Negative pragmatic transfer in complaining by Vietnamese efl learners Vũ Thu Hà Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English teaching methodology; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm Năm bảo vệ: 2013 Abstract. Although L2 pragmatic competence is essential in intercultural communication, many studies show that most of language learners, even those with advanced grammatical competence, lack necessary knowledge of performing speech acts in the target language. Lack of L2 pragmatic knowledge has led to pragmatic failure or error, which is considered to have more serious consequences than grammatical errors because native speakers tend to see pragmatic errors as offensive and rude rather than simply as demonstrating lack of knowledge. This can lead to misjudgment or miscommunication between them and native speakers. Moreover, the findings of many studies indicate that pragmatic failure or errors are to a large extent caused by the interference of the learners’ pragmatic knowledge in their native language with their performance in the target language, or in other words, the negative pragmatic transfer. Many learners, in performing speech acts in the target language, translate social norms of their native culture or linguistic expressions of their native language into their L2 performance, which are, in most cases, not seen appropriate by native speakers. This study investigates the negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of the face-threatening act of complaining by Vietnamese EFL learners at both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic level. Pragmalinguistically, the study is aimed at detecting the occurrences of negative transfer in learners’ choices of complaint strategies, external modifications and internal modifications. Sociopragmatically, it seeks to examine the impact of learners’ L1-based perceptions of two contextual factors, including social power (P) and social distance (D), on learners’ realization of the speech act of complaining in the target language. The data were collected via Discourse Completion Test (DCT) questionnaires. The DCT questionnaire was comprised of 6 situations that were picked up based on the results of Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) on 22 native speakers of English. DCT questionnaires were then administered to 20 native speakers of Vietnamese, 20 native speakers of English, and 20 Vietnamese learners of English, whose English proficiency was assessed as intermediate. The findings of the study have revealed the evidences of negative pragmatic transfer in learners’ interlanguage complaints. At the pragmalinguistic level, negative transfer was most strikingly evident when learners complained to people of lower and equal status. While native speakers of English managed to keep their complaints at a certain level of indirectness across power contexts, learners, just like native speakers of Vietnamese, tended to be very direct and explicit in complaining in higher and equal power contexts. They quite frequently opted for the most direct strategies on the scale and perhaps the most avoided strategies by native speakers of English – Strategy 7 (Explicit Blame on Behavior) and Strategy 8 (Explicit Blame on Person). Another occurrence of negative pragmalinguistic transfer was seen in learners’ modest use of external modifiers in their complaints. It seemed that both native speakers of Vietnamese and learners did not support their complaints as well as native speakers of English. This might have made their complaints sound straight, explicit and even confronting according to the English speakers’ perceptions. At the sociopragmatic level, Vietnamese learners of English appeared to negatively translate their L1 emphasis of power differences into their IL performance. They may have been influenced by their L1-based belief that being polite means highlighting the status differences where they actually exist, whereas native speakers of English may think differently; being polite means denying the power differences even when they actually exist. In highlighting the power differences like that, learners might be judged as insincere, bossy or even rude by the other interlocutors in intercultural communication. The main findings of the study, therefore, provided language teachers, educators and learners with precious information about the possible interferences of L1 with IL performance. This will surely raise their awareness of developing learners’ L2 pragmatic knowledge and pragmatic competence in the English language teaching and learning. Keywords. Tiếng Anh; Ngữ dụng; Ngôn từ phàn nàn; Kỹ năng nói Content 1. Rationale The nonstop growing globalization trends have gradually turned the world into a so- called ―Global Village‖, where people from different backgrounds live, study, work and communicate together. Such a need for intercultural communication has led to the increasing dominance of the English language, which has always been referred to as an international language of business, commerce and education. The English language teaching and learning has accordingly enjoyed more attention than ever before and undergone significant changes to meet learners’ novel demands. It is now more important for a learner to become a competent user of English in real communication than to be a master of English grammar rules and structures for reading and translation as in the past. Correspondingly, there has been a steady shift of focus in the English language teaching from building up learners’ grammatical competence to developing their pragmatic competence. Pragmatic competence, as noted by Kasper (1997), is ―knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according to context‖. However, intercultural communication involves interlocutors with diverse sociocultural norms and linguistic conventions, and thus, a clash of perceptions of appropriateness in communication is very likely unavoidable, which also means that miscommunication in intercultural contexts can occur. Intercultural miscommunication can be attributed to many causes, among which are learners’ incomplete understandings of the other interlocutors’ sociocultural values together with learners’ falling back on their L1 norms in realizing speech acts in