“You Look Amazingly Fabulous”: Sociolinguistic Perspectives from Medical and Non-Medical University Students

The study investigates the employment of compliment strategies of medical and non-medical university students using the linguistic frameworks of Holmes and Yu. Three hundred fifty respondents took part in the study. These students-respondents came from four medical colleges/schools and three non-medical colleges/schools in a university located in Manila. They were asked to complete the Discourse Completion Test (DCT). DCT was developed and modified by the researchers. The said DCT was distributed via google sheet thru Facebook messenger. From the data collected, results revealed that both medical and nonmedical students opted to follow the Accept, Combination, Reject, and Evade pattern. Both groups preferred Accept the most and Evade the least. Appreciation Token and Combination were preponderantly exhibited by both groups in their CRs. There is no significant difference realized between and among the students- respondents regarding the use of CRs by medical and nonmedical. Implications of the study were offered and research directions were provided.