A contrastive study on invitations to a housewarming party in english and vietnamese

After having contrasted, some similarities and differences of the syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitations and the form of a card, a letter of invitation to a housewarmin

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON INVITATIONS

TO A HOUSEWARMING PARTY

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU LỜI MỜI DỰ TIỆC TÂN GIA TRONG

TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

PHẠM THỊ TUYẾT LAN Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017

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CERTIFICATE OF ORGINALITY

The undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “A

contractive study on invitations to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2017

Phạm Thị Tuyết Lan

Approved by SUPERVISOR

(Signature and full name)

Date:………

I am also indebted to my friends, who squeeze time from their busy schedule

to help me finish my thesis, they are all busy with their own thesis but they are willing to give their helping hands as soon as I am in need

Finally, I am grateful to my colleagues and family who always support me spiritually throughout my life and provide a carefree environment for me, so that I can concentrate on my study

of invitation to a housewarming party in Vietnamese After having contrasted, some similarities and differences of the syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitations and the form of a card, a letter of invitation to a housewarming party between English and Vietnamese have been founded There are some implications

on teaching and learning how to write a card, a letter of invitation to a housewarming party in English as a foreign language in Nam Duyen Ha high school are carried out

- EFL: English as First Language

- ESL: English as Second Language

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 Speech acts classification………24

Table 2: The format of informal letters………29

Table 2 Summary of categories of invitations………39

Table 3: Summary of forms of an invitation card………42

Table 4: Summary of forms of an invitation letter……… 45

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality

Acknowledgements

Abstract

List of abbreviations

List of tables and figures Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1.1 Rationale for the study ………1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study ………2

1.3 Research questions……… 2

1.4 Methods of the study………2

1.5 Scope of the study………3

1.6 Significance of the study ……… 3

1.7 Design of the study 3

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ………5

2.1 Previous studies……… 5

2.2 Theoretical background ……… 6

2.2.1 The syntax, semantics and culture……… 6

2.2.2 Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics……… 13

2.2.3 Categories of invitations in English and Vietnamese……….15

2.3.4 The theory of letter writing……….16

2.3 Theoretical framework ……… 17

2.3.1 Politeness strategies………17

2.3.2 Generalization of speech acts……….20

2.3.3 Invitations as speech acts………24

2.3.4 Direct and indirect speech acts……… 26

2.3.5 Informal letters and cards ……… 26

2.4 Summary ……… 30

Chapter 3: SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC AND CULTURAL FEATURES OF AN INVITATION CARD AND LETTER TO A HOUSEWARMING PARTY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ……… 32

3.1 Syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms in card and letter to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese……… 32

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3.1.1 Direct invitations in English and Vietnamese………32

3.1.2 Indirect invitations in English and Vietnamese……… 37

3.2 Forms of invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese………41

3.2.1 Forms of invitation cards to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese………42

3.2.2 Forms of invitation letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese………43

3.3 Similarities and differences in syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese………47

3.3.1 The similarities and differences in syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitations forms to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese ……… 47

3.3.2.The similarities and differences in forms of invitation cards, letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese……….49

3.4 Summary………51

Chapter 4: IMPLICATIONS FOR WRITING CARDS AND LETTERS OF INVITATION TO A HOUSEWARMING PARTY IN ENGLISH………53

4.1 The invitation forms mainly used in invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English………54

4.2 Writing a letter of invitation……… 55

4.3 Writing a card of invitation………59

4.4 Summary………59

4.5 Few ways that aims to help write perfect invitation letters regarding Housewarming……… 60

4.6 The series of housewarming invitation wording examples will help to inspire you to create a unique and fun invitation……… 61

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION ……… 63

5.1 Concluding remarks ……… 63

5.2 Limitation of the study ……… 63

5.3 Recommendations/Suggestions for further study ……….63

REFERENCES ………65

APPENDICES……… 67

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

There is no doubt that today mastering a language is very necessary because

it can give learners important opportunities to communicate to study and work effectively abroad It is very difficult to master a foreign language because the enormous vocabulary and profound understanding in grammar are not enough So it

is necessary for learners to understand the culture of the language that they want to

master

The goal of learning a language, these days, is to be able to carry out effective communication Communication, however, may fail to achieve as there is lack of certain understandings of the country where that language is spoken There are “unwritten rules” are potentially confusing and create misunderstandings even for native speakers (Levine & Adelman, 1982) Wall (1987) indicated that many of our daily social interactions involve making invitations and responding to them Everyday people are usually invited to do small things including going somewhere, drinking something, eating food or in special occasions such as weddings, birthday party, graduation So that making invitation is now very important in our daily life

It is a speech act used very often in communication People can use it both in spoken and written forms in many ways It helps people to create, maintain and reinforce a good relationship with other people In teaching students to write a letter

of invitation, It has been found that they have some difficulties such as they confuse formal and informal invitations; they cannot make other invitations themselves but for the forms or the invitations are not appropriated Mastering how to make appropriate invitations which are suitable to a particular culture should be taken in considerations so as not to cause hurts, shocks, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations Moreover, helping the pupils in Nam Duyen Ha high school uses invitations in writing a letter, a card of invitations and how to write an informal card and letter of invitation to a housewarming party in English effectively is a must For

the above reasons, the study: “ A contrastive study on invitation to a housewarming

party in English and Vietnamese” is carried out to find out the similarities and the differences in syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms and the

forms of cards and letters of invitation to housewarmings in English and Vietnamese

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

This study is designed to aim at pointing out the way to make invitations to a housewarming party and how to write a card, a letter of invitation to a housewarming party in English as a foreign language in Nam Duyen Ha high school

This study is designed to aim at the following objectives:

- To investigate syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation structures and forms of cards and letters of invitation to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

- To point out the similarities and differences of invitation structures and forms of cards and letters of invitation to a housewarming party between English and Vietnamese

- To suggest some implications for teaching and learning a card, a letter of invitation writing in English as a foreign language in Nam Duyen Ha high school

1.4 Methods of the study

With the aim of achieving the set goal “ to find out the similarities and differences of invitation cards, letters to a housewarming in English and Vietnamese, several methods will be employed here:

- Descriptive method is employed to describe syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms and the forms of invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

- Contrastive method is used to find out the similarities and differences of invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party between English and Vietnamese

