A comparative study on hedges in declining an invitation in english and vietnamese

PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study The goal of learning a language, nowadays, is to be able to carry out effective communication In another words, to learn a language means to learn the culture of the country where that language is spoken One can have a wide range of vocabulary and a sound knowledge of grammar, but misunderstandings can still arise if we cannot apply pragmatic competence appropriately Thus, it is necessary to have certain understandings of the culture where that language is spoken Human communication is a combination of cooperation and understanding Understanding social conventions and attention to such concepts as politeness, and face, which are important to members in a particular culture, will certainly enable us to better comprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thus helping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings To have successful conversations, each interlocutor has to perform some conversational principles such as the cooperative and the politeness principles Among them, politeness plays an important role in making utterances in communicative process Evenly, it also contribute in helping speakers decide whether or not to produce the first pair part of the base sequence in order to avoid failure in communication everyday social life, people are sometimes invited to go somewhere or to something Accepting an invitation is a delicate matter although it is much easier than declining as the latter is a face- threatening act However, there are situations in which invites cannot avoid declining Decline, as the word refusal itself, like other speech acts, occur in all languages The speech act of refusal has been looked at by many researchers However, they are mainly based on literary works either published or uploaded in the internet and English speaking materials written by native speakers This paper focuses on speech acts of invitation declining performed by native speakers of English and then compare them to those performed by Vietnamese native speakers The research will first shed light on how learners think and react when declining invitation in cross-cultural It aims to investigate the similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese to help the Vietnamese learners overcome the difficulties caused the interfere of two cultures when they face the sticky cases of declining invitations, create the tactfulness and flexibility in language use for both Vietnamese learners of English and English-speaking learners of Vietnamese with the maxim declared in a Vietnamese proverb: “Lời nói chẳng tiền mua/ Lựa lời mà nói cho vừa long nhau” (“You don’t have to buy words, so don’t let them hurt the feeling of others.”) It also helps to enhance and improve language communicative competence of Vietnamese learners of English Furthermore, the study is a hope to give some reliable suggestions for teaching declining invitations in particular, and raise the importance of applying cross-cultural activities to teaching and learning English in Vietnam Aims and objectives of the study • Find out the similarities and differences in the way Vietnamese and English speakers using hedge when declining an invitation • Help avoid potential cross-cultural conflicts between Vietnamese and English speakers, with focus on the proper use of hedging in invitation declining • Helps to enhance and improve language communicative competence of Vietnamese learners of English • Give some suggestions on teaching hedging in the situations of invitation declining Research questions What are the major similarities and differences in the ways native speakers of English and native speakers of Vietnamese using hedges to decline invitations? Do social distance, relative power, and gender affect the choice of hedging strategies by native speakers of English and Vietnamese native speakers? Scope of the study The study focuses on speech acts of invitation declining performed by native speakers of English and then compare them to those performed by Vietnamese native speakers in order to investigate the similarities and differences between the two groups of participants under the light of cross-cultural perspective Design of the study The thesis consists of three parts: Part A: Introductions, this part presents the overview of the thesis including rationale, aims and objectives, research questions, scope and design of the study Part B: Development, this part consists of four chapters: Chapter 1: Literature review, this chapter provides the theoretical background including speech act theory, politeness strategies, pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics Chapter 2: Methodology, this chapter focuses on presenting research participants, research procedure, data collection, as well as methods of analysis Chapter 3: Findings and discussion, this chapter presents the results gained in survey questionnaires and observation and discusses the similarities and differences in how invitations speech acts are declined in English and Vietnamese as well as the influence of three variables to the choice of inviting forms of two groups of participants Part C: Conclusions, this part summaries the major findings recorded during the making of the thesis, presents the limitations of the study, provides some suggestions for further research PART B: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1.Generalization of speech acts 1.1.1 Definitions of speech acts J Austin takes the pioneering role in formulating the theory of speech acts In his first book discussed in the theory of speech act entitled “How to things with words (1962)”, he assumes that language not only functions as stating and describing things but also as performing acts He gives examples that an apology or a promise conveys psychological or social practice and takes place at the right time when someone apologizes or promises, not before the actual action He also points out that the declarative sentences are not only used to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to things According to Austin, when people produce utterances, they often perform actions via those