Conjunctions in some english and vietnamese newletters a contrastive analysis m a thesis linguistics 60 22 15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀNG HUẾ CONJUNCTIONS IN SOME ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSLETTERS: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS (PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU LIÊN TỪ TRONG MỘT SỐ BỨC THƯ NGỎ TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60.22.15 HA NOI- 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀNG HUẾ CONJUNCTIONS IN SOME ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSLETTERS: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS (PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU LIÊN TỪ TRONG MỘT SỐ BỨC THƯ NGỎ TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60.22.15 SUPERVISOR: PHẠM THỊ THANH THÙY, Ph.D HA NOI- 2012 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ……………………………………………………… Acknowledgements …………………………………………………… List of tables…………………………………………………………… Abstract ……………………………………………………………… Table of contents ……………………………………………………… PART 1: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………… Rationale for the study ……………………………………………… Aims of the study …………………………………………………… Scope of the study ………………………………………………… Methods of the study ……………………………………………… Design of the study ……………………………………………… PART 2: DEVELOPMENT……………………………… CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND………………… 1.1 An overview of Newsletters………………………………… 1.1.1 Definitions of Newsletters……………………………… 1.1.2 Types of Newsletters…………………………………… vi 1.1.3 Formats of Newsletters…………………………… 1.1.4 English and Vietnamese Marketing Newsletters……… 1.2 English and Vietnamese Conjunctions………………………… 1.2.1 English conjunctions…………………………………………… 1.2.1.1 Definitions of English conjunctions………………… 1.2.1.2 Classifications of English conjunctions……………… 1.2.2 Vietnamese conjunctions……………………………………… 1.2.2.1 Definitions of Vietnamese conjunctions……………… 1.2.2.2 Classifications of Vietnamese conjunctions………… 1.3 Related studies …………………………………………………… 1.4 Summary………………………………………………………… CHAPTER 2: CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF CONJUNCTIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE MARKETING NEWSLETTERS…………………………………… 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………… 2.2 Contrastive analysis of conjunctions in English and Vietnamese Marketing Newsletters………………………………… 2.2.1 Frequency of using conjunctions in English and Vietnamese Marketing Newsletters…………………………………… 2.2.2 Similarities and Differences in conjunction usages in English and Vietnamese ………………………………………… vii 2.2.2.1 Similarities……………………………………… 2.2.2.2 Differences……………………………………… 2.3 Summary………………………………………………………… PART 3: CONCLUSION…………………………………………… Recapitulation……………………………………………………… Implications………………………………………………………… 36 2.1 Implications for EFL teaching and learning………………… 2.2 Implications for translating………………………………… Contributions of the study…………………………………………… Limitations of the study……………………………………………… Suggestions for further research…………………………………… REFERENCES ……………………………….………………… APPENDICES PART 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study In the world of cooperation and development, English has become an international language and effective means of communication bringing nations throughout the world close together English is said to have played a very important role in the development of commerce, trade, education, technology, economics, etc in almost every country especially in Vietnam’s integration into the world Therefore, it is necessary to know how to use English correctly and communicatively In the process of learning English, having good knowledge of English grammar is of great importance, for one can express his/her ideas, feelings or emotions not only by separated words but also by meaningful sentences formed grammatically Thus, the importance of grammar is the researcher’s first reason for choosing this topic The second reason the writer chooses conjunctions to study is that when grammar is under discussion, most people tend to appreciate the significances of tenses, aspects, voices, order of clause elements rather than conjunctions Conjunctions, functioning as connectors and transition signals, actually play an important role in linking sentences, paragraphs, or clauses each other Apart from this, thanks to conjunctions, various kinds of grammatical sentences are formed such as compound sentences and complex sentences One more reason that has inspired the researcher to the topic is her deep interest in English Commerce, especially in newsletters The fact is that, a newsletter is regarded as a form that many companies use to promote their products It serves as a smaller version of the newspaper to create good relationships with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders It goes without saying that newsletters contribute towards the overall success of the business Newsletters are also known as consultant letters, so they need to have the logic and coherence to attract customers Besides, conjunctions are seen as an essential means of linking so as to increase the persuasion in newsletters Therefore, studying