A comparative study of the politeness markers in the offering in english and vietnamese

Chapter Introduction 1.1 background of THE research This descriptive and comparative research into the Politeness markers including Strategies of language use (or Illocutionary Strategies) and Social Deixis (primarily consisting of Person-referring Forms and Formal Items) (Brown P and Levinson S [11], Nguyen Duc Hoat [36, p 325]) in the speech act of offering in English and Vietnamese is carried out because of the following reasons: There have been so far a lot of contrastive studies into certain speech acts including Face- threatening Acts (FTAs) such as requests by Nguyen Duc Hoat [36], Ha Cam Tam [83], Mulken M V [62], Sifianou M [79], Nguyen Van Do [104], Ohashi J [66], Tran Lan Phuong [124], complaints by Eslami - Rasekh Z [22], refusals by Liao C C and Bresnahan M I [55], Phan Thi Van Quyen [68] etc.; and Face- enhancing Acts (FEAs) such as compliments by Nguyen Quang [125], Nguyen Minh Nguyet [65] In spite of its frequent occurrences in various kinds of interpersonal communication there has been little research done on the speech act of offering which may be either a FTA or a FEA If any, there still remain limitations in the study of this speech act The studies by Rabinowitz J F [69], Hoang Thi Thu Lan [52] mainly focus on the linguistic expressions of the offering They not base on the face notion to explain the Politeness Markers used in the speech behavior of offering Chu Thi Bich [97] narrows down her study on the speech act of offering in Vietnamese Although Nguyen Thi Hong Ha [32] has a more expanded cross-cultural research on the speech acts of offering and responding in English and Vietnamese, her research centers round offering gifts, which is one part of the offering In fact, according to Wierzbicka A [91] and Rabinowitz J F [69], the offering involves offering a service or an item In other words, the offering to a full sense involves “the offerer’s showing or expressing the willingness or intention to something for or to give something to the hearer” (Hornby A S [38, p 623]) In this sense, the speech act of offering has not been thoroughly studied by Chu Thi Bich and Nguyen Thi Hong Hµ either Generally, the above-mentioned studies on the speech act of offering are restricted to the linguistic expressions rather than based on the face assumption which may be radically influenced by the cultural features to explain the use of the Politeness Markers in this speech act Nonetheless there exist in all languages these interrelated elements to express politeness in speech acts including the offering 1.2 aims and Scope of the research Due to the time and resource constraints, this research is restricted to the descriptive and comparative study on the Politeness Markers in the offering in Australian English and Vietnamese As a result, the research is intended: To describe the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of offering performed by the native Australian speakers To describe the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of offering performed by the native Vietnamese speakers To compare their use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering along the directness/indirectness dimension in various social situational contexts studied To explain the underlying reasons for the similarities and/or dissimilarities in their use of these Politeness Markers 1.3 Theoretical and practical implications This research could offer the following theoretical and practical implications: The findings of this research could provide the knowledge of the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese, which could be necessary for the researchers of pragmatic field and for those who use it as a means of intercultural communication to avoid “culture shock” This research based on the face assumption which may be impacted by the cultural features to explain the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese could make a significant contribution compared to the former researches restricted to the study of the linguistic expressions of speech acts including the offering Truly a speech act is a basic pragmatic unit of communication (Trosborg A [85]), whose semantic structure is closely associated with the ideology and cultural features of the community employing that speech act The ideology and cultural features of the community in their turns determine whether or not a speech act is of politeness in the ongoing verbal interaction from the interlocutors’ perception of face In other words, there must be an entwined relationship between the semantic structure and pragmatic sense of a speech act including the offering in association with linguistic politeness, which may not have been intensively studied by the previous studies on the speech act of offering This research could help the pragmatists and the learners of English or Vietnamese as a foreign language have a deeper insight into speech acts including the offering in Australian English as an Indo-European inflectional language and in Vietnamese as a typical tonic and non-inflectional AustroAsiatic language Especially the findings of this research is useful for Vietnamese learners of English and Australian learners of Vietnamese in that they could help these learners better learn English or Vietnamese as a foreign language in a scientific and systematic way and in this way could prevent them from committing unexpected pragmatic errors 1.4 research methods The methods used in this research are descriptive and comparative - Descriptive: the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese are described in relation to the semantic structure and pragmatic properties - Comparative: The coding system for the comparison of the strategies of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese used in this thesis are modified from the coding system of strategies developed by Blum-Kulka S et al [8] and Rabinowitz J F [69], which cover seven strategies within the three major Strategy Categories ranking in a decreasing level of directness The comparative method is preferred to the contrastive method because of the following reasons The findings from the thesis based on this comparative method (to find out the similarities and differences) could offer not only the practical implications in a foreign