utterances These actions are called speech acts: such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request Searle (1976: p.16) pointed out that : “the unit of linguistic communication is not, as has generally been supposed, the symbol, word or sentence, but rather the production or issuance of the symbol or word or sentence in the performance of the speech act” This is only expresses information through words but also performs certain functions such as promising, inviting, questing, wishing, etc… in everyday communication In addition, in everyday use of language, the act may occur either before or after the utterance is produced An apology or an expression of congratulation belongs to the type of speech acts taking place after the propositional act For example, in the utterance “I am so sorry, I broke your car”, the speaker expresses regret for a past act On the contrary, a promise or a request is uttered before the act actually occurs, as in “I’ll pay you back tomorrow” The action of paying money is done after the speaker produces the utterance Paltridge (2000, p.15) defines that a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication Some examples are an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal A speech act might contain just one word such as "No" to perform a refusal or several words or sentences such as: "I' m sorry, I can't, I’ll be on duty this weekend" It is important to mention that speech acts include real-life interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a given culture Socio-cultural variables like authority, social distance, and situational setting influence the appropriateness and effectiveness of politeness strategies used to realize directive speech acts such as requests Yule (1996, p.47), another famous linguist, defines that "in attempting to express themselves, people not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances." According to him, actions performed via utterances are speech acts In daily communication, people perform speech acts when they offer an apology, greeting, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal Since people often more things with words than merely convey what words encode, speech acts have to be seen from real-life interactions For example: “Could you open the window” is a request more than a question In the same way, when a student talks to his friend, “ We’re having a party on Saturday evening and wanted to know if you’d like to join us” is an invitation more than a question Moreover, speech acts require not only knowledge of any languages but also the culture of the country where this language is use For examples in Vietnamese when we utter: “Where are you going?” means we are greeting the people we meet 1.1.2 Classification of speech acts According to Austin (1962), a speaker can perform three acts: • Locutionary act: the act of saying something in the full sense of “say” • Illocutionary act: the act performed in saying something • Perlocutionary act: the act performed by or as a result of saying For instance, in a response to A’s statement “I am gonna marry her in the next months”, B utters “Are you kidding me? How come? Way too fast” to make a question This is known as illocutionary act However, this utterance conveys the assumption that the hearer A will recognize it as a signal of disagreement This is generally known as perlocutionary act Searl (1965), basing on the speakers’ intention, presents one of the most influential and widely used classifications of speech acts His classification consists of five broad types, namely: • Representatives (Assertives): commit the speaker to something being the case such as assertions, reports, conclusions, descriptions, etc… Exercise may be just as good as medication to treat heart disease • Directives: the speaker gets the hearer to something This class includes order, request, challenge, invite, etc… Would you like some coffee? • Commisieves: commit the speaker himself to some future action such as promise, refusal, threat, swear, etc… I swear I don’t know what to tell her • Expressives: express feelings and attitudes about a state of affairs such as apology, compliment, thanks, etc… I sincerely thank for your help • Declaratives: change the world via utterance This includes many of those which Austin first considered as performatives You aren't lazy According to Yule (1996), there is one general classification system that lists five types of general functions performed by speech acts including declarations, representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives He also presents a table showing speech acts classification as follows: Speech act types Direction of fit S=speaker X=situation Declarations words change the world S causes X Representatives makes words fits the world S believes X Expressives makes words fits the world S feels X Directives make the world fits words S wants X Commissives make the world fits words S intends X 1.2 Politeness theory 1.2.1 Politeness strategies Politeness is one of the most important aspects of human communication In English, politeness may be described as a form of behavior which is exercised in order to consolidate and promote relationship between individuals or, at least, to keep it undamaged According to Leech (1983), politeness means to minimize the effect of impolite statement or expression (negative politeness) and maximize the effects of polite illocutions (positive politeness) Early work on politeness by Goffman (1967,p 77) describes politeness as “the appreciation an individual shows to another through avoidance or presentation of rituals” Lakoff (1973) suggests that if one wants to succeed in communication, the message must be conveyed in a clear manner Fraser and Nolan (1981) define politeness as a set of constraints of verbal behavior while Leech (1983) sees it as forms of behavior aimed at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction He also considers the Politeness Principle as part of the principles for interpersonal rhetoric He presents six maxims for the Politeness Principle (Leech 1983, pp 132-139): • Tact maxim: Minimize cost to other Maximize benefit to other • Generosity maxim: Minimize benefit to self Maximize cost to self • Approbation maxim: Minimize dispraise of other Maximize dispraise of self • Modesty maxim: Minimize praise of self Maximize praise of other • Agreement maxim: Minimize disagreement between self and other Minimize agreement between self and other • Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other Minimize sympathy between self and other According to Brown and Levinson (1987), “Politeness is basic to the production of social order, and a precondition of human cooperation… any theory which provides an understanding of this phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundation of human social life” They set out to develop a model of politeness which will have validity across cultures The common factor in Lakoff’s (1975), Leech’s (1983), and Brown and Levinson’s(1978, 1987) approaches is that they all claim, explicitly or implicitly, the universality of their principles for linguistic politeness The general idea is to understand various strategies for interactive behaviors based on the fact that people engage in rational behaviors to achieve the satisfaction of certain wants 1.2.2 Politeness in Vietnamese language In Vietnam, politeness is highly considered Everyday courses of action and lifestyle should be based on the grounds of morality than reasonability In former times, politeness was considered more important than education itself Students of Confucian culture were taught tiên học lễ, hậu học văn, or “behave oneself before studying” (tiên: first, học: study, lễ: good manners, hậu: later, học: study, văn: knowledge) (Luu 2004) Vietnamese society is no longer as agriculturally dominated as it once was It has become industrialized and is subject to increasing globalization A large percentage of the population has to conform to the norms and patterns of industrial life, with changing lifestyles and ways of thinking However, there PART C: CONCLUSION Finally, chapter five of the thesis is about shortly to take a look at what are presented in the thesis as well as give additional information related to the study It is comprised of two smaller parts: (1) summary, major findings, implications on teaching and (2) limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies Summary, major findings and implications on teaching 1.1 Summary The focus of this study was on the differences and similarities in English and Vietnamese invitations The literature review of the thesis is based on the theoretical background of speech acts, politeness strategies, the existing theory on pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics, categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese through previous researches as well as books on linguistics and English learning The data for analysis was provided by two groups of participants: thirty English native speakers and thirty Vietnamese native speakers The study employs by survey questionnaires data collection instruments The survey questionnaires consisting six situations were delivered to thirty Vietnamese and thirty English participants The study aims to find out the similarities and differences between the ways English and Vietnamese making invitations As a result, two research questions are addressed: (1) What are the major similarities and differences in the ways native speakers of English and native speakers of Vietnamese using hedge to decline invitations? (2) Do social distance and relative power affect the choice of inviting forms by native speakers of English and Vietnamese native speakers? Data analysis methods in this study are statistics, comparing and contrasting After the results was presented, the discussion to answer two research questions were made, and some implications on teaching was introduced 1.2 Major findings In the research, hedging in invitation declining has been viewed in the light of pragmatics After collecting data, six main hedging strategies have been found, including Delaying, Showing Regret, Giving Excuses, Showing Respect, Giving an Alternative and Mixing Different Ways Such factors as power distance of the inviters and the invitees and the formality of the events have been explored to find the similarities and differences in the use of hedges to decline an invitation between Vietnamese and American people The result of the survey shows that a majority of English speakers and Vietnamese speakers using hedges when declining invitations (94.5% and 96.7% respectively).Moreover, when declining an invitation, gender decides the use of hedging 99.5% Vietnamese and 97.8% English female participants say they mostly hedge The number of Vietnamese male who agree to hedge frequently is just 97.3% while that of the American is 96.8% Giving Excuses is a tactic favored by Vietnamese people They tend to give very detailed excuses in every decline This is sometimes seen as lengthy and unnecessary in conversations with the Americans It has been noticed that it is a Vietnamese habit not to say sorry and thank very often, especially in socialized situations, or when there exists intimacy between the speaker and the hearer Saying sorry and thank to someone close will be considered pseudo and artificial in Vietnamese culture This habit is a disadvantage when Vietnamese people have to decline an invitation from American partners, as American people tend to say sorry and thank very often, even to those who are intimate as a sign of respect The favorite strategy used by both Vietnamese and English people is Mixing Different Ways, while the least favored tactic is Delaying 1.3 Implications on teaching According to Raines (1999), language is the most typical, the most representative and the most central element in any culture Language and culture are simply not separable; one cannot fully understand the nature of either language or culture unless they are seen as inseparable It follows that second language learning is often second culture learning (Brown 1989).The results of the present study demonstrate that refusing in an L2 is a complex task because it requires the acquisition of the socio-cultural values of the target culture In order to effectively communicate in the L2, the learner needs to acquire the socio-cultural strategies used most frequently by NSs, and the rules for