A study on politeness strategies manifested in advising in english and vietnamese

1   1. Rationale English has played a vital role in society and made considerable contribution to education, culture, science and technology. The number of people learning English for various purposes (such as for job, business, traveling…) is continually on the increase everyday. Therefore different kinds of English teaching and learning materials are available over the world, especially in Vietnam. In our country, English has been regarded as the most important foreign language nowadays, especially since the Vietnamese Government carried out the open door policy. English has been taught for a long time in Vietnam. It becomes a compulsory subject in most universities and schools throughout the country. However, the emphasis on transmission of structural rules and forms often sever as the principal method of teaching English in Vietnamese schools and universities. Most of Vietnamese teacher tends to focus on teaching as much grammar and vocabulary as possible. In fact, this method cannot do much help for students to assure a successful communication in daily life. The students may get difficulty in achieving contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication. Therefore, the failure or the cultural breakdown might easily happen in oral communication even though they learn English grammar well. Thus, cultural knowledge is obviously an important key for Vietnamese students to succeed in learning English because second language learning is second culture learning. In order to acquire the second language, English, it is necessary to learn not only linguistic knowledge and interaction skills but also knowledge of culture. When understanding the cultural factors students may have chances to expose themselves to native speaking environments. Normally Vietnamese students tend to employ English based on their native culture and cause misinterpretation in oral communication. They are sometimes impolite, unfriendly or even hostile by chance. Hence, to communicate well across culture students must be aware of their own culture as well as the English culture, especially the hidden part of culture including politeness and politeness strategies, which is really important part in all social interaction. 2 According to Wierzbicka in “A different cultures, different languages, different speech act” cultural norms reflected in speech acts differs not only from one language to another. Like the other speech acts, advising may be different from language to language, culture to culture and community to community. It is our essential component in most aspects of human life. Thanks to advising human beings seem to be closer, women look prettier, children behave nicer, men are more perfect and home are more civilized. Together with other speech activities, advising does a function of identifying a specific culture of people and speech behavior in politeness, which makes the communication light, bright and workable. The author of this study aims to investigate and draw out the politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese. 2. Aims of the study: The aims of the study are: * To draw out the important role of politeness in social communication, especially in cross - cultural communication * To study positive and negative politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese. * To put forward some suggestions for teaching advising situations 3. Scope of the study: In all aspects of politeness, the study only deals with verbal aspects. Paralinguistic and non - verbal factors are not discussed here. This thesis focuses on positive and negative politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework (1987). Off record politeness strategies, politeness rules and politeness principles are out of the scope of the thesis. The paper is aimed to investigate the English – Vietnamese cross - cultural interaction on speech act of advice. Its central focus is on which politeness strategy used in advice in both languages English and Vietnamese. The data analysis is mainly taken in to account of politeness based on what is collected from ten situations of case study in which the act of advising occurs and three kind of relations: family relation, social relation, business relation. The data were collected by conducting survey questionnaires by author herself. In addition, the data from the interviews with informants is also utilized in the study. 3 Examples for illustration are mostly taken from the data and reference is made when they are taken from other sources. A part from that, the study referred to positive sense of advice. It does not cover negative senses such as irony, sarcasm, incitement and so on. With the limitation of thesis, the response to advice is not regarded. 4. Research questions: The study will focus on dealing with the following questions: * How are politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese? * How is the implication of politeness in advising related to the teaching of language? 5. Methods of the study The major method that the author has employed is quantitative with due reference to qualitative method as this study is mainly about the practical aspects of cross - cultural communication. All the considerations and conclusions are mainly based on the data analysis and references. Survey questionnaire comes from the daily personal observation. The Vietnamese Northern dialect and English speakers at Vietnam are chosen for the contrastive analysis. By “English speaker”, the author means the foreigners who mostly come from Western countries and speak English as their first language. Approaches and procedures employed to achieve the research goals are as follows: * To establish a theoretical background, both home and foreign relevant publications are critically reviewed and referred to * To collect sufficient data, the informants are asked to tick in the appropriate space * The investigation is resorted to in the investigation with the illustration of tables and charts * Consultation with supervisor, discussion with colleagues and personal observation are also significant contribution to the study 4 6. Design of the study: The study is divided in to 3 parts: Part A: Introduction (Includes: Rationale, Aims of the study, Scope of the study, Research questions, Methods of the study and Design) Part B: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1. Cross – cultural communication 1.1.1. Communication & Communicative competence 1.1.2. Cross - cultural communication 1.2. Speech act 1.2.1. Definition of speech act 1.2.2. Classification of speech acts 1.3. Politeness 1.3.1. What is politeness? 1.3.2. Politeness strategies 1.3.2.1. Positive politeness strategies 1.3.2.2. Negative politeness strategies 1.4. On advice 1.4.1. Definition of advice 1.4.2 Advising as a speech act 1.4.3. Characteristics of advising Chapter 2: Politeness in advising 2.1. The advising frequency in English and Vietnamese 2.1.1. The data analysis 2.1.2. English findings 2.1.3. Vietnamese findings in comparison and contrast to English 2.2. Politeness in advising 2.2.1. Politeness in advising as a need in English and Vietnamese interaction and cultures 2.2.2. Politeness in advising in English and Vietnamese 2.2.2.1. Data collection 2.2.2.2. Data analysis and findings 2.2.2.2.1. Politeness in advising as seen from informant parameters 5 2.2.2.2.2. Positive politeness strategies manifested in English and Vietnamese 2.2.2.2.3. Negative politeness strategies manifested in English and Vietnamese Chapter 3: Some applications of politeness in advising in English teaching and learning 3.1. Application of politeness advising in the teaching of speaking skill 3.2. Application of politeness advising in the teaching of writing skill Part C: Conclusion 1. Summary of the major findings 2. Suggestions for further study Part D: Bibliography Appendix  6    This chapter provides of the theoretical background of the thesis. It is also divided in to four main sections. Section 1 discusses the concept of cross - cultural communication, section 2 positive, negative politeness and section 3 focuses on the issues of the key notion of Speech Act. Lastly, advice is discussed in section 4. 1.1. Cross – cultural communication 1.1.1. Communication and communication competence Communication can be defined as “the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non verbal symbols, oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes” (Canale, 1983:4). It is a form of social interaction and involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message. Communication competence encompasses an underlying system of knowledge and skills. The former refers to what one knows about the language and about other aspects of communicative use; the latter refers to how well one can perform this knowledge in actual communication. The theoretical framework for communicative competence proposed by Canale includes four areas of knowledge and skills: Grammar competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. In the Ethnography of Communication, Saville-Troike provides a more elaborate component of communication, which includes: 1.1.1.1. Linguistic knowledge a. Verbal elements b. Non verbal elements c. Patterns of elements in particular speech events d. Range of possible variants (in all elements and their organization) e. Meaning of variants in particular situation 1.1.1.2 Interaction skills f. Perception of salient features in communication situations 7 g. Selection and interpretation of forms appropriate to specific situations, roles and relationships (rules for the use of speech) h. Norms of interaction and interpretation i. Strategies for achieving goals 1.1.1.2 Cultural knowledge j. Social structure k. Values and attitudes l. Cognitive maps/ scheme m. Enculturation process (transmission of knowledge and skills) (1982:25-26) Communicative competence therefore involves not only the mastery of language codes but also the rules of speaking, social cultural convention and ability to manage in communicative situations. A good communicator is supposed to know when it is appropriate to open a conversation and how, what subjects to choose for particular speech events, which forms of address are to be used to whom, and in which situation and how such speech acts as compliments, request, refusing, etc… are to be given, interpreted and responded to. Factors determining their choice of language may include age, sex, social status, goals of interaction and the setting in which communication occurs (Saville Troi, 1982). The nature and extent of this diversity also vary across cultures. This is the main subject of discussion in the following section. 1.1.2. Cross - cultural communication 1.1.2.1. Definition of cross - cultural communication So far, there has been no unified definition of culture. This word has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilting of the soil. Hofstede (1991) noted that in most Western languages, culture commonly means “civilization” or “refinement of the mind”. In broader sense, culture is a catchword for all the thinking patterns, feeling and acting, including the ordinary and menial things in life such as greeting, eating, showing feeling and so on. Kramsch (1998) suggests defining culture by contrasting it with nature. It is my view that favors the following definition: “Culture is the systemic, rather arbitrary, more or less coherent, group invented and group shared creed from the past that defines the shape of “reality”, and assigns the sense and worth of things. It is modified by each generation and in response to adaptive pressure. It 8 provides the code that tells people how to behave predictably and acceptably, the cipher that allows them to derive meaning , from language and other symbols, the map that supplies the behavioral options for satisfying human needs” (Seelyr,1997:23) A part from that according to Kramsch cross - culture can be understood as “the meeting of two cultures or languages across the political boundaries of nation states.” (Kramsch, 1998:81) This cross - cultural communication is the exchange and negotiation between individuals who come from different cultural background. Normally, people know how to behave appropriately within their own culture and society, but when they move from country to country, this social etiquette changes. For instance it is quite usual for Vietnamese people to greet each other by saying “where are you going?”. Such utterance may be perceived as annoying curiosity by native English speakers because for most Western cultures the individuals and personal privacy come first. For Asian cultures, nevertheless the emphasis is on promoting group harmony. It should be noted that for the purpose of the study Vietnamese examples in this thesis are translate literally, thus, in some cases they may sound unnatural in English. The nature of difference will be made clearer in the following part. 1.1.2.2. Individualism – collectivism in cross - cultural communication In 1974, Hofstede conducted a large - scale study about the cultural values of people in over 50 countries. Based on the result of this research Hofstede (1980, 1991) delineated the two cultural values patterns, labeled individualism – collectivism. The data show that the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada (English speaking countries) are highly individualistic while East Asian countries are at the opposite pole, highly collectivistic (1991:53). In Hofstede’s terms, individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after him or herself and his or her family. Collectivism as its opposite pertains to societies in which people form birth inwards are integrated in to strong, cohesive in - groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty (1991:51). Generally, individualistic and collectivistic value tendencies can be felt in everyday family, school and workplace interaction. The typical individualistic values are freedom, honesty, social recognition, comfort, hedonism, personal equity and personal autonomy. Nguyen Quang further states that individualistic cultures tend to promote the respect for personal 9 privacy; therefore, avoidance of “trespassing on the other’s territory” is regarded as polite behavior (2003:19). Whereas the top collectivistic values include harmony, face saving, respect and conformity of parent’s wish. It is noticeable that in collectivistic culture the power distance is large. Meanwhile for East Asian countries particularly China and Vietnam these values are largely due to the Confucianism doctrine, which maintains that the stability of society is based on unequal relationships between people. The origin of individualism can be traced to various sources. Hofstede highlights the correspondence between modernization and urbanization with individualism. Another important influence stems from Adam Smith, which assumed that “the pursuit of self interest by individuals through an invisible hand would lead to the maximal wealth of nations.” This is a highly individualistic idea that can be found in most Western societies. In conclusion, individualism – collectivism may be the most important dimension in cross- cultural study. It is interesting to find that there is among correlation between the dimensions of individualism – collectivism and the dimensions of negative politeness and positive politeness, small power distance and large power distance, respectively. Therefore, it can serve as guideline for investigating communication behavior of individuals from unalike cultures. However, it should be stressed that not everyone in a collectivistic culture is equally collectivistic in speaking, thinking and behaving, nor are all of the people in an individualistic culture equally individualistic. In fact, we can find certain Vietnamese who are assertive and direct in speaking style and behavior. Likewise, some European – Americans and Canadians may be as collectivistic as the average Vietnamese or Chinese. The truth of the matter should be studied dynamically in relation to the static. 1.2. Speech act Speech act theory was first introduced by the philosopher Austin who originally (1960-52) used the term speech act to refer to an utterance and was later studied by other theorist, such as Hymens (1964), Searl (1969), Levinson (1983), Brown and Yule (1983)… Speech act theory has led to the design of the notional - functional syllabus in English language teaching and speech act analysis has offered a valuable way to look at language function and the connection between function and grammatical forms. 1.2.1. Definition of speech act Although many theorists have studied speech act theory, generally all of them share the common theme that speech act are the actions that are involved when one says something. 10 According to Searle (1964:24), language is part of theory of action, and speech act are those verbal acts such as promising, threatening and requesting that one perform in speaking. George Yule (1996:47) defines that actions performed via utterance are generally speech acts and in English, are commonly given more specific labels such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request. Indeed, when expressing themselves, people do not only produce utterance containing grammatical structure and lexical factors but also perform actions through these utterances. In saying “Shall I open the door for you ?” the speaker is making an offer or in saying “Anh di dau day ?” right after greeting, the Vietnamese speaker does not want to know where you are going, but rather, she is simply producing a greeting routine. In real life conversations, these sentences have their uses quite independent from lexical and grammatical forms. Richards (1985:104) points out: “Speech acts are acts in nature, not sentences. There is no one utterance - one function limitation. A single utterance can have more than one function. For example, the utterance “I’m thirsty” can be used to perform the acts of statement and request.” 1.2.2. Classification of speech act On any occasion, according to Austin the action performed by producing an utterance will consists of three related acts: Locutionay act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. * Locutionary act is the physical act of producing a well - formed and meaningful utterance. For example, if we make a simple sentence like “I want to have a cup of coffee.” We are likely to produce a locutionary act. * Illocutionary act is the force or intention of the speaker or writer behind the words. Take the pervious sentence as an example. We do not only simply say that sentence but also intend to require the listener to bring us a cup of coffee. The illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance. We might utter to make a statement, an offer and an explanations or for some other communicative purpose. This is generally known as the illocutionary force. * Perlocutionary act is the effect of the illocution on the hearer or the reader. It also includes the change to state of mind, knowledge or attitude of the hearer or the reader. For the sentence “I want to have a cup of coffee” we wish the act of bringing a cup of coffee to be done or the perlocutionay force is performed. [...]... Levinson (1987) The analysis focuses only on positive and negative strategies so bald on record and does not do the FTA are beyond the scope of the study 2.2.2.2 Data analysis and findings 2.2.2.2.1 Politeness in advising as seen from informants’ parameter * English findings Table 2.2.2: Politeness in advising as seen from informants’ parameter (English speakers) Informant Age Gender Marital Status... speaker’s point of view Apart from that, it is surprising to see that not only English speaking countries but also Vietnamese ones appear to be interested in using “Impersonalize S and H” negative politeness strategy According to Brown and Levinson (1997:190) one way of indicating that speaker does not want to impinge on hearer by avoiding the pronoun “I” and “you”, for example in situation 7: “Take my advice... put into the avoidance of a conflict situation, the establishment and the maintenance of comity” (Watts, 2003:50) Brown and Levinson (1987) emphasize politeness as strategies employed by a speaker to obtain a variety of objectives such as promoting or maintaining harmonious relations In interaction, there is a narrower type of politeness at work, which serves as a crucial concept for people to conduct... can overcome all difficulties or culture shock in real life communication In brief, teaching English cannot be separated from teaching its culture – its politeness Doing and practicing cultural exercises and activities on politeness introduced in the next section are one of the effective ways for studying and understanding politeness of English 3.1 Application of politeness in advising in the teaching... about Vietnam and have no bias toward answering the survey questionnaire The later group, the Vietnamese in the North of Vietnam, is my colleagues at Panasonics Company and my students at Language Link Centre Since the survey questionnaire was administered in Vietnam by the author herself, she was able to have face to face contact with the informants It is the author’s assumption that the status parameters... important thing Actually, the closeness makes the Vietnamese give advice more frequently than the English does The feedback mostly are in column 1 and 2 has shown that the positive politeness makes them concern the other people 2.2 Politeness in advising 2.2.1 Politeness in advising as a need in English and Vietnamese interaction and cultures People live in a community and have relationship with each... clarify this assumption 2.2.2 Politeness in advising in English and Vietnamese 2.2.2.1 Data collection This survey was done with the participation of 20 English speakers and Vietnamese ones There are ten situations designed in the form of multiple choice, three answers for each situations 20 Vietnamese informants and 20 English are asked to choose the right one, which they think the most suitable in. .. reduce as much imposition on someone else’s negative face In brief through the data analysis of negative politeness strategies in 10 designed situations, we can see easily that there are only five strategies are frequently used in communication Apparently, the analysis of data has made an influence of cross - cultural factors on the choice of using negative politeness strategies However, among these 11 strategies. .. understand more about the cultural values and be aware of cultural differences That is the students may be pointed out whether positive or negative politeness strategies are acceptable, preferable in English or in Vietnamese in certain conversational activities They should grasp the reality that some linguistic expressions, which are appropriate in English, cannot be literally interpreted in Vietnamese. .. students about what to say and how to say politely in English in a certain situation Polite or appropriate utterance should be subtly introduced in a way that language functions are focused as well as forms Lastly, while teaching English the teacher is advised to create chances of social interaction for students because one of the best ways to teach social English is by social situations Under the teacher’s . Politeness in advising as a need in English and Vietnamese interaction and cultures 2.2.2. Politeness in advising in English and Vietnamese 2.2.2.1. Data collection. applications of politeness in advising in English teaching and learning 3.1. Application of politeness advising in the teaching of speaking skill 3.2. Application