Moreover, this was also a combination between qualitative and quantitative method Both of qualitative and quantitative date were collected and analyzed on the purpose of finding out the relationship of syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms and the forms of invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

Data collection: the study was dealt with invitation cards and letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese Together with limited scope of the research mentioned in this chapter, the data was taken mainly from:

- Existing invitation

- Existing cards and letters of invitation to a housewarming party

- Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Oxford University Press

The number of samples used to investigate in the research was about fifty ways of invitations, fifty cards and letters of invitation to a housewarming party in English and fifty cards and letters of invitation to a housewarming party in Vietnamese These samples were of different sources: Internet, newspapers, in real life

1.5 Scope of the study

This paper focuses on how to write an informal card and letter of invitation

to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese This paper, moreover, finds the similarities and differences in making invitation to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

1.6 Significance of the study

The study deals with making invitation speech acts, which set up and promote social rapports among people in a particular culture The study is carried out with the hope to provide common understandings on writing a card, a letter of invitation for students in Nam Duyen Ha high school to avoid cultural conflicts and effectively carrying out writing a card, a letter of invitation in real life situations In addition, the study’s findings hope to make contributions to raising the importance

of studying the cross-culture for English teachers and students in our school

1.7 Design of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1, Introduction, states the background to the situation, the problems

under investigation and justification Also, in this chapter, the rationale for the

study, aims and objectives of the study, research questions, methods of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study and design of the study are presented

Chapter 2, Literature review , provides a brief literature review of the

previous researches which have some similarities with the study or are closely related to the field being investigated It also provides the theoretical background about some concepts related to the study

Chapter 3, Syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation cards, letters to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese show what have been found and how they are analyzed The features are accompanied by statistical results and the analysis of the data shown in the tables The most important in this chapter is the discussion of the data collection and analysis to find out the similarities and differences of invitation cards, letter to a housewarming party between English and Vietnamese

Chapter 4, Implications for invitation cards and letters writing to a

housewarming party in English in Nam Duyen Ha high school In this chapter, the mainly structures of invitation and some techniques of writing an informal letter, card to a housewarming party have been implicated for a card, a letter of invitation writing

Chapter 5, Conclusion, provide a summary of the development of the study,

a brief restatement of the findings Also, the recapitulation, concluding remarks, the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies are cited here

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies

Up to now, there have been many studies on invitations in English and Vietnamese

Robert J Starr (1972), studied how to isolate the attitude of high ability

ninth grade BSCS students toward instruction utilizing “Invitations to Enquiry.”

Nguyen Thi Kim Quy (2004), pointed out the similarities and differnces on inviting and responding to invitation in Vietnamese and English in term of across – cultural perspective

Nguyen Van Lap ( 2005), classified categories of invitation as speech etiquette in Vietnamese in terms of speech act theory The thesis introduced and analyzed two main categories of invitation in Vietnamese including invitations with explicit performative verbs and invitations with implicit performative verbs, which lays a foundation for the data related to making invitation in Vietnamese in this study

Le Thi Mai Hong ( 2008), focused and emphasized on politeness strategies used in the speech acts of requests and invitations between English and Vietnamese The study pointed some major differences between politeness strategies employed

in English invitations in comparison with the Vietnamese ones The studies mentioned above are helpful to this study in terms of providing the theoretical background for the thesis as they are closely related to making and responding to invitations in English and Vietnamese right in the thesis

Ngo Thi Bac Ha (2010), found out the similarities and differences of the pre – sequences in invitations from those languages

Nguyen Van Trong (2012), pointed out some major similarities and differences of making invitations in English and Vietnamese The effects of social distance, relative power, and ranking of impositions to the choice of inviting forms native speakers of English and Vietnamese native speakers have also been found

Le Thi Kim Ngoc (2013), pointed some major similarities and differences of making and accepting invitations in English and Vietnamese

Đinh Phuong Thuy (2014), found out the syntactic and cultural similarities and differences between spoken invitations in Vietnamese and English native speakers She pointed out cultural mistakes that students make frequently are linked to social contexts, status and relationship between the inviters and the invitees And some solutions were given to help learners make invitations perfectly

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 The syntax, semantics and culture

2.2.1.1 The syntax

In linguistics, syntax refers to the rules that govern the ways in

which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences Adjective: syntactic

More simply, syntax can be defined as the arrangement of words in a sentence The term syntax is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties

of a language

Syntax is one of the major components of grammar Traditionally, linguists

have recognized a basic distinction between syntax and morphology (which is primarily concerned with the internal structures of words)

However, this distinction has been somewhat disrupted by recent research inflexion grammar

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."(Linguist Noam Chomsky created this sentence—which is grammatically correct but incomprehensible—to demonstrate that the rules governing syntax are distinct from the meanings words convey.)

According to Chomsky (1971), "Syntax is the study of the principles and

processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language Under analysis”

(Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 1971)

According to Burgess (1968), "And the words slide into the slots ordained

by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call

meaning ."It is syntax that gives the words the power to relate to each other in a sequence to carry meaning—of whatever kind—as well as glow individually in

Just the right place” (Anthony Burgess, Ender by Outside, 1968)

According to William Cobbett (1918), "Syntax is a word which comes from

the Greek It means, in that language, the joining of several things together; and, as

used by grammarians, it means those principles and rules which teach us how to

put words together so as to form sentences It means, in short, sentence-making

Having been taught by the rules of Etymology what are the relationships of words, how words grow out of each other, how they are varied in their letters in order to

correspond with the variation in the circumstances to which they apply, Syntax will

teach you how to give all your words their proper situations or places, when you come to put them together into sentences”

(William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters:

Intended for the Use of Schools and of Young Persons in General, but More

It is a mistake to believe that some English speakers follow rules in their

speech and others do not Instead, it now appears that all English speakers are

successful language learners: they all follow unconscious rules derived from their early language development, and the small differences in the sentences that they prefer are best understood as coming from small differences in these rules

The differences of the sort that we are looking at here follow lines of social

class and ethnic group rather than geographical lines Thus we can speak of social

varieties or social dialects." (Carl Lee Baker, English Syntax, 2nd ed MIT Press,

1995)

"Many kinds of spoken language have a syntax that is very different from

the syntax of formal writing It is essential to understand that the differences exist not because spoken language is a degradation of written language but because any written language, whether English or Chinese, results from centuries of development and elaboration by a small number of users In spite of the huge prestige enjoyed by written language in any literate society, spoken language is

primary in several major respects." (Jim Miller, An Introduction to English Syntax

Edinburgh University Press, 2002)

2.2.1.2 The semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning, but what do we mean by ‘meaning’? Meaning has been given different definitions in the past

Meaning = Connotation?

Is meaning simply the set of associations that a word evokes, is the meaning

of a word defined by the images that its users connect to it?

So ‘winter’ might mean ‘snow’, ‘sledging’ and ‘mulled wine’ But what about someone living in the Amazon? Their ‘winter’ is still wet and hot, so its original meaning is lost Because the associations of a word don’t always apply, it was decided that this couldn’t be the whole story

‘altruism’ that don’t have a solid thing in the world that they are connected to So meaning cannot be entirely denotation either

Meaning = Extension and intention

So meaning, in Semantics, is defined as being Extension: The thing in the world that the word/phrase refers to, plus Intension: The concepts/mental images that the word/phrase evokes

The study of semantics looks at how meaning works in language, and because of this it often uses native speaker intuitions about the meaning of words and phrases to base research on We all understand semantics already on a subconscious level, it’s how we understand each other when we speak

One of the things that Semantics looks at, and is based on, is how the meaning of speech is not just derived from the meanings of the individual words all put together

The Principle of Compositionality says that the meaning of speech is the sum

of the meanings of the individual words plus the way in which they are arranged Into structure

The relationships between words

Semantics also looks at the ways in which the meanings of words can be related to each other Here are a few of the ways in which words can be semantically related:

• Synonymy – Words are synonymous/ synonyms when they can be used to mean the same thing (at least in some contexts – words are rarely fully identical in all contexts) Begin and start, Big and large, Youth and adolescent

• Antonymous Words are antonyms of one another when they have opposite

Come and go, Up and down

• Polysemy – A word is polysemous when it has two or more related meanings In this case the word takes one form but can be used to mean two different things In the case of polysemy, these two meanings must be related in some way, and not be two completely unrelated meanings of the word Bright (shining) and bright (intelligent) Mouse (animal) and mouse (computer hardware)

• Homophony – Homophony is similar to polysemy in that it refers to a single form of word with two meanings, however a word is a homophone when the two

meanings are entirely unrelated Bat (flying mammal) and bat (sports equipment) Pen (writing instrument) and pen (small cage)

The relationships between sentences

Sentences can also be semantically related to one-another in a few different ways

• Paraphrase – Paraphrases have the same truth conditions; if one is true, the other must also be true ‘The boys like the girls’ and ‘the girls are liked by the boys’, ‘John gave the book to Chris’ and ‘John gave Chris the book’

• Mutual entailment – Each sentence must be true for the other to be true

‘John is married to Rachel’ and ‘Rachel is John’s wife’,

‘Chris is a man’ and ‘Chris is human’

• Asymmetrical entailment – Only one of the sentences must be true for the other to be true, but that sentence may be true without the other sentence necessarily having to be true ‘Rachel is John’s wife’ entails ‘John is married’ (but John is married does not entail Rachel being his wife), ‘Rachel has two brothers’ entails

‘Rachel is not an only child’ (but Rachel not being an only child does not entail Rachel having two brothers)

• Contradiction – Sentences contradict each other when one sentence is true and the other cannot be true ‘Rachel is an only child’ and ‘Rachel’s brother is called Phil’, ‘Alex is alive’ and ‘Alex died last week’

Ambiguity - One of the aspects of how meaning works in language is ambiguity A sentence is ambiguous when it has two or more possible meanings, but how does ambiguity arise in language? A sentence can be ambiguous for either

of the following reasons:

Lexical Ambiguity - A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two

or more possible meanings due to polysemous (words that have two or more related meanings) or homophonous (a single word which has two or more different meanings) words

Example of lexically ambiguous sentence: Prostitutes appeal to the Pope This sentence is ambiguous because the word ‘appeal’ is polysemous and can mean ‘ask for help’ or ‘are attractive to’

Structural Ambiguity - A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have

two or more possible meanings due to the words it contains being able to be

combined in different ways which create different meanings

Example of structurally ambiguous sentence: Enraged cow injures farmer with axe

In this sentence the ambiguity arises from the fact that the ‘with axe’ can either refer to the farmer, or to the act of injuring being carried out (by the cow) ‘with axe’

Semantics in the field of Linguistics - Semantics looks at these relationships

in language and looks at how these meanings are created, which is an important part

of understanding how language works as a whole Understanding how meaning occurs in language can inform other sub-disciplines, such as Language Acquisition,

to help us to understand how speakers acquire a sense of meaning, and Sociolinguistics, as the achievement of meaning in language is important in language in a social situation Semantics is also informed by other sub-disciplines

of linguistics, such as Morphology, as understanding the words themselves is integral to the study of their meaning, and Syntax, which researchers in semantics use extensively to reveal how meaning is created in language, as how language is structured is central to meaning

2.2.1.3 The culture

As globalization becomes increasingly prominent in our everyday lives, cultural research becomes the cornerstone of social advancement Many problems between countries and even individuals stem from a misunderstanding of culture and cultural differences Cultural research aims to create an understanding of the mechanics and implications of various cultures across the globe to help remedy misunderstandings and intolerance

The biggest obstacle cultural research faces is the question of how it should

be observed, recorded, and interpreted How do we study culture? First, we must define what culture is Culture has many definitions, but they all synonymously denote culture as the accumulation of systems of knowledge shared by a group of people Although the definition of culture is easy enough to understand

Culture must not only be observed but be understood to be studied There are two approaches to understand culture:

1 An inside view from the point of the ethnographer in which they attempt to

explain a culture in its own terms

2 An outside view from the point of the ethnographer in which they attempt to

explain a culture in terms of general standards These views are often referred to as

Descriptive relativism is based on the theory of cultural determinism (the theory that human social and psychological characteristic are determined by culture) It thereby assumes that different cultures have different thoughts and ways

of understanding the world than other cultures do

Normative relativism is the idea that there is no way to judge a culture on a scale of merit or worth in terms of good vs bad because all standards are culturally constituted

Epistemological relativism is similar to descriptive relativism except for the idea that culture not only dictates what we think about our lives but how

we feel about our lives, providing a limitless view of cultural diversity (Spiro 1986)

The three categories of cultural relativism have not been supported by all social scientists, with some supporting one and others supporting the other or a combination of the three It was with American anthropologists Franz Boas and the rise of the American Historical School that they all began to be used in conjunction with one another Boas and his followers rejected the idea of cultural progress and cultural evolution because that suggests that one culture is superior over another and

is a result of ethnocentric views

A long term debate has been going on in the field of anthropology over cultural relativism and psychic unity Are cultures incommensurable and is it impossible to make generalizations about cultures because every person perceives the world differently depending on the culture they are a part of? If this is so, then how can ethnographers even begin to describe a different culture’s kinship systems, rituals, and other cultural aspects?

The cultural materialist perspective was a response to cultural relativism and

is really thought to have originated with Karl Marx Karl Marx explains that societies and culture are systemic and his major interest was how those systems

2.2.1.3.1 Culture of the UK

The culture of the United Kingdom is influenced by the UK's history as

a developed island country, a liberal democracy and a major power; its predominantly Christian religious life; and its composition of four countries—England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—each of which has distinct customs, cultures and symbolism The wider culture of Europe has also influenced British culture and Humanism, Protestantism and representative democracy developed from broader Western culture

Literature, music, cinema, art, theatre, comedy, media, television, philosophy, architecture and education are important aspects of British culture The United Kingdom is also prominent in science and technology, producing world-leading scientists (e.g Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin) and inventions Sport is an important part of British culture; numerous sports originated in the country, including football The UK has been described as a "cultural superpower", and London has been described as a world cultural capital A global opinion poll for the BBC saw the UK ranked the third most positively viewed nation in the world (behind Germany and Canada) in 2013 and 2014

The Industrial Revolution, which started in the UK, had a profound effect on the family socio-economic and cultural conditions of the world As a result of the British Empire, significant British influence can be observed in the language, law, culture and institutions of a geographically wide assortment of countries, including Australia, Canada, India, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the United States and English speaking Caribbean nations These states are sometimes collectively known as the Anglosphere, and are among Britain's closest allies In turn the empire also influenced British culture, particularly British cuisine

The cultures of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverse and have varying degrees of overlap and distinctiveness

2.2.1.3.2 Culture of Vietnam

The culture of Vietnam is one of the oldest in Southeast Asia, with the ancient Bronze age Đông Sơn culture being widely considered one of its most important progenitors.[1] Due to a millennium of Chinese rule, Vietnam was heavily influenced by Chinese culture in terms of politics, government, Confucian social and moral ethics, and art Vietnam is considered to be part of the East Asian cultural sphere.[2]

Following independence from China in the 10th century, Vietnam began a southward expansion that saw the annexation of territories formerly belonging to the Champa civilization (now Central Vietnam) and parts of the Khmer empire (modern southern Vietnam), which resulted in minor regional variances in Vietnam's culture due to exposure to these different groups

During the French colonial period, Vietnamese culture absorbed various influences from the Europeans, including the spread of Catholicism and the adoption of the Latin alphabet Prior to this, Vietnamese had used both Chinese characters and a script called Chữ nôm which was based on Chinese but included newly invented characters meant to represent native Vietnamese words

In the socialist era, the cultural life of Vietnam has been deeply influenced

by government-controlled media and the cultural influences of socialist programs For many decades, foreign cultural influences were shunned and emphasis placed

on appreciating and sharing the culture of communist nations such as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and others Since the 1990s, Vietnam has seen a greater re-exposure to Asian, European and American culture and media

Some elements generally considered to be characteristic of Vietnamese culture include ancestor veneration, respect for community and family values, handicrafts and manual labor, and devotion to study Important symbols present in Vietnamese culture include dragons, turtles, lotuses and bamboo

2.2.2 Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics

As the study is centered on the speech act of invitations in terms of cross cultural perspective It is, therefore, necessary to look at some basic information on what is called pragmatics and cross - cultural pragmatics

-Pragmatics, since its appearance, has excited great attention from many leading linguists Enormous efforts have gone into reaching a satisfactory definition

of this linguistic phenomenon The notion of pragmatics is clarified by Richards, Platt, & Webber (1992, p.284) as follows:

Pragmatics includes the study of:

How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of the real world;

How speakers use and understand speech acts;

How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer

Of the above issues, the study of speech acts is considered to be of high importance to pragmatics

* Pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings

in situation (Leech, 1983)

* Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used (Richards, Platt& Weber, 1985)

* Pragmatics studies the factor that governs our choice of language in social actions and the effects of our choice on others (Crystal, 1987)

* Yule (1996, p.3), defines pragmatics as follows:

- Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning rather than of what the words or

phrases in those utterances my mean by themselves

- Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning (it involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how context influences what is said)

- Pragmatics is the study of how more get communicated than is said (It studies how

a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicative)

- Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance ( i.e on assumption

of how close (whether it is physical, social or conceptual) or distant the listener is, speakers determine how much need to be said)

In a word, it can be concluded that, from all above definitions, pragmatics is

a branch of linguistics that studies the speaker’s meaning behind his words

As "every culture has its own repertoire of characteristic speech acts" and

"different cultures find expression in different system of speech acts and different speech acts become entrenched, and to some extent, codified in different languages" ( Wierzbicka (1991, p.25) Nguyen Thien Giap (2007), states that in different cultures, speech acts are performed in different ways through different languages

Linguists, these days, has studied, contrasted how language is used in different cultures, which is called contrastive pragmatics Nguyen Thien Giap (2007) adds that in order to master a language successfully, to carry out effective intercultural communication, having the knowledge of the language is by all means insufficient, but the knowledge of pragmatics is a must

Through what has been discussed so far, the speech act of invitations in English and Vietnamese is not exception It is discussed in the study under contrastive analysis The cross-cultural perspective, certainly, is a great concern during analysis

2.2.3 Categories of invitations in English and Vietnamese

This paper goals to investigate the similarities and differences in terms of syntactic, semantic and cross-cultural features of invitations in English and Vietnamese, in the effort of increasing not only the effectiveness of learning invitations utterance in English and Vietnamese but also the ability to use language for English learners in Vietnam Nevertheless, there is a little proper work on inviting in both languages The analytic framework of this study has been collected from a number of English and Vietnamese researches as well as practical textbooks to invitations which contains different forms of inviting These are dissertations by Nguyen Van Lap (2005), Luu Quy Khuong (2004) Tran Yen Bao Tran (2009), Nguyen Van Trong (2012) and Tillitt and Bruder (1999) In these researches and textbooks, different linguistic forms of invitations are specified and found out

