a cross-cultural study on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses nghiên cứu giao văn hóa về chuyển di ngữ dụng học trong cách đáp lại lời khen của sinh viên học tiếng anh trường đại học hùng vương

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND APENDICES Tables Table 1.1 Compliment response strategies Herbert, 1986 12 Table 1.2 Summary of interlanguage pragmatics studies of CRs 13 Table 3.1 Frequency

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

- -

NGUYỄN THỊ TỐ LOAN

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER

IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY (Nghiên cứu giao văn hoá về chuyển di ngữ dụng học trong cách đáp lại lời khen của sinh viên học tiếng Anh ở trường Đại học Hùng Vương)

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

HANOI – 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

- -

NGUYỄN THỊ TỐ LOAN

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER

IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY (Nghiên cứu giao văn hoá về chuyển di ngữ dụng học trong cách đáp lại lời khen của sinh viên học tiếng Anh ở trường Đại học Hùng Vương)

Field: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: ĐỖ THỊ MAI THANH, M.A

HANOI – 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vi

List of tables, figures and appendices……… vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Background of the study 1

2 Significance of the study 2

3 Aim of the study 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Design of the study 4

6 Summary 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

5 5 1.1 Pragmatics and speech act 6

1.2 Theories of politeness 6

1.3 Interlanguage pragmatics and communicative competence 8

1.4 Pragmatic transfer 10

1.5 The speech acts of compliment and responding to compliments 10

1.5.1 The speech acts of compliment 10

1.5.2 Compliment responses 11

1.5.3 Previous studies of pragmatic transfer in responding to compliments…… 13

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 15

2.1 Subjects 15

2.2 Instruments and procedures 16

2.3 Administration of the questionnaires 18

2.4 Data collection procedures 18

2.5 Coding and data analysis 18

2.6 Summary 19

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 20

3.1 Pragmatic strategies used in responding to compliments 20

3.1.1 Strategies from acceptance to denial ……… ……… 21

3.1.2 Strategies along the avoidance continuum ……… 22

3.1.3 Frequency of pragmatic strategies used in responding to compliments by all groups 24

3.2 A comparison of the pragmatic strategies used among the three groups 25

3.2.1 Similarities in the frequency of CR strategy use between the HVU learners of English and NV groups ……… 25

3.2.2 Differences in the frequency of CR strategy use between the HVU learners of English and NE groups 28

3.3 The occurrences of pragmatic transfer 30

3.4 Summary 34

PART C: CONCLUSION 35

1 Conclusions 35

2 Pedagogical implications 36

3 Limitations of the study 37

4 Suggestions for further research 38

References 39 Appendix 1 I

Appendix 2 III

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Throughout this work, abbreviations and symbols are adopted for the description of recurrent concepts and speech features

CRs = Compliment Responses

DCTs = Discourse Completion Tests

EFL = English as a Foreign Language

FTA = Face-threatening Act

HVU = Hung Vuong University

IELTS = International English Language Testing System

ILP = Interlanguage pragmatics

L1 = First Language

L2 = Second Language

NE = English Native Speakers

NV = Vietnamese Native Speakers

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND APENDICES Tables

Table 1.1 Compliment response strategies (Herbert, 1986) 12 Table 1.2 Summary of interlanguage pragmatics studies of CRs 13

Table 3.1 Frequency of pragmatic strategies used in responding to

compliments by all groups

24

Table 3.2 Statistical comparison of frequency of CR strategy use between the

HVUE and NV groups (based on the number of students who used/did not use a specific CR strategy in each group)

26

Table 3.3 Statistical comparison of frequency of CR strategy use between the

HVUE and NE groups (based on the number of students who used/did not use a specific CR strategy in each group)

Figure 3.2 Frequency of use of CR strategies on the avoidance continuum by

the HVUE and NV groups (based on the number of students who used a specific CR strategy in each group)

27

Figure 3.3 Frequency of use of CR strategies on the acceptance to denial

continuum by the HVUE and NE groups (based on the number of students who used a specific CR strategy in each group)

29

Figure 3.4 Frequency of use of CR strategies on the avoidance continuum by

the HVUE and NV groups (based on the number of students who used a specific CR strategy in each group)

29

Figure 3.5 Variation in the use of CR strategies on the acceptance to denial

continuum by the HVUE, NE and NV groups (based on the number

of CRs containing each strategy in each group)

31

Figure 3.6 Variation in the use of CR strategies on the avoidance continuum by 31

the HVUE, NE and NV groups (based on the number of CRs containing each strategy in each group)

