Comparisons between american and vietnamese greeting cultures

The study focused on greeting behavior through popular greetings, commonly used in daily communication in American and Vietnamese.. Chapter 3: Comparisons between American and Vietnamese

HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS COMPARISONS BETWEEN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE GREETING CULTURES (SO SÁNH VỀ VĂN HÓA CHÀO HỎI CỦA NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT) Supervisor: Nguyen Thi My, M.A Student: Nguyen Thi Thanh My Student number: 11317041 Hung Yen – 2021 HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS COMPARISONS BETWEEN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE GREETING CULTURES (SO SÁNH VỀ VĂN HÓA CHÀO HỎI CỦA NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT) Student: Nguyen Thi Thanh My Student number: 113171 Supervisor: Nguyen Thi My, M.A Hung Yen – 2021 i DECLARATION I declare that this study entitled “Comparisons between American and Vietnamese greeting cultures” is entirely the results of my own research Wherever contributions of other involved, I have faithfully and properly citied all in the study Hung Yen, May 2021 Nguyen Thi Thanh My ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my special thanks to my supervior Ms Nguyen Thi My for her invaluable guidance, assistance, and instructive comments comments throughout this study I am greatly indebted to all my lecturers at the Faculity of Foreign Languages, Hung Yen University of Technology and Education whose support and considerations have enables me to pursue the course I would like to thank all members in my family and my friends who always encouraged me for a long time Last but not least, I am very greatful for any comments form readers who interested in this research I could not have been completed this paper without their great help iii ABSTRACT In today's modern society, a lot of things have changed from facilities to service human life to new ways of operating in society But one thing that has always been preserved and developed over generations is the culture of greeting The first communication mode always begins by greeting Especially in the context of ongoing globalization, greetings are the key to connecting people As a result, the aim of the research is to find out speeches and gestures features of American and Vietnamese greeting culture then draw out some suggestions for Vietnamese students to greet the American properly The data of the study is the collection of typical features of American and Vietnamese greeting culture that are taken from a range of reliable sources such as books, newspapers and on the internet The results of the study show that there are three similarities and four differences between the features of Amercan and Vietnamese in greeting culture iv TABLES OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF PICTURES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Methods of the study 1.6 Design of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of greeting 2.2 An overview of greeting culture 2.2.1.Speech acts 2.2.2 Speech acts “greet” in American 2.2.3 Speech acts “greet” in Vietnamese 2.3 Gesture 2.3.1 Communicative Gestures 2.3.2 Greeting Gestures 2.4 Kind of greetings 2.4.1 Kind of greetings in American 2.4.2 Kind of greetings in Vietnamese 11 2.5 The function of the greeting 15 2.6 The factors effect to greeting acts 16 v 2.6.1 Context 16 2.6.2 The strategy of communication 16 2.6.3 Time 16 CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 17 3.1 The features of American greeting cultures 17 3.1.1 Greeting in time 17 3.1.2 Kinds of greetings 18 3.1.3 Gesture in American greeting cultures 22 3.2 The features of Vietnamese greeting cultures 25 3.2.1 Direct greetings 25 3.2.2 Indirect greetings 28 3.2.3 Gesture in American greeting cultures 31 3.3 The similarities and differences between American and Vietnamese in greeting culture 34 3.3.1 The similarities of American and Vietnamese in greeting culture 34 3.3.2 The differences of American and Vietnamese in greeting culture 35 3.4 Some suggestions for ESL, Vietnamese students when greet the British properly 36 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 39 4.1 The summary of the study 39 4.2 The limitations of the study 39 REFERENCES 40 vi LIST OF PICTURES Picture 3.1: Handshaking in American…………………………………………………… 23 Picture 3.2: Waving in American ……………………………………………………… 23 Picture 3.3: Hugging in American …………………………………………………… 24 Picture 3.4: Kissing in American ……………………………………………………… 25 Picture 3.5: Handshaking in Vietnam ………………………………………………… 31 Picture 3.6: Waving in Vietnam ……………………………………………………… …32 Picture 3.7: Bowing and crossing arms in Vietnam …………………………………… 33 Picture 3.8: Nodding in Vietnam………………………………………………………… 34 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OS: Subject of communication OC: Object of communication G: Greet 40 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Nowadays, along with the industrialization and modernization of society and foreign companies investing in Vietnam, the use of English communication is becoming more and more widespread Besides the difficulties in grammar, structure and phonetics, people also have difficulties in using the language in the right way related to the idioms and culture of the target language People in different cultures have different ways of communicating Cultural differences can cause problems that lead to communication failures In some types of communication, people express more in nonverbally than verbally Nonverbal communication includes gestures, postures, facial expressions, touch behavior, voice behavior, etc It is said to convey up to 90% of our messages and play an important role in our daily lives Along the lines of logic, nonverbal communication emerges even more powerful than reciprocity verbal author Therefore, it is essential that more attention is paid to the study of non-verbal communication Greetings show cultural characteristics of each country There are many ways to say hello In the West like France, Spain, Italy , people usually greet by kissing the cheek In the Middle East, people often hug people of the same sex to greet them In Vietnam, greetings are very important Since ancient times, there has been a saying "Lời chào cao mâm cỗ", showing that the culture of greeting has become an indispensable culture of the Vietnamese people, although in all languages, basic functions Most of the greeting is to confirm the presence of humans in communication America is a leading country in using English in everyday communication Therefore, to help Vietnamese people understand more about the American culture of greeting So I chose the topic "Comparison between American and Vietnamese greetings culture" 1.2 Aims of the study The aims of the study are to study on some kinds of greeting gestures Then I will analyze them to help people understand about America – Vietnamese cross-culture From there compare with the linguistic and gesture characteristics in Vietnamese greeting culture, find out the similarities and differences in the two cultures The study also aims at helping students who have contact with linguistic, psychological, social, cultural of greetings in America, thereby improving competence and language communication as well as translation 26 Model 1: SC + greet + OC! According to Pham Thi Thanh, Model contains three parts: Subject of communication (SC), Speech act “greet”, Object of communication (OC) Besides, this structure also has diversity and richness manifested through personal pronouns in the subject of communication and the object of communication in Vietnamese Let's analyze the example below For example: “Đi học đến cửa Bé cất tiếng chào Bé khoanh trịn hai tay Con chào ơng bà SC G OC Chào cơ, bác, chú, dì… G OC Em chào chị, chào anh SC G OC G OC Ồ bé yêu ngoan quá.” (Chào hỏi, sưu tầm) From this example, the structure of greetings has SC and OC respectively into pair such as: - ông, - bà, - cô, - bác, - chú, - dì, em - chị, em - anh Therefore, model is used for all subjects and objects of communication which show the diversity in Vietnamese pronouns In addition, it also shows respect for the senior addressee in the communication of Vietnamese greeting culture The unique feature in 27 Vietnamese greetings is that a speaker can express his or her emotion toward an addressee through a politeness intensifier “ạ” Model 2: Greet + OC! Model is structured by two parts: Performative verb and Object of communication, this model is widely used in formal communication with polite nuance and bring the solemn for the conversation For example: “Thưa đồng chí, SC OC Với tất tinh thần khiêm tốt người cách mạng, có quyền nói rằng: Đảng ta thật vĩ đại!” (Hồ Chí Minh (1960), “bài phát biểu Lễ Kỷ niệm 30 năm Ngày thành lập Đảng”) From example, Ho Chi Minh used the adjunct "Thưa" in the speech, moreover the context of greeting is 30th anniversary of the founding of the party Thereby expressing the solemn in the speech in accordance with