Strategies used in giving advice by english and vietnamese students

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I STRATEGIES USED IN GIVING ADVICE BY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE STUDENTS NHỮNG CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐƯỢC SỬ DỤNG ĐỂ ĐƯA RA LỜI KHUYÊN CỦA SINH VIÊN VIỆT VÀ SINH VIÊN ANH Hoang Tra My Central University of Construction (CUC) Email: hoangtramy.hn@gmail.com ABSTRACT Cultural knowledge plays an important role in learning language To help English learners enrich their cultural knowledge, this study is to find out the similarities and differences in the ways of giving advice of English and Vietnamese students The study uses a quantitative method to collect data by carrying out a survey questionnaire among 60 students from different universities The study is aimed to find out some significant results Firstly, in most situations, Vietnamese give advice more frequently than English students However, in sensitive situations, both of them share the same point of views by avoiding advising Furthermore, only in Vietnam, advising frequency depends on the level of closeness of relations and the seriousness of the problems Lastly, in advising, English students prefer indirectness regardless of age and social position The directness of Vietnamese, in contrast, relies on the closeness and the positions of speakers and hearers All these similarities and differences are explained due to the cultural influences Key words: Giving advice strategies; politeness in advising; direct and indirect advice; Vietnamese culture; Western culture TÓM TẮT Kiến thức văn hóa đóng vai trị quan trọng việc học ngoại ngữ Để bồi đắp kiến thức văn hóa cho người học tiếng anh, nghiên cứu nhằm tìm điểm giống khác cách đưa lời khuyên sinh viên địa Việt Nam Phương pháp phân tích định lượng áp dụng với bảng câu hỏi gửi cho 60 sinh viên từ trường Đại Học Nghiên cứu tìm số kết đáng ý Trong hầu hết tình huống, sinh viên Việt đưa lời khuyên thường xuyên hơn, đặc biệt mối quan hệ gần gũi Tuy nhiên hai có xu hướng tránh đưa lời khuyên tình tế nhị Cuối cùng, khác với sinh viên địa, sinh viên Việt thích khuyên trực tiếp mức độ trược tiếp tiếp phụ thuộc lớn vào mức độ gần gũi vị trí xã hội người nói người nghe Sự đa dạng văn hóa giải thích cho khác Từ khóa: Chiến lược đưa lời khun; tính lịch lời khuyên; lời khuyên trực tiếp; lời khuyên gián tiếp; văn hóa Việt Nam; văn hóa Phương Tây Introduction 1.1 Aims of the study Giving advice is an extremely crucial speech act in our daily communication; nevertheless, how to give advice politely is a really challenging question to everyone, especially to people coming from different or opposite culture Vietnamese students, for example, meet various obstacles in dealing with cultural problems when communicating with Westerners Among those, the act of giving advice seems to trouble them most because they are unaware of when and how or what strategies to give advice This study, consequently, deals 78 with two main questions (1) in what situations English and Vietnamese students give advices? And (2) which strategies used in giving advice by Vietnamese and English students? 1.2 Literature Review 1.2.1 Social Indirectness Distance, Directness and Social distance, in the view of Levison (1987) and Wolfson (1988), is one of the factors that determine politeness behaviors and Wolfson (1988) adds by stating that there is very little solidarity established among strangers and intimates because of the relative pre-existing THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I familiarity of their relationship, whereas the negotiation of relationships is more likely to happen among friends People from English-speaking countries often use direct expressions while Oriental people in general and Vietnamese in particular seem to prefer roundabout and indirect patterns (Kaplan; 1972) 1.2.2 Giving Advice in Politeness Many linguistic scholars have done researches on question of politeness There are various conclusions made by many scholars such as Grice (1975), Lakoff (1973), Leech (1980), Scolon (1983), Richard (1985), Yule (1996) and others Basing on the theory of conventional principles of Grice, Lakoff (1973) has described politeness in terms of three rules namely “don’t impose”, “offer options” and “encourage feelings camaraderie” while Leech (1983) suggests these maxims accounting for the level of politeness in different cultures Richard (1985), furthermore, notes how language expresses the social distance between speakers and listeners and how face-work maintains and saves face during conversation Especially, Brown and Levinson (1978) distinguished between ‘positive face’, one’s desires are approved or accepted and ‘negative face’, one’s desires to be free from imposition from others In various situations, people need help from others; hence, it is important to give a piece of advice in politeness The speech act of advising has to cope with the social cultural backgrounds in which politeness is an essential norm As a result, it is necessary to learn about rules