Comparison 4 11.11% 1 5% 4 8.16%
Question 3 8.33% 2 10% 4 8.16%
Explanation 2 5.56% 0 0% 4 8.16%
Sarcasm 1 2.78% 4 20% 1 2.04%
Indication of standard 0 0% 1 5% 4 8.16%
Want statement 1 2.78% 2 10% 0 0%
Total 36 100% 20 100% 49 100%
An examination of direct and indirect criticism strategies showed that the American judges' criticizing performances were
closer to that of the Taiwanese judges, that is, more towards higher-context communications, whereas the British judges were
more oriented to lower-context cultures. Tang (2016) investigated criticisms by American and Taiwanese judges and found
that the former, from a lower-context society, preferred an explicit mode of communication, producing a lot more direct than
indirect criticisms and employing more speaker-centered and content-oriented strategies (e.g. showing expectation). On the
other hand, Taiwanese judges, from a higher-context culture, offered more indirect criticisms and utilized more hearer-
centered and affection-oriented strategies (e.g. giving suggestions). Nevertheless, unlike Tang's (2016) study, the current
research found a much higher percentage of indirect criticisms by the American judges (Tang's study: 25%, this study: 49%),
and these judges also provided indirect suggestion criticisms frequently. In other words, the American judges in this study were
more concerned about the contestants. They used more indirect strategies to alleviate the destructive impact of their negative
evaluations and offered indirect suggestion criticisms to show their consideration for the candidates' future performances (see
Section 5.4 for more discussion on the American judges' involvement with the contestants). In contrast, the British judges'
criticizing performances were more oriented to a lower-context culture, as evidenced in their high frequency of direct crit-
icisms, especially their use of direct expressions of negative attitudes to clearly express their personal feelings about the
contestants' performances. This might also explain why indirect suggestion criticisms occurred less frequently on the British
program, as this hearer-centered strategy may be intrusive in a lower-context society where individual autonomy is relatively
respected. The findings indicated that, although the American and British judges shared the same language, there were
variations in their criticizing performances, and the dichotomy between higher- and lower-context cultures does not seem to
apply to the current research.
Apart from the within-program differences in direct and indirect criticism strategies above, several between-program
variations were also identified. First, the Taiwanese judges produced more direct and indirect criticisms than did the Amer-
ican and British judges. This finding, however, stands in stark contrast to previous studies on Chinese/Eastern and English/
Western criticisms, in which Chinese/Easterners favored greater indirectness out of concern for group harmony, while En-
glish/Westerners were inclined to be assertive and direct (Min, 2008; Wang, 2010; Zhu and Zhou, 2004). It is noted that these
studies examined criticisms primarily in Mainland Chinese, which might be similar to or different from those in Taiwan
Chinese. Hence, more studies on Taiwan Chinese and English criticisms are needed to explore if the cross-cultural variation
mentioned above exists. Next, a significant difference was observed based on the multivariate result using Pillai's trace,
V ¼ .23, F(20, 338) ¼ 2.15, p < .05. The univariate tests showed a significant program effect on direct expressions of negative
attitudes, F(2, 177) ¼ 6.56, p < .05, direct statements of problems, F(2, 177) ¼ 8.09, p < .05, indirect criticisms, F(2, 177) ¼ 3.83,
p < .05, and indirect suggestion criticisms, F(2, 177) ¼ 3.84, p < .05. The Tukey's HSD test results indicated that the British judges
offered significantly more direct criticisms by expressing negative attitudes (e.g. That didn't go quite well if I'm being honest)
than did the Taiwanese judges. The other direct criticism strategy, statement of problem, was employed significantly more often
by Taiwanese judges than by their American and British counterparts. The Taiwanese judges also produced significantly more
indirect criticisms and indirect suggestion criticisms than did the British judges. The comments in example (9) below were
produced by one Taiwanese judge criticizing an unsuccessful performance. The judge first pointed out the contestants'
problems with their emotions, harmonies, and pitch and then suggested that more arrangement should have been incor-
porated in their performance. Lastly, the differences in the other indirect criticism strategies among the American, British, and
Taiwanese judges were not statistically significant.

J: 我覺得剛才我整個聽到的感覺，我覺得你們對整首歌的結構，包括情緒，包括拍子，包括和聲、音準，我覺得你們都有去想過，但是沒有一個是做得很
好的，我覺得。嗯 ...我覺得情緒過多了，感覺兩個好像在比大聲的感覺。但 ...對阿!合唱不應該是比大聲。我覺得你們要，你可能要飆高音，你可能要feel那
些很多的句子。我覺得可能要經過一些設計。
Wǒ ju ng ca
e de ga i wǒ zheng g o de gǎn ju
e tıng da e, Wǒ jue de nǐ men duì zheng shǒu ge de ji u, ba
e go o kuo o kuo
qíng xù, ba pai zı, ba
o kuo h
e sheng, yın zhǔn,
wǒ ju e de nǐ men dou yǒu qù xiǎng guo n shì m
, da ei yǒu yı g d
e shì zuo e h
en hǎo de, wǒ jue de.
en ... wǒ ju duo
e de qíng xù guo le, gǎn ju e liǎng ge hǎo xiang za
i
bǐ da sh o. Da
eng de gǎn jia n ...duì a ! H
e cha ng bù yıng ga i shì bǐ da
sheng. Wǒ ju
e de nǐ men ya o, nǐ ke n
eng yao bia
o ga
o yın, nǐ k
e n eng yao feel na xi
e h
en duo
de jù zı. Wǒ jue de ke n
eng ya o jıng guo yı xi
e sh
e jì.
‘I think in general, what I just heard was you had thought about the structure of the entire song, including emotions, the beats, harmonies, and pitch, but none
of these worked very well, I think. Um … I think you put too many emotions into the song. It’s like two of you were competing to see whose voice was louder,
but … right, singing in harmony is not about loudness. I feel you, if you would like to sing high notes, you probably need to choose those lyrics with strong
emotions. I think some arrangement is possibly needed.’
C: ((點頭))
((Diǎntoú))
((Nodding))
5.4. RQ4: rapport management in the expression of compliments and criticisms
Based on the statistically significant findings provided above, the rapport management framework (Spencer-Oatey, 2000,
2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2008) was applied to explore how the American, British, and Taiwanese judges managed rapport with
their contestants in terms of interactional goals, face concerns, and sociality rights and obligations. These three components
served as underlying motives for the judges’ complimenting and criticizing performances on the talent shows. As Lo pez
(2008) mentioned, interlocutors usually have their interactional goals pre-established, while face and sociality rights and
obligations are constructed during the process of an interaction. The pre-set goal orientations of the American, British, and
Taiwanese judges are discussed below, as well as how they managed face concerns and sociality rights and obligations on the
reality programs.
First, the American judges were more inclined to attain relational goals and meet the contestants' quality face by offering
significantly more compliments than criticisms in general (see Section 5.1). Compliments were expressed to recognize the
candidates' abilities and performances and thus attended to their positive face (e.g. I listened so carefully to everything you did,
and it was pinpoint perfect. There wasn't one thing wrong. And when you do that, everybody's at ease. And we sit back and enjoy the
performance. We like you.). In this example, the judge produced several compliments explicitly and implicitly to show his
appreciation of the candidate's singing ability and performance. Furthermore, compliments in American culture usually have
a positive effect on interpersonal relationships (Wolfson, 1984), that is, to establish, maintain, or enhance a relationship. In
this sense, compliments were performed by the American judges in the current study to achieve the relational goals and fulfill
the association right. Moreover, the American judges attended to the contestants' association right by providing substantial
compliments not merely on successful but also on unsuccessful performances. Specifically, on unsuccessful performances, the
British and Taiwanese judges made more criticisms than compliments, as expected (British judges: 32 compliments versus 40
criticisms, Taiwanese judges: 52 compliments versus 88 criticisms), whereas the American judges gave many more com-
pliments than criticisms (90 compliments versus 40 criticisms). In other words, the American judges expressed their sup-
portive politeness to associate affectively with unsuccessful contestants. In line with Culpeper and Holmes' (2013) research,
the American judges in the present study were also more encouraging than the British judges were. The following sequence
(10) is a typical example of the American judges still complimenting the contestants even though their performances were
not flawless or professional. In example (10), the American judge Harry Connick Jr. made positive comments on the con-
testant's performance even though he thought that the candidate was not the one American Idol was looking for. He expressed
several explicit compliments (e.g. You did a nice job, That was good, madam, and It was really nice) before his expression of
uncertainty as an indirect criticism at the end (i.e. I am just not so sure Idol is the way you should be going). That is, although
Harry did not think that the contestant possessed the qualities to be a star, he still acknowledged her joyous spirit to minimize
the harm imposed by the indirect criticism. Interestingly, the phrase “I think a lot of us from New Orleans do” indicated a
common background between the judge and the contestant and served as an example of the judge's attempt to manage the
association with the candidate.

J: Yeah! You got it.
C: Thank you so much, Harry.
J: You did a nice job.
C: I am so happy.
J: That was good, madam. It was really nice.
C: Thank you so much.
J: Well, that was really nice. That’s all time all time normal right there. Oh … listen. You know, do I think you are lovely? Yes. Do I think you have an infectious
joyous spirit? Well, I think a lot of us from New Orleans do. I am just not so sure idol is the way you should be going. You did hear what I am saying?
C: I appreciate your honesty, but I still want to go to L.A.
J: Um… I am gonna have to say no.
C: Thank you, Harry.
In addition, the American judges' interpersonal involvement with the contestants was also clearly observed in the frequent
occurrence of the syntactic structure I like NP3 in their explicit compliments (as shown in examples 6 and 8 above), i.e. 31
instances on the American program. This syntactic pattern was less frequent on the British program (i.e. 10 instances) and the
least common on the Taiwanese program (i.e. 5 instances). Apart from using semantically vague adjectives like nice and good
to comment on the contestants' performances, the American judges chose these verbs of liking to explicitly demonstrate their
positive feelings about the candidates' performances and hence managed their association right. American speakers' pref-
erence for this syntactic formula of compliments has been identified in previous research (Holmes, 1988; Manes and Wolfson,
1981; Wolfson, 1989). In sequence (11) below, six of the explicit compliments were phrased in the structure I like NP (e.g. I like
the way you sing, I love a geek, and I love falsetto). In addition, the judge addressed the contestant with the term “baby”,
indicating the former's attempt to reduce the distance between them and foster a relationship with the latter.

J: Baby, I like the way you sing. I think you’re very interesting. I think you have a little quirkiness to you that it’s kind of like, cool, geeky quality. Don’t take
geek the wrong way. I love a geek. I love a good geek.
C: No, I love science. I appreciate it.
J: Um, but I like it. I like the way you sing. I thought you did a really nice job. I love the falsetto.
Second, the British judges' commenting behaviors were governed more by transactional goals; that is, they tended to
provide clear comments on contestants' performances. Though the American, British, and Taiwanese judges all produced
more explicit than implicit compliments and more direct than indirect criticisms, statistically, the British judges offered
significantly more explicit than implicit compliments and significantly more direct than indirect criticisms, as reported in
Sections 5.2 and 5.3. The British judges' tendency for communicative clarity (Kasper, 1989; Ren, 2014; Tang, 2016) might have
been influenced by the genre of RTV, which requires participants to state their intentions clearly (Ren and Woodfield, 2016).
Therefore, by assuming their roles and obligations as judges on talent shows, the British judges opted for explicit/direct
strategies to have their evaluations unmistakably delivered to contestants. This transaction-oriented goal might explain why,
even when expressing criticisms in a public context that might threaten the candidates' positive face or their interpersonal
relationships, the British judges still resorted to direct criticism strategies more frequently. As evidenced in previous research
(Culpeper and Holmes, 2013), British judges are more likely to make critical evaluations. Even after a successful performance,
a British judge expressed a series of direct criticisms about the contestants' performance (e.g. I think that was your worst
performance in the competition so far, to be honest, I don't think the vocals were great, and I think you lost your sense of fun)
without any compliments, as shown in example (12) below. In response to these criticisms, the candidates, without any verbal
behavior, nodded to indicate acceptance of the negative evaluations. It appears that in the genre of RTV, direct criticisms are
relatively more acceptable in Britain. In contrast, more indirect criticisms were expected on the American and Taiwanese
programs to minimize the threat to the contestants' quality face.

J: Um, can I be honest with you guys? I think that was your worst performance in the competition so far, to be honest. It really was. Because, I didn’t think the
vocals were great. I think you lost your sense of fun. Um, it was too serious, um, and it was nowhere near as good as the weeks before if I’m being honest with
you. I think you’re very lucky you’ve got a second song.
C: ((Nodding))
Third, the Taiwanese judges were more oriented to the transactional goals and their social identity face as experts in
the entertainment industry. As mentioned in Section 5.1, the Taiwanese judges were usually addressed as “teacher”, as
shown in the contestant's response to the judge's comments in sequence (13) below. Bearing this respectful title,
Taiwanese judges “represent the roles of celebrity, experts, authorized predecessors and teachers” (Jian, 2013:125). In
this regard, Taiwanese judges tend to offer comments as teachers and their evaluations are more instructional with
“kind and guiding suggestions” (Jian, 2013:125). This might explain why there were significantly more direct statements
of problems on the Taiwanese program than on the American and British programs and why more than half of the in-
direct criticisms by the Taiwanese judges were realized in the form of suggestions. While offering direct statements of
problems, the Taiwanese judges sounded more professional, specifying the weaknesses of the contestants so that they
would understand which aspects of their performances required improvement. Moreover, since criticisms are face-
threatening, especially in public discourse such as RTV, the judges might be less likely to be challenged for offering
factual negative evaluations and hence preserve their professional identity. For example, in sequence (13), a Taiwanese
judge directly pointed out the contestant's major flaws leading to his failure, that is, being too nervous to sing the lyrics
of the first two parts right. These criticisms were accepted by the candidate, as shown in his expression of appreciation
(i.e. 謝謝老師 Xi e xi
e lǎo shı ‘Thank you, teacher’). In addition, when making indirect criticisms, the Taiwanese judges
preferred indirect suggestion criticisms (e.g. 那士軒, 其實到台上來選歌, 你還是要想這個歌能夠更適合你的聲音的歌。 Na Shì-
Xua n, qí shí da
o ta
i shang la
i xuǎn g i shì ya
e, nǐ ha o xiǎng zh
e g
e g
e n u g
eng go eng shì h
e nǐ de sh
eng yın de g
e ‘So Shi-Xuan, in
3
Following Manes and Wolfson (1981), LIKE represents any verb of liking, e.g. love or enjoy; NP stands for any noun phrase.