Appendices

Appendix 1 Discourse Completion Tests (English version) I Appendix 2 Discourse Completion Tests (Vietnamese version) III

PART A: INTRODUCTION

This initial part outlines the research problem and background of the study as well as its scope and significance More importantly, the aims and objectives are highlighted with two research questions to provide guidelines for the whole research

1 Background of the study

In the Gulf war, two ladies, an American and a Kuwaiti, met The American expressed her admiration of the Kuwaiti‟s necklace, and being polite, the Kuwaiti lady responded to this

admiration with a common response, “It is yours” The American took this response

literally and accepted the necklace as a gift She believed that the Kuwaiti lady was sincere

in her offer and did not understand that this was only a customary response and should not

be taken literally What the Kuwaiti lady said was only a sign of politeness, generosity and

hospitality The appropriate response would have been to say, “Thank you”; not to take the

jewelry, of course This misinterpretation happened because these ladies belonged to different cultures with different traditions, thus have different frames of reference

Communicating with speakers of other languages is a complex behavior that requires both linguistic and pragmatic competence Whether we speak in a first or second language, we are influenced by socio-cultural norms and constraints that affect the way we communicate

In practice, many language learners have experienced the loss of how to do in actual intercultural communication though they know perfectly well the phonological, morphological, syntactic rules, and the semantic meaning of every word and sentence Looking back on the history of English teaching in Hung Vuong University (HVU), Phu Tho, Vietnam, teachers‟ attention tends to focus on linguistic knowledge, while pragmatic information is not usually stressed Therefore, most students here are good at reading and writing with sufficient knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary and able to score high in tests, but they fail in communicating with foreigners In these cases, the mistakes they commit are not verbal or grammatical; instead, these mistakes occur because certain social conventions or rules of interpersonal relationship have been violated These kinds of mistakes are defined as pragmatic failure Pragmatic failure may cause misunderstanding, and thus sets up barriers to successful cross-cultural communication

Some of the foreign volunteer teachers at HVU said to me that sometimes they might consider the way the students respond to compliments offending or bizarre, because they

understood only the words without the cultural rules that govern them The problem here is that HVU learners of English do not produce target-like compliment responses Hence, this study aims at finding out how HVU learners of English produce compliment responses in English and whether pragmatic transfer can occur

My interest in the issue of responses to compliments derives mainly from my teaching and supervising experiences To my knowledge, so far, there has been no systematic research carried out on the pragmatic failures made by HVU students in the process of English learning and cross-cultural communication Hence, an elaborate study should be implemented in order to develop students‟ pragmatic competence as well as teachers‟ capability in cultivating students‟ communicative competence

2 Significance of the study

It is hoped that this study might be of theoretical and pedagogical importance Theoretically, it might shed light on the communicative strategies inherent in compliment responses among HVU EFL learners

Most of previous studies focused their research on compliments and compliment-responses

in general but rarely on EFL students‟ complimenting behaviors What is more, this study might be included within the body of literature that has shown the extension of research of pragmatic competence and its relationship to foreign language learning and teaching It might support the assumption that ignorance of cross-cultural differences might cause potential breakdown in communication Such research might enable teachers to show points

of similarity and difference to students in order to use positive but avoid negative transfer which might lead to pragmatic failure

On the practical side, this study might provide practical insights into whether there is need for further pedagogical training of learners of English so that they may acquire pragmatic competence in responding to compliments in English If the results of the study indicate such a need, learners might be given specific instructions to help them respond to compliments appropriately The findings of this study could be of great help in the teaching and learning of foreign languages in relation to culture, like teaching Vietnamese

to speakers of other languages or teaching English to Vietnamese at HVU as well as in developing a syllabus for courses

To sum up, gaining knowledge of native Vietnamese and English speakers‟ response strategies to compliments may enhance our ability to communicate effectively in a cross-cultural setting without facing any communication breakdowns

3 Aims of the study

The present research is an effort:

1) to investigate what typical response strategies to compliments are used; and

2) to compare the response strategies to compliments as used by English native speakers (NE), Vietnamese native speakers (NV), and HVU English learners (HVUE) in terms of the frequency of use of the pragmatic strategies The possibilities of pragmatic transfer effecting of the cross-cultural competency in the responses of HVU EFL learners to baseline responses by English and Vietnamese natives are also examined

More specifically, the study is designed to answer the following two questions:

1 Are there any similarities and differences in strategy use of compliment responses among those groups?

2 Is there pragmatic transfer in the communicative act of responding to compliments in English by HVU learners of English? If there is a transfer, what is transferred?

The research questions are answered through the investigation of the following two assumptions:

1 There are significant differences and similarities in strategy use in responding to compliments by HVU learners of English as a foreign language and NE and NV speakers

2 There is pragmatic transfer in the communicative act of responding to compliments in English by HVU learners of English What is transferred can be explained by finding out the similarities in strategy use in responding to compliments by HVU learners of English

as a foreign language and native Vietnamese speakers and the differences between HVU learners of English as a foreign language and native English speakers‟ response choices

4 Scope of the study

The present thesis study focuses on HVU EFL learners who are taking IELTS class to prepare for a post-graduate course in an English-speaking country Due to the limited numbers of students, the limited range of speakers and speech situations, we cannot claim

that the results of this study show the whole picture of compliment response interaction in Vietnamese EFL learners Hence, its findings may not be necessarily generalized to

(a) Vietnamese EFL learners who do not have the same motivation,

(b) Vietnamese learners of English as a second language (ESL), and

(c) a larger population of L2 learners with different L1 backgrounds

Secondly, the chosen target norm for baseline target language data in this thesis is Australian English Therefore, the language behavior of the NSs of Australian English in this study may not apply to NSs of other varieties of English

Finally, the present study only looks at the linguistic aspects of compliments and responses to compliments and thus, paralinguistic and other non verbal aspects will be outside the scope of inquiry

5 Design of the study

Part A provides an introduction to the topic of research, and by stating the research questions, limits the scope of the study It also defines the operational terms and outlines the structure of the thesis

Part B, the Development is sub-divided into three chapters Chapter 1 reviews the literature relevant to the topic of research and summarizes what has been done and what has not yet been done about the topic so far, indicating the gap that the present thesis will bridge Chapter 2 presents the research methodology in terms of sampling, instrumentation, data collection, and data analysis Chapters 3 reports and discuss the main findings according to research questions

The final part summaries the main issues touched upon so far in the study Apart from that, the researcher addresses some pedagogical implications, limitations of the study and calls for further research

6 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter has presented the background, and significance of the study These contribute to the purposes and the research questions of this study of the pragmatic transfer in compliment responses of HVU learners of English The present study also provided the scope and limitations of the study An outline of this study was given in the final part of the chapter

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of this chapter is to provide information pertaining to this research, which was obtained from reviewing the related literature and studies It begins with some concepts of the study which are pragmatics and speech acts, politeness theory, interlanguage pragmatics and communicative competence, pragmatics transfer, and the speech acts of compliments and CRs Finally, an overview of the comparative studies on responses to compliments and the theoretical framework for the present investigation are presented

1.1 Pragmatics and speech act

There are as many definitions of pragmatics as there have been attempts by pragmaticians

to shed light on the nature of the discipline which is one of the youngest in the widening field of linguistic inquiry Pragmatics basically comprises “the study of language usage” according to Levinson (1983, p.5), or in a more elaborate definition from Kasper and Rose (2001, p.2), “the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context”

According to Yule (1996, p.3), “pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or a writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader) It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves.” In this sense, pragmatics essentially focuses on language in use and users

Pragmatics is often classified into two components, namely, pragmalinguistics, which concerns appropriateness of form, and sociopragmatics, which involves appropriateness of meaning in a social context (Canale, 1983; Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983; Tamanaha, 2003) One of the most compelling notions in pragmatics is the notion of speech act A speech act

is a functional unit in interaction The term “speech act” originated from the observation that speech can produce action (Austin, 1962; Searle 1969, 1975, 1979) For example, the

spoken utterance: “I apologize” produces the action of apologizing Examples of different

kinds of speech acts are requests, offers, commands, greetings, invitations, promises, apologies, complaints, compliments, compliment responses, etc According to Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962) and later the further systematization of this theory (Searle 1969,

1975, 1979), in making an utterance, a speaker also performs certain actions and does

things with words These actions are characterized by force, (i.e the speaker‟s intention), and consist of the following components

- The locutionary act is the actual saying of something with its literal meaning The illocutionary act refers to the force behind the literal meaning It reflects the speaker‟s communicative intention

Example: He said to me: “Hit him!” (Meaning of the action of hitting by “hit” and referring to him by “him”)

- The illocutionary act is the investment of a communicative force or the act performed in saying something by means of some kind of conventional force associated with it either explicitly or implicitly