and norms of giving advice to others first one is designed to check the frequency of giving advice through three levels namely really necessary, necessary and unnecessary while the second one deals with ways English and Vietnamese students apply to advise people in different age and social status The survey is carried out among 60 participants (30 Vietnamese and 30 English) They are in different ages, coming from various universities and belonging to varied social status Vietnamese students are from some universities in Hanoi including: Open University, Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Education, Hanoi University of Technology and Hanoi Architectural The natives are students from some universities in Hanoi and some universities in English speaking countries, mostly from Canada, England and American Data Analysis 2.1 The advising frequency in English and Vietnamese Table The advising frequency used by English and Vietnamese students (in percentage) English Vietnamese (1) 17 80 30 60 10 (2) 20 73 13 67 20 (3) 10 50 40 47 50 (4) 17 76 37 47 16 (5) 10 90 53 40 23 72 36 53 11 (6) 17 83 27 57 16 (7) 13 84 47 46 (8) 10 90 10 37 53 (9) 10 20 70 27 43 30 (10) 23 27 50 13 43 44 17 76 17 45 38 1.3 Methodology: Survey Research The study is carried out basing on the quantitative method A survey questionnaire including 10 situations related to social and family problems is employed in this study Five social and five family problems are dealt with separately to find out the differences and similarities in responses The study is divided into two parts; the (1): Situation 1: Your son does not the homework (2) Your younger sister has a messy room (3) Your mother has taken drugs 79 THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I (4) Your father smokes a lot 20 23 57 40 20 40 27 13 57 50 20 23 17 50 33 17 39 27 17 10 10 36 47 10 47 33 10 (8) Your colleague does not want to live with her parents and decides to rent a house to live alone 16 30 50 16 51 17 16 (9) Your roommate often comes home late S: Situation (10) Your neighbor often makes noise at night (1) Imperative (5) Your sister falls in love with a married man (6) Your friend gets low marks in important exams (7) Your close friend has gained a lot of weight 2.2 Strategies Used by English and Vietnamese Students In advising, people often take advantage of politeness strategies in order to show their respect and concerns towards others People from different culture prefer different politeness strategies When people want to show their closeness, concern or solidarity, they use positive politeness strategies or direct ways; however, when people want to respect others’ independence and privacy, they utilize negative politeness strategies or indirect ways In this study, politeness positive and negative strategies will be dealt with in the forms of directness and indirectness in the ways English and Vietnamese students give advices to others The levels of directness are presented in four suggested options in each situation These options are illustrated in terms of four forms of advices namely imperative, modality markers, declarative and interrogative The data gathered are in the table below: Table The use of four forms of advices by English and Vietnamese students (in percentage) English Students Vietnamese Students S (1) (2) (3) (4) (1) (2) (3) (4) 13 33 47 47 33 17 17 53 27 53 33 7 17 17 60 73 13 10 14 73 70 17 10 10 20 30 40 13 67 10 10 17 27 56 60 17 17 80 (3) Declarative (2) Modality markers (4) Interrogative Discussions 3.1 The Advising Frequency in English and Vietnamese 3.1.1 The advising frequency in English As mentioned above, giving advice is an excessively important speech act in our daily communication; however, the frequency of advising in different countries is different due to cultural diversity In most Western countries, people highly appreciate individualism and independence and they are inclined to respect others’ privacy and freedom In terms of family, all members from grandparents to children have freedom to make their own choices and others tend to respect them In terms of society, Westerners move their houses time to time and this leads to the fact that they rarely pay attention to neighbors or acquaintances living around them Furthermore, friends often gather for enjoyment rather than share problems or difficulties According to the statistics shown in table 1, despite close relations in family and distant relations in society, the frequency in which English students give advice in these relations is considerable similar Most English students (72% and 76%) suppose that giving advices is unnecessary while only 5% and 7% regard it as highly necessary This number proves that English students not have habits of giving advices Secondly, English students avoid giving advice whether they are in higher or lower positions For example, in situation and 4, most English students (80% and 76%) THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I disapprove of advising although advisers are in higher position in situation (parents) and lower position