Rationale
At the beginning of the 21st century, it is beyond question that English has become the lingua franca, the language used for communication across territorial and cultural borders Crystal (2003: 120) states that “English has become a global language because it has been at the right place at the right time” English is considered the universal language and its contribution towards such fields as business, international communications, entertainment, tourism, trade and technology, is undeniable‟
People learning and using English are increasing dramatically in number worldwide It can be seen that, because of the heavy demand of cross-cultural interaction, the development of telecommunications, and the appearance of communicative approaches in language teaching and learning, the study of speech acts in communication appears inevitable
The last few decades have witnessed a great change for the better in the relationship between Viet Nam and the US Many cross-cultural activities have been performed between the American and the Vietnamese However, it is observed that, in cross-cultural interaction, people tend to focus much more on linguistic factors than on cultural factors For example, it is customary for the Vietnamese to extend such greeting routines as „Bác/ cô/ chú/ anh/ mày đang làm gì đấy?‟, „Bác/ cô/ chú/ anh/ mày đang đi đâu đấy?‟; so, when communicating with their Anglophone friends, they simply transfer their cultural practices into „What are you doing?‟ or „Where are you going?‟ In the English-speaking cultures, such greeting routines are considerably embrassing, especially in the initial meeting The lack of appropriateness in language use may lead to misinterpretation, misunderstanding and miscommunication
Communication breakdown might very much be the case Therefore, the study of Vietnamese-American cross-cultural differences in speech acts is obviously necessary
Silence/Pauses and time-fillers exist in all social interactions in any culture They are used to show respect, anger, hostility, disinterest, or any other emotions However, when and how to use time-fillers or silence/pauses are not the same in different languages and cultures Therefore, the study of similarities and differences of using silence/pauses and time-fillers in interaction would help not only for the success of American-Vietnamese cross-cultural communication but also in communicative language teaching/learning.
Scope of the study
Although intralinguistic (vocabulary, grammatical rules, phonetic rules ) and extralinguistic (facial expressions, postures, proximity ) factors, to a great extent, play a vitally important role in communication, they are beyond the scope of this study This study only focuses on pauses and time-fillers in some American and Vietnamese films for the discovery of major similarities and differences between the two groups
This research is confined to studying only the factor of power [colleague to colleague (equal); boss to employee (high to low); and employee to boss (low to high)] that are readily manageable and lend themselves to quantitative analyses
Similar plots, characters and scenes that involve similar communicative events/ situations are intentionally chosen for contrastive analysis.
Aims of the study
The aims of the study are:
- To investigate the use of silence/pauses and time-fillers under the variables of power in chosen situations in some American and Vietnamese films
- To find out major American- Vietnamese cross-cultural differences and similarities in using silence/pauses and time-fillers in the situations under investigation.
Methodology
The main method of this study is the quantitative one All the considerations, remarks, interpretations, comments and assumptions given in the study are largely based on data analysis with due reference to publications
The data were collected from four American and four Vietnamese socio- psychological films The instrument to construct validation is used to tap individual assessment of social power (SP).
Design of the study
The study consists of three parts:
Part I Introduction, which provides the rationale, scope, aims and methods of the sudy
Part II Development, which consists of three chapters
Chapter 1 Theoretical preliminaries This chapter covers the relationship between language and culture, language and communication, cross-cultural communication, high-context and low-context culture, non-verbal communication and paralanguage
Chapter 2 Silence/pauses and Time-fillers This chapter reviews the issues relevant to the study including silence/ pauses and time-fillers Then the notions of silence/ pause and time-filler definitions and usages are discussed
Chapter 3 Findings and Discussions The strategies of using silence/pauses and time-fillers are identified and major cross-cultural differences and similarities discussed
Part III Conclusion, in which the main findings are reviewed, the implications for cross- culture interactions, the limitations of the study pointed out and suggestions for further research offered.
