Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS disagreeing among power unequals in english and vietnamese a cross cultural pragmatics study

Rationale

In the process of globalization, English has played an increasingly important role in various fields, such as: science, business, education, and especially, cross-cultural (henceforth CC) communication As a consequence, there have been a large number of worldwide studies on cross-cultural pragmatics (henceforth CCP) which have been thoroughly presented in (1) Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper’s (1989)

Cross-cultural pragmatics: request and apologies, (2) Wierzbicka’s (1991) Cross- cultural pragmatics – the semantics of human interaction, (3) Kasper & Blum-

Kulka’s (1993) Interlanguage pragmatics, (4) Trosborg’s (1995) Interlanguage pragmatics – requests, complaints and apologies, and (5) Gass & Neu’s (1996) Speech acts across cultures – challenges to communication in a second language

CCP, according to Trosborg (1995: 45), is a particular field of contrastive pragmatics that is concerned with contrasting pragmatics across cultural communities The major reasons for the appearance and development of this field are, as clarified by Wierzbicka (1991: 69), that in different societies and cultural communities, people speak differently Being profound and systematic, those differences reflect different cultural values, different ways of speaking, and different communicative styles

One of the objectives of those studies is to focus on comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences between a language and English in certain speech acts in particular contexts, which leads to the trend of contrastive pragmatics studies

Another objective is to figure out potential features of pragmatic transfer (henceforth PT) from one language to English, which results in another common trend, namely interlanguage pragmatics (henceforth ILP) studies The overall purpose of the CCP studies is to help learners and non-native speakers of English become aware of potential similarities and differences between their language and culture and English language and culture as well as potential PT, especially negative PT or pragmatic failures, which may affect their study or use of English to communicate with English native speakers and possibly cause culture shock or communication breakdowns

As regards the contrastive pragmatics trend, there have been a great number of studies conducted by researchers all over the world, as reviewed by Trosborg

(1995) Those studies investigate different speech acts, with a focus on requests, apologies, compliments, and thanks (cf Trosborg, 1995: 46-47) In Vietnam, there have been a number of contrastive pragmatics studies, as part of the researchers’ unpublished PhD research projects, comparing and contrasting Vietnamese and English in certain speech acts comprising complimenting (Nguyen Van Quang,

1998), requesting (Nguyen Van Do, 1999), disagreeing (Kieu Thi Thu Huong,

2006), and inviting (Duong Bach Nhat, 2008) There have also been a great number of other relevant studies of a variety of speech acts on a smaller scale of MA theses, as presented in Nguyen Quang Ngoan and Nguyen Tien Phung’s (2007) review, presenting various speech acts such as greeting (Nguyen Phuong Suu, 1990; Huynh Thi Ai Nguyen, 1997), requesting (Nguyen Van Do, 1996; Do Thi Mai Thanh,

2000), apologizing (Dang Thanh Phuong, 1999), refusing a request (Pham Thi Van Quyen, 2001), among others (cf Nguyen Quang Ngoan and Nguyen Tien Phung, 2007: 26-29)

Regarding the ILP trend, Kasper & Dahl (1991) present a detailed literature review of 39 ILP studies Trosborg (1995) also does a good job of reviewing ILP pragmatics studies comprising studies of requests, than ks, complaints, and apologies (cf Trosborg, 1995: 55) In Vietnam, as far as the author of this study is aware of and able to access, there have been only a few ILP studies, including those of requesting (Ha Cam Tam, 1998, 2005), criticizing (Nguyen Thuy Minh,

2006), and general cultural linguistic features, (Pham Dang Binh, 2002)

Thus, in the last fifteen years in Vietnam, there have been a great number of contrastive pragmatics studies comparing and contrasting Vietnamese and English in various speech acts However, there have not been sufficient ILP studies contrasting English by Vietnamese learners and English by its native speakers It is for this reason that the dissertation author decided to contribute to developing the trend of ILP studies by conducting a research into PT from Vietnamese to English in the act of disagreeing under the influence of the relative power (henceforth P) in some particular contexts

The focus of the study is on pragmatic transfer (i.e “transfer of some culturally specific politeness strategies from one’s native language to the target language”

(Beebe & Takahashi, 1989: 200) It should be noted that a deep insight into this phenomenon contributes a great deal to language teaching, learning, and use

However, as discussed, in Vietnam the relevant studies are completely limited

Thus, it is urgent that more thorough studies on ILP trend in other speech acts should be done to build up a better background for teaching and learning English and CC communication in Vietnam

It is for this reason that disagreeing has become the speech act under investigation in this study Disagreeing was chosen also because of some additional reasons

Firstly, some similarities and differences in disagreeing politeness strategies between the Vietnamese and the Americans were investigated by Kieu Thi Thu Huong (2001) and Nguyen Quang Ngoan (2004) at the level of MA theses, from the perspective of contrastive pragmatics It was also studied from the perspective of conversational analysis combined with contrastive pragmatics by Kieu Thi Thu Huong (2006) for her PhD research project Thus, no studies of the speech act of disagreeing from the ILP perspective have been conducted in Vietnam

Additionally, in literature, the dissertation author is able to access only one study of this type which was conducted by Beebe and Takahashi in 1989 to contrast English by Japanese learners and that by English native speakers Hence it is expected that a thorough investigation into disagreeing from the ILP perspective will contribute to drawing a whole picture of studies of the speech act

Secondly, another focus of the present study is on the effects of P on verbal interactions, and according to many researchers (Beebe & Takahashi, 1989; Rees- Miller, 2000; and Locher, 2004), the realizations of disagreeing strategies are proven to be under great influence of P In other words, disagreeing is a potential speech act on which P is enacted However, the dissertation author has not noticed any studies of speech acts, in which P was realized as a separated social variable that is in focus Thus, it is the author’s purpose to attempt to investigate the issue

There are also some other reasons for his choice of P as the focused social variable operating in this study of disagreeing as an example of verbal interaction

One reason is that, as far as the author knows, there have been no thorough empirical studies of power influence on verbal interaction in Vietnam although there have been a lot of relevant discussions and studies on power and its correlation with language in English-speaking cultures (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1985; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Wartenberg, 1990; Ng, 1995; Ng and Bradac, 1993; Watts, 1991, 2003; Hofstede, 1977, 1991, 2001; Holmes, 1992; Rees-Miller, 2000; Fairclough, 2001; Holmes & Stubbe, 2003; Locher, 2004) Thus, this study can serve to fill in the gap in the Vietnamese literature

Another reason is that, according to Hofstede (1991, 2001) and his supporters, including Spencer-Oatey (1997), Gibson (2002), Samovar and Porter (2001), and Ting-Toomey & Chung (2005), high-power-distance values are appreciated in Asian countries while lower-power-distance values are appreciated in the USA, Great Britain and its former dominions, including Australia Vietnam is an Asian country but it was not a country under Hofstede’s investigation, so it seems to be logical to hypothesize that Vietnam is among other Asian countries which show high-power-distance values but this hypothesis must be tested to know whether it is right or how high power distance is perceived in Vietnamese culture, especially when it is compared to an English-speaking culture, Australia

A third reason is that the effects of P on language have been discussed and emphasized by many authors (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1985; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes, 1992; Ng & Bradac, 1993; Ng, 1995; Rees-Miller, 2000; Fairclough, 2001; Nguyen Quang, 2002, 2004; Holmes & Stubbe, 2003; Locher, 2004)

Aims of the study

Overall purpose

The overall purpose of the dissertation is to investigate thoroughly primarily the negative PT from Vietnamese into Australian language and culture, and secondarily noteworthy Vietnamese-Australian CC differences as valid clues for the interpretation and discussion of the PT in the speech act of disagreeing under the effects of P in the investigated situations.

Specific aims

To achieve the overall purpose, the study is aimed:

- to find out the major features of Vietnamese-English PT caused by the VLE and

CC differences between the VNS and ANS in their use of disagreeing politeness strategies with the more powerful as well as with the less powerful in the investigated situations

- to investigate the effects of P on the subject’s use of disagreeing politeness strategies reflected from the differences in their use of politeness strategies for disagreeing which is affected by their perception of P described in the relative roles in the investigated situations.

Research questions

1 What are some significant features of negative PT caused by the VLE and what are some significant CC differences between the VNS and ANS in their use of disagreeing politeness strategies in the investigated situations? Sub questions are:

- Which features of negative PT and CC differences in the use of disagreeing politeness strategies are significant?

- Which CC differences between the VNS and ANS lead to negative PT and which CC differences do not?

- Which disagreeing politeness strategies are used and preferred by the VLE, ANS, and VNS? What are the differences in their use of those strategies in the powerful and powerless situations?

- Which politeness strategies in B&L’s (1987) framework are realized, either as single strategies or strategy combinations for disagreeing in the investigated situations? Is there a high possibility for strategy combinations?

2 How does the subject’s perception of P in the investigated situations affect their use of disagreeing politeness strategies? How do the similarities and differences in the subject’s perception of P affect negative PT and CC differences in their use of disagreeing politeness strategies? Sub questions are:

- How is P described in the relative roles in the investigated situations perceived by the VNS, ANS, and VLE?

- To what extent is the VNS’s perception of P different from the ANS’s? Is it true that Vietnam is a higher-power-distance culture than Australia?

- Is there the phenomenon of inverse PT in P perception caused by the VLE in the investigated situations?

- How do the similarities and differences in the subject’s perception of P in the investigated situations affect their use of disagreeing politeness strategies?

Scope of the study

- The study focuses on intralinguistic factors Paralinguistic and extralinguistic aspects are, therefore, out of the scope of the study The verbal interaction is restricted to the act of disagreeing

- The act of disagreeing focuses on the frequency and realizations of politeness strategies used by the VLE, ANS, and VNS in some specific situations in light of the politeness framework by B&L (1987)

- The particular situations are restricted to thirty situations in the Meta-pragmatic Assessment Questionnaires (henceforth MAQ) and six situations in the Discourse Completion Task (henceforth DCT)

- “Among power-unequals” is meant to cover all the interactions between not only the more powerful and the less powerful but also the less powerful and the more powerful in various situations in the four contexts: (1) at home, (2) at work, (3) at school, and (4) in society

- P is described in the relative roles, such as a parent versus his/her child (at home), a university lecturer versus a student (at school), a boss versus an employee (at work), or an elder person versus a younger one (in society)

- The focused social variable is P, which is used to refer to the relative power each speaker temporarily has in each given context However, the social distance (henceforth D) and the speaking context (henceforth Se) are also taken into consideration for detailed interpretation and discussion of each particular situation

- Vietnamese-Australian PT in disagreeing among power-unequals is what the study aims to investigate Thus, comparison and contrast of disagreeing strategies by the VLE and ANS are in focus However, for the objectivity and validity of the research, the study is expanded to cover the comparison and contrast of the power perception and disagreeing strategies by the VNS and ANS to serve as the basic background for the interpretation, discussion, and conclusion of the PT.

Contributions of the study

The study is expected to bring out some following contributions:

- Theoretically, it contributes an investigation to some research areas in Vietnam:

(1) socio-cultural effects (i.e power effects) on verbal interactions, (2) pragmatic transfer (i.e Vietnamese-English transfer), (3) speech act theory (i.e disagreeing as a speech act), and (4) linguistic politeness Specifically, this is the first thorough empirical research in Vietnam, the focus of which is on the influence of P on language, or to be more exact on disagreeing, and also the first study of Vietnamese-Australian PT in the act Its findings are expected to reinforce or deny existing hypotheses in the fields and to bring about a better insight into the issues

- Practically, its findings on the Vietnamese-Australian PT, especially negative PT, in the frequency and realizations of disagreeing strategies in particular situations with sufficient details and plenty of specific examples from a rich source of data can be applied to English language teaching and CC communication

- Methodologically, it serves as a valid study on people’s perception of socio- situational factors and their production of language strategies in verbal interactions through the suitable research methodology of a combination between the MAQ and DCT It also contributes a new way of applying B&L’s (1987) politeness model to data analyses in empirical studies concerning linguistic politeness.

Methodology

This is primarily a quantitative CCP study in combination with some qualitative methods The data collection is conducted with a combination of MAQ and DCT

The data analysis is done with the T-Test and Chi-square statistics in the SPSS package through various techniques including statistical, descriptive, contrastive, and inferential analysis This methodology is presented at length in chapter two.