Example: She urged (or advised, ordered, etc.) them to hit him

- The perlocutionary act is the bringing about of certain effects on the hearers; or the act of producing certain consequential effects upon feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience/the speaker/other people, possibly done with the design, intention or purpose of producing it

Example: She persuades (or got) them to hit him; or she made (or had) them hit him

Speech acts are universal but the language norms uses in each speech act vary culturally Therefore, relying on the native scociocultural norms in performing speech act

cross-in the target culture may lead to miscross-interpretation and breakdowns cross-in cross-intercultural and interethnic communication

In recent literature, Kasper (1998) replaced the term “speech acts” with “communicative acts” “Communicative acts” better describe actions performed through both verbal language and non-verbal language in interaction As a result, the term “communicative acts” is suggested in place of “speech acts” and is used hereafter in the present study

1.2 Theories of politeness

Another pivotal concept in pragmatics is politeness Politeness theories explain how politeness is viewed, achieved and maintained in different cultures According to Fraser (1990), there have been four approaches to politeness including the social-norm view, the conversational contract view, the conversational-maxim view and the face-saving view In the social-norm view, politeness is common-sense, acceptable behavior which involves avoiding taboo subjects and speaking with a reasonable extent of formality Fraser‟s

conversational contract view was based on the argument that politeness is an integral rather than additional part of each conversation in which speakers negotiate their rights and obligations in terms of convention social institutions or prevent encounters Compared to the social-norm and the conversational contract views, the conversational-maxim and the face-saving views are more popular and have a stronger impact on the field

Central to the conversational-maxim view is Grice‟s (1975) Cooperative Principle, which states that speakers should cooperate and follow a set of maxims in order to communicate

effectively Grice‟s maxims are Quality (i.e Be non-spurious), Quantity (i.e Don’t say less than required), Relevance (i.e Be relevant) and Manner (i.e Be perspicuous; Avoid ambiguity and obscurity) Although interlocutors usually desire to adhere to these maxims,

they sometimes flout or deviate from them for different reasons one of which is to be polite

For example, one may say: “I was wondering if you have a light” to imply a request to

borrow the other‟s cigarette lighter It‟s obviously a violation of the maxim of Quantity but

it is for the purpose of being polite Moreover, grounded on Grice‟s Cooperative Principle, Leech (1993) posited the Politeness Principle, which suggested that the speaker should seek to maximize benefits to hearer in order to be polite

The most well-established politeness theory to date is the face saving view advanced by Brown and Levinson in 1978 (reissued 1987), who stated that politeness principles are universal Brown and Levinson‟s theory rests on three basic notions: face, face threatening acts (FTAs), and politeness strategies The most central component to this theory is the concept of face, a dimension of social interaction initially introduced by Goffman (1967)

Face is defined as “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for him/ herself” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.61) They also characterize face as an image that

intrinsically belongs to the individual or to the self Brown and Levinson first distinguish between two kinds of face: positive and negative face (the word “negative” here does not mean „bad‟, it is just the opposite pole from „positive‟)

Positive face is the want to be thought of as a desirable human being, while negative face is the want not to be imposed on by others In other words, positive face is the desire for approval; whereas, negative face is the desire for autonomy or self-determination

When engaged in social interaction, social actors are expected to save both the positive and negative face of each other One's failure to preserve any of the other's face will make the

other embarrassed, which eventually prevents one from achieving one‟s conversational goals Therefore, people strive to preserve others‟ face

The second notion is face-threatening acts (FTAs), which are defined both in terms of whose face, speaker‟s or hearer‟s, is at stake and whose face is threatened In performing FTAs, participants have to calculate the potential face risks, i.e., how much they are risking

in performing those acts The three sociological factors taken into the calculation in determining the level of politeness which a speaker will use to a hearer are:

1) the social distance between speaker and hearer (D),

2) the relative power relationship between speaker and hearer (P), and

3) the ranking of the particular imposition (R)

Moreover, when being faced with an FTA, the speaker can choose among possible strategies for dealing with it (Figure 1.1) To mitigate the FTAs, either positive or negative politeness strategies are used, which are the third notions Positive politeness strategies are addressed to hearer‟s positive face wants, such as expressions of solidarity, informality, and familiarity Negative politeness strategies are addressed to the hearer‟s negative face wants and can be described as expressions of restraint, formality, and distancing

Figure 1.1 Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 69)

