INTRODUCTION
Rationale
The fundamental goal of teaching a foreign language is to help learners be able to communicate in that language For a successful communication, apart from the language competence, learners must also have socio-cultural knowledge and ability
It is because in many situations, having good knowledge of grammar rules and wide vocabulary does not guarantee comprehension Rather, language users must know how and when to use an utterance appropriately so that it does not threaten the hearer‟s face which can lead to communication breakdown In other words, the understanding of grammar rules and word meaning does not constitute the understanding of the message (Kaplan, 1989)
In Vietnamese context, communicative language teaching has been applied in almost all high schools in last 10 years or so The establishment of the National Foreign Language Project (NFLP), which is realized by Decision 1400 in 2008 by the Prime Minister, has set new insights into teaching and learning practices at all levels which include high schools
In recent years, there have been remarkable changes in the course of teaching and learning English in Vietnam, especially when the communicative approach became a hot topic among people in the fields of language education As a result, the English curriculum has been geared more toward communication, and communicative competence is also paid more intention However, the development of linguistic competence still sees a minor role in teaching and learning English Consequently, Vietnamese learners are likely to have difficulty communicating with English native speakers and other leaners of English as well
During the last fifteen years teaching English for upper secondary students, my colleagues and I have witnessed a rather disturbing phenomenon in which those students were often reluctant to raise their voice in English in the classroom In retrospect, I found myself in the same situation as my students Were it not for the
2 teacher‟s encouragement or acknowledgement of my ideas, I would not have had the willingness to raise my voice in class “Teacher‟s encouragements would probably be the solution for my students”, I thought I then took into consideration this experience when planning the lessons I spent much time thinking about the language I would use in class, so that through my saying, I could encourage and motivate my students to speak more Still, I felt quite puzzled Much as I planned the language used beforehand, I failed to stir up the class atmosphere sometimes Why the students show little interest in learning English in class? Is there anything a teacher can do, besides giving encouragements, to stimulate the student‟s interest? It comes to my realization that in a specific language learning environment, classroom activities hosted (not controlled, but guided) by teacher helps shape a special interpersonal relationship This is similar to any other social relationship To promote the effective communication as well as to develop good relationship or togetherness, being polite could be seen as the one of the core elements in social interactions The teachers, hence, probably should take into consideration “how to speak” and “what to speak” so that they could sound more polite in the classroom For instance, utterances such as please, would you and thank you are regarded as polite in teacher-students interaction Being aware of how politeness strategies are employed in the teacher‟s utterances, accordingly, is also of significance
As it can be seen clearly, politeness plays a great importance role in human daily communication It has a great influence in phenomena, rules and structures of languages Therefore, the effectiveness of communication is affected considerably During the development of civilized society, human beings have been founding standards and values describing appropriate behaviors as well as communicative strategies and language structures which are considered being polite in specific situations and specific cultures There are a number of studies on politeness issue because of its significance in communication However, each researcher has a different point of view For example, Lakoff (1973) and Leech (1983) study politeness under communicative strategies, Brown and Levinson (1987) consider politeness as behaviors of saving face Although politeness seems to be quite familiar
3 and very old, in fact it still develops nonstop and actually offers me many interests, which inspires me to carry out research on such issue However, to achieve politeness in communication, it is necessary to give out suitable politeness strategies for each certain context Thus, the study on politeness as well as politeness strategies is of great importance and essential to enhance the effectiveness of our daily communication
Since politeness is an essential part of all forms of communication, Mey
(1993), Levinson (1983), and Chomsky (1980) argue that communicative competence includes not only knowledge of the linguistic forms of a language but also knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms In this line, communicative competence seems to cover or include pragmatic competence, the former is “the knowledge of form and meaning”, and the latter is defined as “the knowledge of conditions and manner of appropriate use, in conformity with various purposes.” (Chomsky, 1980)
Reviewing the literature, I have found out that little research has been done on the politeness strategies in making requests by high school teachers Most studies on requests are carried out with learners of English rather than with teachers Also, little research has been done with politeness in requests Therefore, to gain a better understanding of this issue, the writer decided to conduct a study entitled “Teachers’ politeness request making: a case study at a high school in Quang Ninh province" to investigate and highlight the use of politeness strategies by English teachers in the classroom and by high school students in particular
There are some reasons for the choice of the speech act of request for investigation in this study Firstly, linguists have admitted that requests are socially complex even for native speakers Secondly, there is little research on this speech act in Vietnamese background although there have been a big number of studies in other languages such as Japanese (Tanaka, 1988; Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Kubota, 1996; Nike & Tajika, 1994), Chinese (Banerjee & Carrell, 1988; Song-Mei, 1993; Huang, 1996), German (Kasper, 1981; Kasper, 1984), Danish (Faerch & Kasper, 1989), and French (Ervin-Tripp et al 1987; Beal, 1990, 1994) Investigation
4 into this speech act made by high school teacher is even rarer Therefore, the researcher would like to bridge this gap by conducting this study.
Aim of the study
Despite the increased emphasis on communication in teaching, high school teachers of English still report difficulty in making different polite forms of requests in their classrooms Therefore, the study aims to find out what politeness strategies high school teacher often use to make requests in their classroom, and what the pedagogical purposes of using such strategies are.
Scope of the study
First, this study focuses only on one speech act namely requesting Other speech acts such as complimenting, thanking, disagreeing and so on which may also happen in any classroom were not explored Second, this is a case study in which I selected only one high school in Quang Ninh where I am teaching Other schools were not in the scope of this study Third, due to the limitation of time and only teachers were recruited to take part in the study Students and other stakeholders of the education system were out of the scope of this study Finally, only teachers lessons were observed and other materials such as textbooks were not investigated.
Research questions
Based on the research aims above, the research questions of the thesis included:
1 What politeness strategies are used by English teachers to make requests in the classrooms at a high school in Quang Ninh school?
