Compliment Behavior in Gay Men

Introduction
Robert Herbert's 1990 study of gender differences in compliment behavior assumes a heterosexual population or at least avoids the possibility of differences between the compliment behavior of gay and straight men. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that there is a difference. The purpose of this pilot study is to examine the workplace compliment behavior of homosexual men and compare the findings to Herbert's findings, which assumed a heterosexual male population.

Relevant Literature
Robert K. Herbert's "Sexed-based differences in compliment behavior" from Language and Society 1990 outlines much of the significant research in the area of compliment behavior, though none of it considers sexual preference as a possible determining factor in either the compliment act or the response. In addition to his impressive use of available literature, Herbert categorizes responses to the 1,062 compliment events he and his field workers collected. Herbert asserts that the driving force behind compliment behavior in American English is not as "literal statements of admiration/praise/and so forth, but rather [compliments] are offers of solidarity" (209). Therefore, responses other than acceptance are negotiations of solidarity. Herbert bases much of his supposition on the gender differences involved in complimenting and accepting compliments. Compliments by men are more likely to be accepted, and compliments between men are much more rare.

Methodology
In this pilot study, I am looking at workplace compliment behavior in which all of the participants were gay males. In this study, I collected nine compliments over a two-day period by listening to work place conversations. I have attempted to categorize the responses in two ways: 1) according to Herbert's outline of 12 compliment responses (particularly agreement/non-agreement) and 2) comparing the results to Herbert's findings for men in general.

Results
Interestingly enough, the all but one of the responses to the compliments are clustered in those areas which Herbert found were more typical in male-male compliment events. Of the nine compliments collected, four responses could be categorized as agreement, five represented non-agreement (Table 1). To break these numbers down further, of the three acceptances, two were in Herbert’s category of "appreciation token," one was "comment acceptance." One response fell in the category of reassignment, which is uncommon in M-M compliment events. Of the five non-agreement responses, three were questions, one was non-responsive (Herbert's category is no acknowledgement), and one was request interpretation. Perhaps the most interesting point is that of the non-agreement responses Herbert charted, "question," "no acknowledgement" and "request interpretation" occur significantly more often in M-M compliment events, and these were the only responses gathered in my pilot survey (Table 2).

Discussion
The most obvious limitation of this study is the small n. While the findings suggest that compliment response behavior in gay males is similar to the behavior that (according to Herbert) characterizes M-M interactions, the comparison is entirely suspect for two reasons. 1) Herbert's study is statistically significant charting 228 male to male compliment events (though perhaps his data collection was haphazard in some ways, he was able to coordinate a large sample). 2) Herbert's study didn't control for sexual preference, and we can assume in a random sample between 6-15% of the males non-heterosexual. For my study to be accurate, I would have to sample both groups, controlling for sexual preference in both samples.

A second subject that came up when collecting this data is the multiplex social network of the gay community. The men in this study not only worked together, but regularly socialized together, worked out at the same health club and in some cases, lived in the same apartment complex. In some ways, the multiplex connections between the individuals giving and receiving the compliments makes me wonder about the validity of Herbert's solidarity assertion, at least in this case. While I do think there is some negotiation of solidarity occurring here, there is something else going on as well. Herbert suggests that compliments are more common between people in that mid-range of acquaintanceship, where there is a searching for common ground that results in offers of solidarity. In this situation, then men involved are in nearly every case close friends, and therefore I see some of this compliment behavior as establishing a group identity—an I'm OK, You're OK sort of affirmation. The high number of question responses (fully 33% of my study) suggest that there may be at least some insecurity (real or feigned) involved. Two of the three question responses led to involved discussions of tangential issues, which did, nonetheless concern personal appearance. I am curious if this function of compliment behavior works in the same way among non-gay men. By comparing perhaps a gay and non-gay workplace, and tracking the daily numbers of M-M compliments, it might be possible to discover if gay men compliment each other more often than non-gay men (which I think is quite possible) and what the situation for the compliments seems to be. That, however, was not within the scope of this project.

Appendix A
Compliment Events:

1) M to D & E

M: I want you to look at my new tie. (In a bag.)

E: That's beautiful.

D: It's nice.

M: Yeah, I like it a lot. Could I wear it with that blue striped shirt? The one I wore Monday?

2) D to E

D: You always look so professional.

E: Is that a compliment?

D: Yes.

E: Thank you.

3) D to M

D: That color is good on you. That's sort of, what would you call that?

M: The shirt? You don't think I look pasty?

4) D to E

D: I like your hair.

E: You're not supposed to notice; it's natural highlights.

D: It's darker.

E: I know.

5) M to D

M: What's with the hair?

D: Why?

M: No, it's good. Who'd you end up going to?

(Followed by lengthy hair discussion.)

6) T to J

T: Goddamn. The resolution on yours is twice as good. That's beautiful.

J: Set the target printer to 600 dpi. You want a gray scale, don't you?

7) J to D

J: Great tie.

D: Thanks.

8) E to D

E: When did you get your other ear pierced? It looks really good.

D: You think it's ok?

9) T to D

T: I saw you at People's Friday. You were looking hot. (laugh)

D: (Laugh) You're a dick. I was so drunk.