Dagli estranei non si accettano caramelle, ma si accettano complimenti

This work analyzes the compliment responses (CRs) in a corpus of 343 compliments among stranger, unfamiliar women. Both the unfamiliarity and the gender of the complimentees resulted in an increase of the degree of compliment acceptance. Our corpus is organized in four sub-corpora (with different context of elicitation), all balanced for two age brackets of complimented women (≤30 y.o.; >30 y.o.) and for two topics: personal belongings and transient aspects (e.g. haircut, manicure). All in all, young women are more easily inclined to accept compliments, especially when the compliments are given by a women of the same age, while adult women are more cautious in accepting compliments. Compliments on transient aspects have revealed easier to be accepted than compliments on personal belongings, probably because women are well acquainted to receive and accept compliments focused on appearance.