2 What are pedagogical purposes of using those strategies?
Significance of the study
The study plays a vital part in the study of positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies of English teachers, in addition to the study of speech acts of teachers in order to evaluate the politeness strategy in requests made by teachers at Ngo Quyen High School
This study is expected to have theoretical and practical benefits in using politeness strategies during English teaching and learning process First, hopefully, it is not only a source for other researchers in their paper but also a provision of knowledge for the teachers and students in teaching and learning process by applying the research findings For the teachers, the results of this research can be used as a reference in English teaching, especially on the use of politeness strategies For the students, they will understand more about the applications and types of politeness strategies Second, the research findings can be a practical choice for other researchers and the author For other researchers, the results of this research can support them to get needed information relating to the use of politeness strategies The author can get in-depth knowledge and experience about the usage of politeness strategies.
Structure of the thesis
The study is composed of five chapters:
This chapter presents the rationale, objectives, scope, significance, and the structure of the study
This chapter discusses speech act theory and politeness theory In particular, the chapter presents the development of speech act as a theory, classification of speech acts, and request as a speech act In addition, the chapter provides the development of politeness theory, politeness vs indirectness, and politeness in making requests
This chapter states the chosen method to carry out the study and to analyze the collected data It also presents the information about the teacher participants as well as the procedure of data collection and data analytical tool
+ Chapter 4: Research findings and discussion
This chapter analyzes collected data to find out major politeness strategies used by teachers Teachers‟ opinions about why they use such strategies are also discussed in this chapter
This part summarizes the main findings of the study, the limitations, and offers some suggestions for further research.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Speech acts
Speech act theory is traced back to the works of philosophers such as Austin
(1962) and Searle (1969, 1975, 1976) where they argue that in saying something a speaker also does something For example, Searle (1969) states that using a language is doing some actions which he referred to as speech acts Thus, speech acts can be understood as verbal acts such as complimenting, complaining, threatening and requesting that one performs in speaking As such, minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as describing things, declaring, asking for permission, criticizing, thanking, requesting and so on At first, Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) called these acts illocutionary acts but then they referred to these as speech acts
In speech act theory, illocutionary acts, illocutionary force, direct and indirect speech acts are central notions Searle (1969, p 23) claims that the term
“illocutionary act refers to an utterance with a communicative force” For instance, when one says “What a nice shirt you are wearing”, this is an act of complimenting Similarly, “Can you open page 25 of your textbook?” or “Please close the window” can be understood as the speech acts of requesting Thus, in these examples, the speakers are performing illocutionary acts of complimenting something, and getting somebody to do something, in such a way that the listener can recognize their intention
According to Searle (1969) in order to understand certain utterance as a specific type of illocutionary act and to perform that act successfully and effectively, we need to have certain conditions which he calls felicity conditions Searle poses four different kinds of felicity conditions which relate to the beliefs and attitudes of the speaker and the hearer They also relate to their mutual understanding of the use
8 of linguistic devices for communication These 4 conditions which underlie a sincere request are specified as follows:
(1) Preparatory conditions (Hearer is able to perform Action)
(2) Sincerity conditions (Speaker wants Hearer to do Action)
(3) Propositional content conditions (Speaker predicates a future Action)
(4) Essential conditions (counts as an attempt by the Speaker to get Hearer to do Action) (Searle, 1979, p 44)
For instance, when a teacher wants one of his/her students to turn on the fans in the classroom, s/he should consider if the student is able to do that If the student is sitting next to or near the button then the preparatory condition is satisfied Second, the teacher should really want the student to turn on the fans and then s/he has to assert the future action And finally, the teacher has to try to produce the utterance which counts as an attempt by the Speaker to get the Hearer to do the Action All things considered, the Speaker (here the teacher) has to choose among his repertoire of linguistic forms the form which s/he could succeed in getting the Hearer to do the action Thus, s/he has to decide whether to say it directly or indirectly, and/or what kind of redress would best serve his purpose etc
In speech act theory, there exist a distinction between direct speech acts and indirect speech acts Indirectness is defined as „those cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another” Searle (1975, p 60) Thus, while in direct speech acts the speaker says what s/he means, in indirect speech acts the speaker means more than what s/he says (Searle, 1980, p viii) In other words, speakers perform one illocution act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act explicitly For instance, instead of asking someone to close the window, a speaker may ask if s/he has the ability to do it such as Can you open the window? In this case the direct act is asking whether the hearer has the ability to open the window, but the indirect act is that of requesting the hearer to open it Thus, the act of asking about the hearer‟s ability is performed explicitly while the act of requesting the hearer to open the window is performed implicitly
Austin (1962) and Searle (1979) have their own classification of speech act Austin (1962) classified speech acts into five types as follow:
- Verdictives: the acts of delivering a finding, and the verbs used in these types include acquit, hold, calculate, describe, analyze, estimate, date, rank, characterize and others
- Exercitives: the acts of giving a decision Some examples of the verbs used in this category are order, command, direct, advice etc
- Commissives: the act of committing the speaker to a certain course of action such as promising, vowing, pledging etc
- Behabitives: the acts of expounding views or conducting arguments such as affirming, denying, emphasizing accepting etc
- Expositives: the reactions to other people‟s behaviour such as apologizing, thanking, deploring, congratulating etc
Austin, however, admitted that he was not happy with his classification because one verb may be put into several categories and that his taxonomy is only tentative
Later on, Searle (1979) also classified speech into 5 categories namely:
- Representatives (or Assertives): are the speech acts expressing beliefs, facts, existence of something (this class contains most of Austin‟s expositives such as complaining, boasting and many of his verdictives)
- Directives: the acts that attempt to get the hearer to do something (e.g asking, ordering, commanding, requesting, begging, pleading, praying, entreating, inviting, permitting and advising
- Commissives: the acts that the speaker commits him/herself to some future course of action such as promising, threatening, offering
- Expressives: the acts that the speaker expresses the psychological state towards the hearer (e.g thanking, congratulating, apologizing, condoling, deploring, and welcoming)
- Declarations: to bring about the correspondence between the propositional content and reality; to make a change such as excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment
2.1.3 The speech act of requesting