the formal atmosphere of the ceremony Model 3: Greet! According to Pham Thi Thanh, model is kind of short greeting with only one component And, when add auxiliaries "Xin”, “Kính” help the model to have the necessary polite nuance and thus can change the stage in communication Besides, the model complemented with tone “A” makes a function express the surprise Greet verbs can also be expressed as a verb phrase sends to, send for whom greetings: “Gửi lời chào đến cô nhé!” Model 4: OC! Model consists of only one component: Object of communication, greet verb are truncated In this model, it is possible to add intonation "ạ!" expressing respect nuance and “ơi!” expressing informal nuance 28 For example: “Nhớn dứng ngõ gọi: - Thịnh ơi! OC Thịnh từ nhà chạy - Gì thế?” (Tơ Hồi (1955), “Dế mèn phiêu lưu ký”, p.18) In above example, Nhớn character used model with two components: The object of communication "Thịnh" and the intonation "ơi" This shows the familiarity between the two characters, in addition to expressing the casual simplicity in the way of greeting of Vietnamese people 3.2.2 Indirect greetings According to Phạm Thị Thành, "các phát ngôn hàm ẩn phát ngơn khơng có động từ ngữ khí chào” Therefore, the meaning of greeting is not revealed directly which is sent to the semantic content of the broadcast other statements such as "reo", "gọi", "hỏi", "khẳng định", "khen", so on contain internal use emotions such as joy, care, sharing, compliments and intimacy and above all they are statements that have the same meaning as the situation of use: informal communication, friendly communication familiar (“Nghi thức lời nói tiếng Việt qua phát ngôn: chào, cám ơn, xin lỗi”, p80) Phan Thi Thanh author divided this type of greeting into models and Nguyen Quang Professor in “Cận kề học giao tiếp phi ngôn từ ,2005” add model Model 1: Questions! Question structures expressing salutation contents in Vietnamese are very common The subject of communication inquires about what is, is, or maybe, occurring in connection with the object communication For example: 29 “Bá Kiến dõng dạc hỏi: - Anh Chí đâu đấy? Hắn chào to: - Lạy cụ Bẩm cụ… Con đến cửa cụ để kêu cụ việc ạ.” (Nam Cao (1941), “Chí Phèo”, p.153) From above example, the utterance of the character Ba Kien are not genuine questions, that is, questions that need not answers which provide information Ba Kien may not need to know exactly what Chi Pheo is doing or where he wants to go However, such questions are often found in greeting encounters for close and relative relationships Responding to this greeting can be a gesture such as nodding or smiling, and can be a question again This is one of the special characteristics in Vietnamese greeting culture Model 2: Exclamatory sentences This model consists of the ringing word and the object of communication When suddenly the communicating parties meet each other, their attitude is excited and surprised This model often accompanies by the intonation "a", "ôi", "kia", "chu cha", "trời ơi", "coi kìa", "chà", so on with excited intonation and other gestures For example: “Xiến Tóc lừ đừ ngẩng đầu lên, ề hỏi: – Ai đâu mà em sợ thế? Xiến Tóc đảo đầu tìm kiếm, ngơ ngác Chợt trơng thấy tơi, bác ta định thần nhìn kỹ reo lên: – A! Dế Mèn! Ði đâu thế? Xuống nào! Có phải Dế Mèn khơng?” (Tơ Hồi (1955),“Dế mèn phiêu lưu ký”, p.84) According to Phan Thi Thanh, exclamations in greetings are often used for SC to express surprise, followed by questions to exchange information with OC In this example, the hair-clipping character was surprised to meet crickets far away from home and then asked 30 a lot of questions to show his interest in his hometown friend This is also a beauty in Vietnamese greeting culture by To Hoai through the story Invitation The structure of the solicitation consists of OC and the verbal act of invitation and an action verb that SC wants to invite OC such as "vào", "ra", "đến", "thăm", so on This invitation is quite common in Vietnamese For example: “Mời bác vào chơi, uống nước” “Mời bác vào xơi cơm” This is a typical invitation in Vietnamese greeting culture, showing the enthusiasm and warmth of the Vietnamese people Congratulation! The congratulatory structure includes congratulatory verbs and what SC wants to congratulate OC: For example: “Chúc mừng bác!” In Vietnamese greeting culture, greetings are used as greetings to start the story The type of greeting used on important occasions to congratulate Comments or compliments According to Nguyen Quang Professor in “Cận kề học giao tiếp phi