Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Compliment Speech Acts 2.1. Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Compliments 2.2. Functions of Compliments 2.3. Topics of Compliments 3. Experiment 3.1. Participants 3.2. Procedure 3.3. Data Analysis 4. Results and Discussion 4.1. Social Functions of Compliments in Korean and American Cultures 4.2. Relationship between Social Status and Compliment Topic 5. Conclusion References