1.3 Interlanguage pragmatics and communicative competence

Since Hymes (1972) first introduced the concept of “communicative competence”, which is the ability to employ linguistic forms in order to communicate appropriately in social interaction, it has been recognized as important in the development of the interlanguage of

foreign language learners This has been the focus of the studies of interlanguage pragmatics, the branch of second language research which studies how non–native speaker understand and carry out linguistic actions in a target language, and how they acquire second language (L2) knowledge (Kasper, 1992) It can be said that successful and effective speaking of L2 learners is not just a matter of using grammatically correct words and forms, but also knowing when to use them and under what circumstances (Olshtain & Cohen, 1988)

In the past two decades, a substantial body of research on interlanguage pragmatics has intentionally been devoted to learners‟ performance within the framework of a speech act The ability to perform various speech acts is an important part of the development of communicative competence The results of much of the research have verified that speech act realization differs cross-culturally and the transfer at the pragmatic level does exist in L2 learners‟ language use The L2 learners, however, tend to be faced with a great risk of offending their interlocutors or of miscommunicating when performing speech acts because they might not have sufficient communicative competence in their L2 and sometimes they may transfer their L1 pragmatics to their L2 inappropriately (Tamanaha, 2003) As a result, the study of interlanguage pragmatics has been recognized as an important subfield of research in second language acquisition As they state, what has been investigated in this field are overwhelmingly cross–cultural differences and transfer from the L1; namely, researchers typically examine differences of use in the speech act sets in the target language and the learners‟ native tongue, and then analyze the learners‟ speech act performance in the L2 to see how closely it matches the target use (Cohen & Olshtain, 1993; Takahashi & Beebe, 1987)

Among these norms, Kasper (1992) points out that studies in interlanguage pragmatics have investigated two aspects of speech act behavior The former is often called

“pragmalinguistic sets”, the semantic formulas that comprise speech acts and the linguistic forms most frequently used to realize these semantic formulas The latter is

“sociopragmatic factors” such as the participants‟ age, gender, social power/distance, and situation factors (imposition) such as the seriousness of the offenses Furthermore, the influence of learner-related factors such as attitude, proficiency learning context, length of residence in the target community is also suspected to affect L2 learners‟ speech act behavior (Tamanaha, 2003)

1.4 Pragmatic transfer

In the field of second language acquisition, pragmatic transfer has been an important issue for several decades Pragmatic transfer is defined by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990, p.56) as “transfer of L1 (first language) sociocultural communicative competence in performing L2 (second language) speech acts or any other aspects of L2 conversation, where the speaker is trying to achieve a particular function of language” In much of the research on interlanguage pragmatics, second language learners‟ pragmatic transfer has been demonstrated

by comparing corresponding L1 and L2 data; however, what is lacking is a satisfactory explanation of what specifically influences second language learners‟ production

Thomas (1983) proposes two main sources of pragmatic transfer; sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic Sociopragmatic is the transfer of the speaker‟s native language, culture and sociological values; whereas, pragmalinguistic is the transfer of forms related to pragmatic force and politeness values from the speaker‟s native language Kasper (1992) states that pragmatic transfer can be divided into positive and negative Positive transfer or the performance of native-like pragmatic strategies typically facilitates communication, and causes miscommunication or pragmatic failure only when such behavior is considered

to be inappropriate for non-native speakers, due to their position as foreigners Negative transfer or “interference” is the transfer of L1 sociopragmatic knowledge or pragmalinguistic elements related to politeness or pragmatic force, but does not contribute necessarily to pragmatic failure Pragmatic failure may result from either type of transfer, and is considered to occur when speakers fail to understand each other‟s intentions (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986) Both positive and negative transfer are possible in target language learning in which positive transfer makes learning an L2 easier because linguistic features from the L1 work well in the foreign language; whereas, negative transfer takes place when the use of a native structure or phrase produces an error in the target language

1.5 The speech acts of complimenting and responses to compliments

1.5.1 The speech acts of complimenting

Holmes (1988:446) states that “a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some

“good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer” While a compliment may be regarded as a positive speech act, it may also be

regarded as a face-threatening act (FTA) Brown and Levinson (1987:247) point out that compliments may be significant FTAs in societies where envy is very strong and where witchcraft exists as a sanction Holmes (1988:448) remarks, “compliments can be regarded

as face threatening to the extent that they imply the complimenter envies the addressee in some way or would like to have something belonging to the addressee”