Theoretical preliminary 1.1 Language, culture and communication
Language and communication
By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts These unique abilities of communicating through a native language clearly separate humans from all animals
In 1994, in Time magazine, an article appeared titled „How man began‟ Within that article was the following bold assertion:
“No single, essential difference separates human beings from other animals”
Yet, in what is obviously a contradiction to such a statement, all evolutionists admit that communication via speech is uniquely human - so that it often is used as the singular, and most important, dividing line between humans and animals
In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Jones, Martin, and
Pilbeam (1999) concede that there are no non-human languages, and then go on to observe that language is an adaptation unique to humans, and yet the nature of its uniqueness and its biological basis are notoriously difficult to define In his book, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrance Deacon (1997) notes:
In this context, […], consider the case of human language It is one of the most distinctive behavioral adaptations on the planet Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, except in the most general sense And the differences between languages and all other natural modes of communicating are vast
Language is the development of the basic form of communication between human beings, and in a society And just as it is the basic form, it is also the most developed
We can not communicate in any real sense without language, other than through gestures; we do communicate through some non-verbal forms like the visual arts - painting and sculpture - and through dance, but the culmination of true, articulate, communication is through language It could naturally take a number of forms It could be unvarnished, workaday prose, it could be poetry, it could be drama; but all of these are forms of language, written, spoken and read The way in which the language is being used is making it pretty Thus, a successful communicator must own a good command of language at first.
Language and culture
Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning “to cultivate”) is a term that has different meanings And, the word “culture” is most commonly used in three basic senses:
excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#cite_note-1)
Of all aspects of culture, it is a fair guess that language was the first to receive a highly developed form and that its essential perfection is a prerequisite to the development of culture as a whole.
Communication
Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules
All communication is cultural - it draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like context, individual personality, and mood interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others
The relationship between communication and culture is a very complex and intimate one First, cultures are created through communication; that is, communication is the means of human interaction through which cultural characteristics - whether customs, roles, rules, rituals, laws, or other patterns - are created and shared It is not so much that individuals set out to create a culture when they interact in relationships, groups, organizations, or societies, but rather that cultures are a natural by-product of social interaction In a sense, cultures are the “residue” of social communication
Without communication and communication media, it would be impossible to preserve and pass along cultural characteristics from one place and time to another One can say, therefore, that culture is created, shaped, transmitted, and learned through communication The reverse is also the case; that is, communication practices are largely created, shaped, and transmitted by culture
To understand the implications of this communication-culture relationship, it is necessary to think in terms of ongoing communication processes rather than a single communication event For example, when a three-person group first meets, the members bring with them individual thought and behavioral patterns from previous communication experiences and from other cultures of which they are, or have been, a part As individuals start to engage in communication with the other members of this new group, they begin to create a set of shared experiences and ways of talking about them With any culture; communication shapes culture, and culture shapes communication
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communication across cultures The study of cross-cultural communication is fast becoming a global research area
One factor that is believed to contribute to successful communication in general and cross-cultural communication in particular is communicative competence
Communicative competence is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately The term was coined by Hymes (1966), reacting against the perceived inadequacy of Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance To address Chomsky's abstract notion of competence, Hymes undertook ethnographic exploration of communicative competence that included communicative form and function in integral relation to each other The approach pioneered by Hymes is now known as the ethnography of communication
The notion of communicative competence is one of the theories that underlies the communicative approach to foreign language teaching Canale and Swain (1980: 1-47) define communicative competence in terms of four components:
1 Grammatical competence: including vocabulary, word formation, sentence formation, pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics;
2 Sociolinguistic competence: addressing the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as status of participants, purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of interaction;
3 Discourse competence: concerning mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres
4 Strategic competence: composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into actual situations or to sufficient competence in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence and to enhance the effectiveness of communication
A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into the broad headings of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence, and pragmatic competence, which includes both sociolinguistic and illocutionary competence Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice
The understanding of communicative competence has been influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts
Research results from contrastive analysis of discourse and acts such as compliment, apology indicate that appropriateness in a particular situation in one culture may not become the same in another culture So acquiring sociolinguistic norms is actually acquiring the culture in which the language is used
Savignon (1997) adds that there exists the interrelation among the four components in increasing communicative competence
1 Linguistic knowledge (verbal and non-verbal elements, patterns of elements in particular speech event, range of possible variants, meaning of variants in particular situations)
2 Interacting skills (perception of salient features in communicative situations; selection and interpretation of forms appropriate to specific situations, role and relationship; norms of interaction and interpretation; strategies for achieving goals)
3 Cultural knowledge (social structure, values and attitudes, cognitive map/schema, enculturation processes)
Nguyen Quang (2001: 68) states that communicative competence is the shared part of the three components mentioned above
Despite the disagreement among scholars about its components, all researchers postulate the existence of communicative competence
A popular cultural framework was proposed by Hall (1973, 1990), in which he states that all cultures can be situated in relation to one another through the styles in which they communicate In some cultures, such as those of North America and much of Western Europe, communication occurs predominantly through explicit statements in text and speech, and they are thus categorized as low-context cultures In other cultures, such as Asia, much of the Middle East, Africa, and South America, messages include other communicative cues such as body language and the use of silence, and thus, known as high-context cultures Essentially, high-context communication involves implying a message through that which is not uttered This includes the situation, behavior, and para-verbal cues as integral parts of the communicated message These terms such as “high-context and low-context culture”, “non-verbal communication” and
“paralanguage” will be investigated in the following sections.
High-context culture vs low-context culture
High-context (HC) culture and the contrasting low-context (LC) culture are terms presented by Hall in his book Beyond Culture (1976) Hall states that HC transactions feature pre-programmed information that is in the receiver and in the setting, with only minimal information in the transmitted message LC transactions are the reverse Most of the information must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the context
High-context culture refers to a culture's tendency to use high-context messages over low-context messages in routine communication This choice of communication styles translates into a culture that will cater towards in-groups; an in-group being a group that has similar experiences and expectations, from which inferences are drawn
In a high-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain Words and word choice become very important in higher context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group), while in a lower context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the value of a single word is less important
LC culture refers to a culture‟s tendency to cater towards in-groups Low context cultures, such as Germany or the United States make much less extensive use of such similar experiences and expectations to communicate Much more is explained through words or verbalization, instead of the context
Viet Nam and most Asian countries are classified as HC cultures The U.S.A and Canada, along with Northern European countries, are classified as LC This is, of course, an oversimplification Within a LC culture, we'll find ourselves in high-context situations and vice-versa For example, within a LC American culture, communications among family members are generally HC because of the high level of shared experience
For our purposes, though, we will rely on the broad-brush definition
High Context cultures are considered:
Less verbally explicit communication, less written/formal information
More internalized understandings of what is communicated
Multiple cross-cutting ties and intersections with others
Strong boundaries- who is accepted as belonging vs who is considered an
Decisions and activities focus around personal face-to-face relationships, often around a central person who has authority
For examples: Small religious congregations, a party with friends, family gatherings, expensive gourmet restaurants and neighborhood restaurants with a regular clientele, undergraduate on-campus friendships, regular pick-up games, hosting a friend in your home overnight
Different from a high-context culture, a low-context can be seen as:
Rule oriented, people play by external rules
More knowledge is codified, public, external, and accessible
Sequencing, separation - of time, of space, of activities, of relationships
More interpersonal connections of shorter duration
Knowledge is more often transferable
Task-centered Decisions and activities focus around what needs to be done, division of responsibilities
For examples: large US airports, a chain supermarket, a cafeteria, a convenience store, sports where rules are clearly laid out, a motel
While these terms are sometimes useful in describing some aspects of a culture, one can never say a culture is "high" or "low" because societies all contain both modes
"High" and "low" are therefore less relevant as a description of a whole people, and more useful to describe and understand particular situations and environments
1.2.2 High and low context situations
Every culture and every situation has its high and low aspects Often one situation will contain an inner HC core and an outer LC ring for those who are less involved
For instance, a PTA (parent-teacher association) is usually a low-context situation: any parent can join, the dates of the meetings, who is president, what will be discussed, etc are all explicitly available information, and it is usually fairly clear how to participate in the meetings However, if this is a small town, perhaps the people who run the PTA all know each other very well and have many overlapping interests They may "agree" on what should be discussed or what should happen without ever really talking about it, they have unconscious, unexpressed values that influence their decisions Other parents from outside may not understand how decisions are actually being made So the PTA is still low-context, but it has a high-context subgroup that is in turn part of a high-context small town society
When we enter a HC situation, it does not immediately become a LC culture just because we came in the door It is still a high-context culture and we are just ignorant
Also, even low context cultures can be difficult to learn: religious dietary laws, medical training, written language all take years to understand The point is that that information has been made conscious, systematic, and available to those who have the resources to learn it
High contexts can be difficult to enter if we are an outsider (because we do not carry the context information internally, and because we can not instantly create close relationships) Low contexts are relatively easy to enter if we are an outsider (because the environment contains much of the information we need to participate, and because we can form relationships fairly soon, and because the important thing is accomplishing a task rather than feeling our way into a relationship)
Many researchers have found that people in high-context cultures tend to be more implicit in verbal codes, perceive highly verbal persons less attractive, tend to be more reliant on and tuned into non-verbal communication, and expect to have more non- verbal codes in communication.