Requesting is a complex speech act and so linguists have different definitions and conceptions of the request Blum-kulka et al (1989) stated that “requests are made to cause an event” Trosborg (1995), on the other hand, defined a request as a sub-type of speech acts whereby a speaker (a requester) conveys to a hearer (requestee) that s/he wants the requestee to perform an act which is for the benefit of the speaker By making a request, the speaker believes that the hearer is able to perform the intended action
In other words, requests are acts by means of which the Speaker attempts to get the Hearer to do something This “something” is usually seen as being “costly” to the Hearer, which means requiring the Hearer some expenditure of time, energy, or material resources (Leech, 1983; Blum-Kulka et al, 1989) According to Searle (1990a, pp 359-360) the request belongs to the type of Directives which he defines as follow:
The illocutionary point of these consists in the fact that they are attempts (of varying degrees, and hence, more precisely, they are determinates of the determinable which includes attempting) by the speaker to get the hearer to do something They may be very modest „attempts‟ as when I invite you to do it or suggest that you do it, or they may be very fierce attempts as when I insist that you do it…
The direction of fit is world-to-word and the sincerity condition is want (or wish or desire) The propositional content is always that the hearer H does
11 some future action A The verbs denoting members of this class are „ask, order, command, request, beg, plead, pray, entreat, and also invite, permit, and advise
As stated above, Searle (1990a) classifies the request as a directive speech act
He makes a distinction between a request with other speech acts that also belong to directives such as command and order He states that a command has the same illocutionary point with a request because “both are attempts to get hearer to do something” (Searle, 1990a, p.350) Also, they both have the same direction of fit
“world-to-words”, and they both express the same psychological states of the speaker as “a desire (want, wish) that H do A” etc However, they are different from each other in two ways namely “the force or strength of the illocutionary point” and “the status or position of the Speaker and the Hearer” (Searle, 1990a, p.350) He points out that though they have the same dimension of illocutionary point or purpose there may be varying degrees of strength or commitment In particular, the force of a command is stronger than that of a request since a command attaches greater commitment on the part of the Hearer than a request does In addition, when one gives a command s/he should be (or assumes that s/he is) in the position of having the power to give that command Hence, Searle explains “if the general asks the private to clean up the room, that is in all likelihood a command or and order” (Searle, 1990a, p 353) This means that when someone gives a command, the act implies that the speaker assumes that s/he has some authority or status or is in some position to do it
However, in some situations, it is not easy to distinguish between a request and another direct speech act such as an order In actual conversation, one can distinguish the same syntactic form, e.g “Please, find me the document”, as intended by the speaker to be a request or an order That is why some linguists (e.g., Gordon & Lakoff, 1971; Morgan, 1978; and Sadock, 1972) argue that there need to be some factors to interpret an utterance as a request These actors are (1) the literal meaning of the sentence, (2) the perceived context, and (3) a so-called conversational postulate Thus, combining the literal meaning with its context and an appropriate
12 conversational postulate, the listener can deduce the meaning of the request that the speaker has intended in a context
Speech acts in general and requests in particular have both illocutionary force and propositional content The force as well as the propositional content are realized through syntax and the choice of words and are influenced by context There is no necessary form-force correlation and thus, as far as syntax is concerned, requests can be expressed in the Imperative form, Interrogative form, and in the Statement form
For example, one can say “Open the window, please” (Imperative), “Can you open the window?” (Interrogative) and “I would like you to open the window” (Statement)
In other words, requests may also be expressed either explicitly or implicitly For instance, asking for a lift home can be expressed by different utterances It can be expressed explicitly such as “Give me a lift home, please”, or in a less explicit way such as “Can you give me a lift home/You wouldn’t mind giving me a lift home, would you?” Or it can also be made via a very implicit way such as “Are you going home now/Did you come to work by car today?” The choice of a particular form depends on various factors, including social variables and consideration of politeness
Blum-Kulka et al.‟s (1989) lists nine sub-levels of request strategy types: a Direct request
The direct strategy refers to utterances in which the illocutionary act is explicitly stated There are five sub-strategies, ordered on a scale of directness from the most direct to the most indirect: (1) mood derivable, (2) explicit performative, (3) hedge performative, (4) obligation statement, and (5) want statement strategies
1 Mood derivable: the grammatical mood of the locution conventionally determines its illocutionary force as a request The prototypical form is the imperative (“Leave me alone”) However, functional equivalents such as infinitive forms and elliptical sentence structures express the same directness level
Example: Leave me alone / Clean up the kitchen / Please move your car
2 Explicit performative: the illocutionary intent is explicitly named by the speaker by using a relevant illocutionary verb Example: I am asking / I am telling you to move your car
3 Hedged performative: the illocutionary verb denoting the requestive intent is modified by nodal verb or verbs expressing intention Example: I must / I have to ask you to clean the kitchen again
4 Locution derivable: the illocutionary intent is directly derivable from the semantic meaning of the locution Example: Madam you will have to / should / must / ought to move your car
Politeness
Politeness is one of the main sub-disciplines of pragmatics and is thus often deeply explored in speech act studies There are different, if not contrasting, approaches to politeness; however, the most influential politeness theory to date is no doubt that proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), and so in the following paragraphs, a thorough review of their theory will be presented
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), every speech act is potentially face- threatening to either the speaker/writer or the listener/reader, or to both, so there is a need to build a politeness theory to avoid this For them, to be polite is to reduce the face threat to the listeners
According to Brown and Levinson (1987) face is “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (p 61) and every social person is endowed with two universal types of face: positive and negative Positive face refers to the interactant‟s desire that his self-image be appreciated and approved of; whereas negative face represents “the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction - i.e freedom of action and freedom from imposition” (Brown &
Levinson, 1987, p 61) Naturally, an interactant often finds it difficult to obtain a balance between the two face-wants and thus his face is constantly at risk
Therefore, face-threatening acts (FTAs) are considered as most important in Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) politeness theory FTAs are characterised according to two parameters: (1) which type of face (positive or negative) is being threatened; and
(2) whose face (speaker or addressee) is being threatened Accordingly, the FTAs may be categorised as one of the following four types of face threats:
(a) the speaker‟s negative face such as thanking or accepting an offer
(b) the speaker‟s positive face such as apologising or confessing
(c) the hearer‟s negative face such as ordering, inviting, or complimenting (d) the hearer‟s positive face, such as denying or criticising
Brown and Levinson (1987) posited what they call a Model Person (MP); that is, “a willful fluent speaker of natural language” (p 58), who is rationally capable of assessing the possible face-threatening nature of the move s/he is about to make The seriousness of a FTA can be calculated via the following formula:
In the above formula: Wx refers to the weightiness of the FTA; D (S, H) refers to the social distance or the degree of familiarity and solidarity the speaker (S) and hearer (H) share; P (H, S) refers to the power H has over S; and Rx refers to the
