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

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 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 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 i Abstract ii Abbreviations iii Part A: Introduction Rationale Aims of the study 3 Scope of the study Methods of the study Data collecting procedure 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 11 1.2 Cultural communication 13 1.2.1 Notion of culture 13 1.2.1.1 Cross-cultural communication 14 1.3 Positive – negative politeness 14 Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents 2.1 Topics of compliment 17 2.1.1 Topics of compliment in English 20 2.1.1.1 Appearance 20 2.1.1.2 Skill or talents 21 2.1.1.3 Work accomplished 22 2.1.1.4 Possession 22 2.1.2 Topics of compliment in Vietnam 23 iv 2.1.2.1 Appearance 23 2.1.2.2 Skill or talents 25 2.1.2.3 Work accomplished 26 2.1.2.4 Possession 27 2.1.3 A contrasive analysis 27 2.1.3.1 Major similarities 27 2.1.3.2 Major differences 28 2.2 Giving compliment strategies 30 2.3: Compliment response strategies in English and Vietnamese equivalents 32 2.3.2 English findings 2.3.1 Vietnamese findings 2.3.3 A contrastive analysis 38 2.3.3.1 Major similarities 39 2.3.3.2 Major differences 40 Chapter III: Some suggestion for giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents 3.1 Some suggestions 41 3.1.1 What we compliment on? 3.1.2 How we give a compliment? 3.1.3 How to respond to compliment 3.2 Suggested teaching application Part C Conclusion Review major findings 48 Suggestion for further research 49 References APPENDIX v ABBREVIATIONS H S E The hearers The speakers 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 PART A: INTRODUCTION 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, “language and culture have to be studied together, and have to be brought into interactive relation in successful discourse” (Radolph Quirk) This relation leads to the need of improving what we call “communicative competence”, which contains sub-factors as shown in the following; Communicative competence Linguistic knowledge Interaction skill Verbal factors Awareness of Cultural knowledge predominant Social structures eatures in context Non – verbal factors Choice and interpretation of forms, suitable to Values and attitudes specific contexts roles and Stereotypes in specific Communicative strategies speech events order to gain oriented targets in Possible continuums Cognitive diagram Acculturation of variable Meaning of variables in specific contexts Those factors are also represented in following diagram by him Interaction skill Communicative 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 As one important part of this thesis, collecting data procedure took the author a rather long period of time to 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 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 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 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 people in the two cultures often compliment on? * How to give a good compliment? *What kind of strategies 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, 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 appearance and ability 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 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 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 13.50% 5% 11.50% 16.50% 5% 43.50% Appreciation taken Comment acceptance Praise up grade Scale down Joke Question Chart 2: Compliment response strategies in Vietnamese Having a cursory glance at the chart 1, we have a general idea that the Vietnamese tend to scale down the compliments (43,5% of ideas) Downgrades or refusals which put the receiver of the compliment in a situation where they could appear unappreciative of having received the compliment When they are used, it means that receivers of compliments not want to appear proud or boastful It seems that when receiving a compliment, most of us tend to scale down it because we think that is simple of modesty However, not all the time we refuse or scale down because we can accept if it is acceptable There are also 11,5% ppreciations strategy used Appreciations are often short and grammatically simple The most common one is „thanks‟ The listeners use it when they not want to talk much about the speakers‟ compliments Looking back at the information of informants, it seems that most of people who choose this kind of response are students, who are above 20 They like to use it because of its simple construction But it is a small number in comparion with the total of agreement group This is because of habit of the Vietnamese In general, the Vietnamese scale down or refuse compliments, in some case, they accept it but they tend to attack comment with agreement signal For example: “C m n! Rất vui vi b n th ch n !