A cross – cultural perspective of speech acts and its application to EFL classrooms

This study provides some insights into the use of speech acts by Vietnamese EFL learners from a cross-cultural perspective. It is suggested that the influence of culture has resulted in students’ common failures to understand and perform English speech acts. To minimize this kind of pragmatic failure, it is recommended that EFL teachers raise students’ awareness of some cultural issues in cross-cultural communication. Furthermore, it is necessary to incorporate speech acts into English language teaching with authentic input and lifelike communicative activities.

AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 A CROSS – CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF SPEECH ACTS AND ITS APPLICATION TO EFL CLASSROOMS Nguyen Thi Nhat Minh1 An Giang University, VNU - HCM Information: Received: 16/01/2019 Accepted: 02/05/2019 Published: 11/2019 Keywords: Cross-cultural perspective, illocutionary force, performative verbs, speech acts, utterances ABSTRACT Speech acts, the actions performed by utterances, play an important role in communication, particularly verbally Speech act performance requires not only knowledge of the language, but also knowledge about the appropriate use of that language in a certain situation within a particular culture As a result, cultural awareness constitutes an integral part of this important area of pragmatics This study provides some insights into the use of speech acts by Vietnamese EFL learners from a cross-cultural perspective It is suggested that the influence of culture has resulted in students’ common failures to understand and perform English speech acts To minimize this kind of pragmatic failure, it is recommended that EFL teachers raise students’ awareness of some cultural issues in cross-cultural communication Furthermore, it is necessary to incorporate speech acts into English language teaching with authentic input and lifelike communicative activities INTRODUCTION cultural perspective, and to explore some pedagogical issues related to common pragmatic failure in terms of performance of English speech from which teachers of English can get some useful tools for their teaching In order to achieve successful communication in a foreign language, people are required to understand what the speaker is saying and know how to respond appropriately In communication, people not only say things containing grammatical structures and words, but also perform actions via those utterances, namely speech acts However, for most language learners, it is difficult to understand the intended meaning communicated by speech acts, or to produce a speech act appropriately in the target language because of the close tie between speech acts and culture This paper aims to present an overview of speech act theory, to examine speech acts from a cross- AN OVERVIEW OF SPEECH ACT THEORY Since introduced by Austin (1962) and further developed by Searle (1969), the theory of speech acts has been growing over time with the contribution of numerous scholars Within its scope, this paper presents some basic concepts of speech acts, including definition of speech acts, the performative hypothesis and speech act taxonomy 53 AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 2.1 Definition of speech acts and three related acts Yule (1996) also emphasized that of these three dimensions, the most worthy discussed item is illocutionary force Indeed, the term “speech acts” is generally interpreted narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance However, it is quite problematic that the same utterance can potentially have different illocutionary forces, for example, ‘I’ll see you later’ can be interpreted as a promise or a warning How can speakers assume that the intended illocutionary force will be recognized by the hearer? That question has been addressed by considering the Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) Yule (1996) defined speech acts as the actions performed by utterances, and in English, these actions are generally labelled as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request, for instance, “Raise your hand!” (request), “I’ll call you tonight,” (promise), “The tea is too cold.” (complaint) (p.48) Cohen (2006) offered a similar definition that speech acts are often (but not always) patterned, routinized utterances that speakers use to perform language functions, such as thanking, complimenting, requesting, refusing, apologizing, and complaining IFIDs means an indication in the speaker’s utterance of the communicative force of that utterance The most obvious device for indicating the illocutionary force is a performative verb which explicitly names the illocutionary act being performed Austin (1962) proposed the original distinction between the different aspects of a speech act into locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary His classification was then developed and exemplified by Yule (1996) as follows Nevertheless, in some cases there is no performative verb to be identified, so IFIDs which can be identified are word order and intonation For instance, “You’re going!” (I tell you that you are going); “You are going?” (I request confirmation about whether you are going); “Are you going?” (I ask you if you are going) (Yule, 1996, p.50) A Locutionary act is the basic act of forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance in a language For example, in English language, uttering ‘Aha mokofa’ may be considered a failure to produce a locutionary act whereas ‘I’ve just made some coffee’ is a success 2.2 The performative hypothesis Most well-formed utterances are produced with some kind of purpose The sentence ‘I’ve just made some coffee” might be