Organization of the study

The present study is divided into three parts: Part A – Introduction, Part B – Development, and Part C – Conclusion

Part A is the introduction to the study in which the author writes about the reasons for which the study is conducted Other issues clarified in this section are the aims, scope, research questions, methodology, and contributions of the study A summary of all the parts and chapters is also presented to help the audience have an overall idea of the study

Part B is the major part which is divided into four chapters, discussing the relevant theoretical concepts, literature review, methodology and results of the empirical research of the study

Chapter one is where a theoretical background and literature review are done in light of CCP It begins with an introduction to basic terminologies and concepts of CCP and ILP Then the speech act theory is visited with critical comments, followed by a discussion of disagreeing as a potential face-threatening act Next, politeness theory is revisited with critical comments on its notion and approaches in literature Especially, Western politeness approaches are compared to the Asian ones, with reference to the perception of the issue by Vietnamese researchers to build up a theoretical background for the chosen theoretical framework in the present study Finally, all the up-to-date studies of disagreeing as a speech act that the author is aware of and able to get access to, be they domestic or international, are introduced for an overview of the achievements and shortcomings in the previous studies of the speech act

Chapter two describes the methodology of the present study In this chapter, various research methods in ILP studies with their strengths and weaknesses, as discussed by well-known authors, are introduced with critical comments before an introduction to the methods in the present study is made, with specific reasons for choosing them Then, the research design including the data-gathering instruments, subject selection, and data-gathering procedures are all introduced Finally, the data analysis procedures are clarified with a thorough description of the T-test analysis, Chi-square analysis, and analytical framework

Chapter three discusses the effects of the relative power as a socio-cultural dimension in verbal interactions, especially in disagreeing It is conducted to uncover how the VNS, VLE, and ANS perceive the relative power between the speaker and the hearer in the investigated situations This also helps ensure the validity and reliability in the discussion of P effects on disagreeing in chapter four

In the first place, relevant studies with their findings, discussions, and shortcomings are presented to serve as a narrower background for the comparison and contrast of the perception of P by the VNS and ANS to find out the cross-cultural similarities and differences between the two cultures In parallel, the perception of P by the VLE is also compared to that by the VNS for the purpose of finding out possible inverse socio-pragmatic transfer Concluding remarks of CC differences and inverse

PT are given at the end of the chapter

Chapter four focuses on the Vietnamese-English PT and CC differences in the subject’s use of disagreeing politeness strategies in the investigated situations realized with the data collected from the three subject groups It begins with an introduction to all the disagreeing strategies realized in the present study either as single strategies or strategy combinations with examples from the collected data

Then, the statistic results of similarities and differences between the VLE and ANS as well as between the VNS and ANS in their use of disagreeing strategies in each situation are presented, interpreted, and discussed at length Finally, concluding remarks of the PT and CC differences are highlighted

Part C is the conclusion of the study where the author summarizes the major findings on the inverse PT caused by the VLE and CC differences between the VNS and ANS in their perception of P in the investigated situations It is also where the major findings on Vietnamese-English negative PT and CC differences in the subject’s use of disagreeing politeness strategies are confirmed and highlighted

Then implications of the research findings to better English language teaching and

CC communication are suggested before suggestions for further studies of the field are put forward

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

Cross-Cultural pragmatics (CCP) and interlanguage pragmatics (ILP)

In his discussion of approaches to inter-cultural communication, Clyne (1996: 3) states,

There are three main ways in which the role of culture can be, and has been, studied – by comparing native discourse across cultures (the Contrastive Approach), by examining the discourse of non-native speakers in a second language (the Interlanguage Approach), and by examining and comparing the discourse of people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds interacting either in a lingua franca or in one of the interlocutors’ languages (the Interactive Inter-cultural Approach)

He (1996: 4) also argues that the three approaches are not always clearly differentiated and that the third approach has been the least developed and investigated so far Actually, Clyne’s classification and comments are completely appropriate, as seen from the perspective of CCP

According to Kasper & Blum-Kula (1995: 3), pragmatics is considered as “the study of people’s comprehension and production of linguistic action in context”

Thus, CCP is the study of liguistic action patterns carried out by language users of different cultural backgrounds Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989: 1-11) argue that the field of CCP can be divided into two trends: one is contrastive pragmatics and the other is ILP

Contrastive pragmatics is concerned with comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences in different pragmatic aspects such as politeness or speech act performance across cultural communities Contrative pragmatics studies are conducted in the belief that in different cultural communities, people speak differently and those profound and systematic differences reflect different cultural values, different ways of speaking, and different communicative styles, which can be explained and made sense of (Wierzbicka, 991: 69)

ILP studies, on the other hand, focus on investigating linguistic actions by language learners or non-native speakers in comparison with those by native speakers to uncover the learner’s comprehension and production of different pragmatic aspects

However, ILP can also be a branch of Second Language Acquisition Research in contrast to interlanguage morphology, syntax, and semantics Thus, as argued by Kasper and Blum-Kulka (1993: 3), ILP is “a second-generation hybrid” because it

“belongs to two different disciplines, both of which are interdisciplinary”

To sum up, as a subset of cross-cultural pragmatics, contrastive pragmatics has the strength of investigating cross-cultural and cross-linguistic pragmatic differences and similarities, while ILP focuses on identifying learner-specific pragmatic behaviors and their relationship to learners' first and second language

However, research methods from these areas of investigation should be combined for a good research project, as it is stated by Kasper and Blum-Kulka (1993: 13):

“A full-fledged research program that sheds light on the relationship between cross-cultural differences, IL-specific pragmatic features, including transfer, and communicative effects will usefully combine methods from all three areas of investigation.”

Based on this line of reasoning, this research project is a combination of research methods from contrastive pragmatics and ILP although the primary investigation is the comprehension and production of pragmatic aspects in English by Vietnamese learners, which belongs to the discipline of ILP It is also for this reason that the research subtitle is “a cross-cultural pragmatics study” instead of “an interlanguage pragmatics study” Another reason for the chosen subtitle is that

“ILP has derived its theoretical and empirical foundation from general and especially cross-cultural pragmatics” (Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993: 4)

1.1.2 Pragmatic transfer and relevant issues

Pragmatic transfer, as defined by Beebe & Takahashi (1989: 200), is “transfer of some culturally specific politeness strategies from one’s native language to the target language” It is resulted from the “influence from learners' native language and culture on their IL pragmatic knowledge and performance” (Kasper & Blum-

On the one hand, PT can be divided into negative PT and positive PT, the first of which is the influence of the first language pragmatic competence on the interlanguage pragmatic knowledge that differs from the target language, while the latter refers to pragmatic knowledge behaviors that display consistent across the first language, the interlanguage, and the target language The focus of ILP is, however, on negative PT because it may lead to communication breakdown

Positive PT attracts less attention possibly because it usually results in communicative success, and thus appearing less exciting to study

On the other hand, in literature, PT is divided into two types of pragmatic failures, as suggested by Thomas (1983) They are: sociopragmatic failure and pragmalinguistic failure According to Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper (1989: 10), in the first type, learners “assess the relevant situational factors on the basis of their native sociopragmatic norms” and in the second type, “native procedures and linguistic means of speech act performance are transferred to interlanguage communication” Pragmatic failure is another term used to refer to negative PT

As possibly seen in a number of studies, negative transfer has been found at both the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic level At the sociopragmatic level, negative PT has been found in the learners’ perception of the status relationships, of the appropriateness of speech acts, of the choice of politeness styles, and so on At the pragmalinguistic level, most of the reported negative PT is related to the learners’ strategic options and forms that modify the politeness value of a linguistic act (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993: 10-11)

One final concept of PT is inverse pragmatic transfer, which is used to refer to the influence of the second/foreign language pragmatic competence on the learner’s perception and production of different pragmatic aspects in their first language to make them differ from those perceived or produced by the first language native speakers In the present study, the author also investigates the inverse sociopragmatic transfer caused by Vietnamese learners of English in their perception of P in the investigated situation on the basis of Vietnamese culture.

Speech act theory and disagreeing as a speech act

The speech act theory, first mentioned by philosopher John Austin (1962) in his influential work, “How to do things with words”, is one of the most compelling notions in the study of language use Levinson (1983: 226) claims that “[of] all the issues in the general theory of language usage, speech act theory has probably aroused the widest interest”

Actually, since its initiation, it has been inherited, refined, and developed by a number of philosophers and linguists, including Searle (1969, 1975, 1976), Bach and Harnish (1979), and Wierzbicka (1987), among others

As stated, the notion of speech acts was first mentioned by John Austin (1962) and then discussed by a number of pragmaticists with a common belief that in saying something that has a certain sense and reference, the speaker normally also does something such as making a promise, a request, or an apology (Austin, 1962; Geis,

1995) For example, in saying, “I’ll come and pick you up.”, a speaker not only produces a meaningful utterance but also constitutes the act of promising

In studying speech act theory, it is essential to have a deep insight into the well- known distinction made by Austin (1962) between the three kinds of acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act According to Austin

(1962) and Searle (1969), clarified by Richards et al (1992: 217), a locutionary act is the saying of something, which is meaningful and can be understood; an illocutionary act is using the sentence to perform a function; and a perlocutionary act is the results or effects produced by means of saying something Clyne (1996:

11) puts it simply that locution is the actual form of an utterance, illocution is the communicative force of the utterance, and perlocution is the communicative effect of the utterance

The three acts are, however, ultimately related because normally, in a meaningful utterance, “S says something to H; in saying something to H, S does something; and by doing something, S affects H” (Bach & Harnish, 1979: 3) For example, on producing the meaningful utterance, “I’ve just made some coffee” (the locutionary act), we might make an offer (illocutionary act) which might get the hearer to drink some coffee (perlocutionary act)

Of the three dimensions, as stated by Yule (1997: 52), the most essential act that counts is the illocutionary force because the same utterance can potentially have quite different illocutionary forces For instance, the utterance, “I’ll see you later” can count as a prediction, a promise, or a warning in different contexts That partially explains why Yule (1997: 52) claims that “[t]he term ‘speech act’ is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance”

Speech acts are a universal phenomenon, but they might vary greatly across cultures under the effects of socio-cultural norms This explains why Wierzbicka (1991:

149) argues that “[e]very culture has it own repertoire of characteristic speech acts and speech genres” It is for this reason that studies of speech acts across cultures have been conducted with an awareness of both universality and culture specificity, as claimed by Blum-Kulka et al

Work done in this area is based on the assumption that speech communities share detectable patterns of speech, and that ‘cultural ways of speaking’ provide an important domain for the exploration of speech as a cultural phenomenon Specific studies of speech act from this perspective show how clashes between different interactional styles can lead to intercultural miscommunication (1989: 5)

What can be interpreted from Blum-Kulka’s argument is that a lack of insight into differences of speech acts in different cultures appears to be one of the causes which potentially lead to cultural conflict or communication breakdowns Thus, more studies of speech acts across cultures to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between them are of crucial importance, though it is challenging to conduct those studies as a result of culture specificity or even context specificity

Speech acts can be classified according to their functions Austin (1962: 151), for example, started the classification by assigning five types of functions to utterances, namely: verdictives (e.g., assess, appraise, ) exercitives (e.g., command, direct,…), commissives (e.g., promise, propose, ), behabitives (e.g., apologize, thank, ), and expositives (e.g., accept, agree, ) Searle (1976) presents one of the most influential and widely used classification of speech acts with a focus on how listeners respond to utterances intentionally, which is on the contrary to Austin

(1962) whose attention is on how speakers realize their intentions in speaking (Wardhaugh, 1986: 287) Searle’s classification consists of five broad types: (1) commissives (e.g., a promise or a threat), (2) declarations (e.g., a pronouncement at court), (3) directives (e.g., a suggestion or a request), (4) expressives (e.g., an apology or a complaint), and (5) representatives (e.g., an assertion or a report)

(ibib.: 10-16) Following Searle (1976), Yule (1997: 55) clarifies the five general types of speech acts that in declarations, the speaker (S) causes the situation (X); in representatives, S believes X; in expressives, S feels X; in directives, S wants X; and in commissives, S intends X Bach and Harnish (1979: 41) appear more specific when they divide illocutionary acts into six categories Two of them, the effectives and verdictives, are conventional, not communicative The four communicative ones are constatives, directives, commisives, and acknowledgements, which are more or less similar to Austin’s expositives, exercitives, commissives, and behabitives, and closely related to Searle’s representatives, directives, commissives, and expressives, respectively, but their characterizations are a bit different from Searle’s For instance, suggestions belong to the constatives in Bach and Harnish’s but to the directives in Searle’s