language teaching method of a speech act (as the contrastive method [to find out the differences] could) but also the linguistically theoretical implications concerning the semantic, structural and pragmatic aspects of a speech act including the offering in the two languages compared 1.5 structure of the thesis From the above-mentioned issues, this thesis could be organized into the following chapters: Chapter introduces the background, the aims and scope, the theoretical and practical implications, the research methods and the structure of the thesis Chapter provides a review of different approaches to linguistic politeness study and discusses my viewpoint on the appropriate approach to study linguistic politeness in Vietnamese culture Chapter discusses the methodology issues including research questions, data approach and the research method, the data collection methods, the selection of subjects, the research procedure involving the procedure for the administration of the Pilot Questionnaires (PQs) and the Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) Chapter describes and discusses the identification of the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese to highlight its distinctive features A further analysis of the Politeness Markers used in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese is then carried out as a coding framework Chapter presents and discusses the findings on the use of the Politeness Markers in the offering in Australian English and Vietnamese in relation to such social variables as the Relative Power (P), the Social Distance (D) and the Imposition Rank (R) in the situational contexts studied and the underlying reasons Chapter presents the conclusion of the thesis including the summary of the major findings, the implications and the suggestions for further research Chapter speech act theory and linguistic politeness This chapter provides an overview of different approaches to linguistic politeness study and presents my viewpoint on the appropriate approach to study linguistic politeness in the context of Vietnamese culture 2.1 speech acts and politeness Speech acts have been studied and defined by different theorists such as Austin J [1], Searle J R [73], Levinson S C [54] and others Their common point of view is that a speech act is a unit of communication Each of these units performs a certain function such as: complimenting, apologizing, offering etc According to Austin J [1], stating is only one function of language He notes that some ordinary declarative sentences are not just to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to things He distinguishes constatives - statements, assertions - from performatives which are used to perform actions According to Austin, an utterance is perceived as having three basic senses and in performing a certain act, the speaker is said to perform simultaneously three kinds of acts: - Locutionary act: the uttering of a certain sentence with certain sense and reference This again is roughly equivalent to “meaning” in the traditional sense; Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, an offering, etc in uttering a sentence by the conventional force associated with it; and - Perlocutionary act: the effect on the hearer achieved by saying something According to Austin, the term “speech act” is actually used exclusively to refer to the illocutionary act He also suggests that different speech acts can be classified and compared basing on the classification of speech act verbs available in a language Yet, he fails to show systematically the relation between illocutionary force and the explicit and implicit performatives and their felicity conditions Searle J R [73] further expands on Austin’s work and basing on the felicity conditions for different speech acts, Searle J R [74, 75] comes up with the taxonomy of speech act types: Representatives or assertives which commit the speaker to the truth of a proposition, for example, asserting or stating; Directives, the point of which is to get the hearer to something, for example, ordering, requesting; - Commissives, which commit the speaker to some future action, for example, promising, offering; Expressives, which express certain feelings and attitudes of the speaker, for example, thanking, apologizing; and - Declaratives, acts of announcing the emergence of an event, for example, declaring, christening Searle’s taxonomy takes the illocutionary act as the starting point in identifying speech act types but not speech act verbs as proposed by Austin J [1] Searle J R [77] also makes a claim that “the basic unit of human communication is the illocutionary act” and that his taxonomy has universal application According to Searle J R [76], in everyday interactions, it is often found that the speaker may utter a sentence and mean what s/he says and also mean another illocution with a different illocutionary content For example, the utterance (2.1) ‚May I help you?‛ can be meant not as a question with the inversion of the Modal Auxiliary Verb (MAV) May and the First Personal Subject I but as an offering to help somebody Utterances of this type fall under what Searle J R [76] calls “indirect speech acts” or the cases in which “… one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by performing another” The distinction between what is meant and what is said shows that a polite utterance reveals the speaker’s true intentions only indirectly The speaker seeks ways to modify what s/he is planning to say, thus s/he could express his/her intention indirectly enough to avoid a social conflict Indirectness has been associated with the levels of politeness by many Western researchers These researchers assert indirectness is the chief motivation for politeness and indirectness and the closely associated notion of politeness operate under universal principles (Searl J R [75], Brown P and Levinson S [10], Leech G N [53]) Utterances of offering in English using Interrogative forms, e g (2.2) ‚Can I offer some help?‛ [DCT 5] are called Conventionally Indirect offering and are considered polite in that the form seems to give the hearer the option of refusal since the “yes” or “no” alternative question allows “no” as a possible answer Within the framework of pragmatics, it is primarily the speech act theory which has succeeded in accounting for the linguistic aspects of politeness Since the mid1970s, Eastern and Western speech act theorists in their different approaches have more or less converged views on the notion of politeness 2.2 notions of politeness and definitions In the Vietnamese language, the closest equivalent to the English word “politeness” is lÞch sù which is defined by Hoang Phe et al as “…having elegant manners and observing propriety in conformity with social rules and expectations in interaction” [122] However, from a traditional point of view, the modern concept of politeness lÞch sù also encompasses the concept of LÔ (The Sino-Vietnamese word for Li “rites”) As a result of extensive contacts with, and influence from Chinese culture, the concept of Li was introduced and assimilated into Vietnamese culture through nearly a thousand years of Chinese domination and adoption of Confucianism as an official political doctrine and a source of moral codes by successful feudal states and Confucian scholars in ancient Vietnam (Tran §inh Huou [111]) LƠ is a set of norms or social etiquettes which prescribes appropriate behavior in dyadic relationships mainly of the vertical nature between the king and his subjects, between the teacher and the student, parent and his child, husband and his wife, between friends etc Social juniors are expected to show deference to their seniors while social super-ordinates are supposed to protect and take care of social subordinates In over the last two decades, various Western researchers working on linguistic politeness have proposed different models on linguistic interaction and its associated notions of politeness Lakoff R [49-51] defines politeness as those forms of behavior which have been “developed in society in order to reduce friction in interpersonal interaction” Leech G N [53] defines politeness as “strategic conflict avoidance” and the ability of participants to engage in interaction with an atmosphere of relative harmony Brown P and Levinson S [12] not take politeness to result from pragmatic principles but rather from a more underlying need to minimize potential imposition on the addressee as a result of the verbal act In the long run, the above researchers believe that “what politeness essentially consists of is a special way of treating people, saying and doing things in such a way as to take into account of the other person’s feelings” In other words, politeness in their viewpoint is volition-oriented conflict avoidance behavior They may have disregarded the social-norm role in regulating a community’s members’ appropriate behavior to show politeness As far as I’m concerned, the term politeness should cover both conventional and volitional politeness Conventional (discernment/normative) politeness is compared to a system of traffic rules, which are socially imposed on every member of the society and strategic (volitional/tact) politeness to one’s individual driving styles Conventional politeness and volitional politeness are intricately linked to each other Conventional politeness provides a set of constraints on the creative and manipulative use of the verbal behavior by the speaker to achieve his or her communicative goal/intention The common theme underlying these varying definitions is the idea of appropriate language use associated with smooth communication Concerning this matter, Watts R J has suggested the term politic behavior-“that behavior, linguistic or nonlinguistic, which the participants construct as being appropriate to the ongoing social interaction” [88, p 257] Watts R J assumes that this type of social interaction has become institutionalized and is subject to some kind of interaction order and conventions Politic behavior is distinguished from polite behavior by Watts R J [88, p 169] and Nguyen Van Do [105, p 2], who claim that politic behavior is not equivalent to polite behavior Truly, there could leave open the possibility that there are certain circumstances where interlocutors could hold the verbal interaction within the framework of the politic behavior may not be perceived by others as being polite In fact, the offerer’s formulaic offering like (2.3)‚Can I help?‛ may not always be polite and welcomed by a strange offeree who may not expect the offerer’s offering assistance and assume it an unnecessarily intruding action into the offeree’s individual freedom though this format has become institutionalized I assume that this could bring into light the invevitable role of the situational context (encompassing the interlocutors’ belief, intention, their social relationship and the spacial/temporal parameters of communication etc.) in determining whether a politic behavior is perceived as a polite behavior In the field of cross-cultural politeness research, many authors have attempted to construct various models with the aims of establishing universal research frameworks Frazer B [26] outlines the four major views of politeness: the Conversational-Maxim view, the Face-Saving view (Brown P and Levinson S [12]), the Fraser’s own Conversational-Contract view and the Social Norm view Following is the review of these major views on politeness and the argument that calls for the extension of the existing views in order to fully account for politeness phenomenon 2.3 An overview of the theoretical perspectives on politeness 2.3.1 STRATEGIC viewpoints on politeness 2.3.1.1 The conversational-maxim view a Grice’s Conversational Principles Grice P [30] proposes the Cooperative Principles (CP) In Grice’s viewpoint, the speaking agent is rational and his/her talk exchange is purposive so that the CP (which consists of four main maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner) is normally observed Given this cooperative nature of talk, any violation of a maxim is thought to signal some conversational implicature(s) When regarding the politeness maxim as one of the other possible maxims of the CP besides the above-mentioned four maxims, Grice argues that the observance of the politeness maxim may, in many cases, produce certain non-conventional implicatures [30, p 46] For instance, if A wants to offer to help B, the production of an Imperative offering such as: (2.4) ‚Let me help you!‛ is quite relevant to the main maxims of the CP Yet, this direct offering is not relevant to the politeness maxim because it is more imposing than an indirect offering such as (2.5) “Can I help you?” [DCT 29] Thus, if A uses an Interrogative instead of an Imperative offering, the use of the Interrogative form is constrained mainly by the politeness maxim rather than by the other maxims of the CP Under the constraint of the politeness maxim, the Interrogative acquires another conversational implicature (a force of offering) besides its primary force of questioning Grice’s ideas of rational speaking agents and purposeful talk, of the Cooperative Principle, and of the relationship between implicatures and politeness are important points of departure for politeness theorists within the strategic perspective b Lakoff ’s Rules of Pragmatic Competence Grice’s ideas are first developed by Lakoff R [49] into a theory of politeness Lakoff R assumes politeness to be a means to avoid conflict She formulates two rules of pragmatic competence: 1) Be clear, and 2) Be polite She takes these two rules to be in opposition to each other In addition, she points out the following sub-rules: Rule 1: Don’t impose (used when formal / impersonal politeness is required) Rule 2: Give options (used when informal politeness is required) Rule 3: Make A feel good (used when intimate politeness is required) Lakoff R [49, p 301] suggests that “all polite action is such because it is in accordance with the dictates of one or more of Rules 1, 2, 3, as a polite utterance” The speaker, in choosing a level of politeness, has to assess the situations and adopt the appropriate rules However, Lakoff’s rules are to a certain extent, arbitrary and non- discrete The three rules above can be said to have the overall function of “making A feel good” When one is trying to “give option”, it is synonymous with “don’t impose” In general, these rules mainly reflect the rules of politeness in typical AngloSaxon culture which emphasizes non- interference and freedom of actions of individual speakers and cannot be considered universally pragmatic rules c Leech’s Maxims of Politeness Leech’s theory builds on the speech act theory of Austin and Searle and Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, but at the same time incorporates other socio-pragmatic principles of language use, with Politeness Principle (PP) being the most important factor regulating human interaction Leech G N makes a distinction between the speaker’s illocutionary goals (what speech act the speaker intends to convey through the utterance) and the 10 b.8.2 CIGR, CIPRGR Strategy and Modification Other Conventionally Indirect Strategies such as using Grounder CIGR (n=5 # 8.30%) and Preparator plus Grounder CIPRGR (n=2 # 3.30%) by native Vietnamese speakers have also decreased significantly b.8.2.1 CIGR Strategy and Modification The Grounder used by native Vietnamese speakers in this context (n=5 #8.33%) is frequently intensified with Strengthening Modifiers like Intensifiers as LPUs, Strengthening Pragmatic Particles (SPs) and the use of Kin Term (KT) for non-relatives to create a sense of solidarity and connectedness typical of Vietnamese culture The Grounder in its turn could be used with KTs and SPs in the Head offering expressed by an Imperative or a Statement to further strengthen the illocutionary force of the offering to show normative or positive politeness (5.283)Đ-a chị xách giúp cho Trông khệ nệ quá! [DCT 2] Head Offering GR “Let me help you They look too heavy for you. (5.284)Em để chị giúp cho tay Đ-a túi chị ôm đỡ cho! Head Offering GR [DCT 16] “You let me lend you a hand Here give me one bag to carry for you!” A Downtoner could be used to mitigate the Grounder restrictedly used by native Australian speakers in this context (n=2#3.33%), following the Head offering expressed by: A Statement of the offerer’s willingness to help, softened by a Horiented Conditional Clause as a Syntactic Downgrader (SD) (5.285)‚I ’ll help you carry those if you like They look heavy.‛ Head Offering GR [DCT 46] An Interrogative as a Syntactic Downgrader (SD) which is further mitigated by the Past of a Modal Auxiliary Verb and an Understater as a LPD 186 (5.286)‚Would you like some help? Looks like you have a lot of bags.‛ Head Offering GR [DCT 45] Like in other situational contexts, the Addressing Terms used by native Australian speakers in this context are I, you, me b.8.2.2 CIPRGR Strategy and Modification Kin Terms, SPs as Modifiers are normally not only used in the Preparator but also in the Head offering and Grounder to persuade the offeree to accept the offerer’s offering for positive politeness in Vietnamese culture (5.287)Em ơi! KT.Voc.Pr.P /PR Để chị xách giùm cho! Không ngà mất! [DCT 53] Head Offering GR “Hi! Let me help! Otherwise you’ll fall!” On the contrary, Softening Modifiers (e.g a H-oriented Conditional Clause as a SD or a Downtoner as a LPD) could be used in the Head offering and in the External Modification to further soften the illocutionary force of the speech act of offering in English for negative politeness (5.288)‚Hello! I ’ll carry those for you if you like They look pretty heavy.‛ F.Gr /PR Head Offering GR [DCT 42] It could be seen that even in the equal intimate relationship with their close next-door neighbor, native Australian speakers still show their distant and tentative attitude through the use of Softening Modifiers when offering to avoid imposition on the offeree for negative politeness However, native Vietnamese speakers prefer using SPs and KTs for non-relatives in accordance with the social norms in Vietnamese culture to show their closeness for positive or normative politeness b.8.3 CIWI, CINE, CIPE Strategy and Modification Native Australian speakers not only use Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (CI) commonly but also use it under various strategies with Internal Modification such as Querying about the offeree’s Necessity (CINE: n= # 15.00 %), asking for the offeree’s Permission (CIPE: n=1 # 1.70 %) and especially 187 questioning about the offeree’s Wish (CIWI: n= 14 # 23.30 %) as the second most common strategy ranking after CIPR strategy For these strategies, offering is normally modified by Interrogative as SD, which could be further modified by LPD or/and a Past Modal Auxiliary Verb to increase the tentativeness of the offering: (5.289)‚Would you like some help?‛ [DCT 29] (5.290)‚Do you need a hand?‛ [DCT 52] (5.291)‚ Can I give you a hand with that?