First, take a look at the definitions of the term "performative sentence" Austin (1962), made a great contribution in terms of discovering and developing what is called: performative sentence Austin (1962) stated that an performative sentence occurs when:

- A sentence is uttered and an action thereby is performed

- The grammatical structure of the sentence makes it look as though the sentence states that it performed that action

Cao Xuan Hao (1991), defined that a performative sentence is a kind of expressive and declaration It expresses the actions that contain in the utterance by directly uttering Such kind of sentence using a verb named performative verb namely "to invite" in English

Following sentences illustrate this:

Eg: It's just that Alan and I wanted to have a few people over for a dinner to

celebrate finishing dissertation and we would like to invite you especially, since

you're chairman (Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)

“We moved to our new place To celebrate this wonderful event, we invite you to come to our housewarming party We will have and drinks to commemorate the event.”

Similarly, Paltridge indicated that an explicit performative sentence is a statement which contains a performative verb that names the speech act

Tran Yen Bao Tran (2009), indicated that explicit performative invitations are employed between the interlocutors who differ in social or status

Tilltitt and Bruder (1999), has introduced numerous structures of English invitations used in formal situations to informal ones In his dissertation, Nguyen Van Lap (2005) has introduced forms of Vietnamese inviting including invitations

in with performative verb (mời) and invitations without performative verb Luu Quy Khuong (2007), in addition, has introduced different kinds of direct invitations in English and Vietnamese He indicated similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese through contrastive analysis Plus, another research goes to Tran Yen Bao Tran (2009), has recorded different structures used to make direct invitations in English and Vietnamese Nguyen Van Trong (2012), he has studied the categories of invitations in English and Vietnamese

These researches and textbook mentioned above is prominent in terms of providing the analytical framework for discussing categories of invitations to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

2.3.4 The theory of letter writing

Although the practice and concept of letter-writing displays great continuities from Antiquity to the Renaissance the changes were also significant Just as in the 17th century, already in ancient times the letter had frequently been defined as a kind of conversation between absent friends Nevertheless, Greeks and Romans took this precept more seriously and more narrowly than later times In Antiquity the concept of the letter was principally that of the familiar letter It had to

be brief and ought to treat a simple subject in simple terms "If anybody should write of logical subtleties or questions of natural history in a letter, he writes indeed, but not a letter" – claimed Demetrius (ca 350–283 B.C.) In terms of style not many variations were allowed Demetrius mentions only the plain and the graceful,

and Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.) by far the most influential authority in Latin epistolography, acknowledged the existence of many sorts while claiming that only two of them pleased him greatly, the familiar or jesting and the grave A letter

in the plain style needed to be direct and natural; it was not constrained by strict rules, since too much elaboration also contradicted "the laws of friendship"

By the Middle Ages, letters of all kinds enjoyed the same legitimacy

"Letter" was now an extremely broad category, including practically anything that

had a salutation and a signature No wonder late medieval dictatores and

Renaissance humanists found it difficult to categorise letters and borrowed the rhetorical concepts of oratory when describing them Little difference was seen

between sermo and epistola, and the writing of both needed to comply with

narrowly defined rules The efforts to classify letters resulted in the precise circumscription of a large number of different types In 1522 Erasmus of Rotterdam

questions of style and form, still organised his manual on letter-writing according to these groups, mentioning thirty of them (e.g letter of petition, recommendation, consolation, lamentation, congratulation, thanksgiving, narration, order, love,

could be expected, and the theory of letter-writing remained embarrassingly linked

to scholastic rhetoric until the end of the 16th century.7 Nonetheless, the rediscovery

of the familiar letter in the early Renaissance meant that in practice letter-writing

developed gradually into a new art, whose style was reframed in imitation of

2.3 Theoretical framework

2.3.1 Politeness strategies

Politeness , an issue which has a great impact to human being and deeply

influences to human interaction, will be now discussed right in this part because politeness is basic to th production of social order, and a precondition of human cooperation… any theory which provides an understanding of this phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundation of human social life

(Brown and Levinson, 1987), in language studies, politeness implies the following: "(a) how languages express the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships, (b) "how face-work, that is, the attempt to

Human communication establishes and maintains not only a comfortable relationship between people but also a social harmony Therefore, in interpersonal communication, in terms of politeness, every participant notes social factors such as age, gender, power and distance among the interlocutors

Moreover, politeness may be described as a form of behavior which is exercised in order to consolidate and promote relationship between individuals or,

at least, to keep it undamaged

According to Leech (1983), politeness means to minimize the effect of impolite statement or expression (negative politeness) and maximize the effects of polite illocutions (positive politeness) (Leech, 1983) However, the best-known theory is developed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) Their universalistic formulation of politeness theory is problematic in some aspects The main issue of politeness is the notion of face Face is defined as “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (Brown and Levinson 1987, p.61) "Face" associates with the English idiom to lose face which means “to do something which makes other people stop respecting you; to not maintain your reputation and the respect of others” Brown and Levinson treat the aspects of face as “basic wants”, and distinguish between positive face and negative face Positive face is interpreted

as the want of every member to be desirable to, at least, some others, whereas negative face is the want of every “competent adult member” for his actions to be unimpeded by others (1987, p.62) Moreover, Yule (1996) argues that in most English speaking contexts, the participants in an interaction often have to determine, as they speak, the relative social distance between them, and hence their face wants (1996, p16) “ In everyday social interactions, people generally behave as

if their public self-image, or their face wants, will be respected If a speaker says something that represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image, it is described as a face threatening act Alternatively, given the

possibility that some actions may be interpreted as threat to another’s face, the speaker can say something to lessen to possible threat This is called a face saving act (Yule 1996, p.61) Analyzing politeness, the anthropologists Brown and Levinson (1987) distinguishes between positive strategies of politeness, those which show closeness, intimacy, and rapport between the speaker and the hearer, and negative politeness strategies, those which indicate various degrees of social distance between the speaker and hearer In situations of social distance or closeness The choice of appropriate politeness strategies in a given context depends on a number of factors Brown and Levinson (1987) groups these factors into a simple formula consisting of three independent variables, namely the social distance (D) of the speaker and the hearer (a symmetric relation), the relative power (P) of the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking

of impositions (R) in the particular culture The social distance (D) is a symmetric social dimension of similarity/difference within which the speaker and the hearer stand for the purposes of this act In some situations, D is based on an evaluation of frequency of interaction and the types of material and non-material goods (embracing face) between S (speaker) and H (hearer) The evaluation will be usually measures of social distance relied on stable social attributes The relative power (P) which is an asymmetric social dimension is the degree to which H can impose his own plans and his own self– evaluation (face) at the expense of S’s plans and self – evaluation Generally, there are two sources of P, either of which may be authorized or unauthorized – material control (over economic distribution and physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others The absolute ranking (R) of imposition which is situational and cultural defined is the degree to which there is

an interference in the speaker ’s wants or self-determination or approval (speaker’s negative and positive wants) There are normally two scales or ranks which are identifiable for negative–face: a ranking of impositions in proportion to the expenditure of services (including the time provision) and good (including non –material goods such as information, regard expression and other face payments)

As for positive – face, the, ranking of imposition embraces an assessment of the amount of “ pain” given to the hearer ’s face, based on the differences between the hearer ’s desired self-image and that presented in face threatening acts Cultural rankings of facets of positive face (like success, niceness, beauty etc.) can be ranked

in specific circumstances, so do the negative face rankings Besides, that there are also personal rankings can explain why some people object to certain kinds of face threatening acts and some do not These three factors affect indirectness in human interaction, especially in the choice of politeness strategies which is an essential aspect of inviting Together with cross-cultural perspective, politeness is another aspect which is used to create the framework for data analysis Basing on the theory

of Brown and Levinson (1987), a bank of 6 situations was designed to elicit offers These situations were grouped according to three variables, namely social distance (D) of the speaker and the hearer , the relative power (P) of the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking (R) of impositions in the particular culture

2.3.2 Generalization of speech acts

2.3.2.1 Definitions of speech acts

J Austin (1962), takes the pioneering role in formulating the theory of speech acts According to him, all utterances should be viewed as actions of the speakers, stating or describing is only one function of language He points out that the declarative sentences are not only used to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to do things Also, in 1962, he defines speech acts as the actions performed in saying something When people produce utterances, they often perform actions via those utterances These actions are called speech acts: such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request A speech act is part of a speech event The speech act performed by producing an utterance, consists of three related acts including locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act They are listed as follows:

Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguistic

expression The locutionary act is performed with some purposes or functions in mind

Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of an

utterance In engaging in locutionary acts we generally also perform illocutionary acts such as informing, advising, offer, promise, etc In uttering a sentence by virtue

of conversational force associated with it

Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by saying something,

such as convincing, persuading, deterring perlocutionary acts are performed only on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended Speech acts,

since then, developed by many famous philosophers and have been central to the works and further developed by many other philosophers and a great concern of any research paper in terms of doing researches on linguistic fields

The two other famous linguistic researchers are Schmidt and Richards who reaffirm that: speech act theory has to do with the functions of languages, so in the broader sense we might say that speech acts are all the acts we perform through speaking, all things we do when we speak The theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory It must systematically classify types of speech acts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail It must reckon with the fact that the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance is often oblique Paltridge (2000), defines that a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication Some examples are apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal A speech act might contain just one word such as "No" to perform a refusal or several words or sentences such as: "I' m sorry, I can't, I have a prior engagement" And require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a given culture Socio-cultural variables like authority, social distance, and situational setting influence the appropriateness and effectiveness of politeness strategies used to realize directive speech acts such as requests (p.15) Yule (1996, p.47), another famous linguist, defines that "in attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances." According to him, actions performed via utterances are speech acts In daily communication, people perform speech acts when they offer an apology, greeting, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal Since people often do more things with words than merely convey what words encode, speech acts have to be seen from real-life interactions For example, in a classroom situation, when a teacher says:

May I help you? It is a request more than a question

In the same way, when a student talks to his friend, we are having some people over Saturday evening and wanted to know if you’d like to join us This example is an invitation more than a question Moreover, speech acts require not only knowledge of any languages but also the culture of the country where this language is used

For examples in Vietnamese when we utter:

Where are you doing? means we are greeting the people we meet

2.3.2.2 Classification of speech acts

Austin grouped illocutionary acts into five classes

Verdictives are typified by the giving of a verdict by a jury, umpire

arbitrator such as acquit, grade, estimate, diagnose, rare, analyze, put it as, reckon,

value, characterize, interpret as, measure

Exercitive are the exerciting of power, rights or influence An exercitive is the giving of a decision in favour of or against a certain course of action It is a decision that something is to be so, as distinct from a judgement that it is so

It is a very wide class; example are: appoint, dismiss, degrade, name, order,

sentence, warn, declare, open, advise, announce, nominate, veto

Commissive: The whole point of commissive is to commit the speaker to a certain course of action They may include a declaration or announcements of

intention Some examples are: am determined to, propose to, intend, agree, bet,

envisage, plan, pledge myself, declare my intention, vow, guarantee, shall, swear

Behabitives include the notion of rection to other people’s behavior and fortunes and of attitudes and expressions of attidtudes to someone else’s past conduct or imminent conduct These are some examples: apologize, thank, deplore, compliment, congratulate, condole, sympathize, complain, blame, welcome, defy, protest

Expositives classify how utterances fit into ongoing discourse, or how they

are being used Here are some examples: affirms, deny, describe, identify, mention,

remark, inform, tell, answer, report, testify, illustrate, explain, begin by, turn to, conclude by, analyze, regard as, understand, refer.

According to Yule (1996), there is one general classification system that lists five types of general functions performed by speech acts including declarations, representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives

Declarations are speech acts that change the world via their utterance The speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order to

perform a declaration appropriately For example, "Priest: I now pronounce you

husband and wife."

Representatives are speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not Statement of fact, assertions, conclusions and descriptions are

examples of the speaker representing the world as he or she believes it is For

example, “The Moon goes round the Earth." or "It is windy today”

Expressives are speech acts that state what the speaker feels They express psychological states and can be statement of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy and

sorrow For example, "What a great party!"

Directives are speech acts that the speakers use to get the hearer to do

something They express what the speaker wants For instance, "Stand up, please!