ngôn từ ,2005” stated a comment or compliment used to start a conversation, to gain someone's admiration or to show admiration to someone This polite strategy will make a good impression on the object of communication in the dialogue For example: “Hôm xinh thế” “Áo đẹp nha” 31 3.2.3 Gesture in Vietnamese greeting cultures Vietnam is a country with a long tradition with its own cultural beauty in which Vietnam's greeting culture was built and developed from the past to now In the greeting culture of Vietnamese people, there are many accompanying gestures to enrich the greeting style of Vietnamese people In this section, I will mention some popular Vietnamese greeting gestures: handshaking, waving, bowing and crossed arms, nodding 3.2.3.1 Handshaking Like most countries in the world, handshaking is one of the most commonly used gestures in Vietnamese greeting culture In a culture of greeting Vietnamese people, handshakes are considered as greetings and can be used with friends or business relationships For parties such as weddings, for example, if two strangers sit at the same table, they will borrow wine to invite the other person and introduce themselves to the person Then when they finished drinking the wine, they would shake hands to get to make friends with each other This is one of the unique handshake gestures of Vietnamese people Picture 3.5: Handshaking in Vietnam 32 3.2.3.2 Waving Waving is created by raising your hands up and moving from side to side Vietnamese people often use this gesture to attract attention to acquaintances from far In addition to waving, you can use words like "Ê" + "name of the other person" to make the effect more noticeable Picture 3.6: Waving in Vietnam 3.2.3.3 Bowing and crossing arms Bowing and crossing your arms is one of the greetings of Vietnamese people, which is considered to be the greeting of people to hierarchical relationships, this is the gesture which combines with speech greetings, for example, "Cháu chào ông ạ" Thereby showing respect for the object of communication 33 Picture 3.7: Bowing and crossing arms in Vietnam 3.2.3.4 Nodding In this gesture, the head is moved down accompanied by direct eye contact and smile A nod seems to be enough to greet someone when you don't have enough time or when you're busy stopping to talk to him/her 34 Picture 3.8: Nodding in Vietnam 3.3 The similarities and differences between American and Vietnamese in greeting culture The greeting culture of both American and Vietnamese has been formed for a long time, creating distinct cultural features of greeting style The two cultures have similarities and also have their own beauty Through about 200 examples taken from literary works, newspapers, conversations on the internet, I have drawn similarities and differences in the two greeting cultures In this section, I would like to support some similarities and differences to help everybody understand more about Vietnamese and American greetings culture clearly 3.3.1 The similarities of American and Vietnamese in greeting culture In this part, I would like to give some similarities between Vietnamese and American greeting culture Through my research, I noticed that the Vietnamese and American have similar attitudes in greetings Both American and Vietnamese people are very friendly, polite when greeting, they also express a respected attitude to the listeners Secondly, the greetings strategies of the American and Vietnamese also have many similarities Both of them have a trend of using indirect questions in greetings They often use the form of questions as a 35 greeting Finally, American as well as Vietnamese all use gestures in the culture of greeting in which handshakes and waving are gestures found in both greeting cultures 3.3.2 The differences of American and Vietnamese in greeting culture The first, in speech greetings, one major difference in greetings between American and Vietnamese lies in a topic In American culture, personal matters are regarded as one’s privacy and people not talk about them except with close friends Thus, American speakers get accustomed to greeting each other with linguistic routines such as “How’ve you been?” or “Nice day, isn’t it?” or some other greetings that not infringe on private issues These talks are traditionally about health questions, weather or food Vietnamese people, on the other hand, like to greet people with “Bác đâu đấy” (Where are you going?) or “Bác làm đấy” (What are you doing?) These are questions about what people are doing at the time they meet each other to show politeness and mutual care according to Vietnamese custom and tradition Vietnamese people know each other a lot can greet and complain about their health but the American never The Vietnamese in greeting can talk about family and themselves but the American rarely talk about that Obviously, people in American culture as well as Vietnamese culture have appreciation in “speaking politely” Yet American may find Vietnamese greetings unacceptable or even offensive because it seems to be concerned about personal life although they are appropriate and friendly in Vietnamese culture I realized that most of the greetings are shared for all subjects in the greeting of American cultures, without the hierarchy of communication, choosing vocative words by gender, age, intimate relationship as in Vietnamese The greeting of the American is more standardized than one Vietnamese, specifically like "Good morning, Hi, How are you?" Vietnamese people are much more creative in their greetings: “Xinh nhỉ?, Đi đâu thế!, Mời bác xơi cơm” If the American give out compliments and direct feelings like: "I am very happy to talk to you that make me miss you" Vietnamese people, on the other hand, express their feelings more indrectly and discreetly For example, the same content, Vietnamese people will say "Lâu không gặp Hôm tụ tập buổi nhé" As we can see, a greeting is normally accompanied with a gesture Kissing, hugging or shaking hands are quite popular in American Similarly, Vietnamese people use lots of 36 body language, gesture and even intonation Yet, those based on the hierarchical relationships, for old people, a greeting is followed by a slight bow or folding their aims For a couple, they habitually hug and kiss each other instead of “Hi” in American; meanwhile the Vietnamese express their sentiment in a reticent way from time immemorial A couple rarely hugs or kisses in public when greeting This is one of the typical feature in Vietnamese greeting cultures “Đi qua nghiêng nón khơng chào Làm thinh biết ngày cho quen.” (Nguồn: “Kho tàng ca dao người Việt”, NXB Văn hố thơng tin) This proverb doesn’t mean that "nghiêng nón khơng chào" is to hate each other without greeting, indifferent to each other Because they love each other so much, people just need to rely on gesture to understand each other The act of "nghiêng nón" is the greeting People greet each other with action, but it is implied that this is a friendly greeting, in which case the eyes speak more clearly than the mouth 3.4 Some suggestions for ESL, Vietnamese students when greet the American properly Firstly, I want to take a view of some failures in greetings It is observable that learners can perform a greeting well because it takes place very often in daily life, especially at the beginnings of interactions Thus, there are more chances for them to learn greetings than other speech acts However, socio-pragmatic failures sometimes occur It is common that most students tend to transfer their native language into the target one mechanically It can lead to misunderstanding due to differences in many aspects between two languages For example, when they intend to say “How are you?”, they use the phrase “How you do?” The inappropriate use of titles is also a problem of learners When talking to the head of a company, they say “Hi, director” instead of “Good morning Mr …” It is clear that students just know how to greet in some familiar situations like in a classroom, but they have a few opportunities to greet people in real social settings such as a meeting or a ceremony They reveal that they don’t know what to say and if possible, the greeting is not natural in the way native speakers accept 37 One big problem is that students may violate cultural values if they don’t know well about distinct features of the new culture For instance, Vietnamese learners fail to achieve the communication goal and give a bad impression in the first time they meet a native speaker when mentioning individual matters which are considered as “a taboo” in American greetings although they don’t mean to be curious about personal affairs Example: What are you doing, Jerry? Or where are you going, Jerry? Not only Vietnamese people but also native learners make the same communication problems Example: One Dutch scientist lives in a Vietnamese village for several months in order to study Vietnamese rural areas When Vietnamese farmers see him They greet: Where is John going? He said: Go straight In short, the pragmatic failure, in intercultural