A cross cultural study of giving compliments and responses in english and vietnamese

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT ==== ==== A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO THOA VĂN HÓA VỀ CÁCH KHEN VÀ ĐÁP LẠI LỜI KHEN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT ) GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: LINGUISTICS Student: TRUONG THI THANH CANH, 47A1 Supervisor: BUI THI THANH MAI (M.A) Vinh - 2010 i Acknowledgement I would first like specially to thank Mrs. Bui Thi Thanh Mai (M.A), my supervisor, for her whole – hearted help and invaluable advice. Without her guidance, my thesis is far from completed. I would also like to thank Mrs. Tran Ngoc Yen (M.A) for her kindly support. She encourages me to have self- confidence to do this research. I want to acknowledge the help of Miss Sofia for her advice when I conduct the list of questionnaire. She provides important information that the author uses to have a suitable survey questions. My gratitude goes to Mr. Tinh (M.A) who teaches at ASEM Vietnam center for his essential materials and advice. Last but not least, I give a very special thanks to my family and classmates, who always stand by me, provide their emotional support through out the process I do this paper. ii ABSTRACT Many people who communicate cross-cultural boundaries have experienced communication breakdowns with people from different first language backgrounds. It also happens to any one who wants to give compliment on a person from another country. The main purpose of this thesis is to raise the aware of culture gap. It is done, focused on the comparison of the ways of giving compliment and responding to compliments between the English and the Vietnamese. Using the authenticable data from survey, which is conducted with 30 native speakers in each culture, this research is carried out with three sub-aims: (1) to find out similarities and differences between two cultures in the way they perform speech act of compliment; (2) to investigate the culture factors that have influence on the word choice of interlocutors; (3) to enrich the knowledge of second language learners about the importance of culture factor in leaning target language. The result also illustrates the fact that people in two cultures are very friendly. They tend to give compliments a lot. However, what they compliment on, how they give and respond to, it differs. How detailed the information is it? The readers will find the answers in the next chapters of the thesis. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract Abbreviations . Part A: Introduction 1. Rationale . 2. Aims of the study . 3. Scope of the study 4. Methods of the study 5. Data collecting procedure 6. Design of the study Part B: Development Chapter I: Theoretical Background 1.1. What is Pragmatics? . 1.1.1 What is Speech acts . 1.1.2 Compliment as a speech act 1.2. Cultural communication 1.2.1. Notion of culture 1.2.1.1. Cross-cultural communication 1.3 Positive – negative politeness Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents 2.1Topics of compliment . 2.1.1 .Topics of compliment in English . 2.1.1.1 Appearance 2.1.1.2. Skill or talents . 2.1.1.3 Work accomplished 2.1.1.4 Possession 2.1.2 Topics of compliment in Vietnam iv 2.1.2.1 Appearance 2.1.2.2 Skill or talents 2.1.2.3 Work accomplished 2.1.2.4 Possession . 2.1.3. A contrasive analysis 2.1.3.1 Major similarities 2.1.3.2. Major differences . 2.2. Giving compliment strategies . 2.3: Compliment response strategies in English and Vietnamese equivalents 2.3.2. English findings . 2.3.1. Vietnamese findings 2.3.3. A contrastive analysis 2.3.3.1 .Major similarities 2.3.3.2. Major differences Chapter III: Some suggestion for giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents. 3.1. Some suggestions 3.1.1. What do we compliment on? 3.1.2 How do we give a compliment? 3.1.3 How to respond to compliment. 3.2. Suggested teaching application Part C. Conclusion 1. Review major findings . 2. Suggestion for further research . References APPENDIX v ABBREVIATIONS H The hearers S The speakers E The English V The Vietnamese HA Highly advisable A Advisable Y/N Yes or No IA Inadvisable CR Compliment response VoE Vietnamese students of English. vi Interaction skill Cultural knowledgeLinguistic knowledge Communicative competence PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Nowadays the increasing diversity of the modern classroom, in which second language learners form a community, poses the need for language learners care for enriching the knowledge of the country where their target language is spoken. To have this knowledge, they have to master many factors such as: language, culture, economy, biography, history… Among those elements, culture plays an important role in widening the knowledge of language in use or context of conversation for the learners. Therefore, “        ” (Radolph Quirk). This relation leads to the need of improving what we call , which contains sub-factors as shown in the following; Communicative competence Linguistic knowledge Interaction skill Cultural knowledge Verbal factors Awareness of predominant eatures in context Social structures Non – verbal factors Choice and interpretation of forms, suitable to specific contexts roles and Values and attitudes Stereotypes in specific speech events Communicative strategies in order to gain oriented targets Cognitive diagram Possible continuums of variable Acculturation Meaning of variables in specific contexts