A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of the Course Book “Topnotch 2 Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của giáo trình gia

The study is conducted using descriptive qualitative research method to find out politeness strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2” the First Edition.. All the aforementioned reasons

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies

Faculty of post-graduate studies

(phiên bản đầu tiên)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

hanoi – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies

Faculty of post-graduate studies

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: ĐỖ THỊ THANH HÀ, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2013

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled

A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversations of the Coursebook “Top

Notch 2” Pre-intermediate (the First Edition)

Is the result of my own research in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Art at University of Languages and International Studies, VNU Hanoi.I certify that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degree at any other university or institution

Ha Noi, December, 2013 Author‟s signature

Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

I also wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all the teachers of Faculty

of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, VNU for furnishing me with valuable knowledge and experience during the course

My special thanks also go to my colleagues and friends for their assistance in completing the research

To all the authors of the publications in the list of references, I offer my sincere thanks for the ideas from which I have benefited

My final heart-felt thanks are given to my family members, without whose moral support, unfailing love and encouragement, I could not have got this far

ABSTRACT

It is undeniable that English nowadays has become indispensable means of international communication However, there are still a large number of Vietnamese EFL learners who have not achieved success in using English in their communication since they may face difficulty understanding the content of conversation or expressing exactly what they mean One of the significant factors necessary for students to get more successful in English conversations is the awareness of politeness strategieswhich are implicitly introduced in textbooks

The study is conducted using descriptive qualitative research method to find out politeness strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2” (the First Edition) In order to fulfill these aims, the author picked up 150 utterances from the sound bites and the conservation models in the course book to analyze in the light of politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) The findings and results of the study show that most of negative and positive politeness strategies are found in the conversations and among them positive politeness strategies 4, 5 and 2, negative politeness strategies 2, 1, and 6 are most frequently used In addition, the author also would like to offer some useful implications for effective teaching of positive and negative politeness strategies

1.2.3 Politeness and politeness strategies 8

1.2.3.4 Positive politeness and positive politeness strategies 13 1.2.3.5 Negative politeness and negative politeness strategies 17

3.2.1 The use of positive and negative politenessstrategies in the

conversations of “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

28

3.2.1.1 Positive politeness strategies in the conversations of the course

book “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

29

3.2.1.2 Negative politeness strategies in the conversations of the course

book “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

38

3.3 Implications for teaching politeness strategies in thecourse book “Top

Notch 2” (the first edition)

List of Abbreviations, Tables and Figures

List of abbreviations

Table 1: The proportion of positive and negative politeness strategies

Table 2: The proportion of positive politeness strategies

Table 3: The proportion of negative politeness strategies

List of figures

Figure 1: Circumstances determining choice of strategy

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Language, generally speaking, is created as a necessary demand of human life with the crucial aim of communication Since different people from different cultural and social backgrounds may have different ways to exchange information and express their attitudes and opinions, the question of how to successfully communicate in certain contexts, especially in cross-cultural communication has attracted great attention from linguists and has been widely discussed so far It is commonly believed that understanding social conventions and paying attention to such concepts as politeness and face will definitely allow us to have better comprehension of a variety of speaking ways by people from different cultures, thus helping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings As claimed by Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), “when learning a second language, one needs to acquire the new culture politeness framework, which is very different from that of one‟s own culture” Obviously, students‟ master of the cultural knowledge in general and strategies to choose the language politely in particular is supposed to make a valuable contribution to their ability to well communicate with confidence

in any English speaking environment With such great importance to language competence and communication skill, politeness strategies are strongly recommended to be included in the course designs for teaching and learning English

as a second language in universities and schools

Among popular course books for English learners, Top Notch series (with Summit), as claimed by Pearson Longman, is an award-winning six-level communicative course for adults and young adults This course book series have also been used and evaluated by a number of ESL institutes and teachers in the world Eslami, Esmaeli, Ghavaminia, and Rajabi (2010) chosed to evaluate the four

mostly instructed courses in Iran English language institutes namelyTop Notch,

Interchange, Headway, and On Your Markbased on Mcdounough and Shaw‟s

(2003) division of course book evaluation into internal and external evaluation

After a thorough examination, the researchers came to the conclusion that“Top

Notch best meets Mcdounough and Shaw‟s (2003) evaluation criteria”.According

to the result of the study by Alemi and Mesbah (2013), the Top Notch series

offered certain benefits to language learners such as “encouraging thestudents to

communicate successfully by giving them lots of opportunities for interaction, and demonstrating cultural-based aspects not only through lively and authentic visual images but also without cultural bias” (Alemi&Mesbah, 2013-162).Frommy and

my colleagues ‟personal experiences as English lecturers who have been making use of these books as text books in the official English teaching program for students at FPT university for nearly four years, we has got deeply interested in their effective communicative approach with the main focus on natural and authentic communication, the promotion of integrated language- skills practice as well as the inclusion of topical themes in interactive conversations In order to make better and more effective use of this course book series in teaching, the author of the present study has had strong desire for chances of conducting anin-depth study on these books‟ communicative approach

