Pragmatic transfer in interlanguage requesting by vietnamese learners of english

Chapter I: Introduction I.1 Rationale for the study With the advent of today's global economic system, we observe an increasing degree of communication across different cultures between people of different languages In order to be successful in communication, it is essential for second language learners to know not just grammar and text organization but also pragmatic aspects of the target language (Bachman 1990)1 ‘Pragmatic competence’ can be specifically defined as “knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according to context” (Kasper 1997) The study of the learner language has been a growing source of concern in pragmatics in recent years The pragmatic perspective toward the learner language led to the birth of a new interdiscipline, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) ILP studies are concerned with language learners’ performance and acquisition of pragmatic competence in their second language The influence of language learners’ linguistic and cultural background on their performance of linguistic action in a second language has been a focal concern in ILP Among non-structural factors interacting with pragmatic transfer is second language proficiency, which has been found to constrain pragmatic transfer in requesting (Blum-Kulka, 1982) A number of ILP studies, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, regarding the use of pragmatic realization patterns and strategies have been conducted on a number of languages such as English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean, etc Informants examined ranged from the English learners of Hebrew as TL (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; Olshtain, 1983), the German learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; House, 1988; DeCapua, 1989), the Danish learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; Trosborg, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989), the Japanese learners of English as TL (Takahashi & Dufon, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990), the Hebrew (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981), the Russian (Olshtain, 1983), the German (House, 1988), the Spanish (Scarcella, 1983), the Venezuelan (Garcia, 1989), and the Japanese (Beebe et al, 1990; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993), and the Thai learners of ESL (Bergman & Kasper, 1993) Up till now, the following speech acts have been investigated cross-linguistically: request (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; House & Kasper, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Takahashi & Dufon, 1989), complaint (DeCapua, 1989), and apology (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Olshtain, 1983; Trosborg, 1987; House, 1988; Garcia, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990; Bergman & Kasper, 1993), refusal (Beebe et al, 1990), and correction (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993) Besides, some other non-linguistic factors, such as discourse accent (Scarcella, 1983) and politeness orientation and styles (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993) were also investigated Studies of speech act realization have at least highlighted ILP research in five ways (Liu, 2002): first, these reports suggested that even quite proficient learners tended to have less control over the conventions of forms and means used by native speakers in the performance of linguistic action; second, there were differences between learners’ and native speakers’ sociopragmatic perceptions of comparable speech events that were systematically related to differences in their speech act performance; third, pragmatic transfer at the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic levels persisted at higher levels of proficiency; fourth, learners produced more speech than native speakers did when the task was less demanding on their control skills; fifth, researchers should pay close attention to the constraints of different data collection instruments on learners’ performance (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993:63) There have been studies on similarities and differences in the realization of speech acts by Vietnamese speakers and English speakers Nevertheless, pragmatic transfer, which has been a focal concern in interlanguage pragmatics, has not been investigated in studies on Vietnamese learners of English Requests, along with the speech acts of apology and refusal, have received substantial attention in second language acquisition research (Ellis, 1994) Tam (1998) has investigated how the form of requests made by native Australian speakers differs from that by Vietnamese learners of English with respect to the use of strategies, internal modifications, and external modifications, and how these forms vary in relation to the variables of Power, Distance and Ranking of imposition She found that Vietnamese learners were limited in modifying their requests syntactically and lexically as well as internally While, the choices of request strategy by the Australian speakers and Vietnamese speakers were similar in some situations, differences that were also found suggested that the Vietnamese speakers lack the pragmatic knowledge of the appropriate strategy However, the study still did not include data for L1 Vietnamese to provide confirmation of pragmatic transfer and did not look at the performance of learners at different levels Addressing differences between