赞扬作为一种特殊的言语行为，它的主要功能是建立良好的社会关系，在语用学的研究，乃至整个语言学研究中都具有举足轻重的地位。作为一种复杂的言语行为，它涉及赞扬者本人的个人素养，审美取向，文化背景，思维方式。它的功能包括打招呼，感谢，表示感谢，引出话题等。在当今技术高度发展，跨文化交流日益频繁的信息时代，中美两国间沟通交流也越来越多。当代中美大学生大多都会采取明确赞扬的方式，而明确赞扬方面，我们发现中美表达赞扬的句式有所不同。本文主要从跨文化交际的角度对中美大学生赞扬句式的差异及背后的深层原因进行了研究，目的是促进跨文化交际和提高外语学习者的语用能力。
Praise, a special speech act, whose main function is to establish good social relationship, it has a pivotal position in the study of pragmatics as well as of linguistics. As a complex speech act, it in-volves the praiser’s personal qualities, aesthetic orientation, cultural background, and way of thinking. The functions include greeting, thanking, expressing gratitude and leading topics. In to-day’s information age, with the increase of technological development and cross-cultural exchanges, more and more communication between Chinese and American College students take place. Most of them will adopt a direct way of praise. In terms of direct praise, we find that the sentence patterns for expressing praise in Chinese and English differ. This article mainly studies the differences in compliment sentences between Chinese and American college students and the underlying reasons from the perspective of cross-cultural communication. The purpose is to promote cross-cultural communication and improve the pragmatic competence of foreign language learners.