Research has shown that complimenting involves a variety of linguistic functions It is argued that the main function of compliments is to establish solidarity between speaker and addressee (e.g., Herbert, 1989; Holmes, 1988; Yu, 1999) By performing this speech event, people can not only maintain mutual harmony but also re-establish reciprocal social relationship Furthermore, complimenting is also to alleviate the weightiness of employing

a face threatening act (FTA) in the discourse (Holmes 1986; Brown and Levinson 1987)

1.5.2 Compliment responses

According to Herbert (1986), a CR is an utterance that is used to respond another utterance that refers to something respected by the participants and it means to express the addresser‟s feeling to the addressee CR was chosen because it is “a much used, yet intricate act” (Yu, 1999, p 102) Research has shown not only that responding to compliments involves a complex relationship among linguistic forms, meanings, and pragmatic prerequisites, but also that high social stakes shape speakers‟ social behavior, which, thus, permits a variety of linguistic options and strategies

Contrastive studies into compliment responses have shown that cross-cultural differences do exist in the compliment response behavior of the English speakers and other languages speakers Ever since Pomerantz (1978) shed light on compliment responses from a pragmatic perspective, empirical studies have been conducted and demonstrated that speakers of different languages and language varieties follow different patterns when responding to compliments

“However, studies based on non-Western languages are scarce” (Farghal and Al-Khatib,

2001, p 1486) None of the existing CR studies so far has focused on Vietnamese CRs

except for Nguyen Quang (1999) on “Some dissimilaritities in Vietnamese-American English compliments and compliment responses” In his study, he also pointed out that In

Vietnamese culture, people often respond to compliments negatively or reject the compliments to show modesty while American people tend to accept them

In English, a simple CR- “thank you”- is preferred as described in Johnson‟s etiquette book (1979) The preference for a simple “thank you” in replying to compliments was demonstrated

in American English (Herbert, 1986, 1989; Saito and Beecken, 1997), British English (Herbert, 1986), and New Zealand English (Holmes, 1986)

CRs can be generally divided into two types: agreement and non-agreement As the compliment response types across a number of cultures have been studies for almost three decades, there are a number of categorization of response types

It can be said that the classic framework of CR categorization are those suggested by Pomerantz (1978) and Herbert (1989) Herbert (1986:78) provides a characterization of compliment responses on the basis of the earliest compliment-response study conducted by Pomeranz (1978) Herbert (1986:78) categorizes American compliment responses into twelve types: “Appreciation token, Comment acceptance, Praise upgrade, Comment history, Reassignment, Return, Question, Scale down, Disagreement, Qualification, No acknowledgement and Other interpretations” Table 1.2 is a summary of Herbert‟s framework with examples from his ethnographic data

Table 1.1: Compliment response strategies

Thanks; thank you; [smile]

Thanks, it's my favorite too

Really brings out the blue in my eyes, doesn't it?

II Comment History

III Transfers

1 Reassignment

2 Return

I bought it for the trip to Arizona

My brother gave it to me

It's really quite old

Do you really think so?

I hate it

It's all right, but Len's is nicer

IV No Acknowledgement [silence]

C Other Interpretations

I Request You wanna borrow this one too?

(From Herbert, 1986, p 79)

In addition to the above classical frameworks, many others have been developed Categorization of CR strategies plays an important role in the analysis of this study Given the above characterization of the categories of compliment responses, it is able to decide what strategies are being used in the data that retrieve later in discussion session

1.5.3 Previous studies of pragmatic transfer in responding to compliments

Compared to other communicative acts such as requesting and apologizing, responding to compliments is less well-documented in the literature on pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatic research Existing studies in pragmatic transfer in CRs are limited to Chinese-English interlanguage (Yu, 1999; Yuan, 1996); Korean-English interlanguage (Jeon, 1996); English-Japanese interlanguage (Saito and Beecken, 1997) These studies yielded conflicting results as to whether or not there is pragmatic transfer in NNs‟ CRs Below is a table summarizing example studies to be reviewed

Table 1.2: Summary of interlanguage pragmatics studies of CRs

Yu (1999) Compliments and

CRs

Written questionnaire L1: Chinese

L2: English Yuan (1996) CRs Written questionnaire L1: Chinese

L2: English

Evidence of pragmatic transfer and non- transfer Saito and

Evidence of pragmatic transfer was found in CRs by Chinese learners of English (Yu 1999) In Chinese culture, people often deny a compliment with “I‟m not” Yu‟s study showed that when responding to compliments in English, Chinese learners of English behaved like Chinese NSs and rejected more often than accepted compliments in their CRs

They used routinized denials rather than appreciation tokens, e.g “Thank you”