and finding the similarities and differences in conjunction usages in English and Vietnamese Newsletters will be of great help to the writer in teaching economic students at Hoa Lu University where the author is working Aims of the study The research firstly aims to study conjunctions used in English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters and then explore the similarities and differences based on the syntactic and semantic features between them At the end of the study, some implications for teaching, learning and translation will be covered as useful resources To fully achieve these aims, the study should answer the following questions: How frequent are conjunctions in English and Vietnamese Newsletters? What are the similarities and differences in conjunction usages in English and Vietnamese Newsletters? Scope of the study Many topics relating to conjunctions as well as lots of types of newsletters in different fields need to be exploited For the feasibility of a minor M.A thesis, the writer narrowed the scope of the paper The main focus is on the descriptive and contrastive analysis of conjunction usages in English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters with respect to the syntactic and semantic features Methods of the study The study has been carried out based on a combination of different methods, among which the main method is contrastive analysis In fact, according to Carl James (1980), contrastive analysis (CA) is defined as a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted two-valued typologies (a CA is always concerned with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared For the contrastive analysis method, English is considered to be the target language and Vietnamese - the source language - a means to contrast The author has taken 40 samples of both English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters (20 English and 20 Vietnamese ones) to compare and contrast This method involves two steps: describing the syntactic and semantic features of conjunctions in English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters, then comparing and contrasting to point out the similarities and differences between these two languages Together with this method, the writer also uses the quantitative method that is based on data to examine conjunctions used in both English and Vietnamese Supporting techniques such as reference to the publication, consultation with the supervisor, discussion with colleagues, and personal observations are also of great significance Design of the study The study consists of three main parts organized as follows: Part entitles “INTRODUCTION” outlining the background of the study in which a brief account of relevant information such as rationale, aims, scope, methods, and designs of the study will be presented Part 2, the “DEVELOPMENT” is subdivided into two chapters Chapter – Theoretical background, as its name suggests, covers a series of concepts about English and Vietnamese conjunctions and an overview of newsletters The writer also introduces some famous studies related to conjunctions as a source to develop this thesis In Chapter 2, the researcher focuses on “Contrastive analysis of conjunctions in English and Vietnamese Marketing Newsletters” The author analyzes and contrasts how to use conjunctions in English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters based on the syntactic and semantic features to find out the similarities and differences in the two languages Part 3, the CONCLUSION, is the last part of the study which summarizes what has been done, what has not been covered, accompanied by suggestions for further study Some possible implications for language teaching, learning and translation are given at the end of this part with a view to providing a new insight into a very important device of linking in English and Vietnamese PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 An overview of Newsletters 1.1.1 Definitions of Newsletters According to Edward A Hamilton (1996) in the book “Newsletters Design”, a newsletter is an ambiguous term It is defined as a condensed periodical used to communicate specialized editorial information He explains briefly that “condensed” means it is shorter than the average newspaper or magazine and provides lots of information in limited space; “periodical” means it is published regularly; “specialized” means it focuses not on a broad subject area such as finance, but on a subject-within-a-subject such as real estate finance, not on organizations in general, but a specific organization From the point of Nadeem Hussain’s views, in the article “Advantages and th disadvantages of Newsletters” published on September 18 , 2008, a newsletter is defined as a form of advertising that is sent periodically It is considered as a popularly effective marketing tool, it provides relevant and updated information of the products or services of the organization for the existing clients or customers In another persuasive definition written by Chuck Green (2002), a newsletter is one of the best ways to keep the company’s name in front of the eyes of the clients, the associates, and others that may be