“culturally and situationally defined ranking of imposition by the degree to which they are considered to interfere with an agent‟s wants of self-determination or of approval” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 77)
According Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) politeness theory, speakers assess the weightiness of face threat on the basis of certain contextual factors, particularly the relations between the speaker and the addressee, and the potential imposition of the act in order to choose appropriate linguistic forms for the utterance s/he wants to make This rationalisation aims at mitigating the potential threat so as to protect both
17 the speaker‟s and the hearer‟s self-image and also preserve the socio-cultural norms appropriate to the situation
Brown and Levinson (1987) posited five possible politeness strategies for the speaker to choose when s/he wants to commit a FTA (see Figure 2.1 below) The strategies are represented hierarchically based on the degree of threat a FTA has on the hearer‟s face (one being the lowest threat level and five being the highest) As such, the strategy chosen by the speaker will depend on the greater or lesser degree of the threat the act poses to the hearer‟s face It is assumed that the MP, upon assessing the weightiness of the face threat, will commit to one or more rational decisions
Figure 2.1: Brown and Levinson’s (1987, p 60) five politeness strategies
First, the speaker will have to decide whether or not to do the FTA If the risk of face threat is too high the speaker may decide not to commit the FTA (strategy 5)
If the speaker has no option but to risk the FTA then s/he is confronted with the second decision, that is, whether to go on record or off record Off record (strategy 4) refers to very indirect ways of doing a speech act by, for example, giving hints and
18 letting the hearer infer the real message However, if the speaker decides to commit the FTA on record, the third rational decision has to be made: whether or not to do so with redressive action or to just carry it out baldly (strategy 1) without an attempt to mitigate the face threat If the speaker chooses redressive action then the final decision to make is whether to address the addressee‟s positive (strategy 2) or negative face (strategy 3)
It can be inferred from the Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) model that strategies
2 (positive politeness) and 3 (negative politeness) comprise the core of their politeness theory According to the authors, positive politeness is appropriate for equal and intimate interlocutors, which aligns with Scollon and Scollon‟s (1983) notion of “solidarity politeness” in which participants‟ common and in-group ground is emphasised In contrast, negative politeness, also defined by Scollon and Scollon
(1983) as “deference politeness”, is the index of hierarchy and distance
In reference to indirectness/directness, Brown & Levinson (1987) propose the politeness strategy built on the basis of the illocutionary force They classified politeness strategies into bald-on-record, on record with redress, and off-record which have different degrees of politeness They distinguish between 2 types of redress namely negative and positive While positive redress is related to „give face‟ by indicating in some way solidarity with the hearer („positive politeness‟), negative redress is related to the use of linguistic units which leave the hearer an
„out‟ and permit him or her to feel non-coerced and respected („negative politeness‟) With this characteristic, the authors argue that negative form is more polite than the positive redress
Directness or indirectness is calculated on the basis of the assessment of the three parameters: P, D, R This means that the degree of indirectness needs to be achieved in the production of any face-threatening act, depends on the Speaker‟s assessment of the three parameters discussed in the previous section They are power difference between speaker and hearer, social distance between speaker and hearer;
19 and the degree of imposition represented by the face-threatening act including obligations and degree of compliance on the part of the hearer
Previous studies on requesting
It is no exaggeration that there have been hundreds of studies on the speech act of request carried out in different languages such as English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Persian among others The biggest research project can be traced back to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) which was carried out by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) In this project, the authors described various request strategies which they observed among speakers from 7 different countries (USA, Australia, England, Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Israel)
Other researchers have conducted a number of studies on the realization patterns of requests in different languages We can easily find references of such studies of requests in different languages and cultures by searching the following 2 websites:
1 https://carla.umn.edu/speechacts/bibliography/list_results2.php?citation=&seta nnotationse&year=&focus=Requests&-find=Find+Record%28s%29
2 https://pragmatics.indiana.edu/speechacts/requests.html
Some of these studies include British English (Marquez Reiter, 2000), French (Warga, 2004), German (Shauer, 2006; Warga 2004), Greek and British English (Sifianou, 1992), Indonesian (Hassall, 2003), Irish English (Barron, 2003, 2006), and Polish (Wierbzicka, 2003)
Spanish is a language that has a lot of varieties, and studies on requests have also been conducted in various regions of Spanish-speaking world They include Colombian Spanish (Delgado, 1994; Escamilla et al, 2004; Méndez-Vallejo, 2006), Cuban Spanish (Ruiková, 1998), Ecuadorian and Peninsular Spanish (Placencia,
1998), Mexican Spanish (Félix-Brasdefer 2005), Uruguayan and Peninsular Spanish (Márquez Reiter 2000, 2002), and Venezuelan Spanish (García, 1989)
However, this speech act has been underexplored in Vietnam background There are some MA and PhD theses done by Vietnamese researchers (e.g Hà, 2005; Đinh, 2008; T.T.M Nguyễn, 2013, T A Nguyễn, 2019) Among those studies, Hà‟s
(2005) PhD dissertation entitled “Requests by Vietnamese learners of English” is a great work In her study, she explores the interlanguage pragmatics by examining requests realized by Australian speakers of English, Vietnamese learners of English in English and Vietnamese speakers in Vietnamese The study focuses on the use of request strategies and internal and external modifications based on the linguistic strategies system of English The results show that the three groups of subjects differed in their realization of requests with respect to strategy, internal and external modifications Findings suggest a consistent transfer of Vietnamese pragmatics and pragmatic failures across a range of situations and that care should be taken in interpreting and conveying the intended force of the Vietnamese Learners' requests as equivalent to those of the English speakers More practice and explicit instructions in the use of strategy, internal modifications and external modifications should be required in teaching English to Vietnamese Learners Pragmatic knowledge should be attended to in detail in textbooks and in classroom activities in order to improve
Vietnamese learners‟ awareness of both Vietnamese pragmatics and English pragmatics if they wish to be more successful in communication in English.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
This study applied a qualitative approach as the main methodology This research used qualitative research because the data was not analyzed by statistical procedures A qualitative researcher usually starts his or her study by determining the research focus, choosing informants as data sources, doing the collecting data, evaluating the availability of data, interpreting and making conclusion
This research method was based on descriptive data that did not make (regular) statistical procedures In deciding the methodology for the study, I thought that with a case study of a high school with the participation of 6 teachers, there was no need to explore the theme quantitatively since the study did not intend to generate the findings to a larger population Instead, I would like to provide a deep analysis of the data in order to explore in depth the topic in question Accordingly, classroom observation and focus group interview were chosen to collect and generate data.