‛ * [DCT 57] It could be seen that in this situational context native Australian speakers assume that the offerer is equal in Power and familiar to the offeree (=P, - D) and they then use the CI under various Conventionally Indirect Strategies at higher frequency as in other (-D) contexts despite the shift in Power Meanwhile native Vietnamese speakers assume the offerer is of Power and familiar to the offeree (+P, -D) also use this CI but at lower frequency and under less varied strategies 5.2.1.3 non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (NI) a The Use of Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category with Respect to (-D): (=P, -D), (+P, -D), (-P, -D) Table 5.1 (Appendix 6, p 241) shows that the least common Strategy Category for native Australian and Vietnamese speakers is the Non-conventionally Indirect (NI) The striking thing from Table 5.11 (Appendix 6, p 251) is that very few native Australians use the NI and none of native Vietnamese use it in such situational contexts as C2a, C2b (1.70 % A vs 0.00 % V) and in C6a (3.30 % A vs 0.00 % V) In terms of Strategy and Modification, table 5.12 (Appendix 6, p 252) indicates that the NI is often used by native Australian speakers in the form of Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy of Feasibility (NIF) This strategy could be modified by an Interrogative as a SD to question the offeree about his/her state before an offering is really made to avoid the imposition on the offeree to show volitional politeness in case the offerer is not sure if his/her offering should meet the demand of the offeree The syntactic pattern used could be: (5.292)‚Are you ok?‛ [DCT 79] 188 This strategy could be used by the Australian speakers in the situational contexts where the offerer is familiar to the offeree (-D) and is equal in Power to the offeree (=P) (Table 5.12, Appendix 6, p 252) Therefore, the generation gap between the offerer and the offeree (> < 10 years old or more) may have resulted in the Australian offerer’s preference for this Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy However, the Strategy and Modification of this kind is not used by native Vietnamese speakers in this context (n= 0) b The Use of Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category with Respect to (+D): (-P, +D), (=P,+D) Also, the above Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (NI) could sometimes be used by native Australian speakers in the situational context C5a where the offerer has no Power over the offeree (-P) and has a non-intimate relationship with the offeree (+D) However, none of the native Vietnamese speakers use this Strategy Category (Table 5.13, Appendix 6, p 253) The only situational context where native Australian and Vietnamese speakers have used the NI at the same frequency is C5c (1.70 %) since both assume that the offerer and the offeree are equal in Relative Power (=P) and their strategy of offering is as a result influenced by the Social Distance (D) Table 5.13 (Appendix 6, p 253) shows that in this situational context the offerer as a student has an unfamiliar relationship (+D) with the offeree as his/her new teacher Therefore the offering made by the native Australian subjects and the native Vietnamese subjects is careful This is in line with Nguyen Phuong Suu’s remark that when carrying out a speech act native Vietnamese speakers often take the Social Distance into consideration to choose the accordingly suitable strategy [82] Nonetheless; within this NI, the strategy used by native Australian speakers and Vietnamese speakers is different Table 5.13 (Appendix 6, p 253) shows that native Vietnamese offerers use the NonConventionally Indirect Strategy of Potential Grounder (NIP) in the form of a Statement, for instance, to inform the offeree as their teacher of their ability to get to know their teacher’s attitude before launching their offerings to avoid abruptness for the sake of normative/positive politeness 189 In terms of Modification, the sentence-final SP is sometimes used (n=1): (5.293)Tôi biết sửa loại máy đấy! [DCT 29] I know how to fix this video!” Unlike the native Vietnamese offerers, the native Australian offerers in this context have used Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy of asking the offeree for the Feasibility condition (NIF) to make their offering to avoid coerciveness towards the offeree for negative politeness The syntactic pattern used in this context could be: (5.294)‚Are you alright there?‛ [DCT 21] It can be seen so far that the NI could sometimes be used by native Australian and Vietnamese speakers in the situational contexts where the offerer is Familiar (- D) or Unfamiliar (+D) to the offeree or where the offerer is of equal Power (=P), of no Power (-P) or of much higher Power (+P) than the offeree In other words, the strategy of offering in these settings could sometimes vary according to the Imposition Rank (R) rather than to such social variables as the Relative Power (P) or the Social Distance (D) Native Australian speakers may assume offering to help one person in activities already in progress may cause more imposition on him/her and hence greater face-threatening risk Native Australian offerers have, as a result, utilized the most Indirect - the Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category to compensate this risk for negative politeness 5.2.2 The use of Social Deixis I have so far found out that besides the Strategies, the Social Deixis including the Addressing Terms especially KT(s) for non-relatives, the Formal Semantic Items and the HP ¹ play a more vital role in expressing the offerer’s politeness in the Vietnamese speech act of offering Table 5.14 (Appendix 7, p 254) reveals that as regards KT usage, native Vietnamese speakers prefer using KT in all the situational contexts studied, i.e., in downward, upward, or even in equal dyad speech, to family members or non-family members to create a sense of solidarity among the in-group members and to show the conformity to the hierarchy in Vietnamese culture for mainly positive politeness 190 Yet, native Australian speakers rarely use KT even to their family members as their individualism-oriented strategy typical of mainly negative politeness (C6a, C6b) With regard to Formal Semantic Item (FSI) usage, native Australian speakers less frequently opt for FSIs than native Vietnamese