恭维是人们日常生活中使用普遍的语言现象，在交际中起着重要的作用，因此受到了语言研究者的重视。过去相关研究主要集中于自然对话、语篇补全对话等语料，较少涉及影视作品，且多为共时层面。本文旨在探究中美恭维语话题和恭维应答策略从20世纪80年代至今各自的发展趋势，并将中美恭维语话题和应答策略进行比较，以期了解不同时期言语交际的特点，和提高跨文化交际的能力。

本研究将20世纪80年代至今这个时期划分为80年代至20世纪末和21世纪初至今两个时段，从两个时段的中美影视剧中收集恭维语及应答语作为语料并进行对比分析。

结果表明，中国恭维语话题总体上没有显著变化，但一致策略的使用显著增加，谦虚策略的使用显著减少。这表明在跨文化交际中，西方文化对中国文化产生了更大的影响，中国人的首选应答策略由“拒绝”逐渐变为“接受”。对美国人而言，恭维话题和应答策略的波动较小，这表明美国文化相对更稳定，演变速度也更慢。一致策略一直是美国人最常用的回应策略，说明美国人倾向于接受恭维，并认为这是自信和平等的表现。此外，表现一直是最受中美欢迎的恭维话题，显示出中美文化都十分强调个人能力和成就，这一定程度上也反映了社会期待值。最后，美国男性更常恭维女性的外表，而中国男性对此更谨慎，因为这容易被认为是轻浮和不礼貌。

Compliments are a common language phenomenon in daily life, and play a crucial role in interpersonal communication. They have received much academic emphasis. The related previous studies have mainly focused on naturalistic dialogues, dialogues from discourse completion test, etc., and seldom involved dialogues in teleplays. Besides, most of them are synchronic. This study aims to explore the developing trends of compliment topics and response strategies used by Chinese and Americans since the 1980s to reveal the features of them in different periods and improve people’s ability of cross-cultural communication.

In this study, the 40 years since the 1980s was divided into two periods: the 1980s to the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century to the present. Compliments and responses were collected from Chinese and American teleplays in the two periods as data.

The results show that Chinese compliment topics, overall, have not changed significantly, but the use of the agreement response strategy has increased, and that of the modesty response strategy has decreased significantly. It suggests as a consequence of cross-cultural communication, western culture has exerted a greater influence on Chinese culture, and being modest is not the only choice as before. For Americans, compliment topics and response strategies have fluctuated much less, suggesting American culture is comparably more stable and has been evolving at a slower pace. The agreement strategy has always been the most frequently adopted response strategy, which shows Americans tend to accept compliments positively and think that is a manifestation of self-confidence and equality. Besides, performance has always been the most popular compliment topic by Chinese and Americans. It indicates Chinese and American cultures both emphasize personal abilities and achievements, which is also a reflection of social expectation to some extent. Additionally, American men compliment women’s appearance more than Chinese men do, while Chinese men are more cautious because it can be easily considered as frivolous and impolite.