A cross-cultural study on American-Vietnamese Verbal expressions in confirming and negating

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE ĐỖ THỊ PHƯƠNG THANH A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON AMERICAN - VIETNAMESE VERBAL EXPRESSIONS IN CONFIRMING AND NEGATING NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HOÁ VIỆT - MỸ VỀ CÁCH DIỄN ĐẠT KHẲNG ĐỊNH VÀ PHỦ ĐỊNH MINOR THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE : 60.22.15 HANOI – 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE ĐỖ THỊ PHƯƠNG THANH A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON AMERICAN-VIETNAMESE VERBAL EXPRESSIONS IN CONFIRMING AND NEGATING NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO VĂN HOÁ VIỆT - MỸ VỀ CÁCH DIỄN ĐẠT KHẲNG ĐỊNH VÀ PHỦ ĐỊNH MINOR THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE : 60.22.15 SUPERVISOR : NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC, MA HANOI - 2012 ABBREVIATIONS CCC: Cross-cultural Communication VC: Verbal Communication V: Vietnam/ Vietnamese A: America/American H: hearer S: speaker FTA: face threatening act LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Five basic types of speech acts - Searl's (1976) 10 Table 2: The parameters of informants 17 Table 3: Realization of communicative strategies used to express confirmation and negation 20 Table 4: The choice of communicative strategies in terms of informants' age 28 Table 5: The choice of communicative strategies in terms of informants' gender 29 Table 6: The choice of communicative strategies in terms of informants' area of living 31 Table 7: The use of communicative strategies as seen from communicating partners in terms of relationship with sister/ brother, mother/ father, close friend, and someone you dislike 37 Table 8: The use of communicative strategies as seen from communicating partners in terms of relationship with colleague and boss 37 LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND FIGURE Diagram 1: Branches of communication Diagram 2: Forms of communication Diagram 3: Types of verbal communication Figure 1: Possible strategies for doing FTA 12 TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality of study project report i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Abbreviations iv List of tables v List of diagrams and figures vi Table of contents vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Scope of the study Methodology Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Culture 1.2 Communication 1.2.1 Definition 1.2.2 Cross-cultural Communication 1.2.3 Forms of communication 1.3 Speech act theory 1.3.1 Speech act 1.3.2 Classification of speech act 1.4 Politeness theory 10 1.4.1 Definition of politeness 10 1.4.2 Politeness strategies 11 1.5 Confirmation and negation as a speech act 13 1.5.1 Confirmation as a speech act 13 1.5.2 Negation as a speech act 14 10 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 Methods of the study 15 2.2 Data collection 16 2.2.1 Subjects of the study 16 2.2.2 Data collection instrument 17 2.2.3 Data collection procedures 18 2.4 Data analysis procedures 19 CHAPTER 3: EXPRESSING CONFIRMATION AND NEGATION IN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE CULTURE 20 3.1 The realization of communicative strategies 20 3.1.1 Bald on record 20 3.1.2 Joking 22 3.1.3 Hedging 23 3.1.4 Advising 24 3.1.5 Asserting condition 25 3.1.6 Passing the ball to other(s) 26 3.1.7 Asking rhetoric questions 26 3.1.8 Don't FTA 27 3.2 The choice of communicative strategies as seen from informants' parameters 28 3.2.1 Age 28 3.2.2 Gender 29 3.2.3 Area of living 31 3.3 The use of communicative strategies as seen from communicating partners' relationship 32 3.3.1 With sister/ brother 32 3.3.2 With mother/ father 33 3.3.3 With a close friend 33 3.3.4 With someone you dislike 34 3.3.5 With your colleague 34 3.3.6 With your boss 35 3.4 Summary 38 PART C: CONCLUSION 40 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY I APPENDIX IV 12 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale To our understanding, only humans have language and culture Language simultaneously reflects culture, and is influenced and shaped by it In the broadest sense, it is also the symbolic representation of a people, since it comprises their historical and cultural backgrounds, as well as their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking People use language to communicate and express their thoughts to each others easier and faster In communication, it is understood people are in the process of sharing or exchanging their thoughts verbally (ie in spoken or written form), or nonverbally The basis of communication is the interaction between people Verbal communication is one way for people to communicate face-to-face Brown (1994: 165) describes the relationship between language and culture as follows: „A language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture.‟ In a word, culture and language are inseparable However, there are cultural and language boundaries, such as the use of languages or the traditional customs between two cultures The lack of people's awareness of the similarities and differences between two cultures may cause culture shock, in turn, can result in communication breakdown Recently, there have been more and more foreigners from different countries coming to live, study and work in our country Especially, with the cooperation and exchange in a number of fields between Vietnam and America, a great number of people from one country work, study, live in the other country With the help of English, an international language, Vietnamese and American people can communicate with each other easily in various aspects So far, there have been a number of linguistic theses mentioning different cross-cultural perspectives, however confirming and negating expressions made by American and Vietnamese people have not been studied thoroughly Therefore, it is essential to raise the awareness of Vietnamese people's difficulties when communicating with people from America in cultural aspect Thus, the differences between the Americans 13 and Vietnamese in expressing confirming and negating verbally have been considered valuable in communication Aims of the study This research aims to:  provide an overview of confirming and negating in American and Vietnamese verbal communication,  find major similarities and differences in how American and Vietnamese express confirming and negating verbally,  raise awareness of cultural differences in CCC in order to help people avoid misunderstandings in communication The research questions can be addressed as follows: i What are the common ways of expressing confirming and negating in American English and Vietnamese? ii What are the similarities and differences in American and Vietnamese verbal expressions of confirmation and negation? Scope of the study This study is confined to the verbal communication of expressing confirmation and negation This study is limited to a number of American and Vietnamese informants who are asked to complete the survey questionnaire on ways of showing confirmation and negation verbally in two socially differentiated situations Hence, other aspects of communication, such as paralinguistic features (body language, gestures, facial expressions, and tone and pitch of voice), environmental factors, and mood factors are not mentioned in the study The author has realized that there have been a number of different strategies which can be used to communicate; however, it is very hard to examine all kinds of strategies Therefore, the analysis of the study is limited to the common strategies which have the highest percentage of occurrence from the collected data Amongst the various kinds of relationship, the author only focuses on the certain kinds of relationship in 46 "Advising" is the least choice which accounts for only 3,8% The following strategies are not used in situation 1: Joking, Asserting condition, Passing the ball to other(s), and Don't FTA With the younger colleague, the figures in the table show that although the American informants make use of all strategies in situation , "Asserting condition" strategy is not appeared in situation Vietnamese findings: In situation 1, it can be seen that the Vietnamese informants only use three out of eight strategies with 88.5% for "Bald On-Record" which is a very high percentage The second and the third ranks are "Hedging" and "Asking Rhetoric Questions" In situation 2, the Vietnamese informants, similar to the American informants, employ "Bald On-Record" as the most commonly-used strategy The percentage of the first strategy is still in the highest number (75.0%) In this situation, strategies "Advising", "Asking Rhetoric Questions" and "Don't FTA" are not found in the data To sum up, "Bald On-Record" is the most commonly used strategy by the two cultures In situation 1, only 1.9% of American informants use "Don't FTA" strategy with colleague who is younger than them In contrast, only Vietnamese informants use "Asserting condition" with that kind of relationship There is a surprising in the choice of "Don't FTA" The Americans refuse to say anything to older colleagues in situation with the percentage of 5.8 No Vietnamese informant chooses this strategy 3.3.6 With your boss American findings: 76.9% of the Americans use "Bald On-Record" in the first situation They not employ "Don't FTA" Besides, the statistics show that 1.9% American informants use "Passing the ball to other" strategy in the two situations for older boss For the second situation, the American informants tend to choose most of the strategies to express negating "Bald On-Record" is employed at the largest use (53.8%) Vietnamese findings: the Vietnamese informants, like the American informants, not use the last strategy They focus mainly on the first strategy at the highest percentage - 47 69.2% Surprisingly, only two strategies are used in situation for communicating partner in terms of boss (older than the speaker): "Bald On-Record" and "Hedging" In short, it is clearly seen the differences between American culture and Vietnamese culture through the relationship of communicating partner: boss The Americans feel easier to express their confirmation and negation toward their boss than the Vietnamese It might be because the facts that in Vietnamese culture, people often have a certain distance with people who have more power or stay in higher position than them Vietnamese people, in the author's opinion, take sensitivity in showing their confirmation and negation to their boss even though they might have a close relationship with their boss Table 8: The use of communicative strategies as seen from communicating partners in terms of relationship with colleague and boss (The figures are given in percentage) Table 7: The use of communicative strategies as seen from communicating partners in terms of relationship with sister/ brother, mother/ father, close friend, and someone you dislike (The figures are given in percentage) 48 49 3.4 Summary In this part, the author will critically review the major findings The statistics have clearly shown that each group of informants reflects different choices among the eight strategies mentioned in 3.1 to express their confirmation and negation First, and foremost, the use of politeness strategies between the American informants and Vietnamese informants in terms of different parameters present the similarities as well as differences Age, gender, and living area are used as parameters in this study It is apparent that the Americans and Vietnamese use "Bald On-Record" strategies more than other strategies They show their respect to older people by direct confirming and negating expressions Moreover, they can show their emotion in using different strategies, such as "Joking" and "Asking Rhetoric Questions", to younger ones As being assumed in 2.2.2, there is a difference in the use of polite strategies between the American females and Vietnamese ones It is clearly seen that the American females choose the last strategy less than the Vietnamese females The area of living is another factor to compare the use of communicative strategies between the two groups of informants It is well noted that the Americans like "Joking" while the Vietnamese prefer "Asking Rhetoric Questions" Second, also the main analysis, the use of the eight strategies in terms of relationship (ie with sister/ brother, mother/ father, close friend, colleague, boss, and someone you dislike) with communicating partners To begin with the confirming expressions, the Americans and Vietnamese show their most choice on "Bald On-Record" Besides, "Don't FTA" is a preference strategy of the Americans In expressing negation, Vietnamese informants likely employ "Hedging" as the second common chosen strategy This strategy is often used with communicating partner in the kinds of relationship of mother/ father, colleague (older than the informants) and Boss (both older and younger than the informants) There are remarkably differences in using polite strategies with each kind of relationship between the S and the H It can be concluded that the Americans as well as the Vietnamese who employ communicative strategies depend on the distance of the relationship, for instance close-relationship (family relationship, close friend), acquaintance (colleague, boss, someone they dislike), age 50 and position With the group of close-relationship, both the two groups of informants use "Bald On-Record", "Joking", or "Asserting condition" to the communicating partners The Americans not want to use these reactions to someone they dislike, they employ "Don't FTA" for all the negation expressions which is similarly to the Vietnamese In conclusion, the result of the study indicates that the choice of strategies in expressions of confirming and negating is involved in the various socio-factors of informants, the communicating partners, the communicative situations, the purposes of communication, and the nature of specific speech act 51 PART C: CONCLUSION Major findings This minor thesis “A cross-culture study on American- Vietnamese verbal expressions in confirming and negating” initiated from the facts that people from these cultures often get into troubles when communicating with their partners To have a better understanding of the problem, the study has been conducted and the results are as follows: The Americans and Vietnamese express confirming and negating through the eight communicative strategies: Bald On-Record, Joking, Hedging, Advising, Asserting condition, Passing the ball to other(s), Asking Rhetoric Questions, and Don't FTA Among these eight communicative strategies, "Bald On-Record" is the most frequently used strategy The Americans and Vietnamese have both the similarity and differences in using the communicative strategies The Americans are similar to Vietnamese in attempts to show their confirmation and negation directly by using "Bald On-Record" strategy However, the Americans and Vietnamese have their own preferred polite strategies American people show their directness by "Bald On-Record" strategy whereas Vietnamese people reveal their indirectness by "Hedging" strategy in expressing confirming and negating Moreover, with the second most choice of "Joking" strategy, the Americans tend to be more humorous than the Vietnamese in dealing with confirming and negating situations The data