"or "Could you open the door?"

Commissives are speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future action They express what the speaker intends They are promises, threats, refusals, pledges For example:

"I’ll give one hand." or "I’ll be back."

Yule (1996) also presents a table showing speech acts classification as follow:

Table 1: Speech acts classification

to understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events To compare selected speech acts from two languages, the topic is still vast and could not be treated exhaustively in any one work The cultural norms reflected

in speech acts differ not only from one language to another, but also from one regional and social variety to another So, the different cultures find expression in different system of speech acts, and that different speech acts become entrenched, and, to some extent, codified in different languages Of these types, the characteristics of invitations can be easily recognized in commissives and directives In our daily interactions, inviting is one kind of speech act that is commonly used with high frequency

2.3.3 Invitations as speech acts

Before we get to know the definition of the phrase ‘Making an invitation’,

we first do through the meaning of the verb ‘invite’ and the noun ‘invitation’

To “invite”, according to Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary means to

“ask somebody to come to a social event” or “to ask somebody formally to go to somewhere or do something”

An ‘invitation’ is ‘a spoken or written request to somebody to do something

or to go somewhere’, ‘the act of inviting somebody or of being invited’, or ‘a card

or piece of paper that you use to invite somebody to something’ as in the examples below:

I would like to invite you to a party next Friday.(Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)

Would you like to come over my place on Thanksgiving?

I’d love to Shall I bring anything?

Similarly, Vietnamese dictionary (1994) defines "lời mời" as a wish or a

polite request that somebody does something or goes to somewhere The following examples illustrate this:

Anh Tuệ, mời anh vào chơi! (Khai Hung, 1988)

(Mr Tue, Come in, please!)

Rước cụ ngồi chơi. (Khai Hung, 1988)

(Get - you - sit - play)

In his dissertation, Nguyen Van Lap (2005), points that "Invitations are polite utterances, requesting others to do something together, which satisfies both the speaker and hearer's benefits”

Le Thi Mai Hong (2009), indicates that invitation is the act of inviting or a requesting to participate, be present or take part in something Invitation is also a speech act that expresses the speaker’s friendliness, politeness as well as respect and hospitality toward the hearer." In addition, Wolfson (1989) defines invitations

as speech acts that contain reference to time and/or mention of place or activity, and most important, a request for response After the above-mentioned definitions we

can have the meaning of the phrase ‘making an invitation’ in English It is the act of

making a spoken or written request to somebody to go somewhere or do something

It is based on the relationship between the inviter and the invitee According

to Seal (1976), the goal of the spoken interaction is to communicate things to the hearer by getting him/her to recognize the intention that one has to communicate those things Invitations which are based on a daily basis happen in all the walks of life, to name but three, inviting for meals, social events or other occasions

To begin with, eating together is a great way to spend time with one’s family and friends, but how to create a suitable invitation for meals is not easy It much depends on family members’ status, age, and distance among participants Making invitation for meals, we have some kinds of below questions:

“Would you like to have dinner with us?”

“Would you like to come over our house and have dinner with us?”

“If you would come over to our house, we could have dinner together?”

“Do you think we could cook and have dinner together?”

“Let’s have dinner together.”

Another context in which invitations are used is inviting for social events like: birthday parties, wedding parties, farewells, ceremonies, anniversaries…In these events, the inviters usually have intention to invite in a formal or informal ways

There are some examples:

“Our dear father Brian Jacobson is turning 65 next month We are hosting

a surprise birthday party to pay tribute to his life and his hard work in buiding his successful catering business.”

“Come and join us in wishing David Banner a very happy 30 th birthday.”

It is indicated that the British frequently invite other people to a party, a meal, an event, a movie… Broadly, these appear to be almost the same as the occasions where Vietnamese invite their acquaintances

English people usually make an invitation directly That means the inviters have a tendency to give the invited people the direct content of the invitation For this function, English invitation has some patterns as basic forms including directive sentence, performative sentence, some kinds of questions and the sentence with ‘if’

2.3.4 Direct and indirect speech acts

In the former part, classification of speech acts has made clear in terms of the speaker's intention of Yule (1996) This part takes a look at another way of classifying speech acts

Another approach to distinguish different types of speech acts is based on the relationship between the structure and the function Yule (1996), claims that three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three general communicative function (statement, question, command/ request)

These are the examples

You wear a seat belt! (declarative)

Do you wear a seat bealt? (interrogative)

Wear a seat bealt! (imperative)

They can be combined to create two other types of speech acts: direct and indirect speech acts Yule (1996), defines that whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an direct speech act as in the following example:

Do join me for a coffee? (Le Huy Lam, 2000)

Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function,

we have an indirect speech act as in the following examples

Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow? (Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)

It is not only used as a question but also a request, hence it is considered to

be an indirect speech act He adds that indirect speech acts are generally associated with greater politeness in English than direct speech acts

2.3.5 Informal letters and cards

When it comes to writing in English, there are two main styles of writing – formal and informal There are two types of letter: Formal and informal invitation letter In this paper, the informal letters and cards are studied

2.3.5.1 Informal and formal writing

Writing can be divided into all kinds of different categories One of the main divides is between informal and formal writing

2.3.5.1.1 Informal writing

In composition, informal style is a broad term for speech or writing marked

by a casual, familiar, and generally colloquial use of language

An informal writing style is often more direct than a formal style and may rely more heavily on contractions, abbreviations, short sentences, and ellipses Informal writing is similar to a spoken conversation Informal writing may include slang, figures of speech, broken syntax, asides and so on Informal writing takes a personal tone as if you were speaking directly to your audience (the reader) You can use the first or third person point of view (I and we), and you are likely to

In a recently published textbook (The Rhetorical Act, 2015), Karlyn Kohrs

Campbell et Al observe that, by comparison, formal prose is "strictly grammatical and uses complex sentence structure and precise, often technical vocabulary Informal prose is less strictly grammatical and short, simple sentences are acceptable and sometimes essential to making a point in informal writing There may be incomplete sentences or ellipsis(…) to make points and ordinary, familiar words (for example, I’m, doesn’t, couldn’t, it’s) and abbreviations (example: TV, photos) whenever possible Informal style may include sentence fragments, such as the truncated style of text messaging and some colloquialisms or slang."

