politeness phenomena in english and vietnamese through using imperative mood within thang long university education environment = hiện tượng lịch sự trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

iv List of tables and figures Table 2.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers …………………………… … 23 Table 2.2 Groups of situations and characteristics of each group ………………………… 27 Table 2.3 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers ………………………… 28 Table 2.4 English native speakers’ sayings vs Vietnamese native speakers’ sayings …… 35 Figure 2.1 Requests with Imperative Mood in English and Vietnamese ………………… 36 Figure 3.1 Frequency of using Imperative Mood when making requests in English……… 38 Figure 3.2 Frequency of using Imperative Mood when making requests in Vietnamese … 39 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of authorship ……………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………… ii Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… iii List of graphs and tables ……………………………………………………………… iv PART A INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………… 1 Rationale of the study ……………………………………………………… Aims of the study …………………………………………………………… Scope of the study ………………………………………………………… Structure of the study ……………………………………………………… PART B DEVELOPMENT …………………………………………………… Chapter one: Theoretical background ………………………………………… 1.1 The Imperative Mood …………………………………………………… 1.1.1 Definition of Mood ……………………………………………… 1.1.2 The Imperative Mood in English ………………………………… 1.1 The Imperative Mood in Vietnamese …………………………… 10 1.2 Politeness phenomena through using Imperative Mood to make Requests 12 2.1 Definition of politeness …………………………………………… 12 1.2.1.1 Face and face work ……………………………………… 12 1.2.1.2 Politeness ……………………………………………… 13 1.2.1.3 Social variables affecting politeness …………………… 14 2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English and in Vietnamese ……………………………………………………………… 14 1.2.2.1 Making a request ……………………………………… 14 1.2.2.2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English ………………………………………………………………………………… 15 vi 1.2.2.3 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in Vietnamese …………………………………………………………………………… 16 Chapter two: A study of how Imperative Mood is practiced within Thang Long University Educational Environment 2.1 Thang Long University in brief ………………………………………… 17 2.2 Research questions ……………………………………………………… 17 2.3 Research methods ……………………………………………… ………… 17 2.4 Research design ……………………………………………… ………… 18 2.4.1 Data collection instruments ……………………………………… 18 2.4.2 Contents of the questionnaires …………………………………… 19 2.4.3 Participants ………………………………………………………… 22 2.4.4 Procedure ……………………………………………… ………… 22 2.5 Results of the MPQ ……………………………………………………… 23 2.5.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers ………………… 23 2.5.2 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers ……………… 27 2.6 Results of the DCT ……………………………………………… ……… 28 2.6.1 English native speakers’ sayings vs Vietnamese native speakers’ sayings 2.6.2 Conclusion ……………………………………………… ……… 35 2.7 Data analysis ……………………………………………… …………… 36 Chapter three: Findings and discussions …………………………………… 38 3.1 Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood when making polite requests of English native speakers …………………………………………… 38 3.2 Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood when making polite requests of Vietnamese native speakers ……………………………………… 39 3.3 Comparison of using linguistic structures to make requests between English and Vietnamese native speakers ………………………………………… …………… 40 PART C CONCLUSIONS vii General conclusion ………………………………………………………… 42 Limitation …………………………………………………………………… 43 Recommendations for further research …………………………………… 44 Implications………………………………………… ……………………… 44 REFERENCES………………………………………… ……………………………… 46 APPENDIX A: METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE (MPQ) …………………… I APPENDIX B: DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASK (DCT) ………………………… X PART A INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study English is one of the most important languages in communication It plays a very important role in many aspects of everyday life such as: Education, culture, technology, science, etc… What is noticeable is that learning English becomes an increasing need for many people in society They study English for various purposes: for job, for promotion, for going abroad… In Vietnam, English is very popular and is being taught widely In Vietnam, with the open-door policy of Vietnamese government, English, day by day, affirms its dominated role for international communication English is taught compulsory in many schools in Vietnam Also, it becomes a compulsory subject in many universities and schools, for example, Thang Long University Although English has been taught in Vietnam for several years but only, grammatical correctness seem to be highly appreciated in teaching This way of teaching and learning is not effective enough to provide cultural factors to make cross-cultural communication successful Therefore, learners not know what to say in order to have a contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication Even today many Vietnamese teachers of English