In Yu (1999)‟s study, a written role-play questionnaire was used to elicit date from English NSs, Chinese ESL group in America, Chinese EFL group in Taiwan and Chinese NSs Results showed that Chinese NSs and Chinese EFL learners rejected more than accepted compliments

in their CRs; and American English NSs as well as Chinese ESL learners accepted more than rejected compliments in their CRs In general, both the ESL and EFL learners groups transferred their L1 way of responding to compliments into their L2 performance

In a study of pragmatic competence in the communicative act of complimenting, Jeon (1996) also found evidence of pragmatic transfer in CRs by Korean learners of English Data was collected through a DCT and informal interviews were also conducted to Korean ESL learners Great differences were found in learners‟ and English NSs‟ CRs because both Korean EFL and ESL learners used their native pragmatic knowledge in their realization of compliments and CRs in English Transfer of sociolinguistic rules was especially evident in learners‟ CR strategies Informal interview, however, revealed that Korea ESL learners were conscious of differing rules for complimenting and responding to compliments and that they did try to adapt their speech behavior according to target language norms

In conclusion, this chapter reviews the relevant literature on pragmatics and speech acts and politeness theory In addition, it covers the speech acts of compliments Then, the nature of the responses to the speech acts of compliment is described Lastly, the research on responses to compliment speech act and the theoretical framework for this study are presented The next chapter deals with the main study, coding, and the categorization of responses to compliment strategies which are used in the main study and

it also deals with the research methods employed

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter is concerned with the selection of subjects and the instruments of collecting data It describes in some detail the design of the instruments and the descriptive quantitative procedures that were undertaken for analysis of the data

2.1 Subjects

A great number of previous studies, e.g Holmes 1986; Herbert 1990, have shown that compliment-compliment response sequences occur more frequently among people with equal social status or acquaintances In order to control the social variables in the present paper, participants in the present study were primarily selected from university students, who have similar educational background, recognize the shared socio-cultural norms There were thirty students who were English NSs, Vietnamese NSs and HVU EFL learners

of English All of them were university students, ranging in age from twenty to twenty-four years old So they showed homogeneity in terms of age, education and profession At the beginning, a language background survey was conducted to ensure that participants were suitable students

- The English group (NE group) included 10 NSs in UQ, Melbourne, Australia Most of them are graduates majored in areas such as Economics, Business, Law, International Relations, and Psychology There were 5 male and 5 female students in this group These subjects provided the baseline data on CRs in English

- The Vietnamese group (NV group) consisted of 10 NSs of Vietnamese in non-major English classes at HVU, Phu Tho, Vietnam Five of them were men and the other five were women They were all undergraduates majoring in different subjects such as Economics, Business, History, Informatics and Agriculture None of them had any experience living or studying in an English-speaking country They gave the baseline data on CRs in Vietnamese

- The group of HVU learners of English (HVUE) was composed of 10 Vietnamese students who come from English major classes, HVU, Phu Tho, Vietnam Participants of this group were composed of fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in English Division from the Faculty of Foreign Languages Learners‟ proficiency is taken into account in order to control unwanted variables, e.g., proficiency in English and prior

exposure to English With regard to English proficiency, only those whose level of English proficiency were advanced and hold an IELTS (International English Language Testing System) score of 6.0 - 7.5 or above will participate in the research However, none in this group ever traveled to any other English-speaking country This condition provides less cultural influences than those who ever come or live in any English speaking countries These participants had received formal instruction in English for at least 10 years by the time when the data was collected During their four years at university, the English majors received full-time training in English and took courses ranging from basic English courses, such as reading, listening, speaking and writing, to advanced courses such as English literature, linguistics, cultures of English-speaking countries, interpreting and translation The number of men and women in this group was equally 5 They provided the NNs data

on CRs in English

2.2 Instruments and procedures

The study uses a questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task (DCT) for data collection A DCT, which employed by numerous studies is the most widely used method of data collection in second language speech act research Beebe and Cummings (1996) reported five advantages of the DCT

Firstly, large amounts of data can be collected quickly and efficiently in a short period of time without any need for transcription Secondly, an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategies in speech acts can be created and studied Thirdly, the necessary elements of a socially acceptable (though not always polite) response can be studied Fourthly, insight can be gained into social and psychological factors that are likely to affect speech act performance Finally, the body of rules governing given speech acts can be discerned in the minds of speakers of a given language