All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged the researcher to work on this study with the objectives of gaining insights into the positive and negative politeness strategies in the conversations of the course book “Top Notch 2” by Joan

M Saslow and Allen Ascher -the third book in the Top Notch and Summit series introduced above

2 Aims of the study

Firstly, the study is aimed to investigate the politeness strategies utilized in the conversations of the course book selected The second aim the study expected to achieve is to provide teachers with some suggestions for the effective teaching of polite strategies in the book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)

3 Objectives of the study

In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the objectives are specified as follows:

- Identifying and analyzing positive strategies employed in the conversations

of “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)

- Identifying and analyzing negative politeness strategies employed in the conversations of “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)

- Offering possible implications for teaching positive and negative strategies in

an effective and efficient way with specific exercises related to the content of the course book

4 Scope of the study

Politeness strategies which can be presented through verbal and nonverbal behaviors also can be expressed in different ways by different linguists The research is conducted with no ambition to study politeness strategies with various approaches but it is mainly based on Brown and Levinson‟s theoretical framework The focus of this study is limited to investigating only the positive and negative politeness strategies in the conversation of “Top Notch 2” (the first condition)

without paying much attention to the nonverbal ones

5 Significance of the study

Once having been completed, this study would give decent benefits With respect to English communication teaching, the study is supposed to serve as noteworthy reference for creating the suitable methods for teaching politeness strategies in the course book “Top Notch 2”.As for English learner of this course book, the research hopefully help not only raise the students‟ awareness of the importance of politeness strategies in cross-cultural communication in general but also provide them with specific knowledge of politesse strategies accompanied with their typical words and expressions used in the course book‟s conversation as well

as related exercises and activities for their learning and practising in particular

6 Design of the study report

Part A: Introduction- presents the rationale, aims, objectives, scope,

methods,significance and design of the study

Part B: Development- consists of three chapters as follows:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background- lays the theoretical foundation for the research Chapter 2: Methodology-details the methods that have been used and the procedures that have been followed by the researcher

Chapter 3: Findings and discussion – reports the study‟s finding on which further discussion is offered

Part C: Conclusion: ends the study by summarizing its main points as well

as finding out the limitation and suggestions for the further studies

The following parts are references and appendix

1.2.Theoretical background

1.2.1 Communicative competence

There have been so far various concepts of communicative competence by language scholars of different fields According to Hymes (1967), communicative competence includes not only knowledge of the linguistics forms of a language but also its social rules, knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms

In the context of second language teaching, Canale and Swain (1980) define communicative competence “a synthesis of knowledge of basic grammatical principles, knowledge of how language is used in social settings to perform communicative functions, and knowledge of how utterances and communicative functions can be combined according to the principles of discourse” Specifically, they prescribe this term into four components:

 Grammatical competence: reflects the knowledge of the lexicon, syntax and semantics, or words and rules in general

 Sociolinguistic competence: refers to the appropriateness of communication depending on the context including the participants and the rules of interaction

 Discourse competence:involves the cohesion and coherence of utterances in

a discourse or cohesion and coherence in general

 Strategic competence： is concerned with the appropriate use of communication strategies especially when communication fails

In the concept of communicative competence by Savignon (1972), much greater emphasis is placed on the aspect of ability when she regards communicative competence as “the ability to function in a truly communicative setting – that is, in a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors” (Savignon, 1972:8) Likewise, Spitzberg (1988) also defines communication

competence as "the ability to interact well with others" (p.68) In his explanation,

"the term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness" (p 68)

As the significant role of communicative competence is undeniable, Wardhaugh

(1989: 213) recommends that “when we teach a language like English to speakers

who already know another language, we must be aware that we have to teach more than new sounds, words, and grammatical structure” In fact, communicative

competence achievement requires not only language users‟ linguistics knowledge but also their interaction skills as well as social and cultural knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately Actually, the notion of social acceptability and the correct use of language depend on what we understand of the norms of behavior in the target language The differences in accepted norms of

behavior are generally reflected in speech acts which in fact can be “not

comparable across cultures” as concluded by Schmidt and Richards (1980) In

more details, the concept of speech act is briefly reviewed in the next part as follows

1.2.2 An overview of Speech act

Having been first mentioned by J.L Austin in his book “How to do things with words” published in 1962, the notion of speech act have considered among the most important subject in the field of language use It also has been further studied

and developed in a number of research by famous theorists and linguists namely Hymes (1964), Searle (1969, 1975), Levinson (1997), Yule (1996) etc., most of whom share the common belief that when a speaker says something, he does something at the same time

As stated by Austin (1962), a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication He believes that in uttering a sentence we can do things as well say things From the viewpoint of Searle (1969:24), language is part of a theory of action and speech acts are those verbal actions like promising, threatening, and requesting that one performs in speaking

Likewise, according to Yule (1996:47), in English, as any other language, some actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts; these actions are given labels such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request More specifically, Zierhofer (2002) claims that speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, offering, explaining, ordering, greeting, accepting, warning, demanding, advertising, canceling, inviting, withdrawing, declaring, judging, criticizing, describing, and congratulating

