(Luận văn thạc sĩ) a cross cultural stydy of pauses and time fillers in some american and vietnamese films

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PAUSES AND TIME-FILLERS IN SOME AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE FILMS (Nghiên cứu giao văn hóa việc sử dụng quãng lặng yếu tố khỏa lấp số phim Việt Nam Mỹ) M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60 22 15 HA NOI - 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PAUSES AND TIME-FILLERS IN SOME AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE FILMS (Nghiên cứu giao văn hóa việc sử dụng quãng lặng yếu tố khỏa lấp số phim Việt Nam Mỹ) M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60 22 15 SUPERVISOR: Prof Dr Nguyễn Quang HA NOI - 2010 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ABBREVIATIONS Part A INTRODUCTION I Rationale .1 II Scope of the study .2 III Aims of the study .2 IV Methodology V Design of the study Part B DEVELOPMENT Chapter I Theoretical preliminary 1.1 Language, culture and communication .4 1.1.1 Language and communication .4 1.1.2 Language and culture 1.1.3 Communication 1.2 High-context culture vs low-context culture 1.2.1 Definitions and main differences 1.2.2 Entering high and low context situations 10 1.3 Non-verbal communication 12 1.4 Paralanguage .13 Chapter II Silence/ Pauses and Time-fillers 2.1 Silence/ Pauses 15 2.2 Time-fillers .17 Chapter III Findings and discussion 3.1 Research methods .19 3.1.1 Subjects 19 3.1.2 Research questions .20 3.1.3 Research method and data collection instruments .20 v 3.2 Findings and discussion 21 3.2.1 Vietnamese findings 21 3.2.1.1 Availability .21 3.2.1.2 Proportionality 23 3.2.1.3 Manifestability 25 3.2.2 American findings 27 3.2.2.1 Availability .27 3.2.2.2 Proportionality 29 3.2.1.3 Manifestability 32 3.2.3 Concluding remark 34 Part C CONCLUSION I Summary of major findings 35 II Limitations 36 III Suggestions for further study .36 References 37 vi LIST OF TABLES Vietnamese findings: Table 1: Number of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) Table 2: Number of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) Table 3: Number of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) Table 4: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) Table 5: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) Table 6: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) American findings: Table 7: Number of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) Table 8: Number of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) Table 9: Number of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) Table 10: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) Table 11: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) Table 12: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) vii ABBREVIATIONS SP Social Power HC High Context LC Low Context NVC Nonverbal Communication TF(s) Time-filler(s) ( -) Pause PART A INTRODUCTION I RATIONALE At the beginning of the 21st century, it is beyond question that English has become the lingua franca, the language used for communication across territorial and cultural borders Crystal (2003: 120) states that “English has become a global language because it has been at the right place at the right time” English is considered the universal language and its contribution towards such fields as business, international communications, entertainment, tourism, trade and technology, is undeniable‟ People learning and using English are increasing dramatically in number worldwide It can be seen that, because of the heavy demand of cross-cultural interaction, the development of telecommunications, and the appearance of communicative approaches in language teaching and learning, the study of speech acts in communication appears inevitable The last few decades have witnessed a great change for the better in the relationship between Viet Nam and the US Many cross-cultural activities have been performed between the American and the Vietnamese However, it is observed that, in cross-cultural interaction, people tend to focus much more on linguistic factors than on cultural factors For example, it is customary for the Vietnamese to extend such greeting routines as „Bác/ cô/ chú/ anh/ mày làm đấy?‟, „Bác/ cơ/ chú/ anh/ mày đâu đấy?‟; so, when communicating with their Anglophone friends, they simply transfer their cultural practices into „What are you doing?‟ or „Where are you going?‟ In the English-speaking cultures, such greeting routines are considerably embrassing, especially in the initial meeting The lack of appropriateness in language use may lead to misinterpretation, misunderstanding and miscommunication Communication breakdown might very much be the case Therefore, the study of Vietnamese-American cross-cultural differences in speech acts is obviously necessary Silence/Pauses and time-fillers exist in all social interactions in any culture They are used to show respect, anger, hostility, disinterest, or any other emotions However, when and how to use time-fillers or silence/pauses are not the same in different languages and cultures Therefore, the study of similarities and differences of using silence/pauses and time-fillers in interaction would help not only for the success of American-Vietnamese cross-cultural communication but also in communicative language teaching/learning II SCOPE OF THE STUDY Although intralinguistic (vocabulary, grammatical