A cross-cultural study on differences in expressing annoyance between English and Vietnamese

A cross-cultural study on differences in expressing annoyance between English and Vietnamese Nguyễn Thị Minh Thương Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics

A cross-cultural study on differences in expressing annoyance between English and Vietnamese

Nguyễn Thị Minh Thương

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: M.A Đỗ Thị Mai Thanh

Năm bảo vệ: 2009

Abstract Based on the solid theoretical background of pragmatics and cross-cultural

pragmatics, this thesis is conducted with an attempt to investigate the act of expressing annoyance in Vietnamese and English language and culture Cross-culturally compared and contrasted, the data has uncovered some major similarities and differences in choosing politeness strategies to express annoyance It is the similarities and differences recognized that hopefully contribute to the avoidance

of cultural conflicts leading to communication breakdown

Keywords Giao tiếp; Giao văn hóa; Tiếng Anh

Content

I RATIONALE

Cross-cultural Communication describes the ability to successfully form, foster, and improve relationships with members of a culture different from one’s own It is based on knowledge of many factors, such as the other culture’s values, perceptions, manners, social structure, and decision-making practices, and an understanding of how members of the group communicate- both verbally and non-verbally, in person, in writing or in any other kind of communication

Miscommunication is today’s greatest workplace hazard And with the world becoming smaller and more diverse, miscommunication seems to be happening more and more People from different cultures encode and decode messages differently, increasing the chances of misunderstanding In other words, when miscommunication happens, it means that the speaker fails to achieve his utterance purposes Miscommunication even sometimes leaves the hearer a negative impression on the speaker

as he/she misunderstands what the speaker wants to convey or express

With its importance, Cross-cultural Communication has been the topic of a large number of Masters dissertations within Vietnam National University A number of aspects of Cross-cultural Communication has been tried to reveal such as greetings, requesting, prohibiting, thanking and so on However, another kind of emotion that is not easy to express, but can’t helping expressing in some situations is the expression of annoyance It is not like the expression of thanking or any other positive emotion that are encouraged to express, annoyance is a negative expression that requires the addresser have to second-think about how to express his/her feeling without deteriorating the relationship with others

With such above-mentioned reasons, the author would like to spend time and effort to carry out a research on the same topic but focuses on other aspects in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of the speech act of expressing annoyance

The subject receives much attention of my colleagues, including both English and Vietnamese as all of them are trying to further understand about others’ culture to seek for a harmonization Due to the limited time, only verbal expressions are considered

II AIMS OF THE STUDY

The research is intended to investigate major similarities and differences in expressing annoyance in English and Vietnamese, particularly the communicative strategies used to express the negative emotion It aims to provide a better insight into cross-cultural similarities and differences between the two languages and cultures, thus helping to avoid any communication breakdown

To achieve this overall purpose, the study aims to:

 Provide a general picture of the theory of speech acts and politeness

 Find out major similarities and differences in expressing annoyance in English and Vietnamese

 Compare and contrast the communicative strategies used by Vietnamese and English when they want to show their annoyance in verbal communication

 Contribute to raise cross-cultural awareness among foreign language users

To achieve the objectives, following two questions are raised to be addressed:

(1) What are different strategies of expressing annoyance verbally in English and in Vietnamese?

(2) What are similarities and differences in the choice of strategies in verbal expressions of annoyance in English and Vietnamese culture?

III SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study is limited to the data obtained from the survey questionnaire on ways of expressing annoyance in English and Vietnamese The answers from informants in the survey questionnaire and direct interviews are used as linguistic inputs Due to the limited time and the scope of a Minor Thesis, only 50 English (out of 65) and 50 Vietnamese (out of 80) informants were chosen for data analysis The study is also restrained to verbal aspects of the act of expressing annoyance only No matter how important non-verbal aspects such as paralanguage and extra-language are, they are excluded within the study

Only Vietnamese Northern dialect and English native speakers are chosen for contrastive analysis By English native speakers, the author means those who speak English as their mother-tongue

The study just focuses on social relationship and ignores the kinship between the informants (Speakers) and the communicative partners (Hearers) as it is pre-supposed that in family relationship, annoyance is seemed to be expressed more directly and frequently

The informants were asked to express their annoyance to a certain person only, not a thing or object

IV METHODOLOGY

The survey is carried out with the following tools:

(i) Relevant publications

(ii) Survey questionnaire

(iii) Statistics, description and analysis of the collected data

(iv) Consultation with supervisor

(v) Interview friends and colleagues

(vi) Personal observation

V COMMENTS ON THE DATA

The survey questionnaire is designed to collect information for data analysis in the form of hand-outs and direct interviews The questionnaire includes 2 main parts:

Part 1 was for getting general information on the informants, including nationality, age, gender,

occupation and acquisition of foreign languages

Part 2 can be considered as the main part of the questionnaire which was designed for eliciting the

uses of linguistic elements and communicative strategies in expressing annoyance in the three following situations:

Situation 1: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone comes to your house and rings

the doorbell continuously?

Situation 2: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone installs computer software into

your computer without your permission?

Situation 3: How would you say to express your annoyance if someone continuously sounds his/her

horn behind you when the traffic light is red?

The informants were asked to express their annoyance verbally with the following communicative

partners: close friend, acquaintance, colleague, boss and stranger

However, there are some important dimensions that the questionnaire does not cover such as

paralinguistic factors, body-language factors, communicative environment factors and mood factors A

sample of the questionnaire in both English and Vietnamese is attached in the Appendix of the thesis

VI DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The study consists of 3 main parts:

PART I: Introduction Rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology and data

collection are all provided in the part

PART II: Development The main part consists of 3 chapters

Chapter 1: Literature review

Chapter 2: Communicative strategies used to express annoyance in English and Vietnamese

PART III: Conclusion In the part, the author aims to review the research findings and suggests some

recommendations for Vietnamese users of English as well as for further studies

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quản lý nghiên cứu khoa học