Figure 1.1: Classification of communicative illocutionary acts (Bach and Harnish, 1979: 41)

Apart from classifying speech acts according to their functions, linguists have also divided them into direct and indirect speech acts It is not very difficult to distinguish direct speech acts, where speakers say what they mean, and indirect speech acts, where speakers mean more than, or something other than, what they say Saville-Troike (1982: 36), for example, argues,

As defined in speech act theory, direct acts are those where surface form matches interactional function, as ‘Be quiet!’ used as a command, versus an indirect ‘It’s getting noisy here’ or ‘I can’t hear myself think’

This argument is clarified by Yule (1997) when he suggests basing on the relationship between the three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, and imperative) and the three general communicative functions (statement, question, and command/request) to decide which speech act is direct and which one is indirect The researcher (ibid.: 54-55) claims,

Politeness theory and its application to the present study

Politeness is so popular a notion in studying pragmatics and CCP that Thomas (1995: 149) argues that “it could almost be seen as a -discipline of pragmatics”

Grumper, in his introduction to “Politeness- some universals in language usage” by B&L’s (1987), explains that a major reason for this interest is that politeness, a universal concept, is basic to the production of social order and the precondition of human cooperation

The notion of politeness has been clarified by a great number of researchers across cultures For example, from the strategic perspective and related to the notion of face, politeness can be defined as “the attempt to establish, maintain, and save face during conversation” (Richard, 1985: 218), “the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face” (Yule, 1997: 60), the complex system of strategies used to “minimize the face threat of the FTA” (B&L, 1987: 60), or

“behavior which actively expresses positive concern for others, as well as non- imposing distancing behavior” (Holmes, 1995: 5) From the normative perspective, it is defined as “one of the constraints on human’s interaction, whose purpose is to consider others’ feelings, establish of levels of mutual comfort, and promote rapport” (Hill et al., 1986: 349) or as “the set of social values which instructs interactants to consider each other by satisfying shared expectations” (Sifianou,

1992, in Watts, 2003: 53) From the communication perspective, Nguyen Quang (2004: 11) defines politeness as “any kind of communicative act (verbal or nonverbal or both) that is intentionally and appropriately meant to make another person/ other people feel better or less bad” In the dissertation author’s view, this definition is quite general, appearing an integrative view of both the strategic and normative approach since it captures both the individual intention (i.e., strategic) and socially institutionalized appropriateness (i.e., normative)

However, in the present study, the author’s focus is on linguistic politeness which is meant to refer to the ways people (represented by the VNS, VLE, and ANS) express (im)politeness verbally via their use of language, or to be more specific, their use of Vietnamese and English, in the given situations However, different politeness approaches in literature are first revisited to build up the theoretical background for the author’s chosen approach and the way it is applied to the present study

There exist different politeness views and approaches that have been put into several broader categories by different researchers

For example, Fraser (1990: 220) divided them into four categories: the social-norm view, the conversational-maxim view, the face-saving view, and the conversational- contract view Kasper (1990: 194-196) reviewed two major conceptualizations of politeness: the strategic politeness and politeness as social indexing Watts (2003: divided them into two major groups: the prepragmatic approaches and postpragmatic approaches Politeness approaches were also put into the volitional/strategic approach, normative/social-norm approach, and normative- volitional/integrated approach (Kieu Thi Thu Huong, 2006, Duong Bach Nhat,

In this research work, regarding Australia as an Anglophone culture and Vietnam as a non-Anglophone culture, the author focuses on discussing the strategic approach and the normative approach, with reference to relevant studies and views by

Vietnamese researchers Then, he argues for an appropriate politeness approach for his study

This politeness view, also referred to as the instrumental (Kasper, 1992) or volitional approach (Hill et al., 1986; Ide, 1989), is argued to work well in

Anglophone cultures and be preferred by Western scholars This view has lead to different approaches that are categorized by Watts (2003) as prepragmatic approaches They comprise the models by Lakkoff (1973), Leech (1983), and B&L

(1987), which rely on, or are more or less related to, Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle They are discussed in two subcategories: the maxim-based approach and the face-centered approach

This approach is under the crucial influence of Grice’s cooperative principle, first introduced in his lectures at Harvard University in early 1970s and officially published in “Logic and conversation” in 1975 Grice’s cooperative principle consists of a limited set of four conversational maxims, named quantity (i.e., Be informative), quality (i.e., Be true), relation (i.e., Be relevant), and manner (i.e., Be clear), under each of which falls sub maxims Grice (1975: 47) also points out that other maxims, such as politeness maxim can be added to the cooperative principle, which is taken into serious consideration by Lakoff in her politeness rules

The influence of Grice’s cooperative principle to the realm of pragmatics is so strong that it remains a crucial part in the well-known models of politeness by Lakoff (1973) and Leech (1983), and appears to be a closely related factor referred to to explain part of the realizations of hedges and all the off-record strategies in

Based on Grice’s cooperative principle, Lakoff (1973, in Watt, 2003: 60), for example, suggests two sets of politeness rules, named (1) Be clear and (2) Be polite

The first set is exactly the same as the Gricean cooperative principle and consists of four similar rules under the same names: quantity, quality, relevance, and manner

The second set is, however, Lakoff’s contribution to politeness approach and consists of three rules: (1) Don’t impose, (2) Give options, and (3) Make A feel good

– be friendly These rules are schematically presented by Watts (2003: 60) in figure

There, however, exists a great weakness, or to be more exact, a contradiction in Lakoff’s model She states that the rules of clarity are a subset of the rules of politeness However, if a speaker chooses to be polite by not imposing, or giving options, or making A feel good, it is certain that at some stage or another in the interaction s/he will violate the rules of conversation

Figure 1.2: Lakoff’s rules of pragmatic competence

Lakoff (1973, in Green 1989: 142-143) gives a clear explanation of her three politeness rules Specifically, Rule 1 (Don’t impose) is applied to situations in which the participants are not equal in power and status Thus, S will avoid, mitigate, ask permission for, or apologize for making A do anything which A does not want to do Rule 2 (Offer options) is applied to situations where the participants are approximately equal in status and power, but not socially close Then, S will phrase his speech so that A does not have to acknowledge S’s intent to persuade A

Rules of conversation (= Grice’s cooperative principle)

R3: Make A feel good – be friendly

Be as informative as require Be no more informative than required

Only say what you believe to be true

Be perspicuous Don’t be ambiguous Don’t be obscure

Be succinct of some view or course of action Rule 3 (Make A feel good) is applied to intimates or close friends, with the assumption that with a close friend, one should be able to discuss anything, although there may be some propositions that “even your best friend won’t tell you”

Thus, the first two rules, based on the basis of avoiding imposition, evoke the impression of negative politeness, while the third, with a focus on strengthening solidarity, evoke the impression of positive politeness in B&L’s politeness theory

However, it is perhaps because of the weakness and insufficiency of the model that it has rarely, if not never, been applied as a theoretical framework to data analyses in other empirical studies

Disagreeing in previous studies and in the present study

1.4.1 Previous studies of disagreeing in English and Vietnamese

The act of disagreeing is marked with Sornig’s (1977) early investigation into disagreement as a communicative act Since then, it has been marked with a number of discussions and studies relative to the issue in light of politeness theory which can be divided into two major groups: (1) those that build up the theoretical framework of politeness strategies (Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987) and (2) those focusing on the realizations of the politeness strategies in specific situations

The latter includes studies on intra-cultural communication (Holtgraves, 1997;

Rees-Miller, 2000; Locher, 2004; Nguyen Quang Ngoan, 2007a), inter-language pragmatics (Beebe & Takahashi, 1989), and contrastive pragmatics (Kieu Thi Thu

In the first group, Brown and Levinson (1987) are the two influential authors whose framework of politeness theory has widely affected other studies on speech acts As regards disagreeing, they argue that to preserve social harmony, the speaker may use (1) partial agreement, colloquial language, and first person plural to redress the threat to the addressee’s positive face (p 68-75), (2) questions, hedges, and impersonal forms to soften the threat to the addressee’s negative face (p 131), or alternatively, (3) indirect strategies by disguising disagreement as another speech act (pp 69) Partial agreement is realized in the positive strategy of avoid disagreement (pp 113-117); colloquial language can be realized in the positive strategy of use in-group identity markers (pp 107-112); and first person plural can be realized in the positive group of include both S and H in the activity (pp 127-

128) Besides, questions and hedges can normally be realized in two negative politeness strategies of be conventionally indirect (pp 132-144) and question, hedge (pp 145-172) As regards indirect strategies, they can be realized with different sub strategies in the off record group but B&L do not suggest which off record strategies are commonly used in the act of disagreeing

Leech (1983) considers disagreement to be dispreferred if face consideration is concerned Minimizing disagreement is even one of his main politeness sub maxims (p 132)

(a) Minimize disagreement between self and other

(b) Maximize agreement between self and other

Leech (p 138) also claims that “there is a tendency to exaggerate agreement with other people and to mitigate disagreement by expressing regret, partial agreement, etc” If they are put into B&L’s model, expressing regret belongs to the negative group of apologize, and partial agreement belongs to the positive group of avoid disagreement Leech’s (ibid.: 132) Tact Maxim (i.e., minimizing cost to other) and

Approbation Maxim (i.e., maximizing praise of other) are of relevance here as well

In the second group (i.e., those on the realizations of disagreeing, based on the framework of politeness theory), studies on intra-cultural communication are the first major type Studies of this type focus on the realizations of disagreeing strategies in both Vietnamese realized by Vietnamese native speakers and English used mainly by English native speakers and sometimes by nonnative English speakers who live in an English-speaking country long enough to speak the language like a native speaker

One representative of this type is Holtgraves (1997) This author documents and describes the use of various positive politeness strategies in actual verbal disagreements, based on the framework of politeness theory by B&L (1987) The researcher examines how people actually disagree rather than asking them how they might disagree by recording and analyzing the verbal strategies used by thirty two participants who are unacquainted students (twenty four women and eight men) in eight experimental sessions The realized disagreeing strategies in this study are token agreement, hedge opinion, personalize opinion, express distaste with one’s position, displace agreement, self-deprecation, and seek common ground-you know

Among them, token agreement, hedge opinion, personalize opinion are the most frequently-used (Holtgraves, 1997: 231-234)

A second researcher on disagreeing from the intra-cultural perspective is Rees-Miller (2000), who examines the act of disagreement as realized in university settings and the choice of linguistic markers used to soften or strengthen disagreement The research was based on a corpus of natural data containing over four hundred and fifty turns (from thirty six students and fourteen professors) in which disagreement was expressed in university courses and academic talks in the eastern United States B&L’s (1987) factors of power and rating of imposition were used to understand some of the ways in which disagreement was realized in the natural data Disagreeing strategies were recognized though the interactions between professors and students, professors and professors, students and professors, and students and students The realized strategies are presented in figure 1.4

Type of disagreement Type of linguistic marker

Positive comment Positive politeness Humor

(21% of turns) Inclusive 1 st person

I think/ I don’t know Negative Politeness Downtoners (may be, sort of) (41% of turns) Verb of uncertainty (seem)

Disagreement not softened Contradictory statement or strengthened Verbal shadowing

(8% of turns) Personal, accusatory you

Figure 1.4: Taxonomy of disagreement (Adapted from Miller, 2000: 1095)

A third representative of intra-cultural studies is Locher (2004), who recently conducted a study, with three very different speech situations: (1) a social argument at dinner among family and friends, (2) a business meeting with controversial content, and (3) a political radio interview This is a thorough investigation into the interface of power and politeness in the realization of disagreement in naturalistic linguistic data However, regarding the realization of disagreeing, the first situation is where she presents and analyzes the verbal strategies most explicitly The data was recorded by the researcher in late 1990s in Philadelphia, America in a private home during a dinner conversation among seven friends and relatives, including the researcher Four of them were native speakers of English, one grew up in Istanbul but lived in Philadelphia for fifteen years, one also grew up in Turkey but lived and worked in Philadelphia, and the researcher who spent most of her life in Switzerland but one year in Scotland and one year in the USA The recording took two hours and fifty five minutes The realized disagreeing strategies are summarized:

Disagreement was realized with the help of hedges, by giving personal or emotional reasons for disagreeing, shifting responsibility, formulating objections in the form of a question, the use of but, repetition of an utterance by a next or the same speaker and unmitigated disagreement Combinations of strategies are possible (Locher, 2004: 149)