rules, phonetic rules ) and extralinguistic (facial expressions, postures, proximity ) factors, to a great extent, play a vitally important role in communication, they are beyond the scope of this study This study only focuses on pauses and time-fillers in some American and Vietnamese films for the discovery of major similarities and differences between the two groups This research is confined to studying only the factor of power [colleague to colleague (equal); boss to employee (high to low); and employee to boss (low to high)] that are readily manageable and lend themselves to quantitative analyses Similar plots, characters and scenes that involve similar communicative events/ situations are intentionally chosen for contrastive analysis III AIMS OF THE STUDY The aims of the study are: - To investigate the use of silence/pauses and time-fillers under the variables of power in chosen situations in some American and Vietnamese films - To find out major American- Vietnamese cross-cultural differences and similarities in using silence/pauses and time-fillers in the situations under investigation IV METHODOLOGY The main method of this study is the quantitative one All the considerations, remarks, interpretations, comments and assumptions given in the study are largely based on data analysis with due reference to publications The data were collected from four American and four Vietnamese sociopsychological films The instrument to construct validation is used to tap individual assessment of social power (SP) V DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study consists of three parts: Part I Introduction, which provides the rationale, scope, aims and methods of the sudy Part II Development, which consists of three chapters Chapter Theoretical preliminaries This chapter covers the relationship between language and culture, language and communication, cross-cultural communication, high-context and low-context culture, non-verbal communication and paralanguage Chapter Silence/pauses and Time-fillers This chapter reviews the issues relevant to the study including silence/ pauses and time-fillers Then the notions of silence/ pause and time-filler definitions and usages are discussed Chapter Findings and Discussions The strategies of using silence/pauses and time-fillers are identified and major cross-cultural differences and similarities discussed Part III Conclusion, in which the main findings are reviewed, the implications for crossculture interactions, the limitations of the study pointed out and suggestions for further research offered PART B DEVELOPMENT Chapter Theoretical preliminaries 1.1 Language, culture and communication 1.1.1 Language and communication By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts These unique abilities of communicating through a native language clearly separate humans from all animals In 1994, in Time magazine, an article appeared titled „How man began‟ Within that article was the following bold assertion: “No single, essential difference separates human beings from other animals” Yet, in what is obviously a contradiction to such a statement, all evolutionists admit that communication via speech is uniquely human - so that it often is used as the singular, and most important, dividing line between humans and animals In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Jones, Martin, and Pilbeam (1999) concede that there are no non-human languages, and then go on to observe that language is an adaptation unique to humans, and yet the nature of its uniqueness and its biological basis are notoriously difficult to define In his book, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrance Deacon (1997) notes: In this context, […], consider the case of human language It is one of the most distinctive behavioral adaptations on the planet Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, except in the most general sense And the differences between languages and all other natural modes of communicating are vast Language is the development of the basic form of communication between human beings, and in a society And just as it is the basic form, it is also the most developed We can not communicate in any real sense without language, other than through 25 utterances and the duration of time-fillers (which occur adjacently to pauses or occur to fill in the pauses) in such speech, where the speakers communicate naturally at work Table shows the average duration of pauses in the conversations between the boss and employee, which is measured 39 sec., making up more than 90%, while timefillers are only sec (less than 9%) In the boss‟s turn, pauses are used more frequently and the length for each is 1.5 sec to sec.; most of the pauses are used to show the feeling of „difficulty‟ between the boss and the employee On the other hand, from the data, the power of the boss over the employee is strongly felt through the use of pauses and time-fillers Table shows the average duration of pauses in the conversations of the employee to the boss Not surprisingly, the length of pauses is 58.5 sec (more than 87%), the highest in the three types of power relation, whereas time-fillers occur only in sec totally (13%) An analysis of the selected conversations of the employee to the boss reveals that the employees tend to use more pauses in their speech than time-fillers Most of the author‟s colleagues who are requested to analyze these conversations believe that the silence/pauses and time-fillers could be the reflection of diversified emotions, not only negative as sadness or anger but also positive as happiness or satisfaction However, pauses in the selected situations seem to suggest that the employee simply wishes to implicitly show his/her respect to his/her boss by resorting to pauses for the right diction and time-fillers against embarrassment Table shows that, in the colleague-to-colleague relationship, the speakers tend to use pauses and time-fillers more frequently The pauses used in these cases are 44.5 sec., making up over 60%, while time-fillers are 26 sec., accounting for less than 40% The data suggests that the short pauses (between - 2sec.) also occur in speech of all subjects Most pauses (70%) are shorter than sec and there are very few pauses which are longer than 0.2sec From the three tables above, the data indicate that power is very important because different power relationships present different percentages of pauses and timefillers 26 3.2.1.3 Manifestability When speaking, we all experience time when we can not seem to think of a particular word we want to say, or when we need more time to organize our thought before we speak; we sometimes use silence/pauses or add time-fillers to give us extra time we need In Vietnamese, there are common time-fillers, for example: ừ, à, ừm, ờ, anh/cậu biết đấy, để nghĩ xem nào, nói nhỉ, kiểu, kiểu như, etc (Nguyen Quang: 110) The study also examines the location where silence/pauses and time-fillers occur The collected data show that time-fillers are found mainly before syntactic constituents such as clauses For example: “…à…ừm mang cho Uyên tham khảo” (Film: Lap trinh trai tim) Or “ à…ừm… Hương biết đấy… điện thoại bị hỏng” (Film: Co gai xau xi) And, silence/pauses are also found before predicate VPs, and before compliments, another location where silence/pauses frequently occur is within an NP constituent, such as between a modifier and a head noun Following are some examples: (a) “( -)Thực cháu viết xong cách bốn hôm.” (Film: Phia truoc la bau troi) (b) “Chúng em đọc qua chương trình ( -) khơng chạy lại ạ.” (Film: Lap trinh trai tim) (c) “Lỗi ( -) tôi.” (Film: Lap trinh trai tim) (d) “Trước sau muốn làm cơng tác giảng dạy, cịn ( -) cơng tác ( -) quản lí ( -) anh nên chọn người khác hợp hơn.” (Film: Mua la rung) In the situations under investigation, most of the responses where silence/pauses and time-fillers are found receive a positive attitude from the listeners Most of the listeners show their satisfaction to the speakers However, whether the location of 27 silence/pauses and time-fillers is considered negative or positive depends also on other components of the situation For example: (1) A: “Đi uống tách cà phê nhé!” B: “Được thôi.” (2) A: “Đi uống tách cà phê nhé!” B: “( -) Được thôi.” (3) A: “Đi uống tách cà phê nhé!” B: “…à…mm…Được thôi.” B‟ : “Để nghĩ mm thôi.” In the first situation, the response is considered to be positive when the listener shows his/her willingness with the answer right after the question In the second, the pause before the answer can be understood as the respect of B to A‟s invitation, and it is a positive pause And in the third situation, the response appears with time-fillers (à, mm, để nghĩ nhé) before the answer and it could be considered as negative time-fillers although the answer itself is positive 3.2.2 American findings 3.2.2.1 Availability Spontaneous human speech is normally disfluent Speakers pause, hesitate, interrupt themselves mid-phrase or mid-word, repeat or replace words, abandon phrases to start afresh, and season their talk with some expressions, such as: ah, oh, am, mm, like, you know, or, so, I mean, let see, kind of, in fact, I don’t know, well, etc (Nguyen Quang: 110) In the previous section, we have tried to dispel or at least clarify some myths about the availability, proportionality and manifestability of silence/pauses and timefillers in some Vietnamese films In this section, we go on examining those criteria in some American films In order to answer the research questions, this present study estimates the rate of using silence/pauses and time-fillers in American films The characteristics of silence/pauses and time-fillers are reported in a style of spoken discourse and in the 28 same setting (at work): 34 dialogues (17 dialogues between colleagues and 17 dialogues between the boss and the employee) The data are collected from the dialogues between different powers: colleagues (equal), boss to employee, employee to boss, and then calculated so that the author can get a direct comparison The distribution of silence/ pauses and time-fillers according to the relationship of characters is presented in the following table: Table 7: Number of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Silent pauses 14 0 14 0.15 0.2 Time-fillers 29 0 29 0.15 0.2 43 0 43 Total Total Min sec Max sec Table 8: Number of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Total Min Max sec Sec Silent pauses 0 0.15 0.15 Time-fillers 10 0 10 0.15 0.15 17 0 17 Total Table 9: Number of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Silent pauses 0 0.15 0.2 Time-fillers 20 0 20 0.15 0.15 28 0 28 Total Total Min sec Max sec To answer the second research question, a frequency count of the silence/pauses and TFs used by all speakers are done The total number of Ps and TFs is 88 and 67 % of 29 these are TFs and 33 % are