Maris Styvanni Malelak Pengarang SEBASTIANUS FERNANDEZ Dosen Pembimbing 1 John Bhae Dosen Pembimbing 2 Sebastianus Fernandez Ketua Penguji Leni Amelia Suek Penguji 2 John Bhae Penguji 1

This study focuses on the compliments and its responses used by the students of SMAN 4 Kupang. This study was conducted to find out the strategies of compliments, the topics of compliment, the types of compliment response and the function of the compliment, and the description of the compliment responses expressed and applied by the students of SMAN 4 Kupang. This study used a descriptive qualitative study. The data of this study were taken from conversations containing compliments, verbal and non-verbal acts of communication which are expressed by the students of SMAN 4 Kupang. The subjects of this study were 42 female students and 40 male students. The instrument used in this study was WhatsApp Messenger due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The result of data analysis shows that most of the compliments and responses to the compliments given by the informants were explicit compliments, which mean that they gave their compliment directly to the content that the addressee had. Most of the addressees accepted the compliment but some of them rejected it, because they felt that they did not fit with the compliment or in other words, the compliment given by the addresser was very offensive. The way they accepted the compliment includes verbal and non verbal acceptance. The writer divided the expression of compliment and responding to the compliment into 4 forms, namely: female to female, male to male, male to female and female to male. Based on the data analysis, the informants used verbal communication as their expressions. The non-verbal communication used by the informants such as: touching, using body language, eye contact, and smile. Then, verbal communication related to sentences or expressions that the informants spoke. Keywords: Student, SMAN 4 Kupang, Compliment, Compliment response