shows that the Americans seem to have freely choice of communicative strategies while the Vietnamese are under the influence of such factors as: social distance, status, group of interest, and communicating situations to express their confirmation and negation The Americans prefer On-Record strategies (ie Bald OnRecord and Joking), while the Vietnamese are more in favor of Off-Record strategies (ie Asserting condition and Asking Rhetoric Questions) 52 To sum up, the similarity and differences in the findings are used to help the Americans and Vietnamese can both give a deep impression and avoid making mistakes when communicating with each other In the field of cross-cultural communication, it is necessary for everyone to improve their knowledge of the host culture Moreover, people who want to use appropriate communicative strategies should understand their partners' behavior and culture This is the key for the successful communication with people of each society Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research In the progress of doing this study, the author cannot avoid some limitations due to the limit of time, scope, and knowledge The number of informants in this research is enough to the data analysis, but it is still modest The author wishes that other researches in the same field should be conducted with larger informants Besides, the expressions believed to be common in this research are collected by a variety types of equipment (paper-based; emails, etc.), which may not be convenient for the author to collect and analyze the data; therefore, the number of expressions may not have fully displayed in this thesis With the above-mentioned number of informants and the data analysis, there are remarks, comments and assumption will be discussed in this study The study has only concerned with some aspects of the confirming and negating expressions, such as the choice of communicative strategies as seen from the informants' information, and communicative strategies used by American and Vietnamese informants in terms of their communicating partners' relationship Therefore, the following matters which are unanswered dimensions would be suggested for further research:  Examining the linguistic realization in confirming and negating expressions;  Analyzing paralinguistic (pitch, vocal fillers, etc.) in confirming and negating expressions;  Examining the confirming and negating expressions from the view of pragmatics to answer the questions when, why, and how to use these expressions;  Using idioms in expressing confirming and negating 53 The author does hope that every effort has been made for the thesis to be beneficial to those who are interested in the field of cross-cultural communication However, shortcomings and mistakes in this thesis are unavoidable, the author especially appreciate the readers' comments and suggestions 54 BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH Austin, J L (1962), How to things with words, Oxford: Oxford University Press Bach, K and Harnish, R (1973), Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, Massachusettes: The MIT Press Back, K (2011), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry Retrieved August Bauman, Z (1999), Culture as Praxis, Sage Publications Brown, P (1994), Politeness strategies and the attribution of intentions: The case of Tzeltal irony, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Brown, P and Levison, S (1987), Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Clow, F R (1920), Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications, The Macmillan Company Cottril, M (1994), Face, Politeness and Indirectness, University of Canberra Creswell, W J (2003), Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, London: Sage Publications 10 Dang Thi Le Thu (2006), A cross-cultural study on expressing dislike in English and Vietnamese - M A Thesis, VNU - ULIS 11 DeVito, J.A (1991), Human Communication: The Basic Course, 5th ed, Harper Collins, New York 12 DeVito, J.A (1989), The Interpersonal Communication Book, 5th ed, Harper & Row, New York 13 Fraser, B (1990), Perspective of politeness, Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219-236 14 Geis, M (1995), Speech Acts and Conversational Interaction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Green, G M (1989), Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 16 Halliday, M.A.K (1974), Language and Social Man, London: Longman 55 (Schools Council Programme in Linguistics & English Teaching, Papers, Series II, no 3) 17 Hybels, S & Weaver II, R.L (1992), Communicating effectively, Von Hoffman Press Inc 18 Hymes, D (1964), Language in Culture and Society, New York: Harper and Row 19 Kieu Thi Thu Huong (2001), Disagreeing in English and Vietnamese, MA Thesis VNU-CFL 20 Levinson, S C (1983), Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 21 Leech, G (1983), Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman Group Limited 22 Lustig M W., et al.,(1996), Intercultural Competence, Harper Collins College Publishers 23 Lyon, J (1981), Language and Linguistics - An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 24 