This paper aims to make a contrastive study on complaining strategies between American and Chinese university students, based on the descriptive study of the collected data, with reference to the social variables of social status and social distance. It is found that Chinese and American university students are significantly different in the choice of complaining strategies produced to professors, intimates, friends and strangers. The Chinese show greater respect to professors than Americans do. Generally, as to interlocutors with equal social status, Americans＇ complaining degree displays a gradually descending tendency along a social distance continuum, while the Chinese have intimates and strangers at the both ends, with friends in the middle. No significant difference has been revealed in the choice of complaining strategies to parents, but Americans tend to be more polite than the Chinese. This challenges Brown and Levinson＇s formula, Wx = D （S, H） ＋ P （H, S） ＋Rx, which implies the same weight for each of these three factors. The study proves that in private conversations, the variable of social distance carries more importance than the variable of social status.