Non-verbal communication
Communication is the transfer of information, ideas and emotions from one person to another Most of us spend about 75 percent of our waking hours communicating our knowledge, thoughts, and ideas to others However, most of us fail to realize that a great deal of our communication is of a non-verbal form as opposed to the oral and written forms
The last decades have seen a tremendous upsurge in research and popular interest in the phenomena of nonverbal communication In its narrow and accurate sense, nonverbal behavior refers to actions as distinct from speech It thus includes facial expressions, hand and arm gestures, postures, positions, and various movements of the body or the legs and feet It may also include the way we wear our clothes or the silence we keep Therefore, we can say that silence/pauses are considered as one of non-verbal behaviors
In his book, Nonverbal communication, Albert Mehrabian (1972) states that nonverbal communication (NVC) is the act of imparting or interchanging thoughts, opinions, or information without the use of spoken words Nonverbal communication is used as a key variable to determine people's attitudes, values, and beliefs For example, an observer watching a focus group will pay special attention to the nonverbal cues of group interaction, such as body language, facial expressions, and eye contact, to identify group members' true feelings about an issue
In The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, nonverbal communication is defined as communication without the use of spoken language
Many scholars indicate that NVC is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages NVC can be communicated through gestures and touch, by body language or posture, by facial expressions and eye contact NVC can be communicated through object communication such as clothing, hairstyles or even architecture, symbols and inforgraphics Speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress
Dance is also regarded as a nonverbal communication Likewise, written texts have nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the use of emoticons
As can be seen from many definitions shown above, paralanguage and body language are considered as NVC; however, object language and environmental language, which are very important and can not be denied in communication, have not been clearly pointed out by those researchers Therefore, the author prefers the definition given by Nguyen Quang (2008):
NVC is all the constituents of communication which are not verbally coded, but vocally and/or nonvocally channeled It includes paralanguage (nonverbal- vocal) such as: speed, volume, vocal flow, and extra-language (nonverbal- nonvocal) grouped into body language such as gestures, postures, facial expressions, object language such as clothes, jewellery, and environmental language as conversational distance, setting
The proverb “Actions speak louder than words” underscores the importance of nonverbal communication NVC is especially significant in cross-cultural situations
Probably nonverbal differences account for typical difficulties in communicating.
Paralanguage
Paralanguage refers to the vocal and nonverbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech Sometimes the definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics
The term „paralanguage‟ is sometimes used as a cover term for body language, which is not necessarily tied to speech, and paralinguistic phenomena in speech The latter are phenomena that can be observed in speech but that do not belong to the arbitrary conventional code of language
Paralanguage is part of the nonverbal communication and convey emotions and attitudes It may not only be expressed consciously or unconsciously but also include vocalizations such as hissing, hushing, and whistling, as well as speech modifications such as quality of voice or hesitations and speed in talking Some examples of paralanguage are laughing, crying, whispering, snoring, sucking, sneezing, sighing, etc
Tone of voice plays a fundamental role in telephone interactions
According to Robbins and Langton (2001), Paralanguage is communication that goes beyond the specific spoken words It includes pitch, amplitude, rate, and voice quality of speech Paralanguage reminds us that people convey their feelings not only in what they say, but also in how they say it
Literature has shown that it is possible to convey the full gamut of emotions in text
The real problem is that it takes a long time and a lot of talent to do this Consequently, it is not that text does not have emotional clues, but it is so difficult to put them in To that end, with text, paralinguistic clues are:
Explicit: Emoticons, cartoons, call-out descriptions
Style: Typography, layout, color, location
Implicit: Rhetoric, rhythm, sound, flex, vocabulary
The paralinguistic properties of speech play an important role in human speech communication There are no utterances or speech signals that lack paralinguistic properties, since speech requires the presence of a voice that can be modulated This voice must have some properties, and all the properties of a voice as such are paralinguistic However, the distinction “linguistic vs paralinguistic” applies not only to speech but to writing and sign language as well, and it is not bound to any sensory modality Even vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen and even felt
In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and instant massaging, paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings.