Participants
The study was conducted at a high school in which there are 7 English teachers The author selected all the 6 remaining English teachers (except the researcher) at this school and observed their lessons 1 of the teachers is male and the others are female, and they age from 28 to 45 years old All these lessons they taught are of 6 grade 10 classes (from Class 10A1 to 10 A6) They were delivered in the second semester of the school year 2011-2022 Each lesson lasted for 45 minutes.
Data collection instruments
The instruments which are used in this research are as follow:
At first, I intended to observe face-to-face classroom teaching implemented by
6 teachers at my school Later, however, due to the impact of the Covid-19, I had to ask those teachers for permission to give me their video recordings of their teaching
34 via the application of Zoom Before asking them for permission, I informed them the objective of my research and promised to keep the identity secret 2 of the teachers felt reluctant at first, but then they were willing to provide me their videos The researcher adopts the request coding scheme developed by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain
(1984) in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) for its high level of practicality and validity The objective of watching these videos is to investigate the use of politeness strategies in the requests by these teachers in their classes The lessons were recorded in some weeks in the beginning of the second semester in the school year of 2021-2022 Although each lesson must last for 45 minutes, the recordings were only from 35 to 40 minutes long since the teachers had to spend some time at the beginning of the lesson to let the student log in the Zoom
An interview with these 6 teachers was carried out in the form of focus group The researcher invited teachers take part in the interview After getting positive responses from the participants, interview times were established The time for the interview was beginning of January The interviews were taped and then transcribed The researcher took the result of interview to reinforce the research findings obtained from video recordings
Researchers in Vietnam have already been used to individual interviews, but they may not have known and applied this method of interviewing Focus group interview is defined as a form of way of interviewing in which a group of participants discuss and co-construct the data Co-constructing the data is the key feature that distinguishes focus group interview with interviewing a group of people In interviewing a group of people, the interviewer asked each individual a question and the interviewees take turn to respond However, in focus group interview, the interviewees can raise their voice by agreeing or disagreeing with the other interviewees in the group They can also make further comments, challenge the others and even criticize the others The interviewer usually takes the role of a moderator to facilitate the interview process
According to Stewart, Shadamsani & Rook (2007), focus group interview has
First, it has the feature of synergism That is, it encourages the collaboration and co-construction among participants to generate data This is the most important characteristic that distinguishes it with individual interview
Second, focus group interview is snowballing which means that a participant‟s opinion or attitude may encourage the others‟ opinions
Third, focus group interview has its security in that it helps the interviewees feel comfortable than individual interview because they may think that their opinions represent the whole group‟s opinions rather than their own
Fourth, focus group interview has its spontaneity because the participants will discuss whenever they feel they should clarify any matter arising during the interview without being asked by the interviewer
Fifth, serendipity is another advantage of focus group interview This means that the interviewees‟ opinions are often provided in a surprising manner and the others will further develop them
Sixth, focus group interview has the feature of specialization This means that due to the role of the interviewer as a facilitator and moderator, s/he need to be trained professionally before interviewing
Seventh, focus group interview has the characteristic of scrutiny This refers to the fact that any interviewee‟s opinion will be checked, supplemented, or rejected by any other interviewee
Eighth, focus group interview has its own structure That means the interviewer can come back to any matter, at any point of time, previously discussed but not deeply enough
And ninth, speed is the final feature of focus group interview In fact, it can interview more people than individual interview in the same amount of time
Different researchers have different points of view on the number of participants in a focus group interview For example, Stewart, Shadamasani & Rook
(2007) a group often contains 6-12 people; Markova et al (2007) state that 4-12 participants are frequently recruited; Kitzinger & Barbour (1999) support for 8-12 interviewees in group; Bloor et al (2001) say that 6-8 participants are most suitable; and finally, Michell (1999) is in favour of a group of 3-6
In my study, I think 6 teachers can form a perfect group for the interview.
Data analysis
The videos were watched carefully several times All the requests made by the teachers were noted down and classified basing on Blum-Kulka‟s (1987) classification of politeness in making requests In particular, the requests were put in the 9 strategies proposed by Blum-Kulka (1987)
Then, all the requests made by the teachers under the heading of each strategy were presented to find out which strategies were used and how often they were used
At first, I intended to count the number of requests under each strategy to compare the percentages; later on, however, I found that it is not necessary to do so because the total number of requests in a lesson is relatively small, and so I would list them all
First, when preparing for focus groups and interviews, the researcher needed to develop a list of questions and key points so that she can have a productive conversation with her participants Second, plan where and when the researcher conducted focus group interviews Next, record the answers from the interview and conversations in the focus group It was carried out with a sound recorder or written notes Typically focus groups last 30 minutes The focus group interview audio recording was also listened carefully several times Some „key‟ moments of the interview were transcribed and presented in chapter 4 hereinafter The transcripts were presented to show evidence for the points needed to illustrate The interview
37 questions were grouped in 3 major headings namely teachers‟ understanding of requests, teacher knowledge of politeness strategies, and pedagogical purposes of the use of such strategies.