uttered to make a statement, an offer, an explanation or for some other communicative purpose This is called the illocutionary act - the communicative force or intention of an utterance Another element of speech act theory is the performative hypothesis This is the assumption first proposed by Ross (1970) that underlying every utterance (U), there is a clause containing a performative verb (Vp) which makes the illocutionary force more explicit The basic structure of the underlying clause is I (hereby) Vp you (that) U A Perlocutionary act is the intended effect an utterance has on the hearer Depending on the circumstances, the sentence ‘I’ve just made some coffee’ will be uttered on the assumption that the hearer will recognize it as an explanation for a wonderful smell or an offer to drink some coffee (Yule, 1996, pp.48-49) Yule (1996) provided a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of this hypothesis He pointed out that this hypothesis helps to make clear what elements are involved in the production and interpretation of 54 AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 utterances For example, comparing the two utterances below, we can see that the underlying clause in utterance [b] make the illocutionary force more explicit than in utterance [b] A different approach is based on structure to classify speech act as direct or indirect In English, there are three basic structural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three general communicative functions (statement, question, request) We will have a direct speech act when there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, for instance, a declarative used to make a statement On the other hand, when the relationship between structural form and function is indirect, e.g an interrogative used to make a request, we will have an indirect speech act (Yule, 1996) a Clean up the mess! b I hereby order you that you clean up this mess (Yule, 1996, p.51) However, there are some disadvantages to the performative hypothesis The first one is that a explicit performative version has a much more serious impact than an implicit version as in the following utterances: The work was done by Emily In light of this approach, one utterance can be used to have two different functions For example, with the utterance ‘It is cold outside’, if the speaker describes the weather to the hearer, the declarative is a statement But if this utterance is used to ask the hearer to close the door, the declarative performed is to make a request I hereby tell you that the work was done by Emily Another disadvantage is that it is difficult to know exactly what a performative verb might be for some utterances For example, both the speaker and the hearer can recognize the utterance in ‘You are dumber than a rock’ as an insult, it would be strange to have an explicit version as ‘I hereby insult that you are dumper than a rock.’ (Yule, 1996, p.52) On the other hand, different structures can be used to accomplish the same basic function For example, when the speaker wants the addressee not to stand in front of the TV, he may produce the following utterances 2.3 Speech act taxonomy Instead of listing the all possible explicit performatives, there are various attempts to classify speech acts Searle (1975) categorized speech acts into five types of functions Representatives (assertion, description, statement) is stating what is believed or known Directives (command, order, request, suggestion) is getting the hearer to something Commissives (promise, threat, refusal, pledge) is committing the speaker to some future actions Expressives (thanks, apology, praise) is expressing feelings or attitudes Declarations (declaring, firing from employment, ordering) is bringing about a change Move out of the way! You’re standing in front of the TV Do you have to stand in front of the TV? (Yule, 1996, p.55) It is evident that although the three utterances are of different structural forms, their basic function in this situation is a command However, in some situations, a hearer, still fails to identify the indirectness of a speech act, as in a famous example by Blum-Kulka (1983) cited in Locastro (2003, p.242) Child: Can you fix the needle? Adult: I’m busy Child: I just wanted to know if you can fix it 55 AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 THE APPLICATION OF CROSSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES OF SPEECH ACTS TO TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE VIETNAMESE CONTEXT Many speakers, in addition, seem to translate from the source language to the target one when they speak, which raises problems when transferring and recognizing speech acts from one language to another 3.1 The importance of speech acts in EFL setting Nguyen (1999) found that because of the influence of culture, the Vietnamese tend to be overtly modest, particularly in spoken language In fact, we not want to show off our ability, we’re shy As a result, Asian people in general and the Vietnamese in particular are usually not as successful in interviews as Westerners The Anglo-American interview style, for example, requires candidates to sell themselves, whereas an interviewee from a different sociocultural background may shy away from such presentation (Roberts, Davies & Jupp, 1992) Therefore, we not understand an interviewer’s intention in the question “Do you think you can it?” which requires the interviewees to talk about their capability or their plans to it Consequently, many interviewees mistakenly use short answers like “Yes, I do”, which makes interviewers unclear and unsatisfied (Nguyen, 1999) According to the contemporary pedagogical tendency, the major duty of a teacher of foreign languages is to help learners develop their communicative competence