According to that author (2004: 147), to soften disagreement with the help of hedges is the most frequent strategy (25%) Giving personal reasons for disagreeing ranks second (23%) Next comes the use of modals (16%), followed by shifting responsibility (13%) and formulating questions (12%) But with mitigation accounts for 7% and repetition of a speaker’s own mitigated disagreement follows with the smallest extent (only 3%)

Nguyen Quang Ngoan (2007a) introduces and describes 25 disagreeing strategies in Vietnamese, partially based on Brown and Levinson’s framework, with examples realized from five collections of short stories published from 2001 to 2006 He argues that strategy combinations are possible and should be noted when the speech act is investigated

The second major type of group 2 consists of ILP studies Those are studies on the similarities and differences of disagreeing strategies in English realized by English native speakers and learners (or nonnative speakers) of English The major purpose of this type is to study PT from the learners’ language and culture into English One example of this type is the study conducted by Beebe and Takahashi (1989) In this study, the researchers investigate American and Japanese performance of face- threatening speech acts in English – especially, disagreement and chastisement

They examine how these face-threatening acts are performed with status unequals – a person of lower status talking to someone of higher status and a person of higher status talking to someone of lower status The method of collecting data involves two procedures First, the natural speech was written down in the researchers’ notebooks (i.e., observation of authentic discourse) Then a discourse completion test was conducted With regard to disagreeing, the discourse completion test included two situations Thirteen Japanese and fourteen American participants were involved in situation 1 in which S has a higher status than H; the respective numbers in situation 2 where S has a lower status than H were fifteen and fifteen

The realized disagreeing strategies by American participants, ranging from the most frequent to the least frequent, were suggestion, positive remark, criticism, and gratitude in situation 1, and positive remark, suggestion, criticism, and token agreement in situation 2 (ibid.: 207-209)

The third type of the second group refers to contrastive pragmatics studies which commonly focus on similarities and differences of verbal strategies in a particular speech act (e.g., disagreeing) in specific situations by native speakers of two different languages (e.g., English and Vietnamese)

METHODOLOGY

Research methods

2.1.1 An overview of research methods in inter-language pragmatics

Research methods in ILP have been discussed by a number of researchers whose discussions on the topic are well presented in Kasper & Dahl’s (1991) “Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics”, and Gass & Neu’s (1996) “Speech acts across cultures – challenges to communication in a second language” Together with those two authors, other widely-known authors whose relevant discussions on ILP research methods have been greatly referred to are Rintell and Mitchell (1989), Beebe & Cummings (1996), Magalef-Boada (1993), Hudson, Detmer & Brown

(1995), Kasper & Blum-Kulka (1993), and Cohen (1996) In those researchers’ works, all the research methods in the field are thoroughly discussed with their strengths and weaknesses

Kasper and Dahl (1991: 3), for example, present a diagram illustrating different methods of data elicitation in interlanguage pragmatics.

Rating/ discourse closed open observation multiple choice/ completion role play role play of authentic interview tasks discourse perception/ production comprehension elicited observational

Figure 2.1: Methods of data elicitation

As seen from the diagram, data-gathering methods in ILP are put into two major methods, perception-eliciting methods and production-eliciting methods, and five - categories: (1) rating/multiple choice/interview tasks, (2) discourse completion, (3) closed role play, (4) open role play, and (5) observation of authentic discourse

These procedures, according to Kasper and Dahl, are characterized on the basis of the constraints they impose on the data; that is, “the degree to which the data are predetermined by the instrument, and the modality of language use subjects/informants are involved in” (1991: 3)

The perception procedures towards the left-hand side of the continuum – different kinds of rating tasks, multiple choice questionnaires, and interviews – provide information about subjects’ perception/comprehension of alternative speech act realizations (e.g., in terms of politeness or directness) or of socio-cultural factors (e.g., of relative power, social distance, or ranking of imposition) in given situations The production procedures comprise highly constrained instruments, including discourse completion questionnaires and closed role plays with no interaction, and less controlled open role plays with partially self-directed interaction between players The observation of authentic discourse on the right- hand side is the instrument in which no deliberate constraints are imposed on the subjects, although unintentional observer effects should be taken into consideration

2.1.1.1 A brief description of the two major research methods in ILP 2.1.1.1.1 Methods eliciting perception/comprehension data

These methods can help to study the subjects’ perception of situational factors This can be seen in the following example:

Direction: Could you please read the situations on the following pages and tick the answer in the appropriate box?

Situation: You are applying for a job with a company You go into a company office to pick up an application form A receptionist is sitting behind a desk

How much authority or right do you think the speaker has in making the request? none some a great deal

How acquainted are the speaker and the hearer? not at all a little bit very well

How large is the imposition of the request on the hearer? very small mode- rate very large

They can also help to study the subjects’ comprehension of speech act realizations, which can be illustrated with an example conducted by Hudson et al (1995)

Directions: There are 24 situations on the following pages Each situation will have three possible responses Circle the response (a, b, or c) that you think is the most appropriate for the situation described

Situation: You live in a large apartment building You are leaving to go to work

On your way out, you meet your next door neighbor, whom you haven’t seen for a long time a Hello That’s a nice shirt Where did you get it? How much did it cost? b Nice to meet you Tell me where you are going How is your family? c Good morning, Bob How have you been? We haven’t talked for weeks!

According to Kasper and Dahl (1991), since the early study of the perception of politeness by Walter (1979), the perception-eliciting procedures have been employed by a number of researchers, using different speech acts, including requests (Walter, 1979; Carrel & Conneker, 1981; Carrel, 1981b; Tanaka &

Kawade, 1982), requests & apologies (Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985), indirect answers (Carrel, 1979), and responding acts (Kasper, 1984) (cf Kasper and Dahl, 1991: 4-9)

These procedures have certain strengths, one of which is that it is quite easy for the subjects to fulfill the tasks since they do not take as much effort in choosing an answer as they do in producing language Thus, it is also easy for the researcher to gather sufficient data in a limited time Additionally, they also help to understand the subjects’ perception of the situational factors obviously affecting language production and thus can serve as the valid background for further investigation into the subjects’ production of language in the given situations However, these procedures prove to have unavoidable weaknesses Firstly, they just help to uncover the subjects’ perception which is what they think, but not what they actually do – their actual production of language What is more, there is a limitation of choices given by the researcher Thus, the subjects can hardy offer their choices but only accept one of the choices suggested by the researcher

The first type of production-elicitation instruments is the discourse completion task

Cohen (1996: 25) argues that there are two options for a written completion task in which a situation is briefly described in writing, either in the native or target language In the first option, that of open-ended elicitations, there is a written prompt followed by a space for the respondent to write down a written response

The second type has been referred to as discourse completion test – DCT (Blum-

Kulka, 1982), where the discourse is structured – part of it is left open and part closed, providing both for the speech act and a rejoinder Following is an example of an open-ended completion task

Directions: Read each of the situations on the following pages After each situation write what you would say in the situation in a normal conversation The situations take place in the United States and are to be answered in English

Situation: You live in a large apartment building You are leaving to go to work On your way out, you meet your next door neighbor, whom you haven’t seen for a long time

Now, this open-ended completion task can be compared with a DCT below

Dan: Ron, I found a great apartment, but I have a problem I have to pay the landlady $500 deposit by tonight

Ron: And you haven’t got it?

Dan: No I’ll get my salary only next week

- Ron: Sorry, no I’m out of money right now

(Blum-Kulka, 1982 in Margalef-Boada, 1993: 36)

A great number of researchers have gathered their data using DCT According to Kasper & Dahl (1991), the format of DCT was first developed by Levenston &

Blum in their 1978 study of lexical simplification, but it is Blum-Kulka who first employed it to investigate speech act realizations in 1982 Then, a series of studies of different speech acts based on DCT were conducted in the Cross-Cultural Speech

Act Realization Project (CCSARP) in the 1980s and others Those include investigations into requests (Blum-Kulka, 1982; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986;

House & Kasper, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Kasper, 1989; Svane in press), complaints (Olshtain & Weinbach, 1987), refusals (Takahashi & Beebe in press;

Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990); corrections (Takahashi & Beebe in press), and suggestions (Banerjee & Carrell, 1988) (cf Kasper & Dahl, 1991: 9)

There appear certain strengths and weaknesses of DCT as discussed by different researchers On the one hand, the strengths are obvious Firstly, DCT is a highly constrained instrument (Kasper & Dahl, 1991: 3) which helps to study the variables such as social and cultural factors (e.g., P, D, and R) that are likely to affect speech and performance Secondly, it surpasses other instruments in ease of use and it saves time and effort because it helps to gather a large amount of data quickly (Beebe & Cummings, 1996) without having to worry about the job of transcribing

Most importantly, it helps to create an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategies that will occur in natural speech (Beebe & Cummings, 1996) However, researchers have pointed out certain weaknesses of DCT Firstly, one weakness of DCT lies in the fact that it fails to reflect prosodic and nonverbal features of natural communication because it is in the written form and non-interactive It is for this reason that one may also question whether DCT can reflect characteristics of oral communication because the data elicited are just what the subjects think they have said or will say but not what they actually say These doubts have partially been answered by several researchers Beebe and Cummings (1985, 1996), for example, find that, discourse completion responses failed to elicit the full range of formulas and strategies found in spoken data, being limited in length of response and number of turns it takes to fulfill the function and deficient in the frequency of repetition and degree of elaboration as in a corresponding oral interaction Dahl (1985, in Kasper & Dahl, 1991: 38) refers to Beebe & Cummings that “written role plays bias the response toward less negotiation, less hedging, less repetition, less elaboration, less variety and ultimately less talk”

Research design

2.2.1 Data collection instruments 2.2.1.1 Meta-pragmatic assessment questionnaires (MAQ)

As stated, the MAQ was designed for the purpose of studying the subjects’ perception of P, D, and Se The MAQ was designed in two versions: one in Vietnamese and the other in English The Vietnamese version was first delivered to the VNS twice, fourteen days apart Then, it was delivered to the VLE The English version was delivered to the ANS

The two versions have the same number of situations (i.e., thirty situations) and the equivalent content These situations were designed for four contexts: (1) family context (situations 1 to 6), (2) university context (situations 7 to 12), (3) work context (situations 13 to 18), and social context (situations 19 to 30) In the family context, the subjects play the relative roles of parent and child or husband and wife

In the university context, they play the relative roles of lecturer and student or student and student In the work context, the relative roles are manager/senior and employee/junior or colleague and colleague The social context includes situations in which the subject speaks to people of different aspects of power, such as: gender, social status, economic status, physical strength, age, and intellectual capacity (a detailed description of the relative roles in the investigated situations is given in chapter three)

The subject is required to read each situation and perceive the relative power and social distance between him and the addressee as well as the degree of formality of the setting in each situation To be more specific, in each situation, he must decide how high his status is in comparison with the addressee (i.e., lower, equal, or higher), how well acquainted he and the addressee are (i.e., not acquainted at all, a little bit acquainted, or well acquainted) and how formal the communication setting is (i.e., formal, semi-formal, or informal) Following is part of the version in English for the ANS

Could you please read the situations on the following pages carefully and tick the appropriate box? In your opinion, on the basis of Australian culture, in each situation, how high is your status (i.e., position or role), compared with the communicating partner’s (i.e., lower, equal, or higher), how well acquainted (or close) are you and the communicating partner (i.e., not at all, a little bit, or (very) well), and how formal is the communicating setting (i.e., formal, semi-formal, or informal)?

How high is your status?

How well-acquainted you are?

How formal is the setting?