Chapter summary
This chapter elaborated on the participants and setting, justifying the research instruments as well as describing in details the procedures of collecting and analyzing data.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Findings from observation data
As discussed in chapter 3, the researcher carried out the analyses of videos by 6 teachers at a school in Quang Ninh The 6 lessons occurred in February 2022
At first, we intended to observe these classes taught face-to-face; however, due to the block-down of the Covid-19 pandemic, all the lessons at this time were delivered online via Zoom The researcher asked the 6 teachers for permission to send her their videos of their lectures
The researcher watched all the videos carefully several times, jotted down all the requests made by the 6 teachers and classified them basing on politeness strategies The politeness strategies used by teachers during teaching process in English classes were also classified
In the following subsections, all the requests made by 6 teachers will be provided under the headings of 3 main strategies namely direct (4.1.1), conventionally indirect (4.1.2), and non-conventionally indirect (4.1.3)
It should be noted here that these requests were made in various situations happening during the whole lesson, and the purpose of these sections is just to list all of them under the heading of each request strategy in order to show which strategy was used most often and which one is rarely used or not used at all Thus, I do not intend to describe the situation for each request listed below
4.1.1 High frequency of direct requests
Upon observing the 6 videos by 6 teachers, the researcher can easily find out that there is a very high frequency of direct requests made by the teachers As discussed in chapter 2, direct strategy consists of 5 sub-strategies namely mood derivable, performative, hedged performative, which will be presented one by one below
Mood derivable type of politeness strategies refers to the use of imperative forms of request which usually start with a verb that convey the illocutionary force of the utterance; for example, open, close, listen, read, answer etc Below are examples of “mood derivable” requests
- Please prepare your textbook and also stationery
- Look at the map of Australia and the pictures, and guess what can tourists do there?
- Look at the key words in questions
- Underline the verbs in the conditional sentences in 3 Decide whether they are conditional sentence type 1 or type II
- Don’t turn off your mic
- Note down the new words
- Answer the questions from number 1 to number 5
- Note down and I will check your notebooks later
- Find the conditional sentences in the conversation please
- Underline the verbs in these conditional sentences
- Discuss in group: if you were a tourist what would you do in Costa Rica?
- Please look at the picture
- Match these words with their meanings
- Read the passage again and choose the best title
- So to make it clear, please do the activity 4 (contains adjunct)
- Find who said these sentences!
- Ok, What is the name of the song? Tell me your answer!
- Now listen to the 2nd song
- Before you listen, the whole class Guess the answer
- Now, listen the recording again and check your answers
- Don’t forget to do the homework
- And now listen to me and you are going to read individually later
- Now come to the second part: While reading
- Now, to know more and to learn more about Brenda Berman, go to the next activity
- All of you! Please look at the statements here and try to underline the key words
- And now we come to the last activity
- And you have 3 minutes to find out names of the jobs in each picture
- Now, please open your notebook and write down the lesson today
- Look at the picture and tell me what you can see in the picture?
- Now, look at second picture
- 5 minutes for you to copy down the new words
- Underline the key words and repeated words
- Raise your hand if you can find the main idea of the text
Sometimes, the teachers used some sort of redressing words and phrase such as let’s and would like to to make their request less face-threatening
- Ok, let’s come to the Unit 10 - Ecotourism
- Let’s look at all the questions here
- So now, let’s move to activity 3
- Ok, good Let’s see the correct answer
- So, in this activity I would like you to work in pairs
- Let’s move the next activity to improve your comprehension
- Now I would like to hear your voice
- In this part I would like you to work in three groups
- And now I would like you to take turn to share your opinions about
In summary, it can be seen from the examples above that all the 6 teachers relied heavily on imperative form of making requests This type of request strategies takes the greatest percentage of the 9 strategies proposed by Blum-Kulka et al
(1989) This type has become quite formulaic and the teachers make them quite automatically
The video data did not reveal any request in the form of performative As stated in chapter 2, performative strategy refers to the use of performative verb such as ask and request However, I did not find any example of these verbs used in the teachers‟ requests
Like performative, hedged performative is not used by the teachers either
This type of request strategies was used by some teachers Most of them used the verb have to to make their requests For example:
- In this activity, you have to find the main idea of the text by choosing the best title
- You have to find the answers to them
- The third exercise we have to complete the sentences with right form of the verbs
- You have to make sentences with present perfect tenses at home 4.1.1.5 Want statement
Want statement is an expression which was utilized in a rather high frequency Most teachers used the verb want to deliver their message; some used the verb need For example:
- I want to ask you once more
- I want to ask you this question: “Have you ever gone to Ecotourism?”
- I need one of you read the answer to the question 2
- So, now the whole class I want you to guess the songs!
- So before you listen I want you to do activity 1
- To do this task I want you to underline the keys words in these questions and try to guess the answer
- So to help you understand more about the recording you have heard,
I want you to watch the video
- I want you to work in groups and talk about your favourite music 4.1.2 Conventional indirectness
No teachers used the structure how about as proposed by Blum-Kulka et al
(1989) to suggest a request However, I found some other structures which I think
44 are quite similar to suggestory formulae I think that the structure we are going to can be classified as this type of request strategies For example:
- We are going to look at the picture and choose the correct answer
- Now, we are going to read a text about a firefighter, unit 6: gender equality
- So now you are going to read the text in 3 minutes and then choose the best title for it
This type of request strategies ranks the second among the 9 strategies The video data shows that almost all teachers use the modal verb can in their requests
Interestingly enough, no one used could
- Can you give an example with the word “already”?
- Can you make other examples with “since”?
- Can you guess what they are talking about?
- Now, can you asnwer the questions?
- Can you tell me the Vietnamese meaning?
- So can you read again?
- Can you read the line?
- Yes, you can say it in Vietnamese
This type of requests consists of strong hints and mild hints, which means that the speaker just gives some implicit message and wants the hearer to understand that message However, due to the fact that they are too implicit and indirect that no teacher relied on them
In summary, the video data shows that the teachers just used direct and conventionally indirect strategies, with a very high frequency of the former It is interesting that no one wanted to use non-conventionally indirect ones I guess the teachers wanted to express their request with short and clear utterance in order to obtain the illocutionary force quickly Non-conventionally indirect requests are often long and implicit expressions which means that they are more difficult for the students to understand, and so the teachers felt hesitant to use them.
Findings from interviews
As described in chapter 3, we conducted the interview in the form focus- group interview The interview protocol was designed with 7 open-ended questions The interview was designed and conducted in Vietnamese with the aim to let the teachers under study express their ideas with ease
The focus-group interview was carried out with 6 teacher participants This number is suitable for a group of interviewees These teachers are the ones whose lectures were analyzed in the above section The interview took place in 45 minutes in a quiet room in a café As has been discussed in chapter 3, the comfortable and friendly nature of the interview
The main objective of the interview is to seek the answer to research question 2 However, the interview was designed to obtain some supplementary objectives relating to the teachers‟ knowledge of the speech act of requests, of politeness strategies, and of pedagogical purpose of making requests in the classroom
The interview data shows that all teachers understand what a request is They all agreed that a request is “an utterance that requires somebody to do something”
In the first interview question, the researcher asked the teachers to give at least 2 examples of requests with the rule that the following one must not be the same with the previous ones Since they are all teachers, they tended to give examples in the context of classroom settings, and below are some examples of requests in English they provided i Please turn to page 15! ii Who can describe picture 1? iii Listen to the recording! iv Can you make 2 sentences with the present perfect tense? v Work in groups of 3! vi I want you to work in groups and discuss about your answers vii Look at the picture
Similar to the requests found in the observation, their examples are not very diverse Most of them are direct request in the form of imperatives (examples i, iii, v, and vii) One of the examples is in the form of a question (example ii), one is a query preparatory (example iv), and one is want statement (example vi)
The teachers argued quite enthusiastically about whether example ii - Who can describe picture 1? - is a request or just a question for information and finally agreed that it is a request When the researcher asked them why it is a request, they argued that it should be understood as a request because it is in fact used by the teacher to ask one of the students in their class to describe picture 1 They said it can be equivalent to “I want one of you to describe picture 1” rather than to “I want to know who can describe picture 1” I was convinced with this explanation
4.2.2 Teachers’ knowledge about politeness strategies
When being asked the second question – Do you know any strategies to make a polite request, all the teachers also showed their relatively good understanding of politeness strategies They said that the requester may use such words or structures as could, would, please, and would you mind doing something
More specifically, they could quickly come to the final arrangement of the requests listed in question 3 in the set of interview questions The order of politeness degree they decided is as follow: c Open your textbook and turn to page 15! d Please, open your textbook and turn to page 15! e Can you open your textbook and turn to page 15? a Could you please open your textbook and turn to page 15? f Could you be kind enough to open your textbook and turn to page 15? b I am wondering if you could possibly open your textbook and turn to page 15
With the first 4 request, they came to that order quite easily and agreeably However, the last 2 caused some disagreement At first, 2 of the teachers argued that the fifth request is more polite than the sixth because it contains structure could you and the phrase kind enough Nevertheless, after some discussion, they came to the conclusion that the sixth is more polite since it is not in the form of a question, but just in the form of a tentative statement We personally agree with their explanation
4.2.3 Pedagogical purpose of making requests in the classroom
4.2.3.1 The necessity of giving clear requests
When being asked whether they have to make requests frequently in the classroom, all the teachers enthusiastically discussed that making requests is what they have to do in every lesson One of them even said that with the new textbooks and new curriculum, making requests is even more important because following the
48 guidelines, teachers must shift their role from a person who provides knowledge to the students to a person who facilitate and organize the learning process of the students This change in teachers‟ roles leads to the changes in the instruction: in order to organize the activities in the classroom, teachers now have to require students to do a lot of things during the lesson
However, when dealing with the matter of politeness in making classroom requests, the teachers interviewed argued that they do not need to make too polite a request for the following reasons:
First, they said they their students are much younger than them, and have a much lower status, so they did not feel it is necessary to show respect to the students They all agreed that in Vietnamese culture, teachers have a much higher status than students and traditionally, they should treat their students with care and concern rather than with respect which, for them, coincide with politeness In contrast, students must behave respectfully and politely to their teachers
They further argued that politeness is very important in real life, especially in a hierarchical culture like Vietnam where social status, age, and profession are fundamental factors that affect people‟s choice of politeness strategies For example, at home they have to show respect to their parents, or in an extended family or clan, they must behave in good manner with the higher-ranked relatives by using „correct‟ address forms such as ông (grand-father), bà (grandmother), bác, chú (uncle) etc Or at work, they have to be respectful to their higher-statused personnels such as the director of a company, the dean of a department, or the principal of a school They should use polite markers such as xin phép, dạ, ạ, or báo cáo sếp However, in classroom settings, they do not think they have to be polite with their students Below is an excerpt from the interview data:
R: In your opinion, is politeness important in classroom environment? Which factors do politeness depend on?
T1: Of course, it is important
T2: I think it depends on each situation Vietnamese people have a long traditional culture in which people must respect the old and people who have higher status in the working places as well
T5: Sure, also respect teachers It is our tradition of respecting teachers and dogma
R: Do teachers have to be polite to their students in the classroom?
T7: I think it is opposite Students have to be polite to their teachers
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
Recapitulation
This study aims at exploring the politeness aspect of teacher requests in classrooms The study was conducted at a high school in Quang Ninh province with the participants of 6 teachers of English There were a number of reasons that encouraged the researcher to carry out this study First, requests are the expressions that are most frequently used in classroom setting This is because EFL teachers now are applying the communicative approach to language teaching in which they are supposed to organize activities for the students and require them to do those activities Second, although requesting is the most frequently-used speech act in high school classroom setting, it is under-explored by Vietnamese researchers And third, politeness of requests in classrooms is also an issue that seems not to attract researchers This might be because requests have become routine expressions uttered by teachers in all and every lesson, so teacher researchers may not see any interest in investigation them
The study was conducted with 2 researcher questions:
1 What politeness strategies are used by English teachers to make requests in the classrooms at a high school in Quang Ninh School?