English and Vietnamese in request perception and production, this study will deal with pragmatic transfer of requesting by Vietnamese learners of English With the aim of finding useful information on the development of pragmalinguistic competence, we pay attention to language proficiency effects on Vietnamese learners’ performance of request in English Specifically, we are going to examine whether English language proficiency affects Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting Besides, the influence of gender on Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting is also going to be investigated for the first time I.2 Aims of the study The study aims to find out: - the influence of contextual factors on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request - the influence of English proficiency of Vietnamese learners on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request - the influence of Vietnamese learners’ gender on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request I.3 Scope of the study The study is limited to the investigation of requesting and request realization in ten situations The survey does not cover paralinguistic and nonverbal aspects although their importance in communication is undeniable The informants of the survey include 21 native English speakers and 48 Vietnamese learners of English (28 intermediate learners and 20 advanced ones, 30 female learners and 18 male ones) All the native English speakers are working in Vietnam The informants are not varied and numerous enough for the author to come to ‘fixed’ conclusions However, the study is expected to point out the influence of contextual factors, learners’ proficiency and gender in English on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English Chapter II: Literature review I Speech act I.1 Speech act When we are producing utterances containing grammatical and lexicological factors, we are performing actions through these utterances It means utterances not only contain a message, it also have a social force For example, when we say ‘I promise I’ll it’, not only information is conveyed but the act of promising is also constituted The actions performed via utterances for the purpose of communicating are called speech acts A speech act is separated into three acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (Austin, 1962) When we make an utterance, we perform an act of saying something, which is a locutionary act It is simply an act of producing a linguistically, well-formed and meaningful expression The illocutionary act is the function of utterance that the speaker has in mind When we say ‘I’d like a cup of tea’, we not simply say the sentence but we also intend to require someone to give us a cup of tea Thus, the illocutionary act is performed for communicative function and it is considered the most important of the three dimensions of a speech act Yule claims ‘ the term speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance.’ (1996,49) There may be no one-to-one correspondence between syntactic forms and illocutionary acts For example, the statement ‘ I’m cold’ may have the illocutionary act of requesting somebody to turn on the heating system When we make an utterance, we intend to have an effect on the hearer and that is the perlocutionary act For example, when we say ‘I’d like to have a cup of tea’, we wish the hearer to give you a cup of tea The act of giving you a cup of tea done means that the perlocutionary perfomed As the illocutionary act is the most important, Searle (1969) has set up five types of speech acts as follows: ♦ Declarations: are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterances (bring about states of affairs such as firings, namings, ) ♦ Representatives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not (E.g: assertions, conclusions, ) ♦ Expressives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels They denote the speaker’s physical state or attitude (E.g: pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, ) ♦ Directives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to get someone else to something (E.g: commands, requests, suggestions, ) ♦ Commissives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to commit themselves to some future action (E.g: promises, threats, refusals, pledges, ) I.2 Speech act of requesting Requesting is defined as an act of requiring the other(s) to something performed through utterance(s) in interaction As the speaker makes a request, s/he desires the hearer’s expenditure of time, energy or material resource In other words, requests impose the speaker’s interest on the hearer They can be regarded as a constraint on the hearer’s freedom of action Thus, requesting is considered one of the most sensitive illocutionary acts in communication Requests are complex speech acts which involve a relationship of different elements These elements have been identified by Blum-Kulka (1991) as the request schema which includes requestive goals subject to a cultural filter, linguistic encoding (strategies, perspective and modifiers), situational parameters (distance, power, legitimization) and the social meaning of the request according to cultural and situational factors Whereas, Gordon and Lakoff (1971) claims the combination of the three factors: the literal meaning of the sentence, the perceived context, and a so-called conversational postulate, helps the hearer interpret the speaker’s utterance intended as a request I Politeness II.1 Politeness Politeness is a common word that means ‘having or showing that one has good manners and consideration for other people’ (Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary.) It is similar to ‘civility’, ‘courtesy’, and ‘good manners.’ However, politeness also means that ‘behaving or speaking in a way that is correct for the social situations you are in, and showing that you are careful to consider other people’s needs and feelings’ (Longman Advanced American Dictionary.) We have ‘commonsense’ politeness and ‘scientific’ notions of politeness Politeness can be manifested through general social behaviour as well as linguistic means This assumption, however, emphasizes once again on the fact that politeness cannot and should not be assessed out of context, since from a pragmatic point of view, all utterances in conversation are interpreted firstly contextually and only secondly literally (Coulmas, 1981) The hypothesis that, what is implied and/or meant at a discourse level varies according to the context of the utterance, was originally introduced by Grice, in 1968 Every utterance has always been looked upon in the social context in which it is uttered Embedded in a social context the function of a greeting, an apology or a compliment differs in its form Obviously politeness is culturally determined and undergoes gender differences This means for example that Americans differ in their polite behavior massively from Japanese or Indian politeness norms Furthermore it is a recognized fact that within one culture there are existing different polite social behavior structures between females and males But some things can be said as true overall It is true that politeness expresses concern for the feelings of others The strategies to so differ from situation to situation and can be expressed linguisticly as well as non-linguisticly In addition, politeness theories distinguish between referential and affective function of language use and between negative and positive politeness If we look at personal face to face interactions there is more to being polite than just opening the door and listening to the communication partner Everyone has to establish a public self-image, which is scientifically called face Yule defines face by saying: “It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize.” Therefore, politeness can be defined as being aware of another person’s face and presenting one’s own face To accept somebody’s face means using strategies which are either threatening or saving respectively and which express a negative or a positive face Using these strategies helps to establish social distance, respect, deference or closeness, solidarity or friendship, depending on the situation and the used strategies On the one hand, if something is said which could be seen as a threat to somebody else’s self image, it is called a face threatening act Face-threatening acts (FTA), are liable to threaten or damage the Hearer’s positive face, i.e expressions of disapproval/criticism, accusations, contradictions, interrupting, expressions of violent emotions, etc., and threaten his/her negative face, i.e orders, requests, remindings, offers, promises, etc Moreover, certain acts can also be face threatening to the Speaker’s positive face, such as expressing thanks, excuses, acceptance of offers/apologies, etc., as well as his/her negative face, such as apologies, acceptance of compliments, confessions/admissions of guilt or responsibility, etc On the other hand, reducing the possibility of a threat to someone’s self image is seen as a face saving act Being polite means trying to save another persons face We can either contribute to the needs of our communication partner or not Expressing polite behavior can be done either by employing a negative face or by using a positive face A person’s negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others The word ‘negative’ here doesn’t mean ‘bad’, it’s just the opposite pole from ‘positive’ A person’s positive face is the need to be accepted, even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others In simple terms, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be connected Thus, the Speaker should adopt certain strategies, in order to maintain his or her own face undamaged and at the same time to minimize the possibility of affecting the positive or negative face of the Hearer It is generally accepted that various markers contribute to the politeness of an utterance and the explanations of their existence are placed within a broad framework of cultural differences As aforementioned, it is undoubtful that different socio-cultural norms are reflected in all levels of the linguistic code Therefore, when observing politeness norms the researcher should always take account of the relationship between the Speaker and the Hearer and the nature of the interaction in which they are involved (Leech, 1983) A politeness strategy is employed by the ‘weightiness.’ The weightiness is calculated by speakers from the social variables such as power difference between speaker and hearer (P), the perceived social distance between speaker and hearer (D), and ranking of imposition (R) R differs from culture to culture because they are how threatening or dangerous in a specific culture P, D and R not have any absolute value Mainly a speaker values them according to the situation and culture subjectively Thus, weightiness is calculated as follows Wx = D (S, H) + P (S, H) + Rx Leech (1983) sees cultural rules at work in expressions of politeness and attempts to categorize in more detail some of the underlying intent behind these forms by articulating a set of rules or Politeness Maxims at work in polite dialogue 1) Tact maxim: minimize cost and maximize benefit to other 2) Generosity maxim: minimize benefit and maximize cost to self 3) Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other 4) Modesty maxim: minimize praise and maximize dispraise of self 5) Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self and other 6) Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between self and other While these maxims not seem to contradict each other in principle, failure to recognize these maxims as they are expressed in particular utterances can lead to what Thomas (1983) calls “cross-cultural pragmatic failure” (p 92) Thomas indicates that pragmatic failure can occur at two levels: failure to understand which proposition the speaker has expressed and failure to understand the pragmatic force of the speaker’s utterance The potential of pragmatic failure is apparent when reviewing specific contrastive examples of politeness features across cultures II.2 Politeness-Directness-Indirectness Politeness is a number of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture S.Blum-Kulka has defined politeness as the interactional balance achieved between the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness If the Speaker decides to perform a FTA, then Brown and Levinson (1978) suggest a framework that determines the choice of his/her strategy: Even though certain pragmatic features manifest themselves in any natural language, the issue of universality of Politeness phenomena is challenged since the system of variant 10 IV.3.1.5 Summary Context Coffee Positive transfer Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Statement Floor Note Direction Non-explicit Question Non-explicit Statement Non-explicit Statement Negative transfer (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) The summary table demonstrated that three of the four strategies were positively transferred in the four contexts predicted to have positive transfer All the contexts had positive transfer as expected In the four contexts appeared negative transfer However, there was only one strategy positively transferred in only one context That was Statement in context Floor, where the native groups disagreed on the hearer’s inconvenience of performing the request Imperative was the only strategy was neither negatively nor positively transferred in the contexts It means the learners were aware of the difference between the two languages in using imperative requests and successfully avoiding it The sexes showed no difference in their use of strategies of making requests in these contexts They made negative transfer, positive transfer or no transfer together in all the cases 56 IV.3.2 Predicted negative transfer and actual occurrence IV.3.2.1 Report Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 57 53 50 37 33 33 40 29 14 17 17 14 0 Similarly in the previous contexts, the non-explicit strategy was positively transferred with the very low rates of the informants in the groups choosing it What was positively transferred with higher percentages was Question Interestingly, the rates of male and female making Questions in the context were equal Another strategy positively transferred by the two groups of gender was Imperative However, the male ESL learners were better Negative transfer in the two sexes’ use of Statement resulted from the fact that about a third of the three groups of Vietnamese informants employed it while the English speakers totally ignored it IV.3.2.2 Summary Context Report Positive transfer Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Question (VEM,VEF) Imperative (VEM,VEF) Negative transfer Statement (VEM,VEF) Though negative transfer in the context predicted to have it, it was small in proportion to unexpected positive transfer 57 Like the contexts above, this context had the negative transfer of Statement It seemed both male and female learners were confused by this strategy The ESL Vietnamese learners of the two sexes seemed to employ the imperative strategy in a moderate way and made positive transfer of it The positive transfer of the Non-explicit and Question strategies continued to occur in this context Non-explicit requests were paid little attention to by the informants The men and women continued to run neck to neck in the pragmatic transfer of the strategies IV.3.3 Unpredicted pragmatic transfer IV.3.3.1 Pen Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 33 0 0 57 60 100 100 43 0 The most noteworthy thing in the context was that nearly half of the English speakers made non-explicit requests The rate was much greater than in the other contexts Nevertheless, the Vietnamese groups continued to leave the strategy out of consideration and this led to negative transfer The Question strategy was the favourite choice of all the four groups Despite the similar rates of the two groups of native speakers’ frequencies of Question, positive transfer did not obtain Even though the rates of the two native groups using it were great, they were only a half of those of the male and female groups Meanwhile, negative transfer of Imperative did not obtain in spite of the difference between the Vietnamese and English people’s use Neither male nor female ESL learners selected it and the same thing happened to the English speakers 58 The only transfer that was observed in this context was positive transfer of Statement 7% of the Vietnamese people making Vietnamese Statement requests was too low to make a difference between the native groups IV.3.3.2 Towel Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 94 22 20 29 71 72 77 0 0 The biggest difference between the native English and Vietnamese people was seen in the use of Imperative in this context Imperative was not in the English native people’s choice list while nearly all the Vietnamese native people selected it However, there was no negative transfer as it was selected by only about one fifth of the male and female learners IV.3.3.3 Score Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 27 11 43 20 22 20 57 53 67 80 0 0 The non-explicit strategy was not paid attention to in this context We can assume that it was positively transferred Positive transfer was made in the use of both Statement and Question The male learners did better than the female ones in selecting both strategies The female ESL Vietnamese seemed to be more indirect in the context They completely skipped Imperative, and Question was their popular choice in context Score Statement was much more frequently employed in this context The Vietnamese learners seemed to be more confident to make Statement requests 59 when the request was accompanied with supportive moves explaining the situation and asking the professor for help The difference between the Vietnamese and English native informants in using Imperative could be considered significant but no transfer occurred here No Vietnamese women made imperative requests and only a few men did It showed that the female Vietnamese behaved more like the English IV.3.3.4 Document Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 14 33 44 13 14 86 53 56 80 0 0 The positive transfer of non-explicit requests as a result of being no informants’ choice came as no surprise The male and female ESL Vietnamese learners differed remarkably in their selection of Question The male ESL ones negatively transferred Question in making requests about the forgotten document while the learners of the opposite sex was successful with the rate of those using it approximate to that of the English speakers Besides, the female performed imperative requests better The percentages of the English native and the female ESL Vietnamese employing Imperative were nearly the same Therefore, the female ESL learners made positive transfer of Imperative in this context Meanwhile, the male learners made such a big difference from the English native informants in the use of this strategy that negative transfer was seen The Vietnamese ESL females’ good performance went on with Statement when they positively transferred it However, the male informants was more like the English people, who refused to use Statement in making requests 60 IV.3.3.5 Course Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question Non-explicit (%) (%) (%) (%) 79 7 17 86 14 83 90 14 0 A few non-explicit requests made by the English native speakers were not enough to make a difference The non-explicit strategy was still chosen the lest frequently And positive transfer occurred due to the groups’ dislike for it The strategy that was even chosen less by the native groups was Statement More Vietnamese ESL learners of the two sexes employed it than the non-explicit strategy but the rates were low enough to avoid differences from the native groups’ use So positive transfer of Statement was made by both the sexes We can realize tremendous differences between the English and Vietnamese native people in their use of both Imperative and Question Nevertheless, there was no transfer in both cases The groups of female and male learners of English demonstrated their awareness of these differences and behaved similarly to the native speakers of the target language 61 IV.3.3.6 Summary Context Pen Positive transfer Statement (VEM, Score Document Course (VEM, VEF) (VEM, VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Question Towel VEF) Non-explicit Non-explicit Statement Imperative (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit Statement Imperative Non-explicit Statement (VEM, VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Negative transfer Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Question (VEM) Positive transfer was prevalent in the five contexts All the four strategies were positively transferred Besides the non-explicit strategy transferred mainly as a result of the groups’ lest popular choice, Statement was positively transferred the most Imperative was the only strategy that had no negative transfer It showed that the Vietnamese ESL informants absolutely did not over-use imperative requests Non-explicit and Statement were also once negatively transferred The negative transfer of non-explicit requests in context Pen was really an interesting thing in the light of the fact that the informants hardly chose this strategy in all the ten contexts Question was transferred positively once and negatively once The transfer of the strategy was little compared with the informants’ frequency of using it It was the only strategy that bore the difference between the two sexes in transfer in one context The ESL men made negative transfer of Question while the women did not when making requests of asking the junior colleague to bring the forgotten document 62 Score was a special context where all the strategies were positively transferred and no negative transfer was made In general, the Vietnamese ESL learners of the two sexes made good use of the similarities between the two languages and thus, made a lot of positive transfer 63 IV.3.4 Pragmatic transfer in ten contexts Context Coffee Floor Note Direction Report Pen Positive transfer Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Question (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) Question (VEM,VEF) Imperative (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM, Score Document Course VEF) Non-explicit Non-explicit Statement Imperative (VEM, VEF) (VEM, VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Question Towel (VEM, VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEF) (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Statement (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit (VEM,VEF) (VEM,VEF) Non-explicit Statement Imperative Non-explicit Statement Negative transfer Statement (VEM,VEF) Question (VEM) Positive transfer dominated the pragmatic transfer in the ten contexts while negative transfer was infrequently at work in the learners’ request performance Learners’ perceptions of contextual factors did not show any significant influence on their choice of request strategies The Vietnamese ESL learners of the two sexes paralleled in pragmatic transfer of the strategies in the contexts except the positive transfer of Imperative in context Document (made by the females only) and the negative transfer of Question in the same context (made by the 64 males only) The difference between the two sexes in making English requests was shown only in this context Context Coffee had little transfer Only the Non-explicit strategy was positively transferred with no choice made by the four groups Meanwhile, context Score had all the strategies positively transferred Besides the non-explicit strategy, Statement was positively transferred the most Interestingly, it was also negatively transferred the most That is, Statement requests caused a lot of confusion to the Vietnamese ESL learners Imperative was the only strategy that was not negatively transferred Though the native Vietnamese people were prone to Imperative in many cases, they used it moderately in making requests in English IV.3.5 Pragmatic transfer across ten contexts Imperative Strategies E V VEM VEF Statement Question (%) (%) (%) 11 57 22 12 19 8 Non-explicit 61 (%) 34 67 81 Across the ten contexts, the two native groups of informants differed strongly only in the employment of Imperative Nevertheless, no negative transfer was made Positive transfer was observed in the use of the remainder of the strategies The male Vietnamese ESL learners’ performance across the ten contexts was better than that of the female ones Their use of three of the four strategies (Statement, Question and Nonexplicit) was closer to the native speakers of English Women are often assumed to use less imperatives than men but here we can easily see male learners employed Imperative more 65 frequently and hence, female learners approximated the native norm in using Imperative requests Both of the gender groups favoured Question and paid little attention to non-explicit requests The more frequently they employed a strategy, the bigger the difference between the two groups’ use was The biggest difference between the male and female ESL informants appeared in their selection of Question, which was the most popular strategy among the informants of the two sexes 66 Chapter V: Conclusion and Implications V.1 Summary Different cultures have different perceptions and interpretations of appropriateness and politeness; therefore, cross-cultural communication posits inherent risks of pragmatic failure Pragmatic transfer occurs when the L1 learners use their own communicative strategies even though they speak the L2 language An especially sensitive pragmatic task concerns constructing requests, in which the benefit is exclusively for the speaker The learners’ level of proficiency has been studied as a factor affecting pragmatic transfer in a lot of research but its influence on pragmatic transfer has been controversial For example, Takahashi and Beebe (1987) hypothesized that high L2 proficiency is correlated with pragmatic transfer since previous studies showed that highly proficient Japanese ESL learners often used a typical Japanese formal tone when making refusals However, their study did not clearly confirm the proficiency effect Besides, gender is also a factor that is considered to have effects on pragmatic transfer but has been little concerned Some research has mentioned the influence of gender on speech act realization in cross-cultural communication but gender has still been little concerned in ILP studies Among the speech acts, requests have been widely examined in interlanguage pragmatics Comparison between Vietnamese and English requests has also received a lot of attention However, Ha Cam Tam’s MA thesis on requests by Australian native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English in 1998 has been among the first studies on requests by native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English from the perspective of interlangauge pragmatics However, pragmatic transfer was not investigated as data of requests made by native Vietnamese people in Vietnamese was not included Therefore, the present study was aimed to examine pragmatic transfer by native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English in requesting in English First, predictions of pragmatic transfer were made based on learners’ assessments of contextual factors, and then they were matched against the actual 67 occurrence Learners’ level of proficiency in English and their gender were two