You are at home talking with your father/mother about where to go on holiday Your father/mother wants to go to a seaside resort, whereas you prefer going to a modern city

A full English version and Vietnamese version is presented in Appendix A

As possibly observed, the variables operated in the MPQ can be put in two groups: independent variables and dependent variables The independent variables are different subject groups: the VNS, VLE, and ANS The dependent variables consist of P, D, and Se

In terms of P, it should be noted that in this study, P was designed with three values:

-P, =P, and +P When they were computed, 1 represents –P, 2 represents =P, and 3 represents +P “–P” refers to situations in which S has less power than H; +P refers to situations in which S has more power than H; and =P represents situations where

S and H are equal in power Since it is a study of disagreeing among power- unequals, -P and +P serve as the primary criteria for developing the DCT

As far as D is concerned, this variable, which represents the social distance between interactants, also has three values in this study “–D” refers to situations in which S is not (at all) acquainted with H In other words, they are almost strangers “= D” refers to situations in which S and H are a little bit acquainted with each other It means they know each other but do not have a close relationship “+D” represents situations where S and H are well-acquainted, which means they have a close relationship with each other When the values were computed, 1 represents –D, 2 represents =D, and 3 represents +D Although this is a study, the focus of which is on the interaction among people who are not equal in P, D is taken into consideration because it can surely help interpret the production data in the DCT much better because power-unequals of different social distances may choose different politeness strategies

“Se” is the next dependent variable in the study which again has three values: +Se,

=Se, and –Se “+Se” represents formal communicating settings, while =Se refers to semi-formal settings and –Se to informal settings In the data input, 1 represents +Se, 2 represents =Se, and 3 represents –Se Similar to D, Se is a dependent variable helping bring about a deeper insight into the interaction among power- unequals

The DCT was also designed in two versions: the Vietnamese version and the English version The Vietnamese one was delivered to the VNS and the English one to the VLE and ANS

The DCT, developed according to the results of T-Test analysis of the MAQ, consists of six situations, which are the statistically reliable situations chosen from the MAQ for validity The six situations in the DCT are situations 1, 5, 9, 12, 13, and 27 selected and developed from the MPQ

Situations 1 and 5 represent the family context in which situation 1 demonstrates the child-parent relationship (-P), whereas situation 5 demonstrates the parent-child interaction (+P) The university context is reflected in situations 9 and 12, in which situation 9 represents the student-lecturer relationship (-P), while situation 12 is a lecturer-student interaction (+P) The work context is represented by situation 13, which is a +P situation referring to the manager-employee relationship The social context is marked with situation 27 (-P) referring to age as an aspect of power through an interaction between a younger S and an elder H Thus, among the six DCT situations developed from the MAQ, there are three powerless situations (situations 1, 9, and 27) in which S has lower power than H and three powerful situations (situations 5, 12, and 3) in which S has higher power than H The situations are summarized in Table 2.2 regarding the result of the validity T-Test

Actually, the DCT in this study is an open-ended elicitation task, not the discourse completion test – the DCT suggested by Blum-Kulka (1982) A purpose for the choice of open-ended completion task is to offer the informants more opportunities to employ a wider range of strategies and a fuller length of responses to deal with the shortcomings of DCT, as compared to oral data Following is part of the DCT in English for the ANS:

Could you please read the 6 situations listed below carefully and write down exactly what you would normally say to express your disagreement in each situation?

You are at home talking with your father/mother about where to go on holiday

Your father/mother wants to go to a seaside resort, whereas you prefer going to a modern city What would you say to him/her?

(For example: Oh yes, Dad, I know you enjoy walking on the beach but we went to a seaside resort last summer Don’t you think it might be better if we explore a modern city like Sydney this time?)

Full versions of the DCT in English and Vietnamese are presented in Appendix A

Data analysis

The T-Test is used for testing the validity of the MAQ collected from the VNS

Then, the Chi-square analysis is used for analyzing the subject’s P perception and use of disagreeing politeness strategies by the three groups Brown and Levinson’s

(1987) framework of politeness strategies is based on to build up the analytical framework for analyzing the disagreeing politeness strategies in the study

2.3.1 Validity test (T-Test) for developing data-gathering instrument (DCT) 2.3.1.1 A description of the T-Test

MAQs were designed, delivered and collected

MAQs were delivered and collected

DCT were delivered and collected

6 situations to VNS, VLE, & ANS T-Test was done and DCTs were developed

This T-Test is the validity test of the reliable situations chosen for developing the DCT It helps to see whether the subjects’ perception of P, D, and Se in the given situations is constant over time If the difference of the subjects’ perception of the variables in a situation between the Test and Retest is not significant, which means the subjects’ perception over time is constant, the situation is reliable

2.3.1.2 Interpretation of the T-Test scores

As seen in the MAQ, in each situation, the subject has to answer three questions:

1 How high is your status (i.e position or role), compared with the communicating partner’s: (1) lower, (2) equal, or (3) higher?

T-test: Research question: Is there a significant difference in VNS’s perception of the variables (P, D, and S) in the 30 investigated situations between the Test and Retest?

Selecting subjects – based on race, place of birth, & residence: Only the Kinh, born and resident in Ha Noi and surrounding areas were selected

NP N% boy Sts & 25 girl Sts representing the VNS

Same MAQ (30 situations) Same students (VNS) Pragmatic Assessment Test

Pragmatic Assessment Retest Compare the test mean scores between the Test & Retest within the same group

2 How well acquainted (or close) are you and the communicating partner: (1) not acquainted at all, (2) a little bit acquainted, or (3) well acquainted?

3 How formal is the communicating setting: (1) formal, (2) semi- formal, or (3) informal?

The first question was intended to ascertain the subject’s assessment of P, which is S’s relative power in comparison with H A score of 1 is equal to -P, meaning a low-power or powerless situation in which S has less power than H A score of 2 represents =P, which means that S and H are equal in power in that situation A score of 3 represents +P, reflecting a high-power or powerful situation in which S has more power than H

The second question was intended to study D, the social distance between S and H in each situation A score of 1 equals –D, meaning that the social distance between

S and H is large, or in other words, S and H are not acquainted at all A score of 2 is interpreted as =D which means the social distance between S and H is not so great; that is S and H are a little bit acquainted A score of 3 means +D representing a situation of small distance in which S and H are well acquainted

Question 3 was for the assessment of the formality of the communication setting in three values: +Se, =Se, and -Se A score of 1 represents +Se which means a formal communication setting, a score of 2 represents =Se which is a semi-formal setting, and a score of 3 represents -Se referring to an informal setting

As far as the values of P are concerned, based on the result of data analysis, the consistent mean scores of P (over time) were interpreted as -P when they are in the range of 1.0 to 1.5, =P in the range of 1.5 to 2.5, and + P in the range of 2.5 to 3.0

The closer to 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 each mean score of P is, the more valid the value of -

Similarly, the consistent mean scores of D (over time) were interpreted as -D when they are in the range of 1.0 to 1.5, =D in the range of 1.5 to 2.5, and + D in the range of 2.5 to 3.0 The closer to 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 each mean score of D is, the more valid the value of -D, =D, and +D remains to be, respectively

Conversely, in terms of Se value, the consistent mean scores of Se (over time) were interpreted as +Se when they are in the range of 1.0 to 1.5, =Se in the range of 1.5 to 2.5, and -Se in the range of 2.5 to 3.0 The closer to 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 each mean score of Se is, the more valid the value of +Se, =Se, and -Se remains, respectively

The mean score value of 1.5 is the border between -P and =P, -D and =D, and +Se and =Se, while the mean score value of 2.5 is the border between =P and +P, =D and +D, and =Se and –Se the interpretation of values is illustrated with figure 2.4

Figure 2.4: Interpretation of P, D, and Se values in the T-Test

As for the test of the mean scores over time (Test and Retest), the interpretation is based on the following Null Hypothesis (H o Hypothesis)

H o Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the mean scores of P, D, and Se between the Test and Retest

The significance level for rejection of H o Hypothesis was set at p0.5 To be more specific, when p0.5, the H o Hypothesis was rejected, which means the difference in the mean scores of P, D, or Se in that case is statistically significant On the contrary, when p>0.5, the H o Hypothesis was accepted It means that the difference in the mean scores of P, D, or Se between the Test and Retest is not statistically significant In other words, the subject’s perception of P, D, or Se in that case is consistent over time Consequently, the situations in which the H o Hypothesis was accepted are reliable situations

However, It is obvious that in some cases, the scores of P, D, or Se are 1.5 (in the border of -P and =P, -D and =D, +Se and =Se) or 2.5 (in the border of =P and +P,

=D and +D, =Se and -Se), which means the reliability of those situations may be questioned In addition, theoretically, if 50% of the subjects rated 1 (-P) and the other 50% rated 3 (+P), the mean score of P in this situation is 2 (=P) Then, the value of P is interpreted as =P, which is contradictory with the subjects’ rating (-P or +P) Of course, in practice, it is almost impossible for the case to happen, but to increase the validity and reliability of the situations, the six situations selected for developing the DCT were then analyzed with frequency statistics and chi-square analysis (please see Appendix C)

As stated, this is a study of disagreeing strategies among power-unequals

Consequently, the investigated situations of =P, in which S and H are equal in power were rejected when the valid situations were chosen for the development of the DCT (All the results of the T-Test are included in Appendix C)

Sit.1 (-P+D-Se) 1.06 1.10 420 3.00 2.96 159 2.56 2.58 837 Sit.2 (+P+D-Se) 2.96 2.86 058 2.98 3.00 322 2.54 2.60 554 Sit.4 (-P+D=Se) 1.14 1.24 133 3.00 2.98 322 2.22 2.28 554

Sit.5 (+P+D-Se) 2.96 2.90 322 3.00 2.98 322 2.52 2.52 1.000 Sit.9 (-P=D=Se) 1.14 1.06 209 2.02 2.12 229 1.96 1.88 510 Sit.10 (-P=D=Se) 1.28 1.16 224 2.02 1.98 598 2.02 1.66 005 Sit.11 (+P=D=Se) 2.92 2.86 083 1.84 1.90 444 1.80 1.80 1.000

Sit.12 (+P=D=Se) 2.92 2.88 159 2.00 1.98 743 1.86 1.78 252 Sit.13 (+P=D+Se) 2.92 2.94 709 2.10 2.00 133 1.40 1.34 472 Sit.14 (+P+D=Se) 2.82 2.68 051 2.54 2.56 811 2.00 1.78 062

Table 2.1: 13 valid and reliable situations in which S & H are not equal in power

Among the thirty situations investigated, thirteen situations were perceived by the subjects as those in which S has either more power (seven situations) or less power

(six situations) than H Of these thirteen valid situations, four are related to family context (situations 1, 2, 4, and 5), four are related to university context (situations 9,

10, 11, and 12), three are related to work context (situations 13, 14, and 16), and only two are related to social context (situations 27 and 28)

Based on the valid situations, some criteria are set up for selecting the valid situation to develop the DCT First of all, the author wants to develop the DCT with three -P situations and the same number of +P situations These situations were also selected in combination with different values of D (-D, =D, and +D), on the basis that priority was put on the values closest to 1 for -P and closest to 3 for +P

Additionally, these situations must represent all the four contexts: family context, university context, work context, and social context The values of Se are, however, only for the help of later interpretation of the data in the DCT, rather than for the consideration as a criterion for selecting the situation for the DCT

As regards -P situations, there are 3 constellations: -P +D, -P=D, and -P-D The first constellation (-P+D) consists of three situations: 1, 4, and 16 Situation 1 (child- parent) was chosen as it had mean scores of P closest to 1, 1.06 and 1.10 over time, compared to 1.14 and 1.24 or 1.20 and 1.20 in situation 4 or 16, respectively The mean scores of D in situation 1 are 3.00 and 2.96 which are very close to 3.0 and the mean scores of Se over time are 2.56 and 2.58 which are between 2.5 and 3.0 The interpretation is that a majority of subjects perceived that in situation 1 S has less power than H (-P), S and H are well acquainted (+D), and the communicating setting is informal (-Se)

The second constellation (-P=D) is reflected in two situations (9 and 10) Situation

9 (Student – Lecturer ) was selected as a representative for this constellation as it had the mean scores of P closer to 1, compared to the corresponding scores in situation 10 (1.14 and 1.06 compared to 1.28 and 1.16, respectively) The mean scores of D in situations 9 are 2.02 and 2.12 which are much close to 2.0 and the mean scores of Se are 1.96 and 1.88, between the range of 1.5 and 2.5 It can be interpreted that according to a large number of the VNS, in situation 9, S has less power than H (-P), S and H are a little acquainted with each other (=D), and the communicating setting is semi-formal (=Se)

CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND PRAGMATIC

Power and language in social interactions in previous studies

3.1.1 The concept and nature of power in social interactions

The concept of power has been notified and clarified by many researchers (Brown

& Levinson, 1987; Wartenberg, 1990; Ng & Bradac, 1993; Watts, 1991, 2003;

Ng & Bradac (1993), for example, discuss this concept in two terminological terms: power to and power over Power to is related to the power an individual may temporarily possess and enact, while power over “is the relational facet of power” realized when two speakers “stand in a relationship of dominance and submission”