communication. This assumption has interested linguistic researchers and educators a lot, and has drawn more of their attention to a new SLA discipline that studies learners’ enactment of linguistic action in the second language, namely interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). ILP is still a young discipline, which as claimed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), is needed in order to discover ―how learners do things with words in a second language‖ (p.9). ILP focuses on linguistic actions, speech acts and the realization by learners to understand what might interfere with a learner’s comprehension and production of pragmatic meaning. It is, thus, interested in identifying the obstacles to or failures of learners’ appropriate production of pragmatics. Pragmatic transfer, among some other concerns, can be seen as the major focus of ILP studies. Studies on pragmatic transfer, especially negative pragmatic transfer, examine the influence of learners’ L1-based perceptions of politeness and appropriateness and their L1 performance of a speech act on their realization of the same speech act in L2, which might cause pragmatic failure. Studies on pragmatic transfer, hence, will provide teachers and learners with precious knowledge about the pragmatic errors learners might make in intercultural communication and help them find ways to be more appropriate, polite and pragmatically competent in intercultural contexts. Pragmatic transfer has received much interest worldwide with a wide range of studies on the realization of such speech acts as apologies, requests, complaints, chastisement, or compliments by Japanese, Turkish, German, Arabian, Danish, Thai EFL learners and so on. However, the number of studies on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese EFL is very modest. Therefore, more studies on this issue are in need in order to promote Vietnamese teachers and learners’ understanding of the possible influence of L1 on learners’ interlanguage performance. As a response to the need to enrich the literature about the occurrences of pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners, this study investigates the negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of the face-threatening act of complaining by Vietnamese EFL learners and the social factors that lead to the negative transfer. Negative pragmatic transfer is chosen for the study because negative transfer, not positive transfer, deals with the inappropriate translation of L1 norms into interlanguage performance and it is considered as one of the main causes of learners’ pragmatic failures. Besides, complaining is picked up as the head act in investigation as complaining is an act that can hardly be avoided in everyday communication but it is very likely to put both the speaker and the hearer at risk of losing their faces unless the complaint is made with caution. 2. Aims and scope of the study The study aims to find out the evidence of negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners. In other words, it will examine the extent to which learners’ L1 pragmatic knowledge of complaining interferes with their performance of the speech act in English. The negative transfer will be investigated at two levels: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer. At the pragmalinguistic level, the study seeks information about the extent to which negative transfer occurs in the learners’ preferences for complaint strategies, external modifications and internal modifications. At the sociopragmatic level, the impact of learners’ L1 perceptions on their choices of complaint strategies, external and internal modifications will be examined. The study is then limited to the investigation of negative transfer seen in the performance of complaining speech act only. Moreover, since the study focuses on the influence of social factors, the Vietnamese learners who are to be chosen as informants will be at the same language proficiency. 3. Research questions The study seeks answer to the following questions: (1) To what extent is negative pragmalinguistic transfer evident in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study? (2) To what extent is negative sociopragmatic transfer evident in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study? 4. Method of the study In this study data were collected via Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MPQ) and Discourse Completion Task (DCT). The MPQ is a questionnaire in which informants, who were native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English, were asked to assess the 15 given situations based on 3 criteria, namely relative social power, relative social distance and ranking of imposition on the hearer. Out of 15 given situations, 6 situations were selected for the DCT questionnaires. These 6 situations must satisfy the constellation of contextual factors, including social power and social distance. The DCT questionnaires were then administered to three groups of participants: 20 native speakers of English, 20 native speakers of Vietnamese and 20 Vietnamese learners of English; all the learners are at intermediate proficiency level. The DCT questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese for the group of Vietnamese speakers and an online DCT questionnaire version was created for the group of English speakers. The data from DCT were then analyzed by calculating frequency of groups’ use of complaint strategies, external and internal modifications. 5. Organization of the study This study is divided into five chapters as follows: Chapter 1 presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research, the aims and scope of the study, the research questions, and the methods of the study as well as the organization of the study were briefly presented. Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical issues relevant to the study including speech acts and the speech act of complaining. Then, the notions of politeness and indirectness in complaining as well as some previous studies on complaining are discussed. Chapter 3 discusses issues of methodology and outlines the study design, data collection instruments, procedure of data collection, and analytical framework. 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