Politeness strategies manifested in conversations in the quiet america = chiến dịch lịch sử thể hiện qua lời hội thoại trong tác phẩm người mỹ trầm lặng

1 Acknowledgement This study would have never been finished without the support of my dedicate teachers, friends and family members First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Ng« §×nh Ph¬ng, who has given me detailed instructions, valuable advice and critical comments during my researching process I am indebted to my teachers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, especially Mr TrÇn B¸ TiÕn, who have provided me with many useful references I would also like to say thank-you to Ms Mindy Schout and Ms Sandy Gannon who have helped me edit my writing Last but not least, my sincere gratefulness goes to my family and my friends whose love and encouragement have contributed to the completeness of the thesis Vinh, May 15, 2005 §Æng ThÞ M¹nh politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” FTA : 2 H : S : Abbreviations D : P : Face Threatening Act R : Hearer/Addressee e.g : Speaker/Addresser i.e : Distance et al : Relative power Absolute ranking of imposition For example That is to say and others politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 3 Table of contents 1 Acknowledgement Page 2 Abbreviations i 3 Abstract ii 4 Part A: Introduction vi 5 Rationale 1 Aims of the study 1 1.1 Scope of the stud 2 1.1.1 Methods of the study 2 1.1.2 Design of the study 3 1.1.3 Part B: Development 3 1.2 Chapter 1: Theoretical background 4 1.2.1 Speech acts 4 1.2.2 Definition of speech act 4 1.2.2.1 Locutionary, illocutionnary and perlocutionary 5 1.2.2.2 Classification of speech acts 5 1.2.3 Politeness 6 1.2.3.1 What is politeness? 8 1.2.3.2 The conversational-maxim view on politeness 8 1.2.3.3 Politeness rules 9 1.2.3.3.1 Politeness maxims 9 1.2.3.3.2 The face-management view on politeness 1.2.3.4 Face 10 Face threatening acts 15 2.1 Politeness strategies 15 Positive politeness strategies 16 2.1.1 Negative politeness strategies 17 2.1.2 Social factors affecting politeness 18 2.1.3 Chapter 2: Politeness strategies manifested 19 2.1.4 20 2.1.5 in conversations in “The Quiet American” 2.1.6 22 2.1.7 Positive politeness strategies manifested in “The QuiThe Quiet 22 2.1.8 2.1.9 American” 22 Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods) 23 2.1.10 Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H) 23 2.1.11 Strategy 3: Intensify interest to H 24 2.1.12 Strategy 4: Use in-group identity markers 25 2.1.13 Strategy 5: Seek agreement 25 2.1.14 Strategy 6: Avoid disagreement 26 Strategy 7: Presuppose / raise / assert common ground 27 Strategy 8: Joke Strategy 9: Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge of and concern for 28 28 H’s wants 28 Strategy 10: Offer, promise 29 Strategy 11: Be optimistic 29 Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity 29 Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 4 2.1.15 Strategy 15: Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation) 30 2.1.16 Strategy 16: Encourage 30 2.1.17 Strategy 17: Ask personal questions 30 30 2.2 Negative politeness strategies manifested in “The QuiThe Quiet American” 2.2.1 Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect 30 2.2.2 Strategy 2: Question, hedge 31 2.2.3 Strategy 3: Be pessimistic 32 2.2.4 Strategy 4: Minimize the imposition 33 2.2.5 Strategy 5: Give deference 33 2.2.6 Strategy 6: Apologize 34 2.2.7 Strategy 7: Impersonalise S and H 34 2.2.8 Strategy 8: State the FTA as a general rule 36 2.2.9 Strategy 9: Nominalize 36 2.2.10 Strategy 10: Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H 36 2.3 Politeness strategies manifested in "The Quiet American" seen from S-H relationship 37 2.3.1 Lovers 39 2.3.2 Friends 39 2.3.3 Wife – husband 39 2.3.4 Acquaintances 40 2.3.5 Strangers 40 Chapter 3: Application 42 Part C: Conclusion 46 References Appendix politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 5 Abstract The study is aimed at investigating how politeness strategies manifested in conversations in the novel "The Quiet American" It is compiled of three main chapters Chapter 1 reviews the major theories on politeness: Lakoff’s politeness rules, Leech’s politeness maxims and Brown & Levinson’s politeness strategies Chapter 2, which is based on Brown & Levinson’s framework, investigates the politeness employed by the characters of "The Quiet American" The research findings are discussed in two sections The first section deals with the manifestation of each strategy The result shows that characters of this novel mainly resort to positive politeness The second section is concerned with the variation of the proportion between positive and negative politeness depending on social relationship It attempts to provide possible explanation to the proportion in each case Chapter 3 suggests some possible ways to apply the study into language teaching The exercise given here will help to raise learner’s awareness of social and cultural elements in real communication in English This thesis can serve as a start for some further study politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 6 Part a: Introduction 1 Rationale 1.1 Language is the primary means of communication It is used as a vehicle to transfer information, ideas, opinions and emotions However, communication