Those factors are also represented in following diagram by him. 1 That knowledge is so important with language learners. Especially, nowadays, with opened- door policy, Vietnam enters the global stage, the importance of study target language is emphasized more than ever. We tend to direct our teaching and learning to modern way. However, here and there still exists the traditional method of learning and teaching language, which focuses on rote memorization of grammatical and lexical components of language. The fact has proved that, it is not suitable in the development of modern society. It cannot help language learners become effective language users. To promote the knowledge of the learners about this problem there are many studies of famous theorists on kind of speech act such as: making request, asking for permission, giving apology but not many of them focus on speech act of compliment. This is also the interesting topic attracting the author’s interest because it requires a great deal of pragmatic insight by the speaker and therefore are often rich with data that reveal the cultural orientation of language learners. (In many languages, compliment responses require the language user to walk a delicate line between appearing too boastful or ungrateful depending on the way s/he responds to the compliment.) Hopefully, this paper with realistic data base will provide useful material for language learners. 2. Data collecting procedure 2 As one important part of this thesis, collecting data procedure took the author a rather long period of time to do it. This survey was conducted by 30 native informants in each culture. In this paper, the term “English” refers to the people who speak English as their mother tongue such as English, American, New Zealand, and Australia . The questionnaire is the combination of open and close ended questions, which contain three main parts: The first one is to find some general information about informants which are used to explain some unexpected findings during the process of writing. The second part, the author asks the participants to rank the topics of compliment given by researcher into the order from 1 to 4, which stand for four groups “highly advisable, advisable, yes or no and inadvisable”. And the last is conducted with the aim to study in specific situations. There are two main situations set and ask informants to give their ideas about: How do they give compliment and respond to it. These compliments focus on two topics are: Appearance and achievement. Even though there are some inconveniences when completing this research, it is valuable and deserved to be considered. 3. Scope of the study - This research focuses on the cross - cultural study to find out the similarities and differences between the English and Vietnamese in the ways they give and respond to compliments. Determined by its aims, this paper tries to find the answers for three following questions: *What do people in the two cultures often compliment on? * How to give a good compliment? *What kind of strategies do they use to respond to compliments? - The analysis is only based on the authentic result collected from the survey. - Furthermore, it is because of the variety of language, this paper is considered in relative not restrict standard. Moreover, with the limitation of a graduation thesis, sometimes some factors can be omitted such as: age, marital statue, area of living They are only taken into account when used to explain some information. In part two, 3 only four popular topics are suggested, not the entire one in daily communication. It is similar in part three, the most popular topics in use with compliment in both cultures are  and  Besides, this thesis only focuses on different cultural aspect which aims to develop communicative skills. It does not go into detail study of paralinguistic and some other aspects of speech act compliment such as: - Paralinguistic factors: intonation, pitch . - Non-verbal language: gestures, facial expression, voice - Communicative environment like : place, distance, light 4. Aims of the study This paper is carried out with the aims: - Through the analysis, the researcher finds out some similarities and differences between the English and Vietnamese when they choose the ways of giving and responding to compliments. - With the difference, this study gives the explanation based on the of cross – cultural study - With the result found, the research emphasizes the importance of studying foreign language applied in culture context, which is to raise the awareness of communication breakdown. - To be as the useful material for second language learners who want to become fluent speakers. 5. Methodology To act such purposes, the author uses the following method: - Firstly, the author makes a survey with a list of questionnaire conducted by herself. After that, she collects the data and sorts it out into groups of information. - Secondly, the contrastive analysis method is applied when analyzing the data from the survey to find out the similarities and differences with the aim as stated before. - Thirdly, for the theoretical background, she applies some theory of some famous theorists to set the base for her research. 4 . Chapter II: A cross- cultural study of giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents Chapter III: Some suggestion for gving and responding. VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT ==== ==== A CROSS- CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN