“Blowing our own trumpet”: Self-praise in Peninsular Spanish face-to-face communication

Abstract Self-praise can be defined as a speech act involving an implicit or explicit positive evaluation of the speaker by the speaker (Dayter, 2014). Given that self-praise runs against the modesty maxim, its use tends to be regarded as a pragmatically hazardous act. Contrary to other speech acts, self-praise in face-to-face communication has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, with the scarce results appearing to be somewhat contradictory (Dayter, 2018). Furthermore, most of this research has focused on English (cf. Wu, 2011). The aim of the present paper is twofold. On the one hand, it intends to contribute to the further understanding of self-praise. On the other, it aims to redress the imbalance in favor of a language other than English, focusing on face-to-face communication in Peninsular Spanish. To this purpose, a mixed-method approach combining three data collection methods has been used, namely: field observation, online surveys, and interviews. Results show that self-praise in Peninsular Spanish is often pre-modified by formulaic expressions although explicit self-praise without any modification is more frequent than expected.