(Ng & Bradac,1993: 3) In other words, power over refers to the hierarchical relationships between individuals which may lead to influence, dominance, or control It is power over that seems to interest many other authors Among those,

Watts (2003) emphasizes the institutional networks in which power over is realized

The researcher (2003: 213) argues that power over is held by complex, institutionalized latent networks such as school, family, local and national government, etc This suggests power be realized through interactions between interactants in different contexts and emphasizes the relational nature of power

Along with this line of argument, Wartenberg (1990: 141) especially deals with the relational side of power and situations where powerful and subordinate agents enact He argues that the existence of power must arise out of the interaction of the powerful and powerless The facet of power is also defined and explained by Brown

& Gilman (1972) and B&L (1987) in the term ‘relative power’ According to Brown & Gilman (1972 in Spencer-Oatey, 1996: 9), power is a relationship between at least two communicators, and it is nonreciprocal in the sense that both cannot have power in the same area of behavior It is also considered the degree to which the hearer can impose his own plans and self-evaluation at the expense of the speaker’s plans and self-evaluation (B&L, 1987: 77)

Also thoroughly discussing the concept of power but from a different perspective called power distance, Hofstede (1991: 28) defines it as the extent to which the less powerful members of an institutional network expect and accept that power is distributed unequally This definition, in fact, follows the line of argument made by Mulder (1977) in his definition of power distance as “the degree of inequality in power between a less powerful Individual (I) and a more powerful Other (O), in which I and O belong to the same (loosely or tightly knit) social system” (Mulder,

Compared with power over discussed by Wartenberg (1990), power distance

(Mulder, 1977; Hofstede, 1991, 2001) also refers to the interaction of the powerful and the powerless but its focus is on the degree of inequality and the particular social system The focus on the latter is suggested because power distance is conceptualized and realized differently in different cultures, which results in different behavioral characteristics

Focusing on the nature of power, some authors (Watts, 1991, 2003; Locher, 2004) argue that the exercise of power involves a conflict between the interactants The conflict may lie in the interests of the two interactants (Watts, 2003: 214) or in trying to keep a balance between arguing one’s point and protecting one’s own and/or the addressee’s face (Locher, 2004: 4)

All in all, although power is defined and clarified with different technological terms from different perspectives by different authors, the nature of this dimension is that it refers to an interpersonal relationship of dominance or control and submission between the powerful and the powerless in institutionalized networks The exercise of power involves a latent conflict and cannot be explained without contextualization

3.1.2 Previous studies of power and language in social interactions

As stated, the power concept and its interconnectedness with communication and society have been investigated by a number of researchers, including Hofstede

(1991, 2001), Ng & Bradac (1993), Spencer-Oatey (1996, 1997), Holmes (1985,

1992, 2003) and Locher’s (2004) Other researchers whose studies or discussions more or less related to the concept of power include Leech (1983), B&L (1987), Tanen (1987), Wartenberg (1990), Wierzbicka (1996), Rees-Miller (2000), Gipson

(2002), Samovar & Porter (2001), Ting-Toomey & Chung (2005), Fairclough

(2001), and Watts (2003) However, there is a lack of thorough studies on the topic of power in social interactions relevant to Vietnamese As far as the author is aware of, Nguyen Quang (2002, 2004), and Nguyen Quang Ngoan (2004, 2008) are among a few Vietnamese authors whose studies show their relevance to the topic

3.1.3 Major findings and shortcomings in the previous studies of power 3.1.3.1 Power and language are closely interconnected

The correlation between language and power has been discussed by a number of researchers

Thomas (1985), for example, believes that the relative power and social norms in institutions where communication takes place are of great importance when people examine how discourse is produced and interpreted She argues that the power relationship between the participants in an interaction and the institutional norms within which that interaction takes place are central to the development and interpretation of individual utterances (ibid.: 766)

B&L (1987: 15) argue that together with the social distance between S and H and the rating of imposition, the relative power is a crucial dimension in investigating linguistic politeness strategies, especially when they are involved in doing the FTA

Their (1987) model of politeness strategies for performing face-threatening acts (ibid.: 68-71) and their discussion of factors influencing the choice of politeness strategies (ibid.: 71-73) also point out that more direct strategies of disagreement would be used in preference to less direct strategies when S has greater power than

Agreeing with B&L (1987), Holmes (1992: 369) also recognizes relative power or social status as a crucial dimension in studying sociolinguistics She especially emphasizes the linguistic differences caused by the effects of the relative power with the belief that power accounts for a variety of linguistic differences in the way people speak Thus, one speaks in a way which signals his/her social status in a community (ibid.: 378)

Along with this line of argument on the correlation of language and power, Tanen

(1987) discusses the versatility of language when it can be used to show different levels of inequality in power She claims that the linguistic concepts of power and solidarity can both be served by the same linguistic means For example, one may call another by his first name because they are friends - solidarity - or because the first is superior to the second in status - power (ibid.: 9)

Perception of P in the present study

In this section, the results of the subject’s perception of P in the investigated situations among the groups of subjects are presented and discussed P in this study has three values: -P, =P, and +P “-P” situations refer to powerless situations or low- power situations in which S has less power than H “=P” situations represent equal- power situations in which S and H are equal in power “+P” situations are powerful situations or high-power situations in which S has more power than H Thus -P and + P situations are unequal-power situations which are the focus of the present study

For a thorough discussion of the subject’s of P among the examined subject groups, the investigated situations are discussed in four contexts: (1) the family context (situations 1 to 6), (2) the university context (situations 7 to 12), (3) the work context (situations 13 to 18), and (4) the social context (situations 19 to 30)

3.2.1 The perception of P in the family context

Of the six investigated situations in the family context, as perceived by the VNS, situation 3 and situation 6 are equal-power situations, while the other four are unequal-power ones

3.2.1.1 Equal-power situations in the family context

Situation 3 and situation 6 reflecting the husband-wife interaction at home were perceived by the subjects as =P situations Here are the results of the chi-square statistics of the situations

Situation 3 represents the wife-husband interaction at home on the topic of redecorating the house

+P≈ High Power *** ≈ p≤0.001 ≡ ≈ all or none

(These same abbreviations and conventions are applied to all the tables in this chapter)

Table 3.3: Family equal-power situations (Sit 3 and 6)

Graph 3.1A: Sit.3, husband- wife, house decoration

Graph 3.1B: Sit 6, husband- wife, diary

Graph 3.1: Family equal-power situations (Sit 3 and 6)

The chi-square statistics show that differences in the subject’s perception of P in this situation are not significant Especially, it is surprisingly that there is even no difference in the perception of =P when the same number of subjects (49 out of 50) in all the three groups thought that S and H in situation 3 are equal in power As seen from table 3.3, and graph 3.1A, nearly all the subjects in the three groups, up to 98%, perceived it as an equal-power situation

Similar to situation 3, situation 6 describes a wife-husband interaction The only difference lies in the topic for disagreeing which is S’s reaction to H’s reading S’s diary without S’s permission Once again, a majority of subjects in the three groups (94%, 76%, and 98% of the VNS, ANS, and VLE, respectively) agreed that S and H in this situation are equal in power The chi-square statistics in table 3.3 show that there are no significant differences in P perception between the VNS and VLE in situation 6 The interpretation is that no inverse PT was caused by the VLE in their perception of P Table 3.3 also shows that there was no significant difference between the VNS and ANS in the distribution of subjects perceiving the situation as -P However, it is statistically 99% sure that there existed significant difference (p≤0.01) between the VNS and ANS in their perception of situation 6 as a =P and +P situation This is demonstrated in graph 3.1B and in the frequency description shown in table 3.3 Specifically, only 4% of the VNS thought that it was a +P situation and 94% perceived it as a =P situation, whereas the corresponding percentages of the ANS were 20% and 76% Thus, it can be clearly observed that although a majority of the VNS and ANS agreed that situation 6 is an equal-power situation, quite a lot of ANS (20%) perceived it as a +P situation It is perhaps because reading one’s diary without his permission is surely intruding into his privacy, and thus threatening his negative face Since negative politeness is considered to be predominant in English-speaking cultures, there is a good reason that up to 20% of the Australian subjects thought that S has more power to react to H’s reading S’s diary

3.2.1.2 Unequal-power situations in the family context

Unequal-power situations in the family context were realized with two powerless situations (situations 1 and 4) and two powerful situations (situations 2 and 5), though in situation 4, the ANS had a significantly different view

3.2.1.2.1 Powerless situations in the family context

Situation 1 and situation 4 representing the child-parent interaction in the family context were categorized as powerless situations The results of the chi-square analysis of P perception by the three groups of subjects are presented in table 3.4

Table 3.4: Family powerless situations (Sit 1 and 4)

Graph 3.2A: Sit 1, child-parent, house decoration

Graph 3.2B: Sit 4, child-parent, diary

Graph 3.2: Family powerless situations (Sit 1 and 4)

Situation 1 describes an interaction at home between a child and his/her parent on the topic of redecorating the house As observed in table 3.4, a majority of subjects in all the three groups thought that it was a -P situation This is shown in the frequency description as 94% of the VNS, 66% of the ANS, and 90% of the VLE considered situation 1 as a -P situation More specifically, there were no significant differences in P perception by the VNS and VLE, which means inverse PT was not witnessed in this situation None of the subjects in either groups thought that it was a +P situation However, according to the chi-square statistics, the differences between the VNS and ANS in their perception of the situation as -P, =P, and +P were all significant These can be clearly observed from graph 3.2A and the frequencies in table 3.4 Although a majority of subjects agreed that it was a -P situation, 94% of the VNS had this perception, while only 66% of the ANS shared the view On the contrary, situation 1 was rated as a =P and -P situation by more ANS than VNS (28% and 6% compared to 6% and 0%, respectively) Thus, the results help to reinforce the hypothesis that Australia is a smaller-distance culture than Vietnam

Like situation 1, situation 4 reflects the child-parent relationship The difference is that in situation 4, the parent reads the child’s diary without his/her permission, which is a violation of the child’s privacy The results in table 3.4 show that there was no inverse PT as there were no significant differences in the perception of the situation as -P, =P, and +P by the VNS and VLE Additionally, a large number of subjects in both groups (88% of the VNS and 82% of the VLE) regarded situation 4 as a powerless situation In contrast, according to the chi-square statistics, it is 99.9% sure that there were significant differences (p≤0.001) between the VNS and ANS in their perception of situation 4 as -P, =P, and +P Especially, as demonstrated in table 3.4 and figure 3.2B, the major differences are that while a majority of VNS (88%) thought that it was a -P situation, only 12% of the VNS thought the same On the contrary, a large proportion of the ANS (64%) considered it a =P situation, while the corresponding proportion of the VNS was just 10% It can then be concluded that the hypothesis that supposes Australia to be a smaller- distance culture than Vietnam is again reinforced

3.2.1.2.2 Powerful situations in the family context

Situations 2 and 5, illustrated with table 3.5 and graph 3.3A and 3.3B, remain the two representatives of powerful situations in the family context

Table 3.5: Family powerful situations (Sit 2 and 5)

Graph 3.3A: Sit 2, parent-child, house decoration

Graph 3.3B: Sit.5, parent-child, diary

Graph 3.3: Family powerful situations (Sit 2 and 5)

Situation 2 represents the parent-child interaction at home on the topic of redecorating the house The results of the chi-square statistics in table 3.6 show that there were no significant differences between the VNS and VLE in their perception of the situation as -P, =P, and +P It is amazing that exactly the same number of subjects in both groups considered the situation as a +P situation (96%) and as a =P one (4%) None of the subjects in either group perceived it as a -P situation It can be interpreted that there was no inverse PT in this situation However, according to the chi-square statistics, there were significant differences (p≤0.001) between the VNS and ANS in their perception of the situation as +P and = P These differences are demonstrated in graph 3.3A and can be clearly observed in the frequency description in table 3.5 While nearly all the VNS (96%) perceived situation 2 as a +P situation, the corresponding proportion of ANS was just about two-thirds (68%)

Nearly one third of the ANS (30%) thought that the parent and his/her child are equal in power in this situation The results again help to confirm the hypothesis that Vietnam is a higher-power-distance culture than Australia.