their appropriate implementation Under contrastive view into making invitations some both aspects in English of and Vietnamese, the study is about to discuss some implications for Vietnamese learners of English It is, first, essential for teachers to make students aware of cultural similarities and differences of making invitations in Vietnamese culture and the cultures where the target language is spoken Teacher should distinguish and highlight which hedging strategy, in other words, when and they are used in informal situations as well as formal ones Through that, students can get to know clearly the functions of this speech act in order to use it effectively in daily interactions It drives the students to be more confident when they make and keep the conversations with other people, especially those who come from English speaking countries This is important because teachers themselves are making every effort to qualify our students for using English for communication Teachers, secondly, should provide their students any input that is necessary for students to enrich their understandings on the way invitation declining made in both languages as well as to enhance students' language and communicative competence The input can be provided in various ways For example, modern technology in language teaching today offers a great help for teachers to provide students with many sources of invitations such as Internet, television, videos, and many others From that teachers can provide students with many options for choosing suitable hedging strategy that are close to real life situations These are quite different to what are presented in the textbooks in order to bring authentic materials into the classroom Thirdly, to develop pragmatic ability in the FL classroom, language instructors should design contextualized, task-based activities which expose learners to different types of pragmatic input and prompt learners to produce appropriate output To successfully perform a speech act, language instructors should teach language forms and functions contextually in communicative oral activities in both formal and informal situations in order to develop the learners’ sociolinguistic ability in an L2 Both socio-cultural and sociolinguistic information should be incorporated into the language curriculum and language textbooks Specifically, students should be taught how to perform different speech acts in an L2 in different situations of social status, social distance, and with reference to the gender relation between the speakers and interlocutors Last but not least, teachers should also provide their students with as many as communicative opportunities as possible Teachers should transform the class into a small society, or a neighborhood or an office where students can practice some activities as role play or mapped dialogue These activities can stimulate students' enthusiasm, creativity in declining invitations in English FitzGerald (1999) argues that we as teachers should not forget that we are preparing our students not only for the domestic workplace and society Our world is shrinking and the possibility of our students working abroad, or even at home with foreigners is much greater than before Our students are very likely to need to communicate with both native and non-native speakers of English Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies 2.1 Limitations of the study 2.1.1 Participants The fact that participants for this study were all volunteers may have some effects on the data collection and analysis Schumacher and McMillan (1993: 160) noted that…volunteers tend to be better educated, of higher social class, more intelligent, more sociable, more unconventional, less authoritarian, less conforming, more altruistic, and more extroverted than non-volunteers 2.1.2 Methodology Due to the methodology of written data elicitation, other factors such as prosody (intonation, tone, and stress), non-verbal gestures and facial expressions were not observed There is also a limitation in the fact that written data not have time constraints: participants can correct their answers As a result the answers may differ from what participants really say in real-life situations Thus naturalistic data collection, from role- plays or recordings made in natural settings, would be desirable as both a complement and as a self-standing methodology in more extensive studies 2.2 Suggestions for Further Studies Although similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese declining invitations in terms of cross-cultural perspective have been investigated so far in the thesis, it cannot cover all the aspects relating to such broad cultural and linguistic convention like declining and its related issues As a result, further researches can further find out more about this topic Here are some suggestions: A comparative study on hedges in declining invitation in English and Vietnamese in terms of politeness strategies A comparative study on using hedges in English and Vietnamese before giving bad news A comparative study on hedges in refusing request in English and Vietnamese The thesis has been completed with greatest efforts However, during the making of the thesis, shortcomings and mistakes are inevitably unavoidable Therefore, sympathetic comments and suggestions are highly appreciated REFERENCES Austin, J.L (1962) How to Do Things with Words Oxford: Oxford University Press Back, K., and Harnish, R (1979) Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B.S (1991) Congruence in native and nonnative conversations: Status balance in the academic advising session Language Learning, 40,467-501 Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B.S (1991) Saying “No” in English: Native and nonnative rejections In L.Bouton, & Y Kachru(Ed.),Pragmatics and languagelearning, 2, 41-57 Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B.S (1993) Redefining the DCT: Comparing openquestionnaires and dialogue completion tasks In L.Bouton, & Y Kachru(Ed.), 143-65 Pragmatics and Language Learning,4, Brow, P, & Levinson, S (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage Cambridge University Press Channell, J (1994) (ed.) 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