The DCT also meets the need of cross-linguistic research to control social variables for comparability for the fact that it allows the researchers to control basic social factors of the situations such as setting, gender, or social status and distance For such purposes, DCT is

an effective option

A DCT typically consists of a set of brief situational descriptions designed to elicit a particular speech act (Kasper & Rose, 2001) Subjects read the situation and then respond

in writing to a prompt

All the participants were asked to provide their compliment responding strategies in a detailed-designed questionnaire Furthermore, the consequences of previous studies have suggested that participants can conduct their questionnaires more smoothly and efficiently

if the questionnaires are designed according to participants‟ native languages Thus, in order to ward off the phenomenon where participants are unable to conduct the questionnaire written in English, it is essential to design questionnaires in Vietnamese so that all participants can offer their responses in a smoother and more nature way

In order to construct the DCT, it was first written in English and after that, the DCT was

translated into Vietnamese by the researcher (see Appendices 1 and 2) Then the translation

was further checked by two Vietnamese linguistic lecturers Finally, the Vietnamese and English DCTs were tested twice among native speakers of English and Vietnamese, and revised accordingly before they were administered Both versions were developed to be equivalent in terms of format and content The compliments of our questionnaire fell into four major topics: appearance, personality, skill, and possessions, which were subsequently subcategorized into ten situations, as manifested in Table 2.1 Those topics occur more frequently than other types in our daily complimenting speech events

Table 2.1: Compliment topic & content

Appearance

Hair-style (S1) Smart clothing (S2) Beautiful eyes (S3) Figure (S4)

MP3 player (S7)

Talent

Computer ability (S8) Sports (S9)

English ability (S10)

(*) Note: “S” here stands for the word “situation”.

2.3 Administration of the questionnaires

After the design of the situations as well as the content of the DCT was carefully thought out and thoroughly discussed with native speakers of both languages in order to ensure they were sufficiently natural and that they meant the same in both English and Vietnamese the instrument was tested by six respondents: two from each group of the NE,

NV and EFL subjects The test proved to be successful Based on the feedback from the participants, several minor changes were made to the questionnaires They were then distributed to the participants

2.4 Data collection procedures

The questionnaires were given to students at HVU, Phu Tho, Vietnam and UQ, Australia

by the researcher and some of my friends and were conducted in the individual classrooms The participants were initially asked to fill out their personal information, including their age, gender and the name of their school and faculty on the top of the questionnaire, which could save our effort to compile statistics and analyze these data Every question is combined with some explanations to the relevant situation and the participants were asked

to envisage the given situation equivalent to that in the real world and provide their reaction to such a situation They were advised not to discuss with each other in conducting the questionnaire and offered their responses as naturally as possible

They were also told not to be preoccupied with grammatical accuracy when they wrote their answers in English This was to avoid having subjects believe that they were being assessed for their grammatical proficiency, thus writing only what they perceived to be grammatically correct in English It is important to remind them to write what they would actually say regardless of the accuracy of the grammar The subjects were also free to ask questions to the administrator regarding the items in the DCT No time limits were imposed on completing the DCT

2.5 Coding and data analysis

Data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively In the qualitative analysis, CR data was coded according to the strategies which are mainly based on Herbert‟s (1990) taxonomy of compliment responses It is held that Herbert‟s classification of compliment responses is more comprehensive than other scholars brought up Nevertheless, it is still

necessary to make certain degree of modifications of her classification To be more specific, I also adjusted certain types of response strategies which appear in my present investigation so as to be more compatible with HVU students‟ responses

In the quantitative analysis, Fisher‟s test was applied to each CR strategy across groups in order to evaluate whether the differences in the use of each strategy between groups are (statistically) significant Fisher‟s test can specify where the difference exists (e.g between the NV and HVUE groups or between the HVUE and NE group) and indicate how significant the difference is

To answer the first research question of whether or not there was pragmatic transfer in English CRs by HVU speaking advanced learners of English, CRs by the NE, HVUE and

NV groups were compared The purpose of the comparison was to find out whether there were significant differences between them in terms of strategy selection If there were significant similarities in the choice of CRs in English by the HVUE group and by the NV group in Vietnamese, and there were significant differences in the choice of CRs in English by the NE group and by the HVUE group Based on the comparison, it could be said that there was pragmatic transfer in the communicative act of responding to compliments in the interlanguage of HVU learners of English

2.6 Summary

In summary, the present investigation has proposed a research procedure It was conducted with three groups of participants in equal numbers: NE, NV, and HVUE groups The instrument used to collect the data was the written DCT The results of the data analyses for all the three groups of DCTs will be presented in the next chapter