J: 俊傑，我覺得你輸得很可惜。你太緊張了！你把第一段跟第二段整個對調啊！而且這兩個對調，是因為它的歌詞其實進副歌的那個曲是不一樣的，所以
那個歌詞對調，其實是有一點違和感。重大失誤，你好可惜。所以，你真的不要緊張，因為你其實唱得真的不錯。加油，繼續加油。
Jùn-Jie, wǒ jue de nǐ shu de h
en k i jǐn zha
e xí. Nǐ ta ng le! Nǐ bǎ dì yı duan gen dì n zh
er dua eng g o a
e duì dia !
er qi
e zhe liǎng g o, shì yın w
e duì dia de g
ei ta e cí
qí shí jìn fù g
e de na g ng de, suǒ yǐ na
e qǔ shì bù yı ya ge g o, qí shí shì yǒu yı diǎn w
e cí duì dia ei h ng da
e gǎn. Zho shı wù, nǐ hǎo k
e xí. Suǒ yǐ, nǐ zh
en de bù yao
jǐn zhang, yın w ei nǐ qí shí chang de zh en de bú cuo yo
. Jia yo
u, jì xù jia u.
‘Jun-Jie, I think it’s a pity that you lost the competition. You were too nervous! You swapped the lyrics of the first and second parts. And this swap, the melody
of the chorus was different; therefore, such an exchange was in fact a bit out of place. This is a serious flaw. It's a pity that you lost the competition. You don’t
need to be nervous since you actually sang very well. Cheer up and keep it up!’
C: 謝謝老師。
Xie xi
e lǎo shı.
Thank you, teacher.
fact, when selecting a song, you still need to choose one which better fits your voice’). By offering suggestions, the Taiwanese
judges indicated the drawbacks of the contestants' performances without pointing out their problems explicitly and also
provided constructive instructions.
6. Conclusion
This study investigated the commenting performances of American, British, and Taiwanese judges on singing competition
programs with respect to their employment of compliment and criticism strategies. The finding that considerably more
compliments than criticisms occurred on the three programs suggested that televised talent shows may in fact not be
impolite, as indicated in previous studies (Garce s-Conejos Blitvich et al., 2013; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Livio, 2011;
Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013). Furthermore, contrary to previous research, the current study found that the American and
British judges did not seem to be impolite but instead appeared to be more complimentary than their Taiwanese counter-
parts. Moreover, when offering positive and negative comments, the American, British, and Taiwanese judges all preferred
explicitness/directness by giving more explicit than implicit compliments and more direct than indirect criticisms.
Based on the major quantitative findings above, an analysis of the complimenting and criticizing behaviors of the
American, British, and Taiwanese judges based on the rapport management framework (Spencer-Oatey, 2000, 2002, 2005a,
2005b, 2008) presented cross-cultural similarities and variations in their interactional goals, face concerns, and sociality
rights and obligations. That is, the American judges attended to the relational goals and to the contestants’ quality face and
association right by producing a great number of compliments on successful and unsuccessful performances and using the
syntactic formula I like NP in their explicit compliments. On the other hand, the British and Taiwanese judges were more
oriented to the transactional goals, but in different ways. The former aimed to provide clear evaluations by offering signifi-
cantly more explicit than implicit compliments and more direct than indirect criticisms. The latter expressed significantly more
direct statements of problems and preferred indirect suggestion criticisms to demonstrate their social identity face as experts in
the entertainment business.
The present study aimed to contribute to the media discourse and pragmatics research by analyzing judges' compliments
and criticisms together in one study to provide a more comprehensive picture of their commenting behaviors on talent
shows. Previous studies on talent shows have primarily focused on impolite non/verbal behaviors (Culpeper and Holmes,
2013; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013) and concluded that talent shows, like other RTV programs, were conflictual in nature;
however, this was not the case in the current study, as mentioned above. Second, an examination of the employment of
compliment and criticism strategies by the American, British, and Taiwanese judges offers insights into their preferences of
strategy use when giving comments, as previous studies on talent shows rarely focused on pragmatic strategies. Third, such
focus on strategy preferences consolidates the classification schemes of compliment and criticism strategies. Unlike other
speech acts (e.g. requests and refusals), there seems to be no systematic framework for categorizing compliment and criticism
strategies in cross-cultural studies. Hence, the categories of the two speech acts developed in the current study can be
adopted or adapted in future relevant research. Fourth, this study also expands the methodological scope of the cross-cultural
pragmatics literature by examining natural media discourse instead of relying on elicitation methods, which might not reflect
authentic pragmatic performance. It should be noted that, due to the small sample size, the findings of this study cannot be
generalized to represent speakers in the three cultures. Moreover, other social factors (e.g. gender, social distance, etc.) which
play a significant role in pragmatic production could be investigated in further research on RTV or media contexts. In addition,
each judge might develop his/her idiosyncratic commenting strategies, as in the case of Simon Cowell (Garce s-Conejos
Blitvich et al., 2013; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2013). The characteristics of individual judges could be scrutinized in future
studies, as well as contestants’ responses, to yield insights into not only comment-making but also comment-receiving be-
haviors in RTV (see Livio, 2011).
Funding
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 105-2410-H-035-043).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier
versions of this paper.
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Intercultural Pragmatics, and Researching Sociopragmatic Variability.

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Journal of Pragmatics 160 (2020) 44e59

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Exploring judges’ compliments and criticisms on American,

E-mail address: cyinglin@fcu.edu.tw.

2.1. Studies on talent shows

2.2. Studies on compliments

2.3. Studies on criticisms

3. Rapport management theory

Fig. 1. The bases of rapport (Spencer-Oatey, 2008:14).

4.1. Data collection

(4) Comment 83 from The X Factor

(5) Comment 124 from Top Million Star

Type Deﬁnition & Example

4.3. Data analysis

Type Deﬁnition & Example

5. Results and discussion

5.1. RQ1: overall use of compliments and criticisms

(6) Comment 1 from American Idol

(7) Comment 171 from Top Million Star

5.2. RQ2: use of compliment strategies

American Idol The X Factor Top Million Star

Evaluation 19 43.18% 29 63.04% 13 30.95%

(8) Comment 113 from The X Factor

5.3. RQ3: use of criticism strategies

American Idol The X Factor Top Million Star

Suggestion 21 58.33% 6 30% 27 55.1%

(9) Comment 159 from Top Million Star

5.4. RQ4: rapport management in the expression of compliments and criticisms

(10) Comment 14 from American Idol

(11) Comment 4 from American Idol

(12) Comment 111 from The X Factor

(13) Comment 151 from Top Million Star

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