Abstract: Compliment is a speech act to maintain people's positive face and a lubricant for social communication. In daily communication, the Bai people of Jianchuan County, Dali Prefecture widely use metaphorical, contrastive and progressive compliments, which can not only express their appreciation and gratitude to the addressees, but also ease their critical tone so as to flatter and please the addressees. The efficient use of sentence strategies and politeness strategies is conducive to meet the needs of communication and ensure smooth progress of communication.

Key words: complimentary speech act, expression mode, pragmatic function, pragmatic strategy