silence/pauses The most common TFs are “you know” and “ah/mm” Across the speaking styles of different power, TFs are considered more frequently in the dialogues between colleagues, while silence/pauses are frequently occurring in the dialogues between employee to boss with the power of the boss to the employee From the collected data, we can observe that there are interesting differences between pauses and time-fillers within each style In dialogues between colleagues, 33% of the pauses are silent and 67% are time-fillers which occur adjacently to pauses Similar result can be found in the dialogues of employee to boss where 29% of pauses are silent and the rest are time-fillers In the speech of the boss to his/her employee, on the other hand, silent pauses are the most commonly occurring type In the short dialogues we have used as examples, we see that in the conversations of low to high power, silence/pauses were relatively shorter than in the last two styles In the three styles, pauses could be roughly divided into two groups, shorter pauses and longer pauses The longer pauses are few in number and occur after sentence boundaries In addition, we have found that even very small differences in the timing of pauses and time-fillers can lead conversationalists to develop negative or positive attitudes toward each other 3.2.2.2 Proportionality Tables 10 to 12 show the proportion of pauses to utterances and the duration of time-fillers (which occur adjacently to pauses) compares to the total duration of pauses In the conversations of the employee to the boss, the proportion of pauses is seen to be longest The data indicate that in the interaction to the boss, the employee may use longer pauses, for example, when the boss talks to the employee that she needs him for the outside working hours, he immediately answers “No” and then is his hesitation and pauses: Boss: I need you around this weekend, have any problem with that? 30 Employee: No, ( -)It’s my ( -)it’s my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday I’m going home and ( -)it’s fine I’ll cancel The duration of the pauses in this case is calculated for 1.5 sec (min) and sec (max) Table 10: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (between colleagues) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec Silent pauses 14 0 23 sec 0.15 0.2 Time-fillers 29 0 58 sec 0.15 0.2 43 0 81 sec Total Table 11: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (boss to employee) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec Silent pauses 0 sec 0.15 0.15 Time-fillers 10 0 12 sec 0.15 0.15 17 0 20 sec Total Table 12: Duration of pauses and time-fillers (employee to boss) 1.5~3 sec 4~7 sec sec.~ Total Min sec Max sec Silent pauses 0 14 sec 0.15 0.2 Time-fillers 20 0 40 sec 0.15 0.15 28 0 54 sec Total When examining pauses and time-fillers, we can distinguish these two types in their duration quite clearly Tables 10 to 12 show the average duration of pauses to utterances and the duration of time-fillers (which occurred adjacently to pauses or occurred to fill in the pauses) in such speech, where the speakers communicate naturally at work Table 10 shows the average duration of pauses in the conversations between the colleagues which is measured of 23 sec., makes up nearly 30%, while time-fillers are used more frequently and get the count of more than 70% Data also point out that in the relationship of equal power, pauses are used quite frequently but the duration is not so 31 long, most of them attempt to cover pauses with unnecessary and undesirable time-fillers, such as: uh, mm, you know, (I) just, like, and, etc For example: Oh, Judy, I just ( -) you know, none of you like me, so, I don’t blame (Film: Smart people) In the collected data about the boss speech, pauses and time-fillers are used very few, and, take a small look at the result shown in table 11, the silence/pauses and TFs appear in the boss‟ speech are very short, about sec to 1.5 sec Most of the pauses here aims to give turns rather than any other aims of pauses The data also indicate that the pauses appear in the boss‟ speech pass very quickly and usually covered with TFs For example, when the employee said that he felt uncomfortable about the boss‟ decision of publishing his article, the boss used some very short pauses and few TFs: For example: Employee: I told you, I ( -)haven’t finished it yet Boss: No, No, It’s good I meant your article is really good I have to admit that I was shocked ( -) it’s ( -) smart and ( -) ah ( -) finding, of course, it’s fun (Film: 27 dressed) The analysis of the pauses that indicate the turn exchanges between interactants shows that the length of the pauses varies according to the kind of informational content of the passage and to speaker status as shown in the exchange turns between the employee and the boss in Table 12 The employee's pauses are longer than the boss's because he needs arguments to make the boss change his mind Another factor is the status of the interactants: the boss is viewed as a symbol of authority and high power while the employee is the one who is considered of low power The boss always responds faster than the employee, that is to say, the employee takes longer to take his turn, because he needs strong arguments to convince the boss that his requests are fair On the other hand, from the data, we have a clear representation of the power of boss to employee Table 12 points out the