But as Carolyne Lee reminds us, "simpler prose does not inevitably mean

simpler ideas or simpler conceptualizing" (Word Bytes: Writing in the Information

Society, 2009) The author can show empathy towards the reader regarding the complexity of a thought and help them through that complexity

2.3.5.1.2 formal writing

Formal writing includes business writing, formal letters, and academic writing Although business writing and academic writing, for instance, have some differences, all formal writing shares certain features

The Rules of Formal Writing

• Most sentences should be complex and add specific meaning to the writing

• You should use a sophisticated vocabulary with terms that are accepted in the topic's field

• Keep a serious tone with literal meanings Formal writing should not be filled with clichés and metaphors, like phrases such as 'hard as nails.'

• Use standard spelling (no texting - style words like 'LOL')

• Use standard punctuation

• References must be properly cited for academic or published writing

• You should organize the writing into paragraphs that fit together

There are some differences between informal and formal writing:

Informal: May use colloquial words/expressions (kids, guy, awesome, a lot,

etc.)

Formal: Avoid using colloquial words/expressions (substitute with children, man /boy, wonderful, many, etc.)

Informal: May use contractions (can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, etc.)

Formal: Avoid contractions (write out full words – cannot, will not, should

not, etc.)

Informal: May use first, second, or third person

Formal: Write in third person (except in business letters where first person may be used)

Informal: May use clichés (loads of, conspicuous by absence, etc.)

Formal: Avoid clichés (use many, was absent, etc.)

Informal: May address readers using second person pronouns (you, your, etc)

Formal: Avoid addressing readers using second person pronouns

(use one,one’s, the reader, the reader’s, etc.)

Informal: May use abbreviated words (photo, TV, etc)

Formal: Avoid using abbreviated words (use full versions – like photograph, television, etc.)

Informal: May use imperative voice (e.g Remember….)

Formal: Avoid imperative voice (use Please refer to.….)

Informal: May use active voice (e.g We have noticed that… )

Formal: Use passive voice (e.g It has been noticed that….)

Informal: May use short and simple sentences

Formal: State your points confidently and offer your argument firm support

2.3.5 2 Informal letters and cards

An informal letter is a letter that is written in a personal fashion You can write them to relatives or friends, but also really to anyone with whom you have a non-professional relationship with, although this doesn't exclude business partners

or workers with whom you're friendly with either

Informal letters are very friendly and casual in their tone Their greatest distinction from a formal letter is this casualness of tone Informal letters are never official or excessively polite, nor do they contain much terminology

Informal letters always contain questions pertaining to the person’s being, as well as that of those around him, like his family and friends

well-Informal letters also rely a lot on memories, shared secrets, humorous moments of the past and shared dreams or conversations.

"The overriding instruction for personal letters: Write from the heart in a positive, caring, giving tone Warm letters have always had a powerful ability to build goodwill And in an age of computers and e-mail, the old-fashioned personal letter stand out even more.”

(Robert W Bly, Webster's New World Letter Writing Handbook Wiley, 2004)

Informal or friendly letters, they have five parts:

1 The heading: The heading can include the writer’s address and the date In casual, friendly letters the address is not necessary

2 The salutation (greeting): The greeting may be formal, beginning with the word

“dear” and using the person’s given name or relationship, or it may be informal if appropriate example: Dear Uncle, Hi Joe,

3 The body: The body of the letter is the information written in the letter It includes the message to be written Normally in a friendly letter, the beginning of paragraphs is indented It usually includes an introduction where the person is greeted and state the reason for writing; the main body, the subject and the conclusion are developed or signaling the end where we use suitable remarks are used (invite, send greeting, etc) or indicate that the letter is going to finish

4 The closing: This short expression is always a few words on a single line In the closing the first word is capitalized

5 The signature line

Table 2: The format of informal letters

writer’s/ sender’s address

To reach the aim of this chapter, some steps have been carried out:

First, find the previous studies relating to the this study

Next, find the data for the theoretical background that have theories relating

to the study such as: syntactic, semantic and cultural features, pragmatics and cross – cultural pragmatic

Last, find the data for the theoretical framework which are the frames for studying the card, letter of invitation to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese such as: Politeness strategies, generalization of speech acts, invitations

as speech acts and direct and indirect speech acts

After having studied some previous studies, theoretical background and theoretical framework, some results have been found:

First, how to study and analyze syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms to a housewarming party in cards and letters in English and Vietnamese

Second, according to five speech act types (declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives) to study invitation

Third, Invitation is divided into two types: Direct and indirect and there are four categories with seven forms

Last, the writing theory, informal writing a card, a letter of invitation and informal letters ‘ format were studied to find out how to write an informal letter , a card of invitation to a housewarming party

All those results are going to be applied for studying on the syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms to a housewarming party and forms of letters, cards of invitation in order to find out the similarities and differences of those between English and Vietnamese then point out some implications for cards and letters of invitation writing in English will be implicated for part D of unit 10 grade 10 and part D of unit 2 grade 11 in Nam Duyen Ha high school

CHAPTER 3: SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC AND CULTURAL FEATURES

HOUSEWARMING PARTY IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

3.1.The syntactic, semantic and cultural features of invitation forms to a housewarming party in English and Vietnamese

The invitations can be direct or indirect utterances and there are four categories of invitations in English and Vietnamese

3.1.1 Direct invitations in English and Vietnamese

Nguyen Thi Kim Quy (2004), defines that direct invitations that direct

invitations are used with performative verbs namely mời in Vietnamese and to

invite in English or in the forms of requests or of orders First, study on direct invitation in English

3.1.1 1 Direct invitations in English

Direct invitations in English go directly into the main ideas, the main content and the main message that speakers want to send to interlocutors As a result, listeners can immediately comprehend and perceive the message without referring

to any illocutionary meaning Foreign language learners find it hard to deal with denotative or illocutionary meaning because it easily leads to misunderstanding or misinterpretation To some extent, however, these are thought to threaten negative face of listeners

English has the following kinds of structures as follows:

Category 1: Direct invitations in form of performative sentences:

The patterns of explicit performative sentences usually take the two following types:

Form 1: Performative sentence with a subject

The structure: S + V +O +(Content of the invitation)

“Would like”, “ Would love” have three meanings: Would like/ love + something, it means “ want, like something” Would like/ love + to verb means “ want, like to do somthing; would like/ love + to invite means “ want to invite”