3.2.1.3 Concluding remarks of P perception in the family context

So far, the statistic results of P perception in the six situations in the family context by the three groups of subjects have been presented and discussed The major findings are as follows

In general, a majority of subjects in all the three groups had similar perception of P in the family context To be more specific, they perceived the husband-wife interactions (situations 3 and 6) as =P situations in which the husband and the wife are equal in power, rated the parent-child interactions (situations 2 and 5) as +P situations in which the parent has higher power than the child, and regarded one child-parent interaction (situation 1) as a -P situation in which the child has lower power than the parent However, it was a contradiction that in the child-parent interaction in situation 4, a majority of the ANS (64%) considered it as a =P situation in which the mature child and his/her parent are equal in power, while a majority of VNS (88%) rated it as a –P situation.

P Perception by a majority of subjects

4 Mature Child to Parent -P (88%) =P (64%) -P (82%) CCD (***)

CCD ≈ Cross-Cultural Difference Sit ≈ Situation

Table 3.6: CC differences and inverse PT in P perception in the family context

In terms of PT, there were no cases of inverse PT caused by the VLE in the family context as there were no statistically significant differences between the VNS and VLE in their perception of P (p>0.05 in all the eighteen cases of the six situations)

As regards CC differences between the VNS and the ANS, the following findings should be taken into consideration

Firstly, in =P situations, the statistical significant differences in the perception of situation 6 as =P and +P (p≤0.01) when far fewer ANS than VNS thought that S and

H are equal in power, but a far greater number of ANS than VNS thought that S has more power than H indicate that the ANS might have thought that S has more of a right to react to H’s invading on S’s privacy (i.e., reading S’s diary without permission) even though they are husband and wife or vice versa This suggests that the Australians be more affected by the negative politeness

Secondly, in +P situations, the statistics show that there existed significant differences between the two groups in the subject’s perception of situations 2 and 5 as +P and =P (p≤0.001 in all the four cases) Specifically, situations 2 and 5 were perceived as +P situations where the parent has more power than the child by far more VNS than ANS but as =P situations where the parent and the child are equal in power by far fewer VNS than ANS These contribute to confirming the hypothesis that Vietnam is a higher-power-distance culture than Australia

Thirdly, in -P situations, there remained statistically significant differences between the two groups in their perception of situation 1 as +P and =P when it was rated as -

CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND PRAGMATIC

Disagreeing politeness strategies realized in the invested situations

4.1.1 Disagreeing strategies based on B&L’s Framework

In the investigated situations, twenty eight disagreeing politeness strategies based on B&L’s framework were realized They were used either as single strategies or strategy combinations Following is a brief discussion of each single strategy, based on B&L’s (1987) framework, with examples from the collected data However, in some strategies, examples by one or two of the subject groups are not given because they were not realized in the data Also, the given examples are just some representatives and cannot illustrate all the aspects of each strategy Thus, the illustrated aspects are underlined in the examples For further explanation and details of each strategy, please see B&L (1987, 91-227), and for more examples of disagreeing strategies and strategy combinations, please refer to Appendix B

In general, the prime reason for using the bald on record (henceforth bald-on R) is because S wants to do the FTA with maximum efficiency rather than satisfy H’s face, even to any degree

(4.1) What you did was wrong … (Sit 5 – ANS) (4.2) I’m not pleased with what you have done … (Sit 27 – VLE) (4.3) Làm gì có Tôi nói nhỏ đấy chứ (Sit 27 – VNS)

Do what for yes-I-talk-softly- … (No, I’m talking softly …) 4.1.1.2 Positive politeness

S may go in twisting their utterances so as to appear to agree or to hide disagreement with token agreement, pseudo-agreement, white lies, or hedging opinions with positive-politeness hedges

(4.4) I think blue is OK but white will last longer and not dated (Sit 1 – ANS) (4.5) OK, but you should try your best … (Sit 13 – VLE)

(4.6) Màu xanh cũng rất đẹp nhưng con thích màu trắng hơn (Sit.1 – VNS)

Blue-also-very-nice-but-I-like-white-more (Blue is also very nice, but I prefer white.)

4.1.1.2.2 Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge of and concern for H’s wants

S may indicate that S and H are cooperators to persuade H to cooperate with S by asserting or implying S’s knowledge of or concern for H’s wants and showing S’s willingness to meet them

(4.7) I understand that you would like assignment in on time … (Sit 9 – ANS) (4.8) I know you like blue, but … (Sit 1 – VLE)

(4.9) …Con biết bố mẹ muốn sơn nhà màu xanh nhưng … (Sit.1 – VNS)

I-know-parents-want-paint-house-blue-but …(… I know you want to paint the house blue but …)

4.1.1.2.3 Presuppose/ raise/ assert common ground (henceforth Common G)

Doing this strategy, S has ample opportunity to stress the common ground (common concerns and common attitudes towards interesting events) that he shares with H

(4.10) … I had it taught at Uni too (Sit 12 – ANS) (4.11) … Why don’t we paint our house white? (Sit 1 – VLE) (4.12) Con nghĩ màu trắng sẽ hợp với ngôi nhà của chúng ta hơn (Sit.1 – VNS)

I-think-white-will-fit in-our house-more (I think white fit in our house better) 4.1.1.2.4 Condolence, encouragement (henceforth Encourage)

This strategy is added to B&L’s framework by Nguyen Quang (2004: 78-84) When doing this, S shows S’s sympathy, understanding, or cooperation to H by condoling or encouraging H However, this strategy was not found in the Australian data

(4.13) … They are easy You only need to work hard, and then you can finish them (Sit

12 – VLE) (4.14) Cô nghĩ là đề tài không quá khó Chỉ cần các em cố gắng một chút (Sit 12 – VNS)

I-think-topic-not-too-difficult Only-need-you-try-a bit.(I don’t think the topic is too difficult You just need to try a little bit.)

4.1.1.2.5 Give gifts (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation) to H

S may satisfy H’s positive wants by the positive politeness action of gift-giving, which means not only giving tangible gifts but also satisfying human-relation wants, such as the wants to be liked, admired, cared about, understood, and so on

This strategy was not found in the Vietnamese data

(4.15) … How are you today, anyway? (Sit 27 – ANS) (4.16) … Have a good trip, Sir (Sit 27 – VLE) 4.1.1.2.6 Use in-group identity markers (henceforth In-group)

S can realize this strategy by using any of the numerous ways to convey in-group memberships These are comprised of in-group usages of address forms, of language or dialect, of jargon or slang, and of ellipsis

(4.17) No Mum, white must look much better (Sit.1 – ANS) (4.18) Dad, I also like blue but …(Sit 1 – VLE)

(4.19) Bố ơi! Con thích màu trắng hơn (Sit 1 VNS)

Daddy! I-like-white-more (Daddy, I prefer white.) 4.1.1.2.7 Include both S and H in the activity (henceforth Include S & H)

By using an inclusive we form, including Let’s in English, when S really means you or me, he can call upon cooperative assumptions and thereby redress to possible

(4.20) Let’s have a look at the work we’ve got to cover … (Sit 12 – ANS) (4.21) … Please, let’s choose white, Dad

(4.22) … Có gì thì góp ý để chúng ta cùng thay đổi cho hợp lý (Sit 12 – VNS)

There is-something-then-give-idea-so that-inclusive we-together-change-for- reasonableness (If you have any ideas, give them to me so that we will make reasonable changes together.)

4.1.1.2.8 Intensify interest to H (henceforth Interest)

S may intensify his own interest in the conversation in several ways, including the use of tag questions or expressions that draw H as a participant into the conversation, such as “you know?”, “see what I mean?”, or “isn’t it?” However, this strategy was not found in the Australian and Vietnamese learner’s data

(4.23) Đây là những bài tiểu luận rất thú vị và bổ ích, các em biết không? (Sit 12 – VNS)

These-are-essays-very interesting-and-useful, you-know-or not? (These are extremely useful and interesting assignments, you know?)

Using this strategy, S assumes that H wants S’s wants for S (or for S and H) and will help him to obtain them That is, S is so presumptuous as to assume H will cooperate with him, so it is his tacit commitment to cooperate with H as well

(4.24) I trust in your ability to complete this report in the shortest possible time (Sit 13 –

(4.25) … We should paint it white I’m sure you agree that it will look more beautiful (Sit

1 – VLE) (4.26) Con chắc bố mẹ cũng thích màu trắng nên sẽ chiều con mà (Sit 1 – VNS)

I-sure-parents-also-like-white-so-will-please-me (I’m sure you also like white and will please me.)

S may claim, with a certain sphere of relevance, that whatever H wants, S wants for him and will help him to obtain This results in the use of offers and promises as a way of stressing S’s good intentions of satisfying H’s positive-face wants

(4.27) … I will listen to your suggestions and consider them (Sit 12 – ANS) (4.28) I hope you’ll forgive us and we promise not to do it again (Sit 9 – VLE) (4.29) Vâng, em sẽ nói nhỏ hơn (Sit 27 – ANS)

Yes, I-will-speak-softer (Yes, I will keep my voice down.) 4.1.1.2.11 Give (or ask for) reasons (henceforth Reason)

Another aspect of including H in the activity is for S to give reasons why he wants what he wants Giving or asking for reasons is a way of implying “I can help you” or “you can help me” and a way of showing what help is needed

(4.30) Why haven’t you finished the report? (Sit 13 – ANS) (4.31) … I think it’s unfair because I have finished my assignment (Sit 9 – VLE) (4.32) … Thầy làm vậy vì muốn tốt cho chính các em … (Sit 12 – VNS)

I-do-that-because-want-good-for-yourself-you (I did that because I want the good things for you.)

4.1.1.2.12 Assume or assert reciprocity (henceforth Reciprocity)

When pointing to the reciprocal rights or obligations of doing FTA to each other, S may soften his FTAs by negating the debt aspect and/or the face-threatening aspect of the FTA

(4.33) … we can have blue rooms in part of the house and white in other rooms (Sit 1 –

ANS) (4.34) … why don’t we have the kitchen painted blue and the rest white …? (Sit.1 – VLE)

(4.35) Thôi bố mẹ cứ sơn màu xanh đi nhưng để phòng con màu trắng nhé (Sit 1 – VNS)

So-parents-just-paint-blue-usher-but-leave-my room-white-appealer (OK, you go on painting it blue, but please paint my room white.) 4.1.1.3 Negative politeness

Disagreeing politeness strategies in powerless situations

Situation 1 describes an interaction between a child (S) and his/her parent (H) at home on the topic of redecorating the house The statistic results of the subject’s perception of P, D, and Se in the situation by all the three groups are presented in table 4.1

As P is concerned, the chi-square statistics show significant differences between the VNS and ANS as well as between the VLE and ANS in their perception of the situation as -P, =P, and +P More particularly, it was perceived as a -P situation by up to 94% of the ANS and 90% of the VLE but only 66% of the ANS, as a =P situation by respective percentages of 6%, 10%, and 28%, and as a +P situation by none of the VNS and VLE but 6% of the ANS The results suggest that Vietnam appears a higher-power-distance culture than Australia because far more VNS and VLE considered the child has less power than the parent while far more ANS thought that the child is equal in power with the parent or even, in some cases, has more power than the parent

(These same abbreviations and conventions are applied to all the tables in this chapter)

Table 4.1: Perception of P, D, and Se in situation 1

In terms of D, there were no differences as all the subjects in all the three groups had the same view that it is a +D situation in which S and H are well-acquainted

As regards Se, according to the chi-square statistics, there exist significant differences between the VNS and ANS as well as the VLE and ANS in their perception of the situation as -Se, =Se, and +Se Specifically, it was perceived as a -

Se situation by 64% of the VNS and 80% of the VLE but up to 96% of the ANS In contrast, as much as 28% of the VNS and 14% of the VLE rated it as a =P situation, whereas only 4% of the ANS shared the view Also, while 8% of the VNS and 6% of the VLE considered it as a +P situation, none of the ANS thought the same

Thus, in this context, the ANS appeared to be less formal than the VNS and VLE

In general, despite the significant differences between the VNS and ANS or between the VLE and ANS in their perception of P and Se, it is a fact that a great majority of subjects in all the three groups thought that it is a -P, +D, and -Se situation, which means, according to most of the subjects, in situation 1, S has less power than H, S is well-acquainted with H, and the setting is informal

Table 4.2: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation 1

Graph 4.1: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation

Bald-on R Positive P Negative P Off-record Mixed No FTA

Graph 4.1: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation 1

The realizations of six major groups of disagreeing politeness strategies used by the three groups in situation 1 are illustrated with table 4.2 and graph 4.1

