(Luận văn thạc sĩ) a study of understatements and hyberboles in vietnamese and english political speeches

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY THAN THI MINH HUNG A STUDY OF UNDERSTATEMENTS AND HYPERBOLES IN VIETNAMESE AND ENGLISH h POLITICAL SPEECHES Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Quang Ngoan BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN THÂN THỊ MINH HƯNG NGHIÊN CỨU NGƠN NGỮ NĨI GIẢM VÀ PHĨNG ĐẠI TRONG CÁC BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CHÍNH TRỊ h Ở ANH VÀ VIỆT NAM Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Mã ngành: 8220201 Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma No other’s person work has been used without due acknowledgements in the thesis This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution An Nhon, 2021 THÂN THI MINH HUNG h ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my great appreciation to all who have encouraged and helped me in this thesis First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Quang Ngoan, my research supervisor, for his patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques of this research work Secondly, I would like to offer my special thanks to all the lecturers in Quy Nhon University for their lectures and devotion over the past two years that have helped me a lot in completing this study Finally, I would also give my special thanks to all of my colleagues and family for their continuous support and understanding when undertaking my research h iii ABSTRACT This study was conducted with the aim to examine the structural and functional features of understatements and hyperboles in Vietnamese and English political speeches in terms of the structural and functional features and the similarities and differences in the structural and functional features of the understatements and the hyperboles between the two sets of data The data of the research contains 40 speeches made by English politicians and 40 speeches made by Vietnamese politicians from 2018 to 2021 In this study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the data which gave a sufficient analysis of the figures of speech based on relevant theories The quantitative techniques provided statistical information such as frequency of occurrence whereas the qualitative approach was employed to analyse the functions and structures of understatements and hyperboles as well as the similarities and differences between h them under the light of Harris (2017)’s theory in the approach adapted from (Claridge, 2011, McCarthy & Carter, 2004, Cano Mora, 2006 and Du Thi Trang Anh, 2010) The result of the study revealed that there are no big differences in the structural features of hyperboles in both languages in which single word form is used most frequently Same in English, hyperboles are used more frequent than understatements in Vietnamese political speeches The most obvious finding to emerge from this study related to structural features of understatements is that understatements in phrasal form are used most frequently by both English and Vietnamese politicians Besides, the differences found in this study were the total understatements used in English were more than in Vietnamese and English politicians tended to use understatements to make problems less serious while Vietnamese politicians tended to use understatements to emphasize the enormity of a problem iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES .vi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim and Objectives 1.2.1 Aim 1.2.2 Objectives .2 1.3 Research Questions h 1.4 Scope of the Study 1.5 Significance of the Study 1.6 Definition of terminology 1.7 Intended structure of the thesis CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW .6 2.1 Literature review 2.2 Theoretical background 11 2.2.1 Political speeches 11 2.2.2 Rhetorical devices 12 2.3 Sumary 17 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .19 3.1 Research approach 19 3.2 Data Collection and Analysis 20 3.3 Validity and reliability 25 v 3.4 Summary 25 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .26 4.1 Overview of Hyperboles and Understatements 26 4.2 Hyperboles in English and Vietnamese political speeches 28 4.2.1 Forms of hyperboles 28 4.2.2 Functions of hyperboles 36 4.3 Understatements in English and Vietnamese political speeches 42 4.3.1 Forms of Understatements 42 4.3.2 Functions of Understatements .50 4.4 Discussion 55 4.5 Summary 56 Chapter CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .57 5.1 Review of main findings 57 5.2 Implications 58 h 5.3 Limitation 59 5.4 Suggestions for further studies 59 REFERENCES APPENDIX vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SYMBOLS %: Percentage &: And ABBREVIATIONS SFL: Systemic Functional Linguistics Eps: English political speeches Vps: Vietnamese political speeches Eps & Vps: English and Vietnamese political speeches EC: Data on the corpus of English Politicians’ speeches VC Data on the corpus of Vietnamese Politicians’ speeches h vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Framework for data analysis 17 Table 3.1: Framework for analyzing data 20 Table 3.2 Data on the corpus of the English political speeches 22 Table 3.3 Data on the corpus of the Vietnamese political speeches 24 Table 4.1: Forms of hyperboles in English 28 Table 4.2: Forms of hyperboles in Vietnamese 32 Table 4.3: Similarities and Differences in forms of hyperboles in English and Vietnamese political speeches 34 Table 4.4: Functions of hyperboles in English 36 Table 4.5: Functions of hyperboles in Vietnamese 39 Table 4.6: Similarities and Differences in function of hyperboles in English h and Vietnamese political speeches 40 Table 4.7: Forms of Understatements in English 43 Table 4.8: Forms of Understatements in Vietnamese 46 Table 4.9: Similarities and Differences in form of Understatements in English and Vietnamese political speeches 48 Table 4.10 Functions of Understatements in English 50 Table 4.11: Functions of Understatements in Vietnamese 52 Table 4.12: Similarities and Differences in function of Understatements in English and Vietnamese political speeches 55 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: Hyperboles and Understatements in Vietnamese Political Speeches 26 Figure 4.2: Hyperboles and Understatements in Vietnamese Political Speeches 27 Figure 4.3: Hyperboles and Understatements in English and Vietnamese Political Speeches 27 h