still appreciate grammatical correctness over appropriateness in communication They still enjoy grammar translation method As a result, students cannot communicate orally in an appropriate way despite their rather good linguistic competence It is obvious that learning a second language means learning a second culture To study the second language, one needs to be provided not only linguistic knowledge and interaction skills but also cultural knowledge Nowadays, cultural factors are included in the course design However, they are often treated as optional supplement to stimulate interest or improve background knowledge Understanding cultural factors is an important key to succeed in learning English Although teachers have created more opportunities for them to use English effectively, Vietnamese students may face with many difficulties in communication because they tend to use English based on their native culture – Oriental culture As a result, sometimes, when they communicate with foreigners, they may make unfriendly or impolite or even rude social expressions unnoticeablely So as to communicate well across culture, firstly, learners must understand deeply about their own culture Then, they must be aware of the English speaking culture They must ensure the hidden parts of culture including politeness Politeness is a very important part of social interaction In order to facilitate students at Thang Long University in improving their oral communication, the author of this thesis wants to study the politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using Imperative Mood to make requests Aims of the study The study aims to find out:  Do English native speakers use Imperative Mood to make polite requests in the Educational Environment?  How Vietnamese teachers and students at Thang Long University use Imperative Mood to show their politeness when making a request in the Educational Environment?  How the English native speakers and the Vietnamese native speakers differ in using linguistic structures to make requests in the social situations studied? Scope of the study The study focuses on politeness phenomena shown by both English and Vietnamese speakers who are Vietnamese students and teachers at Thang Long University when using Imperative Mood to make requests Structure of the study This thesis is structured in three parts: Part A – Introduction, Part B – Development and Part C – Conclusions Part B is composed of three chapters as follows: The purpose of Chapter one (Theoretical background) is to introduce the key theoretical concepts that the study is based on Chapter two (A study within ThangLong University Educational Environment) introduces the questions the present study attempts to answer It also describes the procedures and instruments used to collect the data, the participants in the study, as well as the way the data were analyzed Besides, a tentative analytical framework is also presented Chapter three (Findings and discussions) presents the results of the study and discusses the differences and similarities politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using Imperative Mood to make requests Finally, part C – Conclusions will summarize the most important findings of the study as well as present all the limitations, the implications of the study and recommendations for further studies PART B DEVELOPMENT Chapter one Theoretical background 1.1 The Imperative Mood 1.1.1 Definitions of Mood The term „mood‟ is traditionally restricted to a category expressed in verbal morphology It is formally a morph syntactic category of the verb like tense and aspect, even though its semantic function relates to the content of the whole sentence But traditionally its verbal nature is not in doubt A good starting point is Jesperson‟s (quoted in Palmer F R (1986) discussion of mood He talks of the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods „They express certain cases, the choice of mood is determined not by the attitude of the actual speaker, but by the character of the clause itself and its relation to the main nexus on which it is dependent Further, it is very important that the speaker of mood only if the attitude of mind is shown in the form of the verb: mood thus is a syntactic, not a notional category.‟ According to Finch, G (2000), mood is a “Feature displayed by verb phrases It refers specially to the way in which the verb expresses the attitude of the addresser towards the factual content of what is being communicated, i.e., whether it is being asserted, questioned, demanded or wished for” And dictionary definitions usually refer to verbal inflections The notion of mood is intimately connected to the modal concepts In International Encyclopedia of Linguistics OUP 1992 Vol.4 (145), modality is proposed for the grammatical category, but traditional studies talk of modality „In the traditional sense, mood is a purely morphological category of the verb, and the term will here be restricted to this sense Mood is, therefore, one way in which modality can be expressed.