AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF MODALITY MARKERS USED BY TEACHERS IN LECTURES IN ENGLISH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF MODALITY MARKERS USED BY TEACHERS IN LECTURES IN ENGLISH

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole, or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person's work has been used without acknowledgement in the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Danang, 2013 i ABSTRACT This thesis made a study into the linguistic features of webcomments on American Idol by American and Vietnamese in order to discover some typical linguistic features and then find out the similarities and differences in terms of the grammatical features, pragmatic features, commonly-used expressions and paralinguistic cues between these two kinds of webcomment on American Idol. The research was conducted based on the combination of a variety of methods, namely qualitative, quantitative, descriptive and contrastive analysis. 810 samples of AWAI and 810 samples of VWAI were collected from the internet for recent years. The findings showed that along with some similarities, there were a number of noticeable differences. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide useful knowledge to enable better use of webcomment languages in cross – cultural communication in American and Vietnamese. L2 learners interprete webcomments and achieve effective communication on the internet. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair .ix Ways of classifying speech acts .ix CHAPTER 1 1 INTRODUCTION .1 CHAPTER 2 6 LITERATURE REVIEW 6 AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .6 2.2.3. Conversational theory 11 Among various types of daily commnunication, conversation is observed as the most popular and familiar one. The mutual talking of people observed everyday in fact implies many interesting but rather complex problems. Conversation action is joint action (Clark, 1987), not to individuals talking, but a pair of people conversing, a speaker and an addressee, or more than just two people interacting with each other, and the participants coordinate on both context and process. Many researches that have been done in the field of conversations, have given many definitions as follows: .11 - Conversation is the means by which we draw near to one another with sympathy and pleasure it is the basic of our social activity. [7, p.550] .11 - Conversation is the means by which we draw near to one another with sympathy and pleasure; it is the basic of our social activity. [10, p.105] .11 - Conversation is an informal talk in which people exchange news, fellings and thoughts. [18, p.302] .11 - Conversation is the language communication between people and people. [10, p.105] .11 - Conversation is a friendly, natural talk in which people exchange information, ideas and emotions to one another. [10, p.612] .11 In Vietnam, there are some definitions of conversation 11 - Hội thoại là hoạt động giao tiếp căn bản thường xuyên, phổ biến của sự hành chức ngôn ngữ. Cách hành chức khác của ngôn ngữ đều được giải iii thích dựa vào hoạt động căn bản này. [42, p.276] .12 - Trong giao tiếp hai chiều, bên này nói, bên kia nghe và phản hồi trở lại. Lúc đó vai trò của hai bên thay đổi: bên nghe lại trở thành bên nói và bên nói lại trở thành bên nghe. Đó là hội thoại. [43, p.76] .12 - Hội thoại là một trong những hoạt động ngôn ngữ thành lời giữa hai hoặc nhiều nhân vật trực tiếp, trong một ngữ cảnh nhất định mà giữa họ có sự tương tác qua lại hành vi ngôn ngữ hay hành vi nhận thức nhằm đi đến một mục đích nhất định. [44, p.18] .12 a.Conversational structure .12 As an activity, conversation proceeds in a structural manner. Hence, the 12 bulk of work on analysing conversation, which has been carried out by many sociologists and anthropologists. Levinson has great contributions to field of conversational structure and organization. Units of the conversational structure are Turn, Adjacency Pair and Sequence .12 * Turn and turn-taking 12 A turn, according to Quirk et al. [30], is seen as everything one person says before another speaker begins to speak. .12 Conversation is said to be based on the coordination of the speakers and the recognised with the appearance of adjacency pairs, so it is preceded by a series of turns. The control of this process is turn taking. Schegloff [33] points out that a conversation can have two turns, the usual sequence is ababab where a and b are the parties of the conversation. The observation of turn- taking system is that speaker-change always occurs, and a person does not continue talking indefinitely, instead one person stops talking and another begins Wargh (1986) .12 * Adjacency pair 13 According to Schegloff [33], an adjacency is the smallest structural unit in conversation that is a sequence of two adjacent utterances produced by different speakers and related to each other in such a way they form a pair type 13 The adjacency pair always consists of a first part and a second part. The utterance of a first part immediately creates an expectation that constrains the possibility form a second part of the same pair .13 There is a class of first pair parts which include Questions, Offers, Greetings…For some first pair parts, the second pair part is reciprocal (Greeting-Greeting); For some there is only one appropriate second iv (Question-Answer), For some there are more than one (Complaint- Apology/Justification-negotiation). 