communication, has aroused much attention since there is always a misunderstanding between people from different cultures This is the reason why I come to the second part- some implications for language teaching In order to minimize the linguistic problems, there should have cooperation between teachers and students For students, they should be aware that learning only grammar does not mean success in communication Therefore, they incessantly learn more about culture and life style of other peoples in the world in order to be confident in communicating Additionally, it is advisable to know the reason why there are differences in pragmatic linguistics in different cultures, which helps them understand the nature of the problem Last but not least, they should be encouraged to learn about Vietnamese history and linguistics which are served as the foundation to comprehend clearly American Such contrastive knowledge in student’s 38 mother tongue and the second language also give them a clear distinction in order to avoid misunderstanding in transference 39 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION This chapter will deal with a summary of the major findings, limitations of the study and some suggestions for further studies 4.1 The summary of the study In conclusion, greeting is a socially significant event in universal terms Especially in Vietnamese, greeting plays an important role in cultural life Through a greeting, people can evaluate one’s academic standard and a community’s civilization A contrastive analysis in this area between American and Vietnamese show many similarities as well as differences in strategies, contexts or addressee forms Some issues considered as “a taboo” in English of American are used popularly in Vietnamese These are the specific cultural features in two languages Obviously, it shows that Vietnamese has a wider range of greetings, which makes it an interesting, plentiful language Furthermore, the studies also suggest some sociopragmatic failures and implications for teaching methods I hope that this paper, to some extent, will provide useful knowledge about greeting and improve language teaching in a classroom 4.2 The limitations of the study Due to the conditions of time, money, this study only focuses on the greeting culture of America and Vietnam It is impossible to compare to other countries like China, Japan, Korea, Russia, France, etc If the author has the opportunity later, the author will study more about the greeting culture in other countries as China and Japan Due to the limited time and resources, this study mainly focuses on speech and gesture in the greeting culture of American and Vietnamese If given the opportunity, the author will continue to study more about other aspects of the American and Vietnamese greeting culture 40 REFERENCES ENGLISH Axtel, R.E (1998), The Do’s and Taboos of Body Language around the world, JohnWiley Sons,Inc George Yule, Eisenstein and Bodman, Corola Otterstedt, John R Searle, Austins, M Gass, Susan, & Neu, Joyce (1995) Speech Acts across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language.Mouton de Gruyter Goody.E, Carr and Tilllit (1972), “The interpretation of Ritual” Essay in Honour of A.I Richerds, London, Tavistock Publication L.t.d Hybells and Weaver II, R.L (1989) “Communicating Effectively”, Von Hoffman Press, Inc Richards, J et al (1997), “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics”, Longman Group L.t.d Susan Goldin-Meadow and Diane Brentari (2015) "Gesture, sign and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies", Chicago of University press Williams, K.E (2001) “An evaluation of greeting exchanges in textbooks and real life settings”, Times L.t.d VIETNAMESE “Chào hỏi, sưu tầm” http://www.happyhouse.edu.vn/goc-phu-huynh/bai-tho-chaohoi-628.html Nam Cao (1941), “Chí Phèo”, Thuận Hóa Ngân, N.T.H (2005), “Lời chào người Việt”, Đại Học Sư Phạm Quốc Gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Quang (2004), "Cận kề học giao tiếp phi ngôn từ", Tạp chí Khoa học Ngoại ngữ, T.XXX, Số 4AP, Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2000), "Dụng học Việt ngữ”, Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Phạm Thị Thành (1995), Nghi thức lời nói tiếng Việt đại qua phát ngôn chào, cảm ơn, xin lỗi", Luận án phó tiến sĩ, Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Tơ Hồi (1955), “ Dế mèn phiêu lưu ký”, Kim Đồng Trâm, V.T.N (2009), Sự vi phạm khác biệt khác biệt khác biệt bạn, khác biệt Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội