Like or Love? Comments and Reactions in Italian Complimenting Strategies on Facebook

This work analyses Italian compliments on Facebook, following a recent trend in pragmatic research concerning compliments in online environments. The major focuses are complimenting strategies and the use of reactions in relation to the complimenting target, i.e. the complimenter and complimentee’s gender, and the frequency of use of Facebook by the respondents. A qualitative analysis of the interactions on three users’ profles is supported by a quantitative study on Facebook users’ behavior in complimenting close friends on the social network as elicited through questionnaires. Although limited to a small sample, the results seem to indicate a possible sociolinguistic distribution of complimenting strategies according to users’ gender, and the frequency of use of Facebook. As for reactions, their use could be interpreted as the emerging of a medium-specifc pragmatic strategy in complimenting on Facebook.