A politeness strategy in expressing sympathy by american and vietnamese speakers

Tran Huu Manh, PhD Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract: This study investigates the politeness strategies employed by American and Vietnamese native speakers expressing sympathy.. It attempts t

american and vietnamese speakers

Tạ Thị Thanh Hiền

Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành:Linguitics; Mã Số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: Prof Assoc Tran Huu Manh, PhD

Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Abstract: This study investigates the politeness strategies employed by American and

Vietnamese native speakers expressing sympathy It attempts to seek what politeness strategies Vietnamese and American speakers use in expressing sympathy, and then how Vietnamese teachers and learners should acquire politeness strategy The data was analyzed using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and basing on the models proposed by Blum-Kulka, et al (1989) including three dimensions: the Head Act, the Internal modifications and External modifications.The findings show that the American speakers used more external modifications Differently, Vietnamese people were more indirect and used many different types of external modifications Also it was found that a variety of internal modifications were exploited by American speakers from the interrogative, modals, intensifier, subjectivizers to downtoner, commitment upgrader while Vietnamese people used more external modifications with explanations or advice On the basis of the findings, certain implications for the teaching and learning language functions were proposed, limitations were pointed out, and further research was suggested

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Người mỹ; Người Việt

Content:

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background and significance of the study … .1

1.2 Objectives ……… .2

1.3 Overview of the study……… .2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Speech acts ……… .4

2.2 Politeness……… 7

2.2.1 Theory of politeness……… .7

2.2.2 Social factors affecting politeness ………8

2.2.3 The notion of face ………

2.2.4 The notion of positive and negative politeness……… …….9

2.3 Directness and indirectness……… 10

2.3.1 Direct speech acts………… .10

2.3.2 Indirect speech acts………… 11

2.4 Cooperative principles……… .12

2.5 The speech act of comfort……… .14

2.6 Politeness in expressing sympathy………… 14

2.7 Sympathy and antipathy…… ……… 17

CHAPTER 3: METHODLOGY 19

3.1 Research methods of the study……… .19

3.2 Research questions……… 19

3.3 Research design……… .19

3.3 1 Selection of subjects……… .19

3.3.2 Data collection instruments…… 20

3.3.3 Data collection procedure… .23

3.4 Analytical framewor……… 24

3.4.1 Internal modification……… .24

3.4.2 External modifications…… .25

3.4.3 The Head Act formula…… .26

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 29

4.1 The choice of strategy……… .29

4.2 The choice of External modification or Supportive Moves 30

4.3 The internal modifications……… ………….31

4.4 The realization of sympathy expression……… 32

4.5 Summary of major findings……… .33

4.6 Discussion of findings……… 34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 37

5.1 Conclusion……… .37

5.2 Implications……… 38

5.3 Suggestions for further study……… 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B IV APPENDIX C VIII APPENDIX D……….…….XII

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background and significance of the study

English has been one of the compulsory subjects in Vietnamese universities for many years However, the tendency in teaching and learning English has placed a great emphasis on communicative competence That means it requires the learners to be able

to use the language grammatically, appropriately ad effectively In other words, the learners must have the ability to say the right thing in the right situation in order to get what they want Nevertheless, the process of teaching and learning in Vietnam, communicative competence has been paid little attention Therefore, learners have difficulties in oral communication though they can read or write well Furthermore, since the open door policy and recent social development, more and more Vietnamese people have been now working in foreign companies and have to speak English in their work; the need for oral communication in English is increasing Apart from the grammatical and lexical knowledge, much awareness in verbal communicative competence has been paid attention to In addition, in order to achieve the communicative goals and avoid misunderstandings, learners have to develop a sense of socio-cultural appropriateness However, despite this increasing emphasis on sealing, both teachers and learners still have difficulties in direct interaction with foreigners due

to the lack of knowledge of when, how and to whom to say what

With an aim to improving learners’ communicative competence, there have been many English and Vietnamese cross-cultural studies on the realization and the usage of such speech acts as thanking (Tam, 1990), offering (Lan, 2000), apology (Van, 2000), inviting (Hien, 2002), prohibiting (Thuc, 2001), etc Those studies have shown similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of linguistic element

Further, Vang’s study (1990) in requests raises some significant concerns in cross- cultural issues relating to request His study shows that there are potential differences in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests between Vietnamese subjects and Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese learners of English

Similarly, in a study on complaining; Hanh (2003) pointed out the similarities and differences in formulation of the speech act of complaint with respect to the use of complaint strategies, directive acts and external modifiers IT also showed a variety of differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers It concludes that complaints can be realized in a great variety of forms depending on a particular context These studies have provided some significant insights in to both the problems Vietnamese learners of English as well as area where Vietnamese learners have fewer difficulties

However, to date a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in American and Vietnamese has not yet been adequately investigated Therefore, the aim

of this study is to compare the realization of the speech act of sympathy by Vietnamese native speakers and the American speakers in order to fill in the gap in research in this area

This study concentrates on answering the following questions:

1 What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy

in the contexts studied?

2 What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in the contexts studied?

2 The scope of the study

This study is aimed at comparing sympathy expressions in Vietnamese with those in English with particular references to the theory of speech acts Besides, it is to uncover differences in sympathy expressions of the two populations in terms of linguistics

The study focuses mainly on verbal communication and the analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaire on expressing sympathy The target groups who express sympathy are common American and Vietnamese speakers in all situations from work to private home Further, the study is confined to ten selected situations In such situations, the Speaker is familiar with the Hearer

3 The organization of the study

The study is divided into three main parts

PART A INTRODUCTION introduces the background, the significance, the objectives and the design of the study

PART B DEVELOPMENT focuses on the theoretical issues related to the topic of the study Firstly, it presents and discusses the issues of speech acts and the speech act of comfort including the theory of politeness Then the notions of directness and indirectness in sympathy together with the matters of the conversational maxims, the cooperative principles are dealt with

It also presents the research questions and the design, the research methods including the selection of subjects, data collection instruments, the procedure of the data collection, and finally analytical framework of the study

Besides, this part reports some findings on the strategy and the choice of external and internal; modifications as well as the sympathy expression realization in relation to the variables of Power, Social Distance and Ranking of seriousness in the context studied PART C CONCLUSION offers an overview of major findings and implications for ELT in Vietnam and suggestions for further research

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