in the company’s market target And sending newsletters to customers is a common marketing strategy which can bring many benefits for the company 1.1.2.Types of Newsletters In his book “Design it Yourself Newsletters” written by Chuck Green (2002), he describes three basic types of Newsletters or models of newsletters including Marketing Newsletters, Relationship Newsletters, and Expert Newsletters The author also shows that each type of newsletter has its own characteristics The first type is Marketing Newsletters They are commonly used by businesses to promote a product or a kind of service It is also known as a company newsletter The marketing newsletter tries to turn prospective customers into patrons The second type is Relationship Newsletters Some examples about this type are club newsletters, employee newsletters, church newsletters, and school newsletters They focus on the shared interests of the target audience or reinforcing a relationship The last type is Expert Newsletters This type can be very exclusive or be paid These newsletters generally focus on a specific topic and the recipient is someone who has specifically requested the information in the newsletters and is willing to pay for the information 1.1.3 Formats of Newsletters According to Janice Byer in the article “Newsletters are smart marketing” th published on August 12 , 2010, newsletters can be produced in several formats For businesses, the most economical and most readily acceptable newsletter formats are plain text emails, HTML emails, and HTML page on the website, PDF, and print The author also shows that each newsletter format has its own advantages and disadvantages and they are shown on the table below: Format Plain Text Email Eas Eas Cos Vis HTML Cos 37 they are very happy” Thereafter, it is highly advisable for teachers to exploit suitable methods in teaching English conjunctions in order to inspire learners and facilitate their learning In the first place, teachers should emphasize important transitions so that students have more chance to recognize those transitions and understand how the semantic relationships between sentences and paragraphs are manifested by conjunctions Therefore, realizing the role of conjunctions is an essential task for learners Secondly, based on dividing conjunctions into types (coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions and correlatives) teachers can give explicit explanations of the conjunction usages in each type to help students not confuse Moreover, the importance of examples should never be neglected In Zamel’s (1983) research, he states that the usage of sentence combining and the longer units of discourse can “provide students with examples of the type that need to be created in order to teach linking words and relationships they signal.” Thirdly, the discussions on conjunctions in many grammar books focus on their intra-sentential level instead of their inter-sentential level That is, their main teaching points are on the syntactic functions of using conjunctions Teachers should provide more exercises or activities for students to be familiar with the usage of those inter-sentential conjunctions Besides, teachers should focus on designing many types of exercises for learners to practice until they are proficient in using English conjunctions Lastly, English learners had better investigate the use of conjunctions in authentic materials so that they can learn how to use conjunctions in such an effective way That is to say, the only way to improve understanding of conjunctions is to realize their functions in linguistics and then try to practice their usage as much as possible And as can be seen from our study, marketing newsletter is a very good example of these types of materials, especially to students major in Economics Study 38 2.2 Implications for translating Translation is a process of interpreting a text either in the form of speech or writing from one language (the source language) into another (the target language) into an equivalent text To achieve the best translation equivalence, translators must take into account the grammatical rules of the two languages, their writing conventions, their conjunctions The biggest problem translators must face with conjunctions is their meanings It is not too difficult to learn their syntactic features but mastering their semantic features is really a challenge Through the comparison between English and Vietnamese, it is advisable for interpreters and learners is that they should pay much attention to using two couple conjunctions “Tuy/mặc dù…nhưng…” and “bởi vì…nên….” As discussed above, these couple conjunctions are popularly used in Vietnamese sentences, but they never exist in English to have: Although … but/ though … but, because … so Secondly, translators should analyze the connotative meaning of conjunctions and find an alternative means of translation; if possible, understanding cross cultural notes between English and Vietnamese are helpful hints for translating implied conjunctions from Vietnamese into English For example, the meaning of coordinator “but” is not popular in English; yet, Vietnamese is rich in this use of “nhưng” The link by “nhưng” was implied in the connection of two sentences in which one has a denotative meaning while the other has a connotative meaning This is illustrated in the following sentence: “Anh Phong thông minh anh Hoàng đẹp trai.” In this example, “nhưng” cannot be easily translated as “but” because it does not seem to convey all the connotative meaning of the sentence There is no measure of comparing smartness, a quality of human intellect with handsomeness, a feature belonging to people’s appearance Actually, there are two hidden comparison between Phong and Hoang One is “Phong is smarter than Hoang”, other is “Hoang is more handsome than Phong” This viewpoint was best justified by Nguyễn Lai (2006) He emphasizes that if only studying conjunctions as a tool, a sign of expressing grammar relationships, not yet paying attention to 39 their ability in contributing to the expression of the sentence’s meaning and their functions in communication activities is not sufficient to understand the value and function of conjunctions Therefore, in this case, if we translate “nhưng” into “but”, this leaves a tough but interesting task for translators to explore the way of describing the hidden meaning in Vietnamese Contributions of the study This study provides three main contributions to the research on conjunctions in the field of SLA The first contribution is the thesis’s addition to the previous studies about conjunctions, especially the very limited studies acquired by Vietnamese learners Secondly, the present study is the first to conduct a contrastive analysis of syntactic and semantic features of English conjunctions as well as Vietnamese conjunctions to find out the similarities and differences unveiled in Marketing Newsletters so that readers, particularly students major in Economic Study can deeply understand how to use conjunctions in both languages Last but not least, the study gives some useful implications for teaching, learning and translating conjunctions in general As a result, these implications can be applied as a general framework or model for teaching conjunctions This is extremely significant for EFL learners in particular Limitations of the study The scope of the study has limited this research to certain areas, leaving behind not a few matters that need to be revealed One thing that the researcher left unresolved in this study is that it only focuses on the contrastive analysis of syntactic and semantic features across two languages: English and Vietnamese Owing to the time constraints and the requirement of the minor M.A research, the writer has been unable to explore other features of conjunctions to help teachers and learners of English have a thorough understanding of their usages The second limitation of the study is that the number of English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters taken to analyze does not really cover all kinds 40 of conjunctions Therefore, there can be some more similarities and differences in the use of conjunctions in both languages that the researcher has not discovered Moreover, the paper only focuses on finding the similarities and differences in conjunction usages in English and Vietnamese marketing newsletters, other aspects such as the format of newsletters have not been studied The last limitation is due to the limited knowledge and experience of the author, the thesis inevitably remains some mistakes and shortcomings Suggestions for further research The present research has provided all sorts of conjunctions in English and Vietnamese Moreover, the writer also has conducted a contrastive analysis in terms of syntax and semantic features to find the similarities and differences between them This may be considered the first step in linguistic research Hopefully, this will pave the way for further studies on this subject with a larger scope, going far from what the writer has mentioned such as: - Studying on the significance of conjunctions as a cohesive device in teaching writing Conducting a corpus-based investigation of conjunctive usages in the Vietnamese students’ writing 41 REFERENCES  English Alice, O & Ann, H (1990), Writing Academic English, second edition, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company 2.Arthur, M (1992), The Oxford Companion to English Language, OUP 3.Ashley, A (2003), A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence, OUP 4.Bergman, C A (1989), Health grammar and Composition, Houghton Mufflin English 5.Berk, M (1999), English Syntax: From word to discourse, OUP 6.Brown, A C (1987), Grammar and Composition, Houghton Mufflin English Byer, J (2010), Newsletters are smart marketing, published on th August 12 , Article Source: http://www.easyhowto.com/articles/Newsletter Chalker, S (1967), Current English Grammar, Macmillan Publisher Ltd Close, R A (1975), A Reference English grammar, Longman Group 10 Cobuild, C (1990), English Grammar, Collins Publisher, London 11 Green, C (2002), Design it yourself Newsletters, Published in the United States of America 12 Hamilton, E A (1996), Newsletters Design, Published in the United States of America 42 13 Hussain, N (2008), Advantages and disadvantages of th Newsletters, published on September 18 , 