is not only an exchange of information, but also the sustainibility of a society Thus, communicative competence makes up a larger notion than language competence In mentioning communicative competence, Saville-Troike (1986:25) states that it involves three different aspects: linguistic knowledge, interactional skill, and cultural knowledge (cited in Le Thi Thuy Ha 2003 – MA Thesis) Hymes (1972) proposes that a speaker’s communicative competence should be the object of linguistic enquiry (cited in Carl James 1980:100) Learning a language cannot be separated from the practice of interactional skill and the acquisition of cultural knowledge, since language choice as well as the interpretation of language forms vary significantly depending on cultural and social contexts Vietnamese learners of English must know how to use English under the norms of English-speaking cultures In other words, people who only master the English languge codes will definitely fail in real communication using English Communication is only successful when a speaker is aware of what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately Therefore, in any language courses, teaching and learning about language choice is as important as learning about language forms One of the most important factors that determine the choice of language is politeness “The QuiWhen learning a second language, one needs to acquire the new culture’s politeness framework, which often is very different from that of one’s own culture” (Celce-Murcia et al 2000:26) If politeness is studied in more detail, the more useful to language teaching and learning it will become Politeness manifests itself in all forms of conversation: everyday conversations and conversations made by characters of literary/art works The manifestation of politeness in the former form of conversation has been largely discussed so far, yet in the latter form, it is still left as an open question This fact gives us the inspiration to work on how politeness is used in conversations in literary works politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 7 1.2 Literature has long been considered as a reflection of society and culture Language in literature changes remarkably depending on not only geographical, but also historical variations Thus, language choice in a classical novel is always different from that in a modern one Politeness forms used by classical characters are, therefore, definitely different from those used by modern characters In modern novels, the way the characters communicate has much in common with what we say in everyday life So the study of politeness forms in modern novels is particularly useful for teaching and learning languages For all of the above reasons, we choose “The QuiPoliteness strategies manifested in conversations in “The QuiThe Quiet American” to be the theme of this thesis 2 Aims of the study The aims of this thesis are: - To emphasize the importance of politeness in human communication, especially in cross-cultural communication - To study the utilities of positive and negative strategies in converstions between characters of an English literary work - To provide/suggest practical implications of politeness strategies in teaching and learning English 3 Scope of the study Of all aspects of politeness, the study only deal with verbal ones Paralinguistic and non-verbal factors are not discussed in here This thesis focuses on positive and negative politeness strategies based on Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theoretical framework Off-record politeness strategies, politeness rules and politeness principles are beyond the scope of the thesis The data analysis is based on utterances in conversations between characters in “The QuiThe Quiet American” – a modern novel by the English novelist Graham Greene This novel was written in 1952 and is set in Vietnam It tells the story of a British journalist called Thomas Fowler and an American named Pyle who is known as an officer of the Economic Aid Mission Both of them work in Saigon and are in love with the same politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 8 Vietnamese girl – Phuong The spinal plot of the novel is the struggle of the two men to win Phuong’s heart In parallel, it reveals who Pyle truly is and describes Fowler’s inner struggle to choose a ‘side’ of the war to support Apart from that, the novel also gives us a vivid image of the south of Vietnam, especially Saigon in the 1950s – a vivid picture of social as well as people’s mental life Conversations among characters of this novel reflect their inner feelings and their cultural background so well that they can serve as a reliable source of data for linguistic analysis in general, and politeness study in particular Most of the examples given in chapter 2 this thesis are taken from this novel, and reference is made when they are taken from other sources 4 Methods of the study - Revision of theoretical publications - Quantative method - Analysis of collected data 5 Design of the study The thesis comprises of three main parts: Part A: Introduction This part discusses the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study Part B: Development This part is subdevided into three chapters: Chapter 1: Theoretical background Chapter 2: Politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “The QuiThe Quiet American” Chapter 3:Applications Part C: Conclusion This part reviews major findings of the study and suggests some directions for further works politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 9 part B: Development Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Speech acts Since the early twentieth century, Oxford-based philosophers have observed the relationship between philosophy and language following two different trends One trend, followed by Moore, was to look at the “The Quilanguage of common sense” The other trend, followed by Bertrand Russell and others, was to view that everyday language “The Quiis somehow deficient or defective” They claimed that it is rather debased, ambiguous, imprecise and contradictory; and they aimed at refining the language by removing its imperfections and illogicalities so as to create an ideal language In response to this, Austin (1962) observed that ordinary people can communicate effectively and fluently with language just the way it is We should not give any effort to deprive the language of its imperfections or flaws; instead, we should try to understand how people could manage to make full and effective use of ordinary language This reaction of Austin was the inspiration for him to develop the speech act theory, which was fully discussed and presented in the series of lectures that he gave at Oxford University between 1952 and 1954 These lectures were later collected and compiled into the famous book “The QuiHow to Do Things with Words” (1962) In the speech act theory, Austin studies what kinds of things we do when we speak, how we do them and how our acts “The Quisucceed” or “The Quifail” He first explored his idea as the “The Quiperformative hypothesis” Before the performative hypothesis was proposed, linguists believed that people’s utterances were always either true or false The approach they followed was called the “The Quitruth-conditional approach” Austin took another view and considered “The Quiwords as actions” According to him, most utterances have no truth-condition; there are no statements or questions but only actions He made a clear distinction between constative and performative Constative means an utterance can be judged as either true or false, for example, the sentence “The QuiHe is wearing a red shirt” is true if the color of the shirt that “The Quihe” is wearing is red, but it is false if the shirt is of a different color Performatives, politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” 10 however, cannot be judged in the same way Let us consider the sentence: “The QuiWill you marry me?” We cannot say whether this sentence is true or false, yet it should be best interpreted as the performance of an action - the action of proposing marriage So far, we have made it clear that people do not use language just to make propositions about the world They also use language to perform actions that may, in some way, change the world The actions may be performed via language explicitly or implicitly The former way creates explicit performatives, whereas the latter creates implicit performatives 1.1.1 Definition of speech act Originally, Austin (1962) claimed: “The Quiwe must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued – the total speech-act – if we are to see the parallel between statements and performative utterances” (1962:52) Later, G Yule (1996) termed this total situation “The Quispeech event” and simply defined speech act as follows: “The QuiActions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts and, in English, are commonly given more specific labels such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request” Today, the term speech act can be used interchangeably with illocutionary act The notion of illocutionary acts will be discussed in the next part of this study 1.1.2 Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts The action performed via an utterance always consists of 3 related acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts Locutionary act is the basis of utterance, the act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression People who are unable to form sounds and words to create a meaningful expression in a language (e.g., those who are tongue-tied or foreign) will not be able to produce a locutionary act In producing a well-formed utterance, people always bear in their minds some certain communicative goal, which is called the illocutionary act The illocutionary act is performed via illocutionary force – the communicative force of the utterance For example, when we produce the English locutionary act: “The QuiI’m studying”, we might want to give an announcement, a request or politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “the quiet American” ... Appendix politeness strategies manifested in conversations in ? ?the quiet American” Abstract The study is aimed at investigating how politeness strategies manifested in conversations. .. work in Saigon and are in love with the same politeness strategies manifested in conversations in ? ?the quiet American” Vietnamese girl – Phuong The spinal plot of the novel is the. .. facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (quoted in Tran Ba Tien politeness strategies manifested in conversations in ? ?the quiet