‟ The diverse category of mood indicates what the speaker is doing with a proposition in a particular discourse situation This includes the status of the utterance as IMPERATIVE (a command) or HORTATIVE (an exhortation) The CONDITIONAL mood may mark SUBJUNCTIVE may be used in a subordinate context Other types of clauses, including declarative sentences, will appear in the INDICATIVE mood Declarative sentences may be further qualified for EPISTEMIC moods (possibility or probability), which indicate the degree of commitment the speaker attaches to the truth of the proposition The most commonly expressed mood distinction is between the indicative the imperative Mood may be expressed inflectionally or by auxiliaries or particles, but never derivationally – Palmer (1986) Mood and Modality, Cambridge – New York CUP It is because of the restrictions of the term „mood‟ to verbal morphology that Lyons (1977) can remark: „mood is a grammatical category that is found in some, but not all, languages For it is probably the case that formal markers of modality are found within the grammars of all languages, though not always within the verb.‟ A review of previous studies on mood As far as we are concerned, mood has not been adequately discussed though it is an immense and important area We not attempt to provide a full picture of the approaches that we deal with In various places, we limit ourselves to giving the flavor of ideas and analyses Our aim is to concentrate on the studies that are likely to be of relatively lasting significance Palmer, F.R in his work „Mood and modality‟ (1986) assumes that mood and modality are grammatical categories which are confusing notions to the learners of English He also points out the differences between epistemic modality and deontic modality A considerable of his work is spent on the discussion of mood However, this study is carried out on the English and Latin backgrounds, which does not contribute much to our investigation on the Vietnamese language Huddleston (1984) deals with the classification of clause types, in which he points out the different criteria for the syntactic and semantic categories He also presents the close inspection on different mood constructions What is noticeable in his work is the focus on the correlation between syntactic categories of declarative, interrogative, exclamative, imperative and semantic categories of statement, question, exclamation, directive, which is not fully studied in the previous research works Huddleston (1995) also used the term analytic mood According to him, these moods show clearly the contrast between factual assertion and nonfactuality and/or non-assertion Besides, English also uses the inflectional system And we have the distinction: - He was downstairs then (factual assertion) - He is downstairs now - He may be downstairs now (possibility) - He must be downstairs now (certainty) Halliday, M.A.K (1994) provides a fresher viewpoint on the language He sees language as a sophisticated tool for accomplishing a number of central functions such as ideational, interpersonal, and textual And the interpersonal function is reflected in the system of mood He summarizes the formal realization of mood in the light of systemic-functional grammar that the clause consists of two functional constituents: a mood element and residue A growing recognition of the importance of studying Vietnamese has urged linguists and language teachers to more research in some recent years There have also appeared some articles that describe Vietnamese rather thoroughly A great number of descriptions have been done by Nguyễn Kim Thản (1963), Đinh Văn Đức (1986), Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1996), Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1999), Đỗ Hữu Châu (2003), etc In the mood section, they state different ways in which mood may be formed It should be noticed in the works of these linguists and language teachers that they give the priority to the formal construction of the mood And they spend a very small number of pages on the problem of mood, especially on imperative mood in the Vietnamese language Perhaps more interestingly, it is fairly clear to see that this gap is partly narrowed by several Vietnamese linguists and language teachers Cao Xuân Hạo (2001) and Diệp Quang Ban (2005) are among those who try to analyze the problem of mood in the light of systemicfunctional grammar They pay attention not only to the structures of the mood but the functions and meanings as well Though their approach to the problem is different from those already done in the past, it provides a useful semantic framework for the discussion of mood Pham Thị Hoa (1985) carries out a research on interrogative mood in English and in Vietnamese She presents a contrastive picture of the different types of interrogative sentences ... Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood when making polite requests of English native speakers …………………………………………… 38 3.2 Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood. .. three (Findings and discussions) presents the results of the study and discusses the differences and similarities politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using Imperative Mood to... speaker and the hearer In this study we are just interested the language used to make requests in English and in Vietnamese in a university educational environment 15 1.2.2.2 Imperative Mood and Politeness