In the theory of Austin (1962), a speech act consists of three dimensions below:

i Locutionary act: The actions performed by uttering a well-formed,

meaningful sentence

ii Illocutionary act: The communication force which accompanies the

utterance E.g promising, warning, conceding, denying, etc

iii Perlocutionary act: The effect of the utterance on the hearer who may feel

amused, persuaded, warned

(Austin, 1962, cited in Hatim& Mason 1990: 59) Among the three above-mentioned acts, speech act theory tends to mainly focus on illocutionary acts, which may explain the reason why discussions about the classification of speech acts actually center on the classification of illocutionary

acts So far there is a large number of speech acts in English and various attempts have been made to classify them One of the most widely used classifications is offered by Searle (1976) as follows:

i Representative: commits the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition

(paradigm cases: asserting, concluding)

ii Directives: are attempts by the speaker to get the Addressee to do something

(paradigm cases: requesting, questioning)

iii Commissives commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm

cases: promising, threatening, offering)

iv Expressives express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking,

apologizing, welcoming, congratulating)

v Declarations affect the immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs

and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from employment)

(Searle, 1976: 10-16 cited in Finch, 2000: 182)

On the whole it is recommended that learners of English must be made consciously aware of the differences in certain speech acts in specific cultural context since the values and cultural norms underlying the English language used by ESL leaners are not necessarily the same as those of native speakers Also ESL learners are advised

to acquire necessaryknowledge of the use of politeness strategies in performing certain speech acts in cross-cultural communication In the next part, a thorough review of politeness and politeness strategies is offered as follows

1.2.3 Politeness and politeness strategies

1.2.3.1 Politeness

Being regarded as one of the most significant aspects of humancommunication, politeness has been given particular attention and interest from a huge number of scholars researchers

Basically, “politeness is interpreted as a strategy (or series or strategies) by a

speaker to achieve a variety of goals such as promoting or maintaining harmonious relation” (Thomas, 1995:157) From the linguistic view of Blum-Kulla (1987:131),

politeness is considered “the interactional balance achieved between two needs: the

need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness”

Culturally speaking, Yule (1996) views politeness as “the means employed to show

awareness of another person‟s face”… and as “the idea of polite social behavior”

or “etiquette, within a culture”.According to Lakoff, politenessis “a system of

interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (Lakoff , 1990:34

, cited in Eelen , 2001:2)

Among the well-known theories of politeness is the one proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) which studies politeness as strategies employed by the speakers to obtain or to save “face”.Since this study will be mainly based on the theory put forward by Brown and Levinson for further discussion, the following part‟s focus is

on presenting an in-depth review of the most influential concepts of their model only

1.2.3.2 The concept of face

Among the first scholars whose studies are concerned with the notion of face, Goffman in his article “On Face Work” views “face” as in the following:

The term face maybe defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact Face is an image of self-delineated in terms of approved social attributes

(Goffman ,1955:213) Goffman‟s face concept is also believed to provide the basis for Brow and

Levinson‟s theory of politeness, in which face is said to refer to “something that is

emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction” (Brown and Levinson, 1978:66)

Quite similarly, Yule (1996) defines face as “the public self-image of a person It

refers to that emotionally and social sense of self that everyone has and expect everyone else to recognized”

Regarding the main aspects of face, Yule also shares Goffman‟s idea on the classification of face into two categories, that is, positive face and negative face An

individual‟s positive face, as stated by Yule (1996), is “the need to be accepted,

even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others” Meanwhile, a person‟s negative face is

presented by “the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be

imposed on by the others”

According to Brow and Levinson (1987), positive face represents “the positive

self-image that people have and want to be appreciated and approved by at least some people” (1987:61) Negative face, on the other hand, describes “the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, right to non-distraction, i.e to freedom of action and freedom from imposition” In other words, the negative face “is reflected in the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses”

(Thomas, 1995:169) The existence of positive and negative face wants can be found in almost every culture and society; yet it is the emphasis on one of these two aspects of face that may differ in different cultures

1.2.3.3 Face-threatening acts

From the viewpoint of Brown and Levinson, certain illocutionary acts can have the potential of threatening another person‟s face, which are termed face threatening acts (FTAs) Specifically, if an individual says something that tends to

threat or damage another one‟s expectation regarding self-image, he is said to have performed an FTA Brown and Levinson (1987: 65-68) also claim that face-threatening acts may threaten either the speaker's face or the hearer's face, and they may threaten either their positive face or negative face In more details, they offer the important distinction of kinds of FTAs as follows:

 FTAs threatening the positive-face want

 FTAs threatening the positive –face of the addressee

Specific acts which can threaten the hearer‟s positive-face are listed below: (i) Those that show that the speaker has a negative evaluation of some aspect of the hearer‟s positive face, for example, by disapproving, criticizing, complaining

insulting or disagreeing, etc

(ii) Those that show that the speaker doesn‟t care about (or is indifferent to) the

addressee‟s positive face, such as expressions of violent (out-of control) emotions, bringing a bad news about the addressee, or good news (boasting) about the speaker, raising of dangerously emotional or divisive topics, etc