2 What are the pedagogical purposes of the use of such strategies?
In order to answer the 2 research questions, this study adopted a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods with the main focus on qualitative approach In answering question 1, at first the researcher planned to observe 6 real face-to-face classes by 6 teachers at a high school in Quang Ninh where the researcher is working Then, however, due to the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the researcher could not attend the classes face-to-face and she had to watch 7 videos of those classes She had to ask the 6 teachers to allow her to watch the videos recorded by Zoom
In answering research question 2, the researcher conducted a focus-group interview with the teachers At first, the researcher planned to interview all the 6 teachers The reasons for applying focus-group interview are clear First, it is convenient and time-saving for both the researcher and the participant teachers to have only one interview Second, focus-group interview can give the teacher participant a sense of confidence so that they would be willing to expression their opinions It is true that Vietnamese people in general and high school teachers of English in particular are quite reserved and reluctant in raising their voice However, in a focus-group interview, the interviewees may feel „safer‟ because they may think that their opinions represent the whole group rather than each individual And third, although focus-group interview has been applied quite broadly in the world and has proved itself as having many advantages, it has not been used as a data generating tool by teacher researchers in Vietnam
After analyzing the 2 sets of data, the 2 research questions were answered as follow:
Research question 1: What politeness strategies are used by English teachers to make requests in the classrooms at a high school in Quang Ninh School?
In answering research question 1, the researcher drew on the strategies proposed by Blum-Kulka (1987) which include 3 main strategies namely direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect These 3 main strategies are sub-divided into 9 sub-strategies as follow:
1 Mood Derivable: Clean up the kitchen!
2 Performatives: I ask/request you to clean up the kitchen
3 Hedged Performatives: I’d like to ask you to clean up the kitchen
4 Obligation Derivable: You should/have to clean up the kitchen
5 Want Statement: I’d like/want/wish you to clean up the kitchen
6 Suggestory Formulae: How about cleaning up the kitchen?
7 Query Preparatory: Can/Could you/we clean up the kitchen?
8 Strong Hints: The kitchen is in a mess
9 Mild Hint: Whose duty is it today?
The analyses of the video data show that high school teachers of English use direct requests much more often than indirect ones All the observed teachers use mood derivables to make their requests with a high frequency This type of requests is in the form of imperatives, which are often made with a speech act verb at the beginning of the utterance and without any subject (e.g., open, read, listen etc) This type of requests is therefore short, concise, and direct to the point, and so it has a strong illocutionary force
Together with imperatives, some other strategies were also used but with lower frequency Some teachers used performatives but only in the second turn of the conversation with the students In fact, these teachers were repeating the requests by reproducing and adding a performative verb at the beginning For example, in the first turn a teacher said describe the picture, but because for some reason the students did not hear well, so the teacher had to repeat the request by saying I ask you to describe the picture
The other conventionally indirect sub-strategies were also used several times by some teachers Among these, query preparatory, which refers to the use of modal verbs such as can and could, was most frequently-used strategy It is of no surprise that this politeness strategy was the second most frequently-used strategy because this type of requests is also short, concise and easy to understand by the students
Research question 2: What are pedagogical purposes of using such strategies?
In answering this question, the researcher drew on focus-group interview as a tool of generating data The analysis of this data shows that the participant teachers relied heavily on direct requests due to some reasons as follow:
First, for them, direct requests can help them to achieve the main objective of a request, that is, to ask the students to do something required for the effective delivery of the lesson All the teachers agreed that since a direct request is short and concise, it should be used in classroom settings to save time for the teacher and students to do the job
Second, to direct requests are easy for both teachers and students to remember since they have already provided in the textbooks In fact, all teachers and students have seen such requests as listen to the recording and take notes, read the text and answer the questions and so on in their textbooks, and so the students would not feel difficult to understand other requests which are in the same form of directness
Finally, polite requests, which coincide with indirect ones, are often lengthy and have little effect Furthermore, all the teachers argued that being polite to their students is not necessary since they are older and have higher status than the students They said in Vietnamese culture, teachers should treat their students with care and concern, and students should show respect to their teachers For them, showing respect is being polite with the teachers.
Implications
Hopefully, the findings from this study can help teachers at high school be aware of the role of making requests in the classrooms They should diversify their requests by making different types, especially using more indirect ones This can help them to make the class atmosphere more interesting attractive In fact, if the students listen to the same form of requests all the time, they will feel bored and demotivated
Also, teachers should be patient enough to let their students some time to process the requests and respond to them In other words, making a long and indirect request can give learners some challenge but interest This can motivate the learners to try their best to study since it is in line with Krashen‟s input theory of
57 i+1 in which he proposed that the input should be a little higher than the students‟ knowledge
Code-switching is necessary, but it should be done separately in two phases Hopefully, teachers use all the requests in English, and if some students do not understand they should try to paraphrase them, let them some time to guess, or have other students to explain them Teachers should only use Vietnamese when all the students do not understand.
Limitations of the study
In spite of the authors all-out efforts, mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable Firstly, due to time, pace constraints and especially Covid-19 pandemic cannot cover all aspects of politeness strategies Moreover, the sample collection is taken from six English teachers and six English classes It is not large enough to assure a complete generalization
This study has some inevitable limitations Firstly, due to the limitation of time, it was conducted within only one school with the participation of 6 teachers The study would have been better if teachers from different high schools had been recruited In addition, the video lessons collected were just in one unit so the requests may not have been diverse enough for the analyses
Second, the study could only analyze the videos and so some interactions between the teachers and their students may not contain some non-verbal modes of communication In analyzing language used in classroom setting, it is no less important to explore the non-verbal forms of making requests such as eye contact between the teacher and students, hand gestures, posture, so on and so forth.
Suggestions for further studies
Basing on the limitations mentioned above, it is suggested that future studies should expand the scope by conducting the research in different high schools More classes should be observed and more teachers should be recruited
Besides, future studies may explore both requests and other relating speech acts such as compliments so that the whole process of interaction between teachers and students can be explored Although requests are the most frequently-used speech act by the teachers in their classroom, other expressions are worth exploring as well.
Chapter summary
This is the last chapter of the thesis After the researcher presented the discussion of the research findings which focuses on the explanations of politeness strategies in requests used by the teachers, some conclusions, limitation and suggestions were also displayed
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