in situation (children) This demonstrates that English students give advice regardless of position Furthermore, in sensitive situations such as situation 5, and 9, few English students suppose that it is highly necessary to give advices Dating, gaining weight or coming home late are extremely private matters in Western culture, nobody should or has right to interfere to others’ privacy Most of them would like to ignore these problems instead of commenting or advising Lastly, although English students avoid advising in most situations, they are certain to raise their voices if someone disturbs their private life In situation 10, for example, 50% think it is necessary to advise their neighbors in case, they often make noise at night as Westerners not only respect others’ independence but also hope to be respected From all debated data, it can be summarized that Westerners are inclined to act in their own ways and others often respect their privacy and independence by ovoid imposition Advising is not a popular habit of English students In fact, participants prefer not giving advices in most situations, because it may make others feel unpleasant and compulsory 3.1.2 The Advising Frequency in Vietnamese Unlike Westerners, Oriental people or Vietnamese often live in extended families with three or four generations and they try to show their concern and closeness towards others by frequent communication, especially by pieces of advice In terms of social life, Vietnamese usually spend their whole lives in one place and regard their neighbors as their relatives Besides that, most Vietnamese have extremely close relations with friends If Vietnamese meet any obstacles, they always think about finding friends for their advices and help For these reasons, it is unsurprising that in both family and social relations most Vietnamese students (89% and 62%) regard giving advice is extremely necessary or highly necessary Although in both relations, Vietnamese tend to give advices, more students give advices in problems related to family than social relations The closeness of communicators and the seriousness of problem can explain for this difference For example, in situation 3, although Vietnamese children seldom give advices to the older because of the respect of age, the relation is extremely close and the problem is too serious; hence, nearly all of them (97%) choose to raise advices Or in situation 5, 93% Vietnamese students would give advice because dating with a married man is unforgivable in Vietnamese culture Furthermore, Vietnamese share the same opinions with English in giving advice for sensitive matters In situations and 9, despite being close friends or roommates, 46% and 30% avoid giving advice because they are afraid of threatening others’ faces In conclusion, Vietnamese regard advising as a regular habit; however, the level of frequency depends heavily on the closeness of relations and seriousness of problems In addition, dealing with sensitive problems, Vietnamese are slightly reluctant to give advice 3.2 Strategies used by English and Vietnamese students Advising strategies, in this study, are analyzed in terms of four forms of speech including imperative, modality markers, declarative and interrogative Generally, advice can be given directly through imperative or utterances including modality markers such as should, may, might, can, etc or the verb advise They may also be given indirectly in the form of interrogative or declarative Normally, Westerners are supposed to be frank and straight; consequently, they may choose direct advices Vietnamese, conversely, are extremely tactful; then, they may prefer indirect advice However, when studying collected data, it is exceedingly surprising to realize that directness belongs to Vietnamese students while indirectness belongs to English ones 81 THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I Firstly, by looking at the table, it can be realized that both native speakers and Vietnamese learners use imperative advices in the lowest percentage Westerners tend to respect others’ freedom and privacy so they often keep distance and leave others chances to refuse their advices If they give advice in the form of imperative, which is extremely curt, demanding and compulsory, they are certain to threaten hearers’ face and destroy their relation Likewise, Vietnamese seem to avoid using imperative in advising, except for two first situations 47% Vietnamese students in the first situation and 53% in the second employ imperative to advise due to their respect of age and the closeness Secondly, pieces of advice including modality markers are used by only a quarter of English students but a half of Vietnamese students basing on average value of ten situations This form is not English’s preference because of its directness and imposition In contrast, Vietnamese tend to take advantage of its directness to show their concerns and regards to hearers Declarative can be realized as utterances unrelated to problems; nevertheless, thanks to background knowledge, hearers can comprehend