13 Not all first parts immediately receive their second parts, however, Yule (1996) point out that a question-answer sequence will be delayed while another question-answer sequence intervenes. This is called “insertion sequences” .13 An insertion sequence is one adjacency pair within another. It is one of the strategies for delaying in response. Delay in response symbolically marks potential unavailability of the immediate expected answer. Delay represents distance between what is expected and what is provided. In order to see how delay is locally interpreted, we need some analytic terms for what is expected within certain types of adjacency pairs .13 The following table, adapted from Levinson [23, p.336], indicates of the consistent match between format and content found across a number adjacency pair seconds 13 Table 2.3: Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair .13 First part 14 Second part 14 Preferred 14 Dispreferred .14 Request 14 Acceptance 14 Refusal .14 Offer/ invitation .14 Acceptance 14 Refusal .14 Assessment 14 Agreement .14 Disagreement .14 Question .14 Expected answer 14 Unexpected answer or non-answer 14 Blame .14 Denial 14 Admission 14 b.Conversational principle .14 Conversational is an activity of human beings; it requires the sharing of information, experience, feelings and other matters. In order to get involved in a conversation and to achieve the best of their purpose of conversing, the v participants have to conform to some rules or principles designed specifically for this activity .14 * Cooperative principles 14 A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. This assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle. As stated in H. P. Grice’s “Logic and Conversation” (1975): “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” [14, p.45]. In other words, we as speakers try to contribute meaningful, productive utterances to further the conversation. It then follows that, as listeners, we assume that our conversational partners are doing the same. The principle can be described by the following four categories which are called “maxims” 14 Maxim of quality: Say only what you believe to be true and adequately supported. Don’t say things that you believe to be false and do not make statement for which they have no evidence .15 Maxim of quantity: Be only as informative as required for current conversational purposes. It should be neither too little not too much .15 Maxim of relevance: Make your contribution relevant .15 Maxim of manner: Make your contribution brief, clear, present it in an orderly fashion, avoid ambiguities and obscurity 15 Grice’s principle and maxims actually form a fundamental part of any understanding of conversation as a cooperative activity. However, he points out that speaker do not always follow all of these maxims. They may violate, exploit the maxim especially when implicature or a “white lie” is communicated. In these cases, one may highly respect a maxim but ignore others. It can be seen that the four maxims helps to sustain conversations, the speech act of negotiation sequences as well as other speech acts also requires the above-mentioned maxims to be considered so as to maintain a harmonious conversations .15 * Implication .15 Grice [14] gave out an approach which was called conversational implication that is a case in point what a speaker implicates is distinct from what he says and from what his words imply .15 With cooperation and shared knowledge, other participants will recognise the purpose of a speaker through violating or conforming to certain maxim. The participants base on the presumption to make a contextually driven inference from what the speaker says to what the speakers means. vi Grice proposed that implication like the second sentence can be calculated from the first, by understanding three things: .15 The usual linguistic meaning of what is said 16 Contextual information (shared or general knowledge) 16 The assumption that the speaker is obeying what Grice calls the cooperative principle .16 CHAPTER 3 23 METHOD AND PRECEDURE 23 CHAPTER 4 28 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 28 CHAPTER 5 96 CONCLUSIONS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS 96 REFERENCES 102 [35] Tran, M.T., Tran, T.C. (2007), Chào Bạn!: an Introduction to 105 QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI (Bản sao) APPENDIX vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AWAI : American webcomment on American Idol AI : American Idol CMC : Computer-mediated communication H : Hearer L2 : Second language S : Speaker VWAI : Vietnamese webcomment on American Idol viii LIST OF TABLES Number Name of Tables Page 2.1 Crystal’s spoken language criteria applied to Netspeak 10 2.2 Crystal’s written language criteria applied to Netspeak 11 2.3 Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair 14 2.4 Ways of classifying speech acts 17 4.1 Phrases found in AWAI 28 4.2 Sentence types found in AWAI 32 4.3 Complete sentences found in AWAI 33 4.4 Tenses found in AWAI 42 4.5 Voice found in AWAI 45 4.6 Phrases found in VWAI 46 4.7 Sentence types found in VWAI 49 4.8 Complete sentences found in VWAI 50 4.9 Phrases found in AWAI and VWAI 54 4.10 Sentence types found in AWAI and VWAI 54 4.11 Frequency of politeness strategies found in AWAI 57 4.12 Frequency of politeness strategies found in VWAI 63 4.13 Frequency of politeness strategies found in AWAI and VWAI 69 4.14 Commonly-used expressions found in AWAI and VWAI 92 4.15 Paralinguistic cues found in AWAI and VWAI 97 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. RATIONALE Since the Internet was officially launched worldwide in the years 1990s, the chance for people all over the world to interact and connect with others has been increasing faster, more easily and conveniently than ever. A myriad of Internet sites offer various forms of feedback mechanisms that make these sites very interactive and interesting. Seeing comments on a website creates an impression of an active audience and that the website is alive (Kraut and Resnick in Press) thereby webcomment is becoming increasingly popular in the world. This type of language started recently with the introduction of instant messaging and is particularly trendy with teens. This "new language" consists of shortening words by taking away some of the letters and using capital letters or punctuations, etc. I choose to study webcomments in the thesis for the following reasons: Firstly, as ‘new forms of computer-mediated communication- unrestricted as to content and form guidelines – allow users total freedom for individual expression. This makes webcomments the perfect choice for exploring linguistic expression of individual differences’. Secondly, ‘ due to the global dominance of the USA in the later half of the twentieth century, American spelling is increasingly accepted and found in British publications’ (Crystal,2001). Moreover, USA had more Internet users than the UK (NUA Internet Surveys, 1999). This has a great effect on English learners in Vietnam. A linguistic study of webcomments on American Idol by American and Vietnamese is preferred to bring about their basic linguistic features so as to help (Vietnamese) American English learners, especially those who are increasingly online for writing, posting and viewing comments. 1