(“Than s! Glad you like it!”) One theorist stated that the Vietnamese compliment sequences rather long contain many words and seem to continue beyond the initial compliment and corresponding response This interaction between the speakers relate to sincerity of the compliment and the compliment response The longer interaction is, the greater the sincerity is 33 The third dimension of responding to compliment is joking, which has 13,5% choices This fact is corresponding to what we found in part I, the Vietnamese like joking Sometime it is for fun but sometime like another way of refusing for polite refusal From the table of data, there is appearance of the strategies “praise upgrade” (5%) Praise upgrade can put the person who receives the compliment in a position where they are potentially showing pride This is a characteristic that many language communities try to avoid, especially in the country which praises modesty like Vietnam This is time for the researcher to look at the survey to find information about participant It is shown that most of them are students, living in urban area They are young (above 20) It seems that they live in urban so they can be affected by foreign culture which connected to individual value They can pride on what they have Question strategy has the same pecentage to praise upgrade one (5%) In summary, it seems that, the Vietnamese use many strategies to respond to compliments and the dominant one is scale down This is the way that they show their modesty and politeness 2.3.3 A contrastive analysis To show clearly the similarities and differences between the two cultures in the ways they respond to compliments, the author illustrates the result on the chart below: 34 Chart 3: The comparion of using compliment strategies between Eglish and Vietnamese 60,0% 55% 50,0% 43,50% 40,0% 30,0% Vietnamese 20,0% 16,50% English 16,50% 13,50% 13,50% 11,50% 8,50% 10,0% 5% 5% 5% 1,50% 0,0% Appreciation token Comment acceptance Praise up grade Scale down Joke Question 2.3.3 Major similarities Firstly, it is noticeable that, most people in the two cultures are very friendly They often respond to compliment as well as give it It is observed from the Chart that, the responding strategies used by the people from two cultures variably with six main ones are: Appreciation taken, Comment acceptance, Praise up grade, Scale down, Joke and Question Obviously, in each culture, they tend to focus on one main strategy and the others play as support ones such as in English 55,% of choice are acceptance and in Vietnam is 43,5% are scale down Secondly, the proportion of using question strategies is small compared to the whole number Therefore, this strategy is considered as not popular one 35 2.3.3.2Major differences It is clearly to see that each culture likes to use different main strategies: the English prefer appreciation token (55%) and Vietnamese is scale down (43,5%) This difference refers to the division of negative and positive politeness The English use agreement acceptance like the way they want to be acknowledged by others for what they have It is kind of positive politeness Meanwhile, the Vietnamese often refuse the compliment although they deserved The reason for this difference is the Vietnamese follow the norms of modesty in their belief This way of thought belongs to negative politeness It is also reflected in daily conversation Whenever hearing another compliments, they often reply that: , c ng b nh th ng th i m ! Ho c l : Cái n y c r i m , h ng ph i m i âu! (“Oh! It normal” or “it is rather old, not exactly a new one) With the response strategy appreciation token, the number users in Vietnamese is much smaller that that in English, which count the percentage 11,5% and 55% respectively This is because of the difference in belief between two cultures One follows collectivism and other‟s is individualism In addition, Vietnam is a developing country while the English speaking countries belong to developed ones where the space of life is more rapid than that in Vietnam Western countries incline the usage of short form and quick answer Whereas, Vietnamese tend to extend conversation to keep close relationship and to prove that they care about speaker Another interesting result is a noticeable difference in scale down strategy The Vietnamese use this kind of response is much more popular than the English (43, 5% vs 8,5%) As many Vietnamese participants said that this is signal of humbles as their traditional concept The last finding is that the imbalance in the use of joking in responding to compliment The proportion of this strategy in Vietnamese is larger than that in English (13,5% and 5%) This result indicates the fact that the Vietnamese are very humorous They tend to show this characteristic in any situation 36 Chapter III: Some suggestions for giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents 3.1 Some suggestions 3.1.1 What we compliment on? From the result of the study, it is necessary to notice that the Vietnamese people, who live in neighborhood relationship and collectivism, compliment topics are abundant (except complimenting on a girl sexy beauty) Meanwhile, the English living in their individualistic environment, they avoid mentioning the personal topics such as age, money The second noticeable point is that if S want to compliment on English‟s ability, they should emphasize on achievement or work accomplished which was obtained through efforts And when talking with a Vietnamese, the compliment