 FTAs threatening the positive –face of the speaker

Apart from threatening the positive face of the hearer, those FTAs might also damage that of speaker with the utterances of apologies, acceptance of a compliment, breakdown of physical control over body, self-humiliation, confessions, or emotion leakage, etc

 FTAs threatening the negative-face want

 FTAs threatening the negative –face of the addressee

Another classification given by Brown and Levinson to FTAs is the actsthreatening the negative-face want of the hearer by indicating that the speaker does not respect the hearer‟s freedom of action and thought Among these, Brown and Levinson point out three main dimensions below:

(i) Those that anticipate some action of the addressee, whereby the speaker puts

pressure on the hearer to do or not to do something, for instance: orders and requests, suggestions and advice, reminding, threats, warnings, dares, etc

(ii) Those that anticipate some action of the speaker, whereby he puts pressure

onthe addressee to accept or reject some kind of debt, like offers, promises

(iii) Those that anticipate some desire of the speaker regarding the addressee,

whereby he puts pressure on the hearer to take action in order to protect or contribute to the speaker‟s wants, such as compliments, expressions of envy

or admiration or expressions of strong emotions toward the addressee

 FTAs threatening the negative –face of the speaker

Not only may those acts threaten the addressee‟s negative face as mentioned above, but also they are likely to threaten the speaker‟s with the expression

of thanks, recognition of thanks or apologies, excuses, acceptance of offers, etc

In order to minimize risk of losing face, a set of five strategies is suggested by the two authors as in the following figure:

Lesser risk to face

Greater risk to face

Figure 1: Circumstances determining choice of strategy

(Brown and Levinson, 1987:69)

The features of each strategy are briefly summarized by Behm (2008) as follows:

1 Do the FTAs on record and badly (without redress): this strategy involves

direct and unambiguous utterances without out any particular politeness

On record

4 Off record

1 Without redressive action, badly

With redressive action

2 Positive Politeness

3 Negative Politeness

2 Do the FTAs on record and with redress by using positive politeness

strategy: This strategy focuses on saving the hearer‟s positive face and

involves the expression of camaraderie, positive feelings and empathy

3 Do the FTAs on record and with redress by using negative politeness

strategy: this strategy attends to the hearer‟s negative face and includes the expression of regret for interference or interruption as well as expression of apologies in order to show respect to the addressee‟s time or concerns

4 Do the FTAs by using off-record politeness- this strategy is performed by hinting and being vague (e.g using irony, metaphors or rhetorical questions) instead of directly stating a message

5 Don‟t do the FTAs- this strategy seeks to avoid a face threat at all

(Behm, 2008:10-11)

As the research is particularly aimed at studying the positive and negative politeness strategies, they will be presented in details in the following sections

1.2.3.4 Positive politeness and positive politeness strategies

As proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987:101), positive politeness is

“redress directed to the addressee‟s face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the

actions/ acquisitions/values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable” In other words, positive politeness is used to satisfy the positive face

of the hearer by approving or including him as a friend or as a member in a group Correspondingly, itis said that in many cases, actual positive politeness strategies are positive approaches to the addressee‟s positive face rather the redress‟s

According to Nguyen Quang (2003), “positive politeness is any

communicativeact (verbal and/or non-verbal) which is intentionally and appropriately meant to show the speaker‟s concern to the hearer, thus enhancing the sense of solidarity between them”

From the viewpoint of Yule (1996:64), a positive politeness strategy “leads

the requester to inquire for a common goal, and even friendship” This type of

politeness strategy can be seen as a “solidarity strategy” since it tends to be

employed not only to redress the FTA, but also to indicate that people in the given contexts know each other quite well and the speaker wants to minimize the distance

as well as enhance the sense of solidarity between them

To specify the types of positive politeness strategy, Brown and Levinson (1987: 101-129) offer the list of fifteen sub-strategies as seen below:

 Strategy 1: -Notice, attend to H (her/his interest, wants, needs, goods, etc…)

This strategy generally suggests the speaker should pay attention to aspects of the hearer‟s conditions, for example, his/her noticeable change, remarkable possession or anything that hearer wants speaker to notice and approve of it E.g.: You must be hungry How about some lunch?

 Strategy 2: -Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)

This strategy often occurs with exaggerated intonation, stress and other aspects

of prosodic as well as intensifying modifiers

E.g.: How absolutely marvelous/extraordinary/devastating/incredible!

 Strategy 3:- Intensify interest to H

Another way for the speaker to communicate to the addressee that the shares some of his wants is to intensify the interest of the speaker contributions by

“making a good story” and drawing the hearer as a participant into the conversation with direct questions and expressions like „you know‟, „ guess what‟ or exaggerating facts to overstate

E.g: I have just met our old neighbor, you know what, he‟s a millionaire now

 Strategy 4:- Use in- group identify markers

This strategy is often done with the usage of the certain ways to express group membership, such as address forms, in- group language or dialect, jargon

in-or slang and ellipses

E.g.: Come here, honey

 Strategy 5:- Seek agreement

With this strategy, the speaker seeks ways in which it is possible to agree with the hearer, such as by raising safe topic, using repetition or making use of minimalencouragers like „yes‟, „uhuh‟, „really‟, etc

E.g: - She is going to New York this week

- To New York!

 Strategy 6:- Avoid disagreement

Several different ways can be employed to help avoid disagreement between the speaker and the hearer in communication, such as the use of token-agreement,

pseudo -agreement, white lie andhedging opinions

E.g.: -What is she, small?

- Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, um not really small but certainly not very big

 Strategy 7:-Presuppose/ Raise/ Assert common ground

This strategy is concerned with gossip, small talk, and personal center switch, time switch, and place switch, avoidance of adjustment of reports to hearer‟s point of view, presupposition of knowledge of hearer‟s relationship, wants and attitudes

E.g.: I went there alone, you know, it‟s my first night out in such a scary jungle

 Strategy 8: -Joke

These kinds of jokes are usually made based on mutual shared background andvalues with the aim to putting hearer at ease or minimizing an FTA of

requesting

E.g: How about lending me this old heap of junk? (the hearer‟s new Cadillac)

 Strategy 9: -Assert or presuppose S‟s knowledge of or concern for H‟s wants

This strategy is considered the way to indicate cooperation and thus potentially

to put pressure on the addressee to cooperate with the speaker as well as to

assert or imply knowledge of the addressee‟s wants and willingness to fit one‟s own wants in with them

E.g.: I know you like to wear your favorite color blue, but why don‟t you try on this green shirt, that may look good on you

 Strategy 10: -Offer/ promise

The occurrence of this strategy can be found in the context when the speaker wants to show his good intentions in satisfying the hearer‟s positive face wants and claim that he/she will help the hearer obtain the hearer‟s wants or desires E.g: Don‟t worry, I‟ll come and talk to your Mom about it

 Strategy 11: -Be optimistic

It is another kind of cooperative strategy for the speaker to assume that the addressee wants the speaker‟s wants for the speaker (or for the speaker and hearer) and will help him to obtain Presumptuous or „optimistic‟ expressions of FTAs are one outcome of this strategy

E.g.: You will lend me your book, won‟t you?

 Strategy 12: - Include both S and H in the activity

By using inclusive forms like „we‟, „us‟, „let‟s‟, the speaker actually want to show that the speaker and hearer are cooperators and the speaker wants the hearer to cooperate with him in taking some actions

E.g.: Let‟s stop for a drink, ok?

 Strategy 13: -Give (or ask for) reasons

With this strategy, the speaker gives reason to why he wants what he wants and assumes (via optimism) that if there are no good reasons why the hearer shouldn‟t or can‟t cooperate, he will

E.g.: Why don‟t you help me with my ironing?

 Strategy 14: -Assume or assert reciprocity

Giving evidence of habit or obligations obtained between the speaker and hearer might claim the existence of their cooperation

E.g: If you help me finish this project, I will give you my book

 Strategy 15: -Give gifts to H (good, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)

The concept of gifts here refers to not only the material gifts but also the spiritual ones, such as fulfilling the hearer‟s wants to be liked, admired, cared about, listened to, and understood, and so on

E.g.: I‟ve just been out shopping Here‟s hot dog for you Like it?

1.2.3.5 Negative politeness and negative politeness strategies

Negative politeness, as defined by Brown and Levinson (1987: 129), is

“redressive action addressed to the addressee‟s negative face: his want to have his

freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded” To put it simply,

negative politeness tends to be employed to emphasize the hearers‟ right to freedom Brown and Levinson (1987: 129-210) provides a list of ten negative

strategies as follows:

 Strategy 1: -Be conventionally indirect

The speaker employs this strategy when he/ she is faced with opposing tensions which may be dealt with by the compromise of conventional indirectness, and

by the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meaning, such as „could you‟,

„can you‟, „why for God‟s sake?‟, etc

E.g.: I‟d like to borrow your car, if you wouldn‟t mind

 Strategy 2: - Question/ hedge

It is supposed that using question and hedge which sounds more polite can makes the addressee feel less threatening This strategy derives from the want not to presume or force on the hearer.A “hedge” can be a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or noun phrase in

a set, such as „sort of‟, „rather‟, „kind of‟, „technically‟, etc.Added to that, there are some hedges functions directly as notices of violations of face wants, like „

to be honest‟, „frankly‟, „ I hate to say this but…‟.The use of certainverbs may also act as a hedge in a sentence, for example „suppose‟, „guess‟ and „think‟

E.g.: A swing is sort of a toy

I hate to have to say this, but I don‟t think it‟s right

 Strategy 3: -Be pessimistic

This strategy is said to gives redress to hearer‟s negative face by expressing doubt that the conditions for the appropriateness of speaker‟s speech act obtain This strategy can be done through namely, doing indirect requests with assertions offelicitous conditions such as „couldn‟t possibly‟, „by any chance‟, etc or using subjunctives like „could /would/ might you please ‟

E.g: You couldn‟t possibly lend me your lawnmower

 Strategy 4: - Minimize the imposition

This strategy is utilized when the speaker does not mean to show much imposition on the hearer The message it is expected to send to the hearer is that there is no or very little imposition even whether the H could do something for S or not The words and phrases to help achieve this strategy can be like

„just‟, „a little‟, „a tiny bit‟ or „I wonder if…‟, „I just want to ask‟, „I know‟, etc E.g: I just want to ask you if I can borrow a tiny bit of paper

 Strategy 5: -Give deference

The use of this strategy allows the speaker to humble himself, his capacities as well as his possessions and at the same time to raise the hearer, satisfying the hearer‟s want to be treated as superior Giving deference can be identified with the use of such phrases: „excuse me‟, „sir‟, „sorry to bother you but…‟, „please

to accept my apology‟, etc

E.g.: Sorry to brother you, but could you check that bill, please?

 Strategy 6: -Apologize

This strategy can help the speaker convey his/her regret or reluctance to do an FTA and thereby partially redress that action The occurrence of this strategy can be noticed with the use of some phrases, such as: „I‟m sure you….but… ‟,

„I wouldn‟t normally ask you but…‟, „I hope this doesn‟t bother you too much‟,

etc

E.g.: I‟m sure you must be very busy, but

 Strategy 7: -Impersonalize S and H

In this strategy, the speaker wants to express his/her reluctance to impinge on the hearer by phrasing the FTA as if the agent were other than the speaker That can be done with the avoidance of „I‟ and „ You‟ pronoun which then can be replaces by indefinites or the use of imperatives, impersonal verbs, passive

and circumstantial voices

E.g.: It would be appreciated that you come here for helping us

 Strategy 8: - State the FTA as a general rule

This strategy enables the speaker to dissociate himself from an FTA or an impingement by stating the FTA as a general social rule, regulation or obligation In other words, what the speaker wants to express is not to be imposing but just reminding the hearer to do or not to do something by rule E.g.: I‟m sorry, but late-comers cannot be seated till the next interval

 Strategy 9: -Nominalize

It is suggested that in English, using more nouns tend to sound more polite Brown and Levinson also claim that as we normalize subjects, sentences get more „formal‟ and FTA less „dangerous‟

E.g.: Your good performance on the examination impressed us favourably

 Strategy 10: - Go on record as incurring a debt or as not indebting a hearer

With this strategy, the speaker can redress an FTA by explicitly claiming his indebtedness to the hearer, or by disclaiming any indebtedness of the hearer by means of expressions such as for requests and for offers

E.g.: I‟d be eternally grateful if you would (for request)

1.3 Previous studies

It is obvious that the politeness-related topics have been extensively

discussed from a variety of perspectives such as pragmatic, sociolinguistic and cross-culture researches The last decades have also witnessed a big increase in the

publication of studies, articles and books on linguistic politeness, which can help to prove that politeness has become one of the most popular areas of research in language use

Among the influential politeness frameworks, the classical theories of linguistic politeness by some famous authors such as Lakoff (1973, 1977), Brown and Levinson (1987), Leech (1983) share the common idea that linguistic politeness can be used as strategic conflict avoidance Based on these authors‟ theoretical frameworks, a variety of research has been conducted with the aim of identifying politeness strategies employed in written and spoken discourse in different contexts

Generally speaking, Brown and Levinson‟s politeness theory has been said to remain among the most influential frameworks in empirical work on particular speech acts in a wide range of languages and cultures as well as in cross-cultural work which is concerned with cultural differences of two or more languages in their realizations of politeness However, there are still certain aspects of this theory which have become the highly controversial and debated topics among linguists and researchers One widely criticized drawback of the politeness theory proposed Brown and Levinson (1987) is that the data for their theoretical assumptions to be based on is from merely three languages: English, Tzeltal and Tamil That limitation might make their claim for valid universality be less strongly supported since in fact, there are other cultures in the world and as stated by Holmes (2006), different cultures have different ways of expressing considerations for others From the viewpoint of Watts (2003), Brown and Levinson do not look at how interlocutors struggle over politeness The universal assumption for Watts is that

“all cultures will have forms of behavior that members classify as mutually shared consideration for others and others which violate these principles of cooperation and consideration” (Watts, 2003:14) Besides, as reviewed by Vilkki (2006), some

Chinese scholars such as Gu (1990) and Mao (1994) have also given thorough

critiques of Brown and Levinson‟s theory, one of which is the criticism that “Brown

and Levinson assume an individualistic concept of face, which is not appropriate to

cultures with broad value tendencies in emphasizing the importance of in-group interests over individual wants” (Vilkki, 2006:326) Another question also put to

Brown & Levinson‟s work is the validity of their concept of negative face“in

cultures where the individual‟s freedom of thought and action are determined by the social status that the individual has in the group” (Vilkki, 2006:326) Added to

that, what is under discussion on Brown and Levinson‟s model is their neglect of

impoliteness It is criticized that “the theory repeatedly refers to different forms of