Silence/ Pauses and Time-fillers 2.1 Silence/ Pauses
Time-fillers
Time-fillers (TFs) are prevalent in Vietnamese and English spontaneous speech and pose a major problem in Vietnamese and English speech recognition
TFs are parts of speech which are not generally recognized as purposeful or containing formal meaning, usually expressed as pauses such as uh, like and er, but also extending to repair ("He was buying a black uh, I mean a blue, a blue shirt"), and articulation problems such as stuttering This is normally frowned upon in mass media such as news reports or films, but they occur regularly in everyday conversations, sometimes representing upwards of 20% of "words" in conversation TFs can also be used as a pause for thought, for example: “I need four um oranges and mm three apples”
In linguistics, a TF is a sound or word that is spoken in conversations by one participant to signal to others that he/she has paused to think but is not yet finished speaking Different languages have different characteristics of TFs; in English, the most common TFs are uh /u/, er /ə/ and um /əm/, "Like", "you know", "actually", and
"basically" are more prevalent among youths; in Vietnamese we can find: ừm, anh/chị biết đấy, thực ra thì, kiểu như, đại loại là, nói thế nào nhỉ? (Nguyen Quang, 2001)
A TF occurs most often when a speaker is thinking It is a time-filler in that the speaker actually breaks off speech while continuing to articulate However, the articulation is neither a word, nor part of a word
There are some of the common TFs that are found in most conversations Even though it is quite alright to use these TFs once in a while during informal conversations, over a period of time they become a habit and finally are a part and parcel of our speaking style and diction In formal situations, especially, they can become quite annoying to the listener, and the speaker could unknowingly become more and more conscious and use these TFs to make up for the awkwardness he or she feels
In an article of Time magazine, Rosenblatt (2001) writes “ The silent friendship of men”:
Wordsworth goes to visit Coleridge at his cottage, walks in, sits down and does not utter a word for three hours Neither does Coleridge Wordsworth then arises and, as he leaves, thanks his friend for a perfect evening (…)
Would the same “conversation” have taken place if Mr Wordsworth and Mr
Coleridge would have met? Or, if Wordsworth and Coleridge never met before? There are differences in the usage of silence/ pauses in speech But where do they come from?
Some are evoked by gender or age, others by personal relationships The utilization of pauses also varies across cultures
When keyword outlines (not full-text, word-for-word) are used as speaking notes, speakers do not have everything they want to say in front of them Therefore, silence/pauses in speaking may result while the speaker is processing the next thought in his/her head Because of the social token that seems to be attached to silence/ pauses, speakers tend to fill the silence/ pauses with time-fillers.
Findings and discussion 3.1 Research methods
Subjects
There are three social factors: relative power, social distance and the ranking of imposition that relate to the data analysis procedure But only the second one is focussed on in the present study
The subjects chosen for this study includes conversations in which silence/ pauses and time-fillers are used by characters in 4 Vietnamese and
4 American films The characters use silence/pauses and time-fillers in similar settings and with similar conversational topics Besides, all the chosen subjects are American in American settings and Vietnamese in Vietnamese settings Relationships between subjects are chosen with the factor of power in view, mainly focussing on the relationship between two colleagues (equal), boss to employee (hing to low), and employee to boss (low to high) The reasons for the author‟s choice are:
+ The films have similar themes (socio-psychological) with similar conversational situations
+ The author has watched the films and discussed with her Vietnamese and American colleagues and friends who have already seen them
+ The author believes that the study of the American and Vietnamese films made in the US by American crews and in Vietnam by Vietnamese crews will offer an access to close-to-authentic speech Furthermore, the understanding of the subjects‟ record is believed to be necessary for data analysis; therefore; the following parameters are taken into consideration:
+ Characters‟ mood when using pauses and time-fillers
However, it is such a hard job to know the characters‟ age and their occupations vary enormously; therefore, these parameters are intentionally ignored.
Research questions
Based on the aims set in Chapter One, the present study addresses the following research questions:
1 How do Vietnamese characters perform silence/pauses and time-fillers in the contexts studied?
2 How do American characters perform silence/pauses and time-fillers in the contexts studied?
3 What are the major differences between American and Vietnamese characters in performing silence/pauses and time-fillers?