average duration of pauses in the conversations of the employee to the boss Very surprisingly, the length of pauses here 32 was 14 sec totally, more than 20%, highest in three styles of chosen powers, whereas the time-fillers occur in 40 sec totally, 80% Take an analysis on the chosen conversations between the employee to the boss, we see that most of the employee would like to use more TFs in their speech than pauses Most of my colleagues and friends were asked to analyze these conversations gave their idea that: Employees often have ideas, information, and opinions for constructive ways to improve work and work organizations Sometimes these employees exercise voice and express their ideas, information, and opinions; and other times they engage in silence/pauses and withhold their ideas, information, and opinions Employee silence/pause can occur in any organization Specifically though, employee‟s silence/pauses occur in most organizations where communication is suffering The silence/ pauses and time-fillers could be the reflection of many different emotions; The TFs in the chosen situations pointed out that the employee had no intention except the expression of respect and the demand of thinking and choosing the next right words or phrases The data in tables reveal the rate of pauses and time-fillers duration is quite different In the colleague relationship, the speakers tend to use pauses and time-fillers more frequently The pauses used in these cases are 23 sec., make up 30%, while timefillers are 58 sec., make up 70% The data also show that the short pauses (between 1-2 sec.) occur in speech of all subjects All the counted pauses showed that there are no pauses which are longer than 2sec From the three tables above, the data indicate that the power is very important because different powers present different percentages of pauses and time-fillers in each of the categories according to length 3.2.1.3 Manifestability In order to examine silence/pauses and TFs more comprehensively, not only is it important to study the availability and proportionality, but also the manifestability in the conversations Therefore, the location where silence/pauses and time-fillers occur is also examined in this study The collected data point out that silence/pauses and time-fillers are found to occur mainly before syntactic constituents as before clauses: 33 Example: “No, No, I just ( -) I just think, It hasn’t been perfect, and , I want to rewrite, so ( -), we should hold off” (Film: 27 dresses) Or: “Oh, let see, the bride wore like a princess” (Film: 27 dresses) Beside the above place, the location of silence/pauses and time-fillers also be found before predicate VPs (a), and before compliments (b), another location where silence/pauses and time-fillers frequently occur is within an NP constituent (c), such as between a modifier and a head noun (a) “Before you start saying anything, you just ( -) not say anything.” (Film : 27 dresses) (b) “ Yes, why you ( -) remember that, Jane?” (Film : 27 dresses) (c) “It’s ( -) fun, you know, cheerful way” (Film: 27 dresses) Or: Boss: “What’s going on here? Who’s she?” Employee: “Ah, No, you know, she is ( -) my friend.” (Film: Enchanted) In the examined situations, the data suggest that most of the responses where silence/pauses and time-fillers are found received a positive attitude from the listeners Most of the listeners show their satisfaction to the speakers However, the location of silence/pauses and time-fillers is considered negative or positive depends mostly on the situation, for example: (1) A: Would you like to go to the movies? B: No, thanks (2) A: Would you like to go to the movies? B: Uh ( -) no, thanks B‟s response to A‟s invitation in (1) appears quite sharp and abrupt The form of the declination strongly suggests that B dislikes A or does not wish to be with A In 34 contrast, the effect of the declination is softened in (2) The time-filler and a short pause here almost seems to say, “please get ready, I am about to decline your invitation” This contrast can be explained in terms of the preservation of harmony In conversation interaction, interlocutors are constrained by social norms to preserve harmony between them 3.2.3 Concluding remark * Major differences: As shown in the results, the occurrence, length and frequency of pauses and time-fillers in Vietnamese films greatly differ from American ones across role relationships in terms of power In the Vietnamese films, it is found that speakers use pauses at highly varying rates; and they tend to use silence/pauses much more than TFs Pauses appear very frequently and naturally in the chosen dialogues Besides, the proportionality of TFs in the selected conversations is consistent among speakers By contrast, it is observed that, in the American films, the speakers tend to use TFs much more than pauses and long silence is very rare Pauses by American characters are normally shorter than those by Vietnamese characters Most of the pauses are followed by TFs * Major similarities: The findings show that most of TFs are used as expressions of nervousness, hesitation, embarrassment, word choice or verbal struggle The data also indicate that Uh (ờ) signals a forthcoming pause that will be short and Um(ừm/mm) signals a longer pause No pauses are found and measured after TFs such as: you know(anh biết đấy), like (kiểu như), just(chỉ là), so (vì thế), and (và) Silence/Pauses are found as: - providing