2008, Article Source: http://www.justsearchseo.co.uk 14 Huddleston, R (1944), Introduction to the grammar of English, Cambridge University Press 15 Lashkari, L (2007), Newsletter Formats – How to easily choose the perfect format for your newsletters, published on th January, 19 , Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/? expert=Ladan_Lashkari 16 Mallery, R (1967), Grammar, rhetoric and composition, Doubleday and Company, Inc 17 Quirk, R & Greenbaum, S (1973), A University Grammar of English, Longman Group UK Limited 18 Swan, M (1995), Basic English Usage, Oxford University Press 19 Zamel, V (1983), The composing processes of advanced ESL students: Six case studies TESOL Quarterly, Vol 17, No 2, 165-187 20 Zames, C (1980), Contrastive analysis, Longman Group Ltd 21 http://www.hp.com/hho/smb_hp_create/ newsletters.html  Vietnamese 22 Diệp Quang Ban (1993), Ngữ pháp Tiếng Việt, tập 1, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 23 Lê Thị Bích (2000), A contrastive analysis of English coordinators and/or/but and Vietnamese equivalents, Luận văn tốt nghiệp đại học, Đại học Ngoại ngữ- Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội 43 24 Nam Cao (1943), Đời thừa, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 23 Nam Cao (1946), Chí Phèo, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 25 Anh Đức (1970), Giấc mơ ông lão vườn chim, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 26 Nguyễn Thanh Hương (2002), A study on English conjunctions, Luận văn tốt nghiệp đại học, Đại học Ngoại Ngữ- Đại học quốc gia Hà Nội 27 Nguyễn Lai (2006), Ngữ nghĩa liên từ Tiếng Việt, Nhà xuất Đại học Sư phạm TP Hồ Chí Minh 28 Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh (1994), Tiếng Việt đại (Ngữ âm, Ngữ pháp, Phong cách), Trung tâm biên soạn từ điển bách khoa Việt Nam 29 Hoàng Thế (1990), Ngôn ngữ học, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 30 Hồng Trung Thơng (1998), Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt đại, Nhà xuất Giáo dục 31 Từ điển (2002), Bách khoa Việt Nam, tập 2, Nhà xuất bản: Từ điển Bách khoa, Hà Nội I APPENDIX ENGLISH CONJUNCTIONS IN ENGLISH MARKETING NEWSLETTERS N0 English Newsletters GET International Newsletter Exellerator Newsletter Tuga CR Newsletter Technical Newsletter Power Transform Newsletter "In the Black" Newsletter Power Team Newsletter Mind Set Newsletter Rooney's Root Newsletter 10 The Edge Newsletter 11 IBM Company Newsletter 12 "Keeping the Best" Newsletter 13 Mosiac Xpressions Newsletter 14 Numbalums Newsletter 15 Turrisi Insights Newsletter 16 NS Charney Newsletter 17 Toyota Newsletter II 18 Douglas Newsletter 19 Michelin Company Newsletter 20 Givenchy Company Newsletter Total Table 2.1: English conjunctions in English mar III APPENDIX VIETNAMESE CONJUNCTIONS IN VIETNAMESE MARKETING NEWSLETTERS N0 Thai Son Tien Phong Company’s Newsletter RMIT Newsletter Bourjois Company’s Newsletter Hapaco Group’s Newsletter Seabird Tours Company’s Newsletter Vina-Giay Company’s Newsletter Vinalands Company’s Newsletter EXPO Newsletter Hong Ngoc Advertising’s Newsletter 10 Lan Newsletter 11 Fiditour Company Newsletter 12 Trung Thuc Trade and Services Limited Company's Newsletter 13 Sac Mau Printing and Advertising Limited Company's Newsletter 14 Trung Son Cement Newsletter 15 Bao Newsletter 16 T&C International Travel Newsletter 17 Anh Son Freight Services Newsletter Anh Tin IV 18 Khang Nghi Package Printing Limited Company's Newsletter 19 Trung Chinh Audio Devices Limited Company's Newsletter 20 Telecommunications Joint Company - Stock Total Table 2.2: Vietnamese conjunctions in Vietnamese marketing newsletters V APPENDIX ENGLISH CONJUNCTIONS IN ENGLISH MARKETING NEWSLETTERS N0 English conjunctions And Or But When Because However Both … and Though/ although Not only … but also 10 Neither … nor 11 So 12 While 13 Since 14 In addition 15 In order to 16 As 17 If 18 If … then 19 After 20 Besides VI 21 Either … or 22 So that 23 For example 24 What’s more 25 Nevertheless 26 yet 27 If so 28 If … yet 29 Rather than 30 In other words 31 Until Total Table 2.3: English conjunction VII APPENDIX VIETNAMESE CONJUNCTIONS IN VIETNAMESE MARKETING NEWSLETTERS N0 Vietnamese conjunctions Và (and) Hoặc (or) Nhưng (but) Vì vậy, vậy, lẽ (so/ hence/ therefore) Hơn (What’s more/ moreover) Tuy … (Although … but) Không … mà cịn (not only … but also) Vì, vì, lẽ (because) Vì … nên (because/since … so) 10 Nếu … (if… so) 11 Để (in order to/ so as to) 12 Ngoài (besides) 13 Nếu (if) 14 Tuy nhiên (However/ Nevertheless) 15 Trong (while) Total Table 2.4: Vietnamese conjunctions in Vietnamese marketing newsletters ... formats are plain text emails, HTML emails, and HTML page on the website, PDF, and print The author also shows that each newsletter format has its own advantages and disadvantages and they are... has been carried out based on a combination of different methods, among which the main method is contrastive analysis In fact, according to Carl James (1980), contrastive analysis (CA) is defined... Vietnamese Taking English and Vietnamese conjunctions into comparison, the study finds out the main similarities and differences on syntactic and semantic features as follows: 2.2.2 Similarities and