speakers even in the speech contexts where difference in age is significant (the offerer is 10-year-younger than the offeree) as seen in C2b [A: n= #6.67%), V: n= 15 # 25%)] or where difference in the social status between the offerer and the offeree (e.g the offerer to his new elder teacher as the offeree) is apparent as seen in C5a (A: n = #10%, V: n = 39 %65%) or where the offerer is equal in Power to the offeree in non-intimate context as seen in C5c (A: n=3 #5%, V: n=17 # 28.33%) In respect of Honorific Pragmatic Particle (HP), native Vietnamese speakers show their overwhelming preference to the use of it (n=32 # 53.33%) in context C5a (-P, +D) where the offerer as a student has no Power over the offeree as his/her teacher and is unfamiliar to the offeree to show deference to the teacher Meanwhile in context C5c (=P, +D) where the offerer is also unfamiliar to the offeree as his/her teacher but is assumed to be equal in Power to the offeree, HP has been used less frequently (n=8 # 13.33%) This reveals that age has influenced the native Vietnamese speakers’ perception of the relative Power (P) of the offerer over the offeree, which in its turn regulates the use of HP to show deference towards the offeree in this context in Vietnamese culture Compared to its use in context C5a, the HP is used far less frequently in context C5b (-P, -D) where the offerer has no Power over the offeree as his/her teacher but is familiar to the offeree (n=2 # 3.33%) This result shows that Social Distance has also impacted the Vietnamese offerer’s use of the HP to show deference to the offeree as his/her teacher in this context Vietnamese offerers’ offering is then not too formal to the intimate offeree (Table 5.14, Appendix 7, p 254) By contrast, in all the situational contexts under study none of native Australian speakers use the HP The use of the HP ¹ together with other FSIs such as xin, xin phÐp, cho, cho phÐp etc in upward non-intimate speech shows the native Vietnamese speakers’ observance 191 of the hierarchical order in Vietnamese society for normative politeness; otherwise the speaker or the offerer is considered to be rude or impolite by others 5.2.3 The use of Pragmatic Particles Aside from the Social Deixis, I have found out that native Vietnamese speakers have used Pragmatic Particles (Pr Ps) as one of the major means to express their politeness towards the offeree when carrying out their offering In respect of the Pr Ps other than the HP ¹, native Vietnamese speakers show their preference to the use of these Mood Words in all situational contexts studied (Table 5.15, Appendix 8, p 255) whereas there is no English equivalence The striking thing is that these Pr Ps have been used not only commonly but also variedly by native Vietnamese speakers with various functions in different positions They could be used either singly or in cluster of two or more serving as the Indicator of the speech act of offering or as the Illocutionary Modifiers, either as softening or strengthening devices according to specific situational contexts In intimate downward or equal contexts (C2a, C3b, C6b) native Vietnamese speakers normally prefer Strengthening Pragmatic Particles (SPs); except in the intimate context (e.g C5d) where there is a significant difference in the social status due to the communicative settings (in class) between the offerer as a student and the offeree as a teacher though the offerer may have assumed that s/he is equal in Power to the offeree in this context due to his elder age than his teacher, they have used SPs at a lower frequency This shows the observance of hierarchy in Vietnamese culture in which age and social status both play an important role in determining the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering In this urgent and intimate context, the offerer still shows his/her respect for the younger teacher in class through the less frequent use of SPs In non-intimate contexts, although the use of SPs by native Vietnamese speakers has declined they are still common in equal speech (C3a compared to C3b) or even in upward speech (as seen in C5a compared to C5b, C5c compared to C5d) The use of Softening Pragmatic Particles (SOPs) is not popular in most of the situational contexts under study The only two contexts where SOPs are preferred 192 are the non-intimate, upward context C5a (n=27# 45%) and the non-intimate equal context C5c (n=16 # 26.67%) Yet, these SOPs are still used at far lower frequency than SPs in most contexts even in upward family contexts (C6a) where the difference in social status is not apparent 5.3 Concluding remarks The noticeable finding is that different from the result of the previous studies, Direct Strategy Category (DC) has been used by native Vietnamese speakers as the second most common after the Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (CI) in this research This CI strategy is also the most popular for native Australian speakers However, there are some differences in the use of Modification for this Indirect Strategy Category between these native speakers In the first place, native Australian speakers prefer using the Internal Modification within the Head offering whereas native Vietnamese speakers opt for the External Modification beyond it In the second place, native Vietnamese speakers prefer using Strengthening Modifiers rather than Softening Modifiers across most situational contexts not only in the Internal Modification but also in the External Modification beyond the Head offering to produce a cumulative strengthening effect on the offering in order to show their strong willingness to help the other in-group members and expect the approval of the offering from these members as the social norms for positive politeness Native Australian speakers, by contrast, prefer using Conventionally Indirect Strategy with Internal Softening Modifiers in most situational contexts Moreover, they frequently use the Softening Modifiers not only in the Internal Modification but also in the External Modification beyond the Head offering to exercise a cumulative softening effect on the offering in order to show their respect for other people’s individual freedom of action for negative politeness Compared to the DC and the CI, Non-conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (NI) is used far less frequently by both native