„politeness‟, yet inherently takes this as synonymous to „polite‟ rather than regarding it as a scale spanning both kinds of behavior…By neglecting one end of the politeness scale, it is arguable that the model is incomprehensive” (Gilks, 2009-

2010) In terms of Brown and Levinson‟s list of politeness strategies, Kitamura

(2000) stated that it “mainly covers a certain very limited type of interaction” In

fact, it is true that most of examples provided are single utterances withquite clear communicative goals, such as warning, asking for borrowing something, etc., thus,

as supposed by Kitamura (2000),it seems Brown and Levinson ignore the fact that

“most single utterances are actually just constituents of a larger exchange between two or more interactants”

However, regardless of the criticisms have been issued as mentioned above,

it is undeniable that Brown and Levinson‟s theory has laid the great foundation for a wide range of studies which vary from analyzing the use of politeness strategies in business letters written by native and non-native speakers such as Maier (1992), Nickerson (1999) or in e-mail exchanges, for instance, Vinagre (2008) and Pariera (2006) to investigating politeness strategies in conversations in novels, for example the novel “Love match” in Meliana (1995) or in requests used by characters in certain novels like “The Thorn Birds” in the study by Nguyen (2010) Specifically, Maier(1992) conducted a study to compare the politeness strategies employed in business letterswritten by native and non-native English speakers.The interesting findings of her research showed that though non-native speaker could make use of politeness strategies in their business letter, they relied more on positive politeness

strategies rather than negative ones This result was also similarly true to the study

by Nguyen (2010) when in her study aimed at investigating how politeness strategies manifested in requests in the novel “The Thorn Bird”, the findings indicated thatcharacters of this novel employed positive politeness in their requests

at a higher frequency than negative politeness strategies From the perspective of spoken discourse, politeness strategies have also been analyzed in the context of interviews or TV shows, which can be found, for instance, in Kodyat (2001) orShigemitsu (2003) respectively In conducting the research, Kodyat (2001) used the recorded material containing the process of interviews taken in an international standard company to identify what positive and negative politeness strategies are mostly utilized by the interviewers In contrast to the result of Kodyat (2001) which supported the common tendency that positive politeness strategies are more preferred than negative ones in communicating, the findings of Shigemitsu (2003) showed that in the discourse of discussion and arguing situations in Japanese debate shows, the use of positive politeness strategies compared to that of negative ones was rather limited as negative politeness strategies are assumed to help avoid conflict among speakers in direct face-to-face speech events

Another remarkable source for studying politeness strategies is conversations indifferentkinds of English course books among which this present research‟s primary data source- the conversations in Top Notch 2, Pre-intermediate is an example As reviewed in Yuka (2009), the study by Murata (2006) on investigating positive politeness strategies in six textbooks (two each of Oral Communication A,

B, and C) with respect to address terms, emphatic responses, and jokesshowed that the number of positive politeness strategies employed in the text books were rather limited, which, as explained by the writer herself, might be the result from the fact that the writers of five out of six text books were not English native ones and they

were “unconsciously influenced by Japanese” In Sari (2012), together with the

Brown and Levinson (1978) politeness theory, the closing strategy theory offered

by Schegloff and Sacks as quoted by Coppock(2005) was adopted in investigating

the use of closing strategy and also politeness strategy in the conversational closing

of conversational text from vocational school‟s English text book entitled English

for SMK 1 One of the study‟s remarkable findings revealed that the positive

politeness strategy numbered 10 is the mostly used one in closing conversations in the text book.To the researcher‟s knowledge, a number of other studies of this type have also been carried out in Vietnam, such as Nguyen (2009), Nguyen (2010), Tran (2011), Pham (2012), etc, which were mostly based on the theoretical background of politeness theory proposed by Brow and Levinson (1987) or Nguyen Quang (2003), which is in fact developed from Brown and Levinson‟s theory Another interesting common thing shared among these studies is that their results all revealed that the positive politeness strategies were employed more frequently than the negative ones in the selected conversational activities Apart from that, in some research like Nguyen ThiHoa (2010) and Tran Thi Phuong (2011), one of their primary aims was to take a look at the performance of politeness strategies from the perspective of speaker-hearer role relationships Noticeably, the findings indicated that the choices of politeness strategies made by speakers and hearers tended to be significantly affected by their roles in the conversations What is more,

in the study by Tran Thi Phuong (2011), the frequency of positive and negative politeness strategies was also investigated in terms of so-called function of utterance namely responding, inviting, requesting, suggesting and social behavior On the whole, all of the studies by the authors mentioned above have made valuable contribution to the research of politeness strategies in various fields of communication in general, and English language teaching and learning in particular

The present study is intended to focus merely on the positive and negative politeness strategies found in the conversations of the course book “Top Notch 2”, which has not ever been the subject of any studies before

1.4 Summary

The first chapter has presented a fundamental review of the key issues of the study namely communicative competence, speech act, the face-management view

on politeness and especially, the positive and negative politeness strategies As the notion of politeness can be varied according to different languages and cultures, it is

a need for language learners to be given appropriate knowledge and instructions which can helpful contribute to their successful communication in the target language The succeeding chapter is supposed to deal with the proper presentation

of the study‟s methodology

Chapter 2: Methodology

2.1 Introduction

In the preceding chapter, the literature on the research topic was briefly reviewed for the theoretical basis of the whole study Turning to the practical side, this research is carried out with strict adherence to research questions, data-related issues as well as justified methods of data collection and analysis in order to maximize its validity and reliability Justification for each step in the whole

procedure would be also given herein

2.2 Research questions

- What kinds of positive politeness strategies are used in the conversations of

“Top Notch 2” (the first edition)?