a type of punctuation - emphasizing a point - drawing attention to a key thought - allowing listeners a moment to contemplate what is being said - giving turns 35 They make the speech more effective than it might otherwise be Subdividing the silence/pauses and TFs into causal categories shows that the vast majority of them occur to select wording appropriate to the meaning the speakers wish to express PART C CONCLUSION I Summary of major findings Collected data of silence/pauses and time-fillers have been critically discussed and analyzed with three points of reference They are: availability, proportionality and manifestability Pauses and TFs have been investigated according to length, occurence and position It is discovered that different role relationships (with the factor of power in focus) in different situations require different patterns of silence/pauses and TFs in both Vietnamese and American films It is also found that such parameters as sex, age and education not seem to exercise any significant effect on the use of silence/pauses and TFs Previous works on English silence/pauses and TFs show that time-filler rates are related to demographic factors such as sex Men produce significantly higher rates of TFs than women However, the author‟s corpus does not reveal similar results in the Vietnamese selected films: sex does not have any significant effect on the use of silence/pauses and TFs In spite of that, characters‟ residence turns out to be significant The mean number of silence/pauses and TFs used by Southern speakers is higher than that of Northern speakers In addition, no significant effect of education on the use of silence/pauses and TFs is found The research presents initial results of a study on Vietnamese and American silence/pauses and TFs With three types of turn in terms of power (colleague-to- 36 colleague, boss-to-employee, employee-to-boss), it reveals that, apart from uh (ừm) and mm, the Vietnamese and American characters abundantly use phrases like you know, let see, anh biết đấy, để xem/ nghĩ nào/ nhé… as a common type of TF Vocal interferences [uh/mm (ừm)] differ in their distribution among syntactic contexts Lexical TFs are more likely to be accompanied by repetitions, false starts etc., while uh/mm are rarely accompanied by other disfluencies Finally, the collected data reveal that most of pauses and time-fillers tend to appear at some common positions, such as: before a clause, a predicate VPs, before complements or within an NP (as between a modifier and a head noun) Although more research on the availability, proportionality and manifestablity of silence/pauses and TFs in social interactions is needed, the results of this study suggest that how to make appropriate use of silence/pauses and TFs is considerably important in communication and communicative language teaching/learning Cross-cultural interactants and language learners should be aware of cross-cultural differences in the use of silence/pauses and TFs for avoidance of misinterpretation and miscommunication II Limitations Shortcomings in the study are obviously unavoidable It is reasonable to say that the data collected from films are not as authentic as that of real-life conversations What is more, this study does not take into account speaker‟s mood, feeling and attitude which appear before or after they pause or use TFs; so it does not help see how that emotion and attitude affects speakers‟ speech and how their pragmatic performance develops Furthermore, being a novice linguistic researcher, the author lacks experience and knowledge of the related field so as to be able to discuss thoroughly every similarity and difference in the realization of pauses and TFs III Suggestions for further study Many dimensions still remain uninvestigated, of which the followings would be suggested:  Silence/Pauses and Time-fillers in two dialogues and read speech 37  Silence/Pauses – Time-fillers in some famous people‟s speeches (Obama, Clinton, Castro )  The influence of communicating partners‟ parameters on the use of silence/pauses – time-fillers * * * Though this research has been conducted with its author‟s greatest effort, 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Langton, N (2001), Organizational Behavior: Concepts, Controversies, Applications Prentice Hall Press Terrence, W D (1997), The symbolic species: The co-evolution of Language and the brain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication data: 25 From: http://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-Evolution-LanguageBrain/dp/0393317544#reader_0393317544 Vietnamese film: Mùa rụng Vietnamese film: Lập trình trái tim Vietnamese film: Phía trước bầu trời Vietnamese film: Cơ gái xấu xí – Tập 69 American film: Enchanted American film: Smart people American film: The ugly truth American film: 27 dresses ... Data are collected in some Vietnamese and American films and analyzed against the three reference points of availability, proportionality and manifestability to find out major similarities and. .. Vietnamese and American colleagues and friends who have already seen them + The author believes that the study of the American and Vietnamese films made in the US by American crews and in Vietnam... differences between American and Vietnamese characters (and hopefully, the American and the Vietnamese) in using silence /pauses and time-fillers The main approaches include: + Statistical method + Descriptive