The chi-square statistics in table 4.2 show that there was significant difference (p≤0.05) between the VNS and ANS as well as between the VLE and ANS in the proportions of subjects using the positive P as it was used by far more VNS (52%) and VLE (48%) than ANS (30%) These differences provide one example of CC differences and negative PT from Vietnamese to English caused by the VLE and help to confirm the hypothesis that the Vietnamese employ more positive P strategies than the Australians

Other differences which are statistically significant include the difference (p≤0.05) between the VNS and ANS in their use of the mixed when this group was employed by only 26% of the VNS but up to 42% of the ANS This, however, does not lead to negative PT because up to 52% of the VLE employed the group and this proportion was not significantly different, compared to the 42% of the ANS What should be noted is that a mixture of strategies was employed by quite a lot of subjects in all the groups

The percentages of VNS, ANS and VLE using the negative P were 8%, 18% and

0%, and the off-record were 4%, 6% and 0%, respectively According to the chi- square statistics, the differences between the VLE and ANS in the proportion of subjects using the negative P (p≤0.01) and the off-record (p≤0.05) were significant

However these differences do not indicate negative PT What should be noted is that the negative P was used by more ANS than VNS although the difference was not statistically significant

What is more, none of the subjects in all the three groups chose the no FTA and only a small proportion of each group (10% of the VNS, 4% of the ANS and none of the VLE) chose the bald-on-record Perhaps it is because S has less power than

Further details in the use of disagreeing strategies divided into the twelve subgroups are presented in table 4.3 and graphically illustrated with graph 4.2 As seen in table 4.3, the six subgroups that were not realized in situation 1 are the multiple N, multiple O, P + O, N + O, P + N + O, and no FTA

Table 4.3: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 1

Graph 4.2: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 1

Graph 4.2: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 1

The single P was used by 18% of the VNS, 20% of the ANS but only 6% of the

VLE According to the chi-square statistics, the difference between the VLE and ANS in their use of this group was significant (p≤0.05) However, this difference was not a case of negative PT The single P strategies realized in this situation include avoid D, concern, common G, in-group, reason, optimistic, and reciprocity, the two most frequently-used strategies of which are concern and in-group

The multiple P was used by as much as 34% of the VNS, and 42% of the VLE but only 10% of the ANS These differences in proportions are statistically significant (p≤0.01) in both cases of comparison, the VNS with the ANS as well as the VLE with the ANS This is, thus, an evidence of CC differences and negative PT caused by the VLE As seen in Appendix C, there is a variety of strategy combinations

Among them, several positive P strategies frequently used in combination are in- group, reason, common G, and avoid D

Since the multiple N was not realized in this situation, the single N turned to be the only representative of the major group of negative P, employed by 8% of the VNS, 18% of the ANS, and none of the VLE Surprisingly, the statistics (Appendix C) show that this group was represented by Q-H, the only single N strategy

Disagreeing politeness strategies in powerful situations

Situation 5 describes an interaction between a parent (S) and his/her child at home in which S reacts to H’s reading S’s diary without permission Table 4.10 shows the statistic results of the subject’s perception of P, D, and Se in situation 5

According to the statistics, it was perceived as a +P situation by an overwhelming percentage of the VNS (96%) and VLE (98%) but much fewer ANS (76%)

Conversely, it was regarded as a =P situation by only 4% of the VNS and 2% of the

VLE but as much as 24% of the ANS The difference (p≤0.001) between the VNS and ANS reveals the CC differences

Table 4.12: Perception of P, D, and Se in situation 5 by the three groups

As regards D, there is no surprise when 100% of the VNS and VLE as well as up to 98% of the ANS agreed that it is a +D situation in which S and H are well- acquainted

In terms of Se, it was rated as a -Se situation by a majority of the subjects, with 58% of the VNS, 76% of the ANS, and 52% of the VLE and as a =Se situation by large proportions of 36%, 16% and 24%, respectively Statistically, the differences between the VNS and ANS in their perception of the situation as -P and =P were significant (p≤0.05) So were the differences between the VLE and ANS in their perception of the situation as –Se and +Se

All in all, as perceived by a majority of subjects in the three groups, it is a +P, +D, and -Se situation

The statistics of the realizations of disagreeing strategies in the six major groups are shown in table 4.13 and graphically illustrated with graph 4.7 As seen in table 4.13, there is one missing case belonging to the VNS group as one Vietnamese subject did not provide a response for this situation

The statistics show that the bald-on R was opted for by quite a large number of subjects, with 38% of the VNS, 32% of the VLE and up to 60% of the ANS Thus, far more ANS opted for the bald-on R than the other two groups and these differences were statistically significant (p≤0.05), being another example of CC differences and negative PT

The positive P was chosen by 22% of the VNS and up to 38% of the VLE but only 14% of the ANS, which results in statistically significant difference (p≤0.001) in the choice of the VLE compared with that of the ANS although the difference is not a case of PT

Table 4.13: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

Graph 4.7: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

Bald-on R Positive P Negative P Off-record Mixed No FTA

Graph 4.7: Realization of 6 major groups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

It was noticeable that the negative P was used by small percentages of subject, with just 6% of the VNS, 6% of the VLE, and 12% of the ANS Though more ANS opted for the negative P than the VNS or VLE, this difference was not statistically significant

There was also no significant difference across the subject groups in their use of the off-record as it was resorted to by 16% of the VNS, 10% of the ANS, and 8% of the

On the contrary, differences in the choice of the mixed between the VNS and ANS as well as between the VLE and ANS were both statistically significant (p≤0.001) since the group was employed by up to 14% of the VNS and 16% of the VLE but none of the ANS These differences provide one more example of CC differences and negative PT

The no FTA was rarely chosen when only 2% of the VNS, 4% of the ANS, and none of the VLE opted for this group of strategy

The disagreeing strategies in situation 5 are further discussed in the twelve subgroups visualized in table 4.14 and graph 4.8 The bald-on R, no FTA, and missing case are exactly the same as those previously discussed in the six major groups

Table 4.14: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

Graph 4.8: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

Graph 4.8: Realization of 12 subgroups of disagreeing strategies in situation 5

The positive P was realized mainly with the single P when 14% of the VNS, 14% of the ANS, and up to 38% of the VLE opted for it According to the chi-square statistics, the difference between the VLE and ANS in their choice of the subgroup was significant (p≤0.001) although it does not indicate the negative PT The multiple P was, however, chosen by a few subjects, with only 8% of the VNS, 4% of the VLE, and none of the ANS The positive P strategies used in isolation were in-group, avoid D, common G, reason, and reciprocity Among them, the two most frequently-used strategies were reason and in-group, accounting for 8% and 4% of the VNS, 10% and 2% of the ANS, and 14% and 18% of the VLE, respectively (Appendix C) The positive P strategies used in combination in the multiple P were reason, concern, reciprocity, in-group, and common G, with the last two being the most commonly-used

As for the negative P, the multiple N was used by only 2% of the VLE but none of the others and it was the combination of Q-H and apologize The single N was used by 6% of the VNS, 12% of the ANS, and 4% of the VLE The realized single N strategies comprised only impersonalize and Q-H, and they were used frequently

As regards the off-record, because the multiple O was not opted for in this situation, the single O remained the sole representative of the major group and was realized with vague, over-generalize, and rhetorical Q, of which the last one was the most frequently-used, with 10% of the VNS, 6% of the ANS, and 8% of the VLE (Appendix C)

Finally, the mixed was realized with all the four subgroups Specifically, the P + N was opted for by 8% of the VNS and 6% of the VLE but none of the ANS These differences between the VNS and ANS as well as between the VLE and ANS were statistically significant (p≤0.05) and reveal CC differences as well as negative PT

The P + O was chosen by 4% of the VNS and also 4% of the VLE but none of the ANS The N + O was employed by just 4% of the VLE but none of the others The

Major findings

1.1 On inverse PT and CC differences in power perception

Power perception was investigated through the relative roles (e.g., a child to a parent) or aspects of power (e.g., age or gender) in thirty situations divided into the four contexts: family (situations 1 to 6), university (situations 6 to 12), work (situation 13 to 18), and society (situations 19 to 30)

As regards inverse PT, it is not a common phenomenon in the present study as it accounts for only 4.44% of all the cases investigated More particularly, it is totally absent in the family context, university context, and work context and rarely occurs in the social context, accounting for 11.11% of all the cases in this context

Regarding CC differences, the results reinforce the hypothesis that Vietnam is a higher-power-distance culture than Australia although Australia does not completely prove a low-power-distance society This can most obviously be reflected in the family context less obviously in the university context, and least in the work context

In the family context, situations 2 and 5 (parent-child interaction) are perceived as +P situations by far more VNS than ANS but as =P situations by far fewer VNS than ANS Besides, situation 1 (child-parent interaction) is rated as -P by far more VNS than ANS but as =P by far fewer VNS than ANS In addition, in situation 4 (mature child-parent interaction), a majority of the VNS, compared to only a few ANS, consider it as a -P situation, whereas a large number of the ANS, compared to only a few VNS, rate it as a =P situation

In the university context, in all the -P situations (situations 9 and 10 – student- lecturer interactions) as well as +P situations (situations 11 and 12 – lecturer- student interactions) in which S and H are perceived as unequal in power by a majority of subjects in both groups, more VNS than ANS perceive that those are unequal-power situations On the contrary, fewer VNS than ANS regard those four situations as =P situations in which S and H are equal in power

In the work context, it should be noted that situations 13 (manager-employee interaction), 14 (manager-employee interaction), and 16 (employee-boss) are all rated as unequal-power situations by more VNS than ANS and as equal-power situations by fewer VNS than ANS These appear to be additional clues supporting the hypothesis that Vietnam is a higher-power-distance culture than Australia although the differences are not statistically significant enough (p>0.05) to contribute to accepting the hypothesis However, it is an exception that situation 15 (junior-senior interaction) is regarded as a =P situation by a majority of VNS compared to a minority of ANS, but as a -P situation by a large number of ANS compared to just a few VNS

In the social context, the results show that gender, economic status, and physical strength are not the major aspects of power in both cultures Age, intellectual capacity, and authoritative status, however, prove to be major aspects of power To be more specific, age is more noticeable in Vietnam, while intellectual capacity is more noticeable in Australia However, it is unexpected that authoritative status is much more noticeable in Australia than in Vietnam in the situation investigated (i.e., between the passenger and the custom officer at the airport)

1.2 On negative PT and CC differences in the use of disagreeing politeness strategies

Disagreeing politeness strategies were investigated in six situations divided into powerless group (situations 1, 9, and 27) and powerful group (situations 5, 12 and

13) Situation 1 (-P+D-Se) is a child-parent interaction in the family context in which S has less power than H, S and H are socially close to each other, and the setting is informal Situation 9 (-P=D=Se) is a student-lecture interaction in which S has less power than H, S and H are a little bit acquainted with each other, and the setting is semi-formal Situation 27 (-P-D-Se) is a younger-elder interaction in which S has less power than H, S and H are not acquainted and the setting is informal Situation 5 (+P+D-Se) is a parent-child interaction in which S has more power than H, S and H are socially close to each other, and the setting is informal

Situation 12 (+P=D=Se) is a lecturer-student interaction in which S has more power than H, S and H are a little bit acquainted with each other, and the setting is semi- formal Situation 13 (+P=D+Se) is a manager-employee interaction in which S has more power than H, S and H are a little bit acquainted with each other, and the setting is formal

1.2.1 On negative PT in the use of disagreeing politeness strategies in specific situations

Negative PT caused by the VLE is a common phenomenon in the present study as it can be observed in nearly all the situations

When the major groups of strategies are examined, PT appears in five out of six situations Particularly, in situation 1, the positive P is used by more VLE than

ANS; in situation 5, the bald-on R is used by more ANS than VLE, while the mixed is used by more VLE than ANS; in situation 9, the mixed is used by more VLE than ANS, while the no FTA is used by more ANS than VLE; in situation 12, the negative P is used by more ANS than VLE; and in situation 27, the bald-on R is used by more ANS than VLE

When the subgroups are examined, PT also exists in five situations Particularly, in situation 1, the multiple P is used by more VLE than ANS; in situation 5, the P+N is used by more VLE than ANS; in situation 9, the P + N is used by more VLE than ANS; in situation 12, the single N and multiple N are used by more ANS than VLE, whereas the multiple P and P + N are used by more VLE than ANS; and in situation

13, the multiple N is used by more ANS than VLE

It should also be noted that in many other cases, there remain significant differences between the VLE and ANS in their realizations of the strategy groups (i.e., those