speakers’ suggestions By this way, speakers can save hearers’ faces and make hearers feel free to accept or refuse their advice Unexpectedly, in average, 30% English students give advices in this form This proves that English students tend to advise indirectly in both family and social relations In contrast, only 17% Vietnamese students give advice in this form More interestingly, in family, advising in declarative is extremely low with 10% while in social relations, it is much higher with 23% in average This is because the closer Vietnamese are, the more direct they seem to be Lastly, a lot of people use interrogative to give advice These advices are often roundabout and highly tactful In spite of being straight, English students use this form with highest percentage because it is like suggestions so it is more flexible and easier to be accepted by hearers This also proves that English not care 82 much about age or status in communication Unlike, Vietnamese would not like interrogative in advising due to its distance, formality and ceremony In addition, to some extent, interrogative is understood as ironical and it may make hearers feel unpleasant In conclusion, although English are free to what they like, they always respect others’ freedom, independence and privacy They hate others’ inference to their lives so they try to keep distance from others In case, English want to give advice, they are certain to choose indirect ways or suggestions to save hearers’ face Vietnamese, in contrast, always want to express their concerns towards others through direct advice, especially in close relations or in higher positions Conclusions After analyzing and debating all collected data, some significant conclusions can be drawn out in terms of the advising frequency and the directness In terms of advising frequency, it can be seen that Vietnamese students give advices more often than English ones English students often avoid advising, they only give advice in extremely necessary situations or when they are consulted Vietnamese, in contrast, give advice as frequently as possible Furthermore, Vietnamese students give advice more frequently to people in family or in close relations while English not In terms of directness, English students are more indirect than Vietnamese English students employ declarative or interrogative to advise because they want to keep distance and respect others’ privacy Vietnamese, in contrast, choose imperative and modality markers to advise to manifest their care to others and make them closer In addition, English students give advice indirectly regardless of age and social positions Despite being in close relations or in higher positions, English always prefer advising indirectly On the contrary, the level of directness of Vietnamese students depends heavily on the level of closeness and the social position of communicators THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 12(73).2013, VOL I REFERENCE [1] Leech, G.W., principles of Pragmatics, London and New York-Longman, 1983 [2] Brown, P and Levinson, S Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge - CUP, 1987 [3] Kaplan, R B., The anatomy of rhetoric: Prolegomena to a functional theory of rhetoric, Philadelphia: The centre for curriculum development, Inc, 1972 [4] Grice, H P., Logic and conversation In Cole, P & Morgan, J (eds) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts New York: Academic Press, 1975 [5] Lakoff, R., The logic of politeness; or minding your p's and q's, Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1973 [6] Leech, G N., Language and tact, Amsterdam, 1980 [7] Scollon, Face in interethnic communication, In: Richards, J.C., Schmidt, R.W (eds.), Language and Communication, Longman, London, 1983 [8] Richards, J C., The Context of Language Teaching, Cambridge: CUP, 1985 [9] Yule, G Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 1996 [10] Nguyen Van Quang, Intercultural Communication, CFL Vietnam National University – Hanoi 1998 [11] Richards, W.H and Vetter, H Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, Longman, 1985 [12] Lado, R., Linguistics across cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers, Ann Arbor: The University Of Michigan Press, 1957 [13] Pham Thi My Le, A Cross - Cultural Study on Criticizing in English and Vietnamese, CFL Vietnam National University – Hanoi 1999 (The Board of Editors received the paper on 08/12/2013, its review was completed on 25/12/2013) 83 ... always think about finding friends for their advices and help For these reasons, it is unsurprising that in both family and social relations most Vietnamese students (89% and 62%) regard giving advice. .. problems, Vietnamese are slightly reluctant to give advice 3.2 Strategies used by English and Vietnamese students Advising strategies, in this study, are analyzed in terms of four forms of speech including... opinions with English in giving advice for sensitive matters In situations and 9, despite being close friends or roommates, 46% and 30% avoid giving advice because they are afraid of threatening others’