- What kinds of negative politeness strategies are used in the conversations of

“Top Notch 2” (the first edition)?

2.3 Research method

The study employs quantitative and qualitative method with which the data from the course book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)and related research will be collected and analyzed to achieve the research‟s aims and objectives.Quantitative method is, as the term suggests, concerned with the collection and analysis of data

in numeric form in order to figure out which strategies are frequently used whereas the qualitative method is applied in describing and analyzing the specific characteristics of each strategy which are revealed through their typical expressions

2.4 Data – related issues

2.4.1 Data sources

The study consists of two data sources:

- The first data source of the study is taken from the course book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition)

- The secondary data sources are from the books and internet including reference and material related to the study

Since it is crucial to provide the comprehensive information on the subject of the study, the design of the selected course book is presented in details This course book is co-authored by Joan M Saslow and Allen Ascher and published by Pearson Longman, Inc in 2006 There are totally 10 units in the book, each of which is made up of six two-page lessons The first lesson of every unit named „Preview‟ is aimed at providing an introduction to the topic and social language of the unit while lesson 1 and 2 offer new language and controlled practice The third and fourth lessons begin with a communication goal and culminate in a Top Notch interaction section in which students achieve that communication goal Finally, the lesson called „Checkpoint‟ reviews the essential content of the unit and supplies students with the opportunity to check their progress

2.4.2 Data types to be collected

The data of the research are the utterances deriving from conversations

appearing mainly in the two parts namely „Sound bites‟ and „Conversation model‟,

that areaccompanied by their recordings Belonging to the first lesson „Preview‟, the

„Sound bites‟ is intended for students‟ observation rather than practice as its

examples of natural conversation will promote comprehension of authentic language and familiarize students with the language they will learn later When it

comes to the „Conversation model‟, which always appears at the beginning of

lesson 1 and 2, students are encouraged to practise the natural language as well as rhythm and intonations by getting involved in a number of relevant activities

2.4.3 Procedure of data collection

Broadly speaking, the process of data collection could be put into the two

major phases as follows:

 Phase 1

Since not all the utterances of the course book‟s conversations might be integrated with politeness strategies,the author first took into consideration all conversations in the course book “Top Notch 2” (the first edition) to find out utterances containing typical expressions of positive and negative politenessstrategies.These utterances then were categorized accordingly whether they are positive politeness strategies or negative ones

 Phase 2

In this phase, the author badly needed help from her supervisor in examining

if any among utterances collected in the first phase were not the appropriate data for analysis After completing two steps mentioned above, the final list was made up with the total number of 150 utterances which were included with typical expressions of positive and negative politeness strategies

2.4.4 Data analysis

Within the framework of Brown and Levinson, the collected data was processed with the application of both statistical and interpretive methods The statistical method was supposed to analyze, synthesize and present the data in forms

of graphs and tables while the interpretive one helped discuss the results

In more details, 150 utterances were taken into consideration and classified into types of politeness strategies For each type, the utterances were examined to put into specific categories of politeness strategies Based on the result, the author analyzed the data and then provided discussions and findings.The result of this study was presented based on the statistics regarding the politeness strategies

2.5 Summary

All in all, the chapter has justified the methodology used in this chapter by clarifying the important aspects of research questions, research methods as well as specific data collection and analysis techniques with the aim to give better understanding of the rest of the thesis

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion

3.1 Introduction

This chapter aims to present the study‟s findings The statistics listed in the data analysis were calculated to figure out the percentage of positive and negative politeness strategies employed in the selected conversations At the end of this chapter, a further discussion on those findings with regard to those of the previous studies will be offered

3.2 Findings

The result of the statistical process offered interesting findings related to the occurrence frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness strategies in “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

3.2.1 The use of positive and negative politeness strategies in the conversations

of “Top Notch 2”(the first edition)

As stated by Brown and Levinson (1987: 68-69), politeness strategies consist

of bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record Nevertheless, within the narrow scope of this thesis, as mentioned in the introduction, its focus is mainly on identifying and analyzing positive and negative politeness strategies

There are up 104 utterances employing the positive politeness strategies, which might be explained that in a great number of the conversations, the speaker and hearer are likely to employ more positive politeness strategies in asking and answering information questions to minimize the distance between them or express friendliness, interest and common background.Meanwhile, that the total number of negative politeness strategies is 46 can imply that fewer cases in which the speaker and hearer tend to keep certain distance between them as well as to show their wish

of avoiding imposition and not intruding the other‟s privacy Normally, the utterances can be the questions and answers about facts, personal information