3.1.3 Research method and data collection instruments
The strategical method used in the present study involves inductive method,
The theoretical background shown in chapters I and II are mostly based on the research by Vietnamese and international authors on silence/pauses and time-fillers
Data are collected in some Vietnamese and American films and analyzed against the three reference points of availability, proportionality and manifestability to find out major similarities and differences between American and Vietnamese characters (and hopefully, the American and the Vietnamese) in using silence/pauses and time-fillers
In addition, in order to get linguistic input for this study, the following methods are resorted to:
+ Setting criteria for selection of films (types, settings, events, characters…) + Collecting data
+ Discussing with Vietnamese and American friends and colleagues.
Findings and discussion
The research was mainly based on the data collected from the chosen films, in which silence/pauses and TFs are used in Vietnamese spontaneous speech by the characters There are 22 chosen conversations, which have complete speaker information In addition, in order to see how silence/pauses and time-fillers vary across cultures, some parameters (age, sex, marital status, job, etc) are also used for identifying distinctive forms of TFs and pauses in Vietnamese
From the author‟s own data, there are two types of hesitation: silence/pauses and time-fillers Silent/Pauses can be considered as pauses produced in conjunction with an inspiration, swallowing, any laryngo-phonatory reflex, or a silent expiration Time-fillers correspond to the perception of a voiced section in the speech signal Or, that is when the speaker utters conventional „planning markers‟ at the beginning/end of an utterance or utters adjacent to unfilled pauses
The characteristics of pauses and time-fillers are reported in a style of spoken discourse and in the same setting (at work): 22 dialogues (10 dialogues between colleagues and 12 dialogues between the boss and the employee) from the conversations in four Vietnamses films The author‟s corpus can be considered examples of different power respectively To study the different characteristics of these, the author calculates the data so that she could make a direct comparison
The distribution of silence/pauses and time-fillers according to the relationship of characters is presented in the following tables:
Table 1: Number of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues)
1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
Table 2: Number of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
Table 3: Number of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
The number of occurrences of pauses and time-fillers is shown in Table 1 to 3
The total number of pauses and time-fillers is 83, and 84.9% of these are pauses and 15.1% are time-fillers The most common time-filler is “à/ừm”
Across the speaking styles of power-equals and power-unequals, it is observed that pauses are most frequent in the boss-to-employee turn, while time-fillers frequently occur between colleagues and in the employee-to-boss turn
There are also noteworthy differences between pauses and time-fillers within each style In the dialogues between colleagues, 76% are pauses and 24% are TFs which occur adjacently to pauses Similar result can be found in the employee-to-boss turn where 87.5% are pauses and the rest are TFs In the turn of the boss to his/her employee, on the other hand, pauses are the most commonly occurring type
In the short dialogues used as examples, it is discovered that the speech of participants has been put a space/ spaces between this person‟s speech and the next person‟s speech This is a way of giving small pauses that occur between turns as one speaker gives up and another takes over the right to speak Our own research interest in the pauses and time-fillers come from their role in giving rise to interpersonal judgments of competence In addition, it is found that even small differences in the timing of pauses and time-fillers can make participants feel uncomfortable about each other
Tables 4, 5, 6 show the proportion of pauses to utterances and the duration of time-fillers (which occur adjacently to pauses) compared to the total duration of pauses
The proportion of pauses is the greatest in the employee-to-boss turn The data indicate that in the interaction with the boss, the employee tends to use longer pauses For example, when the boss talks to the employee that her fixed-term contract has come to an end, the employee falls into silence and when she starts talking, she continues falling into a pause of 3 sec.:
Boss: Anh phải thông báo với em một chuyện, hợp đồng thử việc của em đã chấm dứt
Employee: (silent) Thế( -) thế khi nào em phải rời khỏi đây ạ?