Australian and Vietnamese 193 speakers The above-mentioned Strategy Categories and Modifications have been found out to be realized with different means by these speakers Native Australian speakers rely mainly on the structural variation or indirectness strategies using Tense, Aspect, Mood as the main indicator of the offerer’s tentative or distant attitude towards the offeree in their offering for mainly negative politeness However, native Vietnamese speakers resort overwhelmingly to such Mood Words as the Social Deixis or Honorifics including the Addressing Terms especially Kin Terms for non-relatives, the Formal Semantic Items and the Pragmatic Particles for mainly positive politeness 194 Chapter Conclusion Different from the former researches in speech acts, this research has been carried out with the description and comparison of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in English and Vietnamese which could be either a FTA or a FEA Significantly enough, the findings withdrawn from this research are explained basing on the assumption of face and politeness of the two cultures in question: Australia and Vietnam 6.1 summary of Major findings 6.1.1 The use of Strategy Category 6.1.1.1 Direct Strategy Category (DC) Direct Strategy Category (DC) is the second most commonly used by native Vietnamese speakers regardless of the variation in the (P), (D) value across various situational contexts under study This could be attributed to the collectivism-oriented Vietnamese culture Offering help is a highly appreciated behavior to show mutual care between the people in the society and is therefore a FEA for both the offerer and offeree As a result, the offerer could frequently resort to the DC aside from the CI to make their offering in order to maintain harmony with other people in the community 6.1.1.2 Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (CI) - Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (CI) is the most common for both native Australian and Vietnamese speakers, used at the highest frequency in nearly all situational contexts of offering under study irrespective of various values of (P), (D) Nevertheless, the striking thing is that this Strategy Category has been used in different ways by these native speakers While the native Vietnamese speakers show a low frequency of using Indirectness Strategy with Internal Modification and a high frequency of using Indirectness Strategy with External Modification characterized by a long sequence of sentences with various semantic structures expressing Preparator, Grounder, Disarmer; native Australian speakers show a reversed trend 195 6.1.1.3 Non-Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (NI) Non-Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (NI) is the far less commonly used by native Australian and Vietnamese speakers than Conventionally Indirect Strategy Category (CI) and Direct Strategy Category (DC) However the justification for this similarity in the low frequency of using the NI by native Australian and Vietnamese speakers is divided This could be ascribed to the difference in the assumption of face and politeness regulated by the difference in the cultural features of Australian and Vietnamese community Native Australian speakers appreciate individualism and respect individual freedom of action The NI or the offerer’s too Indirect offerings as Hints could lead to further imposition of prolixity and obscurity on the offeree and impose the burden of inferential task of the illocutionary force on the offeree in order to know the offerer’s intention In this way, Hints could threaten the offeree’s negative face As a result, the NI is restrictly used by native Australian speakers Meanwhile, native Vietnamese speakers put a high value on collectivism, which has been influenced by Confucianism (rooted from China) whose leading principle is “humanism or keeping warm human feeling between people and this relationship is reciprocal” (Huu Ngoc [64, p 264]) According to this principle, mutual solicitude among in-group members is stimulated As a result, offering assistance to other people who are in need or difficulty is regarded as a FEA for both the offerer and the offeree Accordingly, offering is not popularly carried out too indirectly (with Hints) but directly or conventionally indirect 6.1.2 The Use of Modifications - The Modifications used in the offering by native Australian and Vietnamese speakers are also different The majority of the Modifications used in the English offering are Syntactic Downgraders or Softeners, i.e to soften the impact of the offering, normally expressed by the levels of structural indirectness with the use of Tense, Aspect, Mood to avoid the risk of imposition on the offeree and to show the greater degree of linguistic pessimism characteristic of negative politeness On the 196 contrary, more Mood Words mainly Social Deixis and Pr Ps could be used as Upgraders or Strengtheners to show the greater degree of linguistic optimism typical of positive politeness in offering by the native Vietnamese speakers Truly, the overwhelming means expressing politeness in Vietnamese rests on such Social Deixis or Honorifics as Addressing Terms, Formal Semantic Items, and especially the HP ¹ used not only within the Head offering but also beyond it These Social Deixis constitute a closed system of Politeness Markers, the use of which is mandatory and provides strict social constraints on the polite language use Other Pr Ps could function either as the Indicator of offering or as mitigating and normally aggravating Internal Modifiers or External Modifiers These Pr Ps may occur on their own or in combination or in clusters of two, three or even more to produce cumulative effects on the speech act of offering In addition, the amount of Preparator or/and Disarmer or/and Grounder that precedes or follows the Head offering together with the Social Deixis used in these Supportive Moves also has a profound impact on the illocutionary force of the offering to express politeness in Vietnamese offering This difference may result from the language category and culture diversity Concerning language category perspective, Vietnamese is a noninflectional language (Xtankªvich N.V [137, p 125]) Therefore, the affective meaning of the speech act of offering and the offerer’s polite attitude towards the offeree are expressed by such Mood Words as the Social Deixis including Addressing Terms especially Kin Terms for non-relatives, Formal Semantic Items and HP ¹ as well as other Pr Ps functioning as the Indicators or the Modifiers of the speech act of offering On the contrary; English is an inflectional language (Xtankªvich N V [137, p 125]), in which the syntactic means (rather than Mood Words) such as Tense, Aspect and Mood are the main devices to express the level of politeness in the offering in English With regard to the culture aspect, native Vietnamese speakers belong to the collectivism and hierarchical culture where showing solicitude to other in-group members of higher , lower or equal status is highly appreciated Offering is then a 197 FEA As a result; Kin Terms to non-kins, Formal Semantic Items or HP ¹ used as a norm to show adherence to the hierarchy in Vietnamese society together with other overwhelming Strengthening Pragmatic Particles by native Vietnamese speakers could normally strengthen the offering to enhance the solidarity in the community Regretedly, the use of these social-norm oriented Mood Words is not brought into focus in Brown and Levinson’s and many other Western researchers’ strategic or volitional politeness theory By contrast, native Australian speakers are pertaining to the individualism and egalitarianism culture in which non-interference into other people’s affair and equality is expected Therefore offering more often as a FTA due to the more likely risk of imposition on the offeree could be commonly expressed by native Australian speakers via the Softening structural Indirectness to show their distant attitude with other people for negative politeness rather than via the Strengthening Social Deixis and Pragmatic Particles as used by native Vietnamese speakers Nonetheless, this use of the structural Indirectness is not emphasized in many Eastern researchers’ normative or discernment politeness theory As a result, linguistic Politeness Markers in speech acts including offering should cover the two interrelated linguistic means to be universally accepted: (1) structural Indirectness Strategies and (2) Social Deixis expressed by Person Referring Terms especially KTs for non-relatives, Formal Semantic Items and HP ¹ and also other Pr Ps either as the Indicators or the Modifiers of the speech act of offering Native speakers speaking different languages of different language categories may have preference over structural Indirectness Strategy or Social Deixis and Pragmatic Particles at different degrees as the Politeness Markers to express linguistic politeness in speech acts including offering The dissimilarities in the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in English and Vietnamese could cause problems to Vietnamese learners of English and Australian learners of Vietnamese as a foreign language and also to intercultural communicators who may commit pragmatic errors due to the lack of pragmatic competence As regards these problems, the following implications could be suggested 198 6.2 Implications The findings of this thesis could help intercultural communicators of English and Vietnamese understand the interactive styles and the Politeness Markers in communication of other peoples and communities, which would help cast light on the socio-cultural stereotype and help these interlocutors avoid “culture shock” in their intercultural communication In addition, the empirical findings from this thesis could contribute to the better teaching of Vietnamese to native English speakers or English to native Vietnamese speakers As far as this issue is concerned, the knowledge of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic rules (Thomas J [84]) withdrawn from this thesis could help language teachers predict the likely pragmatic errors and design relevant syllabus and teach their students how to realize their speech acts including offering better to help them develop their pragmatic competence As regards the study of cross- cultural communication, this piece of work could bring to light the importance of socio-cultural values in regulating the interactive styles of a community It is true that polite behavior is so deeply engrained in social life and so much influenced by social norms that it is almost impossible to study politeness without analyzing the social rules behind it (Yuling P., [95, p.51]) Most importantly, the description and comparison of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese in this thesis could help the native Vietnamese learners of English as well as the native Australian learners of Vietnamese have a good insight into the speech act of offering so that they could better learn English and Vietnamese as a foreign language 6.3 Suggestions for further research I have so far provided a description and comparison of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese However natural communication is a co-operative activity which requires both productive and receptive strategies The meanings are negotiated and renegotiated depending on the offeree’s immediate reaction This study should then be supplemented with further 199 research into the discourse analysis aspect so that speech acts including offering could be more thoroughly studied Moreover, the data used in this thesis are primarily based on elicited samples of individual tokens of the offering withdrawn from the DCT However, these elicited samples have their limitations since such extralinguistic signals as gestures and intonation which may give important cues when offering are left out Therefore further study should apply the Ethnographic data collection method so as to obtain the more naturally occurring speech act of offering 200 ... degrees in Australian and Vietnamese cultures that may underlie the similarities or /and dissimilarities in the use of the Politeness Markers in the speech act of offering in Australian English and Vietnamese. .. the demand of the offeree 40 Therefore the offering in English according to Rabinowitz J F could be either a FTA or a FEA but more often a FTA against the offerer and the offeree than a FEA Consequently,... similarities in the Politeness Markers (P Ms.) used in the offering in English and Vietnamese? In order to establish the basis for the comparative analysis of the Politeness Markers used in the offering