In fact, achievement of successful communication in a foreign language calls for many factors beyond linguistic competence This fact can account for the paradox that even EFL learners with good mastery of English syntax and vocabulary fail to use English appropriately It is pragmatic failure that leads to their communication breakdown, especially in cross-cultural contexts In oral communication each utterance serves a specific function It is obvious that these utterances, namely speech acts, play a dominant role in daily conversations However, they seem to be a hard task for most foreign language learners to understand and to perform Their difficulties mostly spring from inadequate mastery of the conversational norms involved in the production of speech acts This arouses a practical need for the integration of speech acts into English language teaching As Locastro (2012) remarked, every culture has characteristic speech acts that reflect its norms and values The Vietnamese also tend to be modest in dealing with compliments In her research, Tran (2006) found that the Vietnamese often accept the compliment in a downgrade or disagreement way, which is a sharp contrast to English native speakers For example: 3.2 The influences of culture on the Vietnamese performance of English speech acts - Theoretically, communicative, or pragmatic, competence is the ability to use language forms in a wide range of environments, factoring in the relationships between the speakers involved and the social and cultural context of the situation (Lightbown & Spada, 1999; Gass & Selinker, 2001) For this reason, it is hard for non-native speakers to speak appropriately English situation A: You look great! B: Thank you - Vietnamese situation A: Cái áo bồ mặc đẹp thiệt đó! [What a beautiful dress you’re wearing!] 56 AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 B: Đẹp mà đẹp Đồ cũ [It’s not beautiful It’s very old.] (Tran, 2006, p.12) pragmatic failure in students’ performance of speech acts For most students, the frequent way of greeting the teacher as he or she enters the classroom is “Good morning / Good afternoon, Teacher” The most commonly used form of addressing a teacher in Vietnam is “Thầy / Cô” (Teacher) and the Vietnamese avoid calling the name of the superior for the reason of respect However, the word “teacher” cannot be used as a form of addressing in English language Native English speakers often address their teacher by the title Mr / Mrs / Miss / Ms followed by their surname Therefore, a native English teacher may feel a bit puzzled when addressed with the word “Teacher” only 3.3 Common pragmatic failure in understanding and performance of English speech acts in reality Understanding the intended meaning imparted by a speech act is not a simple task at all In many cases the hearer cannot figure out or might even misunderstand the speaker’s intention, which might lead to communication breakdowns For example: A: Can you repair the leaky faucet? B: Yes, I can., would you like me to fix it? Here the hearer interprets the speaker’s utterance as a normal Yes / No question which asks about his ability to the action while A is actually making a request B’s misinterpretation is due to his oversimplification of the use of Yes / No questions In another situation, if a native speaker of English remarks to a Vietnamese interlocutor “Your English is excellent!”, a possible response to his compliment would be “ No, my English is still poor” because it is natural and advisable for the Vietnamese to accept compliments in downgrade or disagreement ways for the sake of modesty In contrast, native English speakers are used to saying “Thanks, I try my best” in response to compliments As a result, the Vietnamese response may put the interlocutor at a loss to keep on the conversation Failure to understand speech acts also arises from learners’ tendency to transfer speech act strategies and conventions from the source language to the target language Pragmatically, it is noticeable that something that works in English might not keep the same meaning when translated into another language For instance, Vietnamese learners often translate the expression ‘I couldn’t agree with you more’ into ‘Tôi đồng ý với bạn nữa’ which expresses a strong disagreement In fact, the meaning of this utterance is similar to ‘I completely agree with you’, which is completely opposite to their interpretation Thus misleading translation may result in serious misunderstanding In cross-cultural communication when a Vietnamese speaker tries to translate an utterance with a certain illocutionary act into English, embarrassment occasionally occurs because there may be various kinds of interpretations For example, the Vietnamese usually greet each other with some informal utterances such as “Đang đâu đó?” (Where are you going?) or “Ăn cơm chưa?” (Have you eaten?) However, if someone asks an American or English friend the same questions, he or she may feel confused with such inquiries because the original illocutionary act of greeting of these utterances is diminished in the In an attempt to conduct daily conversations, Vietnamese EFL learners may find it challenging to produce speech acts using appropriate language and manner in the target language Follows are some common cases of 57 AGU International Journal of Sciences – 2019, Vol (1), 53 – 59 English context The hearer would instead interpret them as intrusion of their personal privacy In a similar way, other questions related to salaries, marital status or female ages are considered impolite and rude to English native speakers although they are considered a good way to express the speaker’s care and attention to the interlocutor in the Vietnamese context they are not used to being told what to do, when and how to it