(Film: Lap trinh trai tim) The average duration of pauses is calculated 2 sec and the pause in this case is longer with 3 sec
Let us examine the duration of pauses shown in Table 6 There is one pause where the duration is the longest, that is when the boss talks to his employee that she is accepted to be the new staff of the company, she falls into silence before she starts her turn, the silence in this case is measured 9 sec.:
Boss: Đây là hợp đồng chính thức của em Em đọc kỹ đi, nếu đồng ý thì kí vào
Employee: (silent) Anh làm em lo quá (Film: Lap trinh trai tim) Table 4: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee)
1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
Table 5: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
Table 6: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec 8 sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec
When examining pauses and time-fillers, we can distinguish these two types in utterances and the duration of time-fillers (which occur adjacently to pauses or occur to fill in the pauses) in such speech, where the speakers communicate naturally at work
Table 4 shows the average duration of pauses in the conversations between the boss and employee, which is measured 39 sec., making up more than 90%, while time- fillers are only 4 sec (less than 9%) In the boss‟s turn, pauses are used more frequently and the length for each is 1.5 sec to 3 sec.; most of the pauses are used to show the feeling of „difficulty‟ between the boss and the employee
On the other hand, from the data, the power of the boss over the employee is strongly felt through the use of pauses and time-fillers Table 5 shows the average duration of pauses in the conversations of the employee to the boss Not surprisingly, the length of pauses is 58.5 sec (more than 87%), the highest in the three types of power relation, whereas time-fillers occur only in 8 sec totally (13%) An analysis of the selected conversations of the employee to the boss reveals that the employees tend to use more pauses in their speech than time-fillers Most of the author‟s colleagues who are requested to analyze these conversations believe that the silence/pauses and time-fillers could be the reflection of diversified emotions, not only negative as sadness or anger but also positive as happiness or satisfaction However, pauses in the selected situations seem to suggest that the employee simply wishes to implicitly show his/her respect to his/her boss by resorting to pauses for the right diction and time-fillers against embarrassment
Table 6 shows that, in the colleague-to-colleague relationship, the speakers tend to use pauses and time-fillers more frequently The pauses used in these cases are 44.5 sec., making up over 60%, while time-fillers are 26 sec., accounting for less than 40%
The data suggests that the short pauses (between 1 - 2sec.) also occur in speech of all subjects Most pauses (70%) are shorter than 2 sec and there are very few pauses which are longer than 0.2sec
From the three tables above, the data indicate that power is very important because different power relationships present different percentages of pauses and time- fillers
When speaking, we all experience time when we can not seem to think of a particular word we want to say, or when we need more time to organize our thought before we speak; we sometimes use silence/pauses or add time-fillers to give us extra time we need In Vietnamese, there are common time-fillers, for example: ừ, à, ừm, ờ, anh/cậu biết đấy, để nghĩ xem nào, nói thế nào nhỉ, kiểu, kiểu như, etc (Nguyen Quang:
The study also examines the location where silence/pauses and time-fillers occur
The collected data show that time-fillers are found mainly before syntactic constituents such as clauses For example:
“…à…ừm tôi mang cho Uyên tham khảo”
(Film: Lap trinh trai tim)
Or “ à…ừm… Hương biết đấy… điện thoại của mình bị hỏng”
(Film: Co gai xau xi) And, silence/pauses are also found before predicate VPs, and before compliments, another location where silence/pauses frequently occur is within an NP constituent, such as between a modifier and a head noun Following are some examples:
(a) “( -)Thực ra cháu đã viết xong cách đây bốn hôm.”
(Film: Phia truoc la bau troi) (b) “Chúng em chỉ đọc qua chương trình chứ ( -) không chạy lại ạ.”
(Film: Lap trinh trai tim) (c) “Lỗi là ( -) của tôi.”
(Film: Lap trinh trai tim) (d) “Trước sau tôi vẫn muốn làm công tác giảng dạy, còn ( -) công tác ( -) quản lí thì ( -) anh nên chọn người khác hợp hơn.”
Limitations
Shortcomings in the study are obviously unavoidable It is reasonable to say that the data collected from films are not as authentic as that of real-life conversations
What is more, this study does not take into account speaker‟s mood, feeling and attitude which appear before or after they pause or use TFs; so it does not help see how that emotion and attitude affects speakers‟ speech and how their pragmatic performance develops
Furthermore, being a novice linguistic researcher, the author lacks experience and knowledge of the related field so as to be able to discuss thoroughly every similarity and difference in the realization of pauses and TFs.
Suggestions for further study
Many dimensions still remain uninvestigated, of which the followings would be suggested:
Silence/Pauses and Time-fillers in two dialogues and read speech
Silence/Pauses – Time-fillers in some famous people‟s speeches (Obama, Clinton, Castro )
The influence of communicating partners‟ parameters on the use of silence/pauses – time-fillers
* * Though this research has been conducted with its author‟s greatest effort, mistakes and shortcomings are inevitable Constructive comments and criticism are highly appreciated for better improvements Thank you kindly
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