Compliments, as speech acts attributing credit, convey positive sentiments and build relationships. However, their meaning is multifaceted and can vary cross-culturally. Gender significantly influences compliment language; previous research suggests differences in frequency, topics, and style between male and female speakers, often focusing on adults. This study investigates the under-explored area of children's gender schema development as reflected in their complimenting language, particularly pre-adolescent children's understanding of gender-specific language styles. The study aims to investigate whether pre-adolescent boys and girls differ in linguistic features of compliments, sentiment polarity of compliments, and how their imitated compliments of the opposite sex differ from their supposedly normal compliments. This research addresses the gap in understanding how children develop gendered linguistic mental representations (gender schema) and the impact on their use of compliments. The study uses oral discourse completion tasks (ODCTs) in Mandarin Chinese with a focus on lexical features (word choice and lexical richness), discourse-pragmatic features (intensifiers and affective sentence-final particles), and discourse-semantic features (sentiment polarity) to analyze these aspects of children's language use.

Prior research on compliments has largely focused on adult speakers, examining cross-cultural variations in complimenting strategies and responses. Studies have investigated the use of explicit and implicit compliments, identifying common syntactic structures and lexical choices across various languages. Researchers have also examined gender differences, noting that women often give and receive more compliments, particularly focusing on appearance. However, methodological limitations, such as the predominance of female researchers and data collection biases, have been noted. The gendered nature of compliments, where syntactic structures, discourse organization, and pragmatic strategies reflect gender norms, is acknowledged. Few studies examine children’s use of compliments or the development of gendered language use in children's development of gender schema, which is a cognitive framework shaping individuals' behaviors and expectations according to gender norms. This study aims to fill this gap by examining pre-adolescent children's complimenting strategies through the lens of Bem's Gender Schema Theory.

This study employed oral discourse completion tasks (ODCTs) with 25 Mandarin-speaking children (15 boys, 10 girls) aged 9-12 from a primary school in Ningbo, China. Participants completed twelve compliment situations across three topics (appearance, possession, ability/performance), providing compliments in both a normal speech style and an imitated style of the opposite gender. Data analysis involved several steps: First, the collected data was segmented into corpora using SegmentAnt software, removing punctuation and stop words, and manually checked by native speakers. Lexical features were analyzed using word frequency lists (raw and normalized frequency) and lexical richness (D measure). Discourse-pragmatic features included the frequency of intensifiers and affective sentence-final particles (ASFPs). Discourse-semantic features were analyzed using supervised machine learning (logistic regression) to determine the sentiment polarity (positivity/negativity) of compliments. 50% of the data was manually labeled for training the classifier, which then predicted the probabilities of sentiment polarity for the remaining data. The accuracy of the logistic regression model was 95%. Linear-mixed-effects regression models were used to analyze the impact of gender and speaking style on the linguistic features.

Analysis revealed striking similarities in lexical choices across the four corpora (boys' normal speech, boys' imitated feminine speech, girls' normal speech, and girls' imitated masculine speech). 70% of the top 10 most frequent words were common across all groups. However, girls exhibited significantly higher lexical richness (LR) (as measured by D) in their normal speech style compared to their imitated masculine style and boys' LR in both normal and imitated feminine styles. This suggests girls possess a wider vocabulary in complimenting. Regarding discourse-pragmatic features, girls used significantly more intensifiers in both normal and imitated masculine styles, whereas boys' intensifier use didn't differ between styles. This suggests a habitual difference in intensifier use but not necessarily a conscious gendered strategy. In contrast, ASFP usage showed significant style-shifting; boys used fewer ASFPs than girls in normal speech but increased their use in the imitated feminine style, and girls decreased ASFP use in the imitated masculine style. This indicates a conscious awareness of ASFPs as gendered markers. Sentiment analysis revealed overall positive sentiments in all corpora. However, girls' imitated masculine compliments showed significantly lower positivity compared to their normal style and boys' styles, suggesting a stereotype of boys' less supportive complimenting style among some girls. Specifically, some girls used strongly negative comments when imitating boys' styles, indicating the development of gender schema associating boys with less supportive speech styles.

The findings provide insights into children's gender schema development, demonstrating that different linguistic features hold varying significance. Discourse-pragmatic features, particularly ASFPs, are more susceptible to gender ideologies and conscious style-shifting. Lexical features, while showing some gendered patterns (e.g., girls' higher LR), appear less explicitly linked to gender performance in this age group. The lower positivity in girls' imitated masculine compliments reflects the development of gender stereotypes, associating boys with less supportive complimenting. This aligns with prior research showing girls' tendency to use negative adjectives when describing boys. The study acknowledges limitations, including the use of ODCTs which might not fully capture real-world complimenting behaviors, the relatively small sample size, and the limited age range of participants. The formulaic nature of compliments, previously reported, was confirmed by the study’s findings. However, this study extends previous findings by demonstrating subtle nuances in how gender shapes the use of these formulaic structures in pre-adolescent children.

This study reveals the multifaceted nature of gender schema development in pre-adolescent children through their complimenting language. Discourse-pragmatic features are more sensitive to gender norms, while lexical richness demonstrates a more nuanced relationship with gender. The significant difference in sentiment scores between girls’ normal and imitated masculine compliments underscores the complex interplay between social norms and linguistic performance. Future research should explore a larger sample size, include children across a wider age range, and incorporate naturalistic data collection to enhance the generalizability of these findings. Examining delexicalization in intensifiers and ASFPs may also provide further insights.

The study's reliance on oral discourse completion tasks (ODCTs) might not fully reflect the nuances of naturally occurring complimenting. The relatively small sample size and focused age range limit the generalizability of findings. Future research should incorporate naturalistic data collection methods and include participants across a broader age range and sociocultural backgrounds to better understand the complexity of gender schema development and its influence on language.