McKay, M., Davis, M & Fanning P (1983), Messages: The Communication Skills Book, New Harbinger, Oakland, California 25 Murphy, R with Altman, R (1989), English Grammar in Use, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 26 Nguyen Quang (1998), Intercultural Communication, VNU - ULIS 27 Nguyen Quang (1998), The negative sentence in English and Vietnamese - A Contrastive Analysis, MA Thesis VNU-CFL 28 Parson, T (1949), Essays in Sociological Theory, Glencoe, IL 29 Phan Thi Van Quyen (2001), Some English - Vietnamese Cross-cultural Differences in refusing a request - M A Thesis, VNU - ULIS 30 Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1973), A University of English Grammar, England: Longman 31 Richard, I et al (1992), Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, England: Longman 32 Ronald B Adler & George Rodman (1998), Understanding Communication, Oxford: Oxford University Press 33 Taylor, E B (1871), Primitive Culture, New York: J.P Putnam‟s Sons Human 56 34 Searle, J R (1981), Speech Acts, Second Edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 35 Searle, J R and Vanderveken, D (1985), Foundations of Illocutionary Logic., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 36 Triandis, H (1994), Culture and Social Behavior, New York: McGraw-Hill 37 Wardhaugh, R (1992), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 2nd ed, Oxford: Blackwell Publisher 38 Yule, G (1996), Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford University Press IN VIETNAMESE Nguyễn Quang (2002) Giao tiếp giao tiếp giao văn hoá, Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Quang (2004) Một số vấn giao tiếp nội văn hoá văn giao văn hoá Nhà xuất Đại học quốc gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Quang (2006) Giao tiếp phi ngơn từ qua văn hố Nhà xuất Khoa học Xã hội Nguyễn Quang (2007) Cách thức diễn đạt tiếng Anh - Ways of expressions in English NXB Từ điển Bách Khoa Nguyễn Văn Độ (2004) Tìm hiểu mối liên hệ Ngơn ngữ-Văn hoá., Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội THE INTERNET http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spchacts.html http://www.ldoceonline.com/ http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/pragmatics.html 57 APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE This survey questionnaire is designed for my research into "verbal expressions in confirming and negating between American and Vietnamese" Your assistance in completing the following items is of great value to us This questionnaire is for research purpose only; therefore you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Section A: Please give a tick () where appropriate Your age: Below 30  Above 30  Your gender: Male  Female   Rural  Area where you spend most of your time: Urban Section B: In completing the following items, your mother tongue is preferable Situation 1: You have a close relationship with a travel agent so that you can book air tickets with a reasonable price Last week, X asked you to book a return air ticket for his/her business travel next month and you did it Now, X asks you whether you have done it for him/her How would you verbally confirm that information if X is: Your sister/ brother Your mother/ father Your close friend Your colleague (older than you) Your colleague (younger than you) Your boss (older than you) 58 Your boss (younger than you) Someone you dislike Situation 2: It's a rumor that you quit your current job (It is not true because you have a good job and you like it) X asks you about the information How would you verbally negate that information if X is: Your sister/ brother Your mother/ father Your close friend Your colleague (older than you) Your colleague (younger than you) Your boss (older than you) Your boss (younger than you) Someone you dislike Thank you very much for your assistance 59 PHIẾU CÂU HỎI Chúng lập phiếu câu hỏi nhằm nghiên cứu “cách diễn đạt khẳng định phủ định giao tiếp văn hố Việt - Mỹ” Chúng tơi đánh giá cao giúp đỡ quý vị việc trả lời chân thực câu hỏi đưa sau Q vị an tâm thơng tin mà Quý vị cung cấp không sử dụng vào mục đích khác ngồi muc đích nghiên cứu Phần A: Xin Quý vị chọn () vào ô trống phù hợp Tuổi: Dưới 30  Trên 30  Giới tính: Nam  Nữ  Nơi quý vị sống lâu Thành thị  Nông thôn  Phần B: Xin Quý vị vui lòng trả lời tình sau Tình 1: Q vị có mối quan hệ tốt với hãng du lịch quý vị đặt vé máy bay với mức giá hợp lý Tuần trước, X nhờ Quý vị đặt vé cho chuyến công tác vào tháng sau Quý vị làm xong Bây giờ, X hỏi xem Quý vị đặt vé chưa Quý vị xác nhận thơng tin lời nói X là: Anh/ em trai chị/ em gái Quý vị Bố/ mẹ Quý vị Người quen Quý vị Đồng nghiệp Quý vị (hơn tuổi Quý vị) Đồng nghiệp Quý vị (kém tuổi Quý vị) Sếp Quý vị (hơn tuổi quý vị) Sếp Quý vị (kém tuổi quý vị) 60 Người Q vị khơng thích Tình 2: Có tin đồn Q vị bỏ việc (Điều khơng Q vị có cơng việc tốt Q vị thích nó) X hỏi Q vị vấn đề đó? Quý vị phủ nhận X là: Anh/ em trai chị/ em gái Quý vị Bố/ mẹ Quý vị Người quen Quý vị Đồng nghiệp Quý vị (hơn tuổi Quý vị) Đồng nghiệp Quý vị (kém tuổi Quý vị) Sếp Quý vị (hơn tuổi quý vị) Sếp Quý vị (kém tuổi quý vị) Người Q vị khơng thích Xin chân thành cảm ơn hợp tác Quý vị