factors, of which the influence on pragmatic transfer was investigated The major findings of the study include: Contextual assessment and predictions of pragmatic transfer The native Vietnamese and English informants have similar perceptions of contextual factors in four of the ten contexts and thus, positive transfer was predicted Negative transfer was expected in only one context where the two native groups differed in their assessment of four contextual factors Vietnamese ESL learners’ level of proficiency in English and their pragmatic transfer Vietnamese learners of English made much more positive transfer than negative transfer in all the contexts no matter what kind of pragmatic transfer was predicted Social perceptions seemed not to be good indicators of pragmatic transfer Intermediate and advanced Vietnamese learners of English made pragmatic transfer of request strategies similarly and showed almost no difference Proficiency in English did not show any obvious influence on learners’ pragmatic transfer of requests The limitation of the study is that we only categorized and examined the head acts of requests The effect of L2 proficiency might have been expressed in other aspects In addition, the number of strategies of requests as well as the number of the informants was limited; they might not be varied enough to reveal differences between groups of different proficiency Vietnamese learners at different levels were all aware that imperative requests were culturespecific native English speakers tended to make Question requests Statement was the strategy they found most confusing 68 Vietnamese ESL learners’ gender and their pragmatic transfer Positive transfer by male and female learners had the pervasive effect compared with negative transfer And like in the case of learners groups of different English proficiency levels, predictions of pragmatic transfer based on learners’ social perceptions did not work well for learners groups of gender Like English proficiency, gender did not clearly show any effect on Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer of request strategies Question was the most popular choice of both groups of gender while they were not very good at using Statement requests The greatest difference between the two sexes lied in their frequencies of selecting Question The female Vietnamese informants only performed better than those of the opposite sex in the employment of Imperative The limitations in the part of the thesis that deals with pragmatic transfer made by the groups of different English proficiency in pragmatic transfer of requests are also the limitations of this part V.2 Implications The findings of the study indicates the importance of teaching pragmatic rules As Vietnamese learners of English were aware of the English speakers’ proneness to requests in the form of questions and the Vietnamese speakers’ tendency to make imperatives, they were more cautious in using Imperative in making requests and gave more priority to Question This stemmed from the fact that conventionally indirect requests have been taught and emphasized in English teaching programs However, the Vietnamese learners did not use Statement efficiently They often reverted to this strategy because they did not really feel “safe” with Imperative and Question rather than because they felt it was a good choice Thus, they should be more exposed and made more familiar with this strategy of request 69 In general, the Vietnamese ESL learners mainly differentiated the strategies of request based on their grammatical structures and were not really sensitive to politeness degrees of the strategies, which should be paid more attention to in language programs V.3 Suggestions for further research First, the effect of contextual factors and native people’s assessment of contextual factors on their pragmatic transfer would be better examined if we could perform surveys with the double number of contexts, in which the two halves of the contexts had the same situations varying by interlocutor role relationships in terms of relative power and social distance between the interactants (which had both been shown to be significant variables in determining speech performance ( Brown and Levinson, 1987 and Blum-Kulka et al., 1989)): interlocutors either knew each other [−distance] or did not know each other [+distance]; the hearer was either of lower status [−power], interlocutors were of equal status [=power], or the hearer was of higher status [+power] Second, this study only investigated head act strategies The investigation into semantic formulae for the speech act of requests in English as well as into the differences between types and frequency of supportive move formulae or internal/external modifications used by Vietnamese learners of English and native English speakers would provide more information on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English and the effect of L2 proficiency and gender 70 ... going to examine whether English language proficiency affects Vietnamese learners? ?? pragmatic transfer in requesting Besides, the influence of gender on Vietnamese learners? ?? pragmatic transfer in. .. Vietnamese to English in the realization of request - the influence of English proficiency of Vietnamese learners on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request... III.3.1 Informants In order to investigate the influence of Vietnamese ESL learners? ?? proficiency in Engllish on pragmatic transfer, there are following groups of informants participating in the