on talent is highly appreciated 3.1 How we give a compliment? We have just taken a look at what we should give compliments on However, would all compliments we pay to the beautiful women have the best effect? Would all the compliments we pay to the ones who are successful in work are highly appreciated? In fact it depends not only on what we comment on, but also on many other factors like the way we making it or the outside factors such as setting And this part will help you answer the question “How to make a good compliment?” With the factor of the speaker himself, whether he is in Vietnam or in Western countries, it is very important that he should show his sincerity Sincerity is the key to give compliments Voicing his favorable perception or reaction to someone or something is usually best simply stated A true compliment comes from the giver‟s heart and impacts the receiver‟s heart Compliments are often remembered long after they are spoken They can lift, heal, and inspire great things In addition, in 37 Western culture, they highly evaluate the compliment which uses the first personal pronoun “I” For example: “A beautiful shirt! I like it a lot” Moreover, it is necessary to notice to the addressee‟s information and environment; the outside factors have effect on the process of receiving compliment of H Besides, compliments should be appropriate with the setting For instance: S should tell some one who has just presented successful in a meeting that “Well done! Your presentation was very good” One more notice, S should acknowledge his relationship with the person he is complimenting For example, comment on his boss' new hair color only if two are long-time friends Last but not least, S should choose words carefully because a compliment in good taste and the right words at the right time is always welcome 3.1.3 How to respond to compliment Because the compliment‟s variety depends on cultural concept, it is necessary for the speaker to focus on cultural factors Vietnamese addressees like to show the modesty and humble so that rarely they accept the compliment for the first time If they do, they also often scale down it or attack some comments after that Whereas, it is normal when accepting compliment in English Therefore, if H is a Vietnamese, we should know how to speak to avoid being considered as a boastful person If he/she is an English, the directness is really highly evaluated 3.2 Suggested teaching application Compliment plays an important role in our life Everyone likes to hear compliments Compliments make people feel good about themselves, and we all need that at times As second language learners, it is very useful to help them to improve language skills In modern language class room, many methods have been applied Teachers tend to emphasize the role of communicative skills by providing cultural factors in lesson There are some suggestive activities for teaching English by teaching students how to give and respond compliments Activities * Activity 1: Role-play Step 1: Provide some expressions of paying and responding to compliment for student practice speaking individually 38 Expressions a Giving complements That‟s a very nice (dress) Great job on the …(presentation) You look very good in … (that new hair-do) This dish is delicious, my compliments to the chef That … (tie) looks great on you b Responses to compliments How kind of you to say so Thank you I‟m glad you like it It was nothing really (an expression of modesty and humility) Step 2: Provide top three compliment formulas (Manes and Wolfson 1981, pp 120 Noun Phrase + is/look + (really) + Adjective E.g Your blouse is really beautiful Your hair looks great! I + (really) + like/love + Noun Phrase E.g I really like your dress I love your new apartment Pronoun + is + (really) + Adjective + Noun Phrase E.g.That's a really nice rug That's a great looking car * Additional six formula examples: You have such beautiful hair What a lovely baby you have! Isn't your ring beautiful! You (really) did a good job! You (really) handled that situation well! Nice game! Step Provide sample dialogue for students to practice in pairs Dialogues Staff: What a beautiful dress, Ms Elliot 39 Guest: Thanks, I'm glad you like it Staff: Your new hair-do looks absolutely gorgeous, Mrs Simpson Guest: How kind of you to say so Guest: My compliments to the chef This linguine is superb Staff: Thank you ma‟am I‟ll be sure to let the chef know Guest: Your English is very good Staff: Thank you very much Staff: Excellent game Mr Johnson You really gave me a workout Guest: Thanks, I guess all those private lessons are finally paying off Guest: I really appreciate all the extra work you did on helping us solve that problem It truly went above and beyond My compliments to your work ethic Staff: Thank you sir, how kind of you to say so Step 4: Practice using the above expressions by having a dialogue similar to the ones above With a partner, one partner takes the role of the guest and the other the role of the staff For additional practice, switch roles Practice the dialogue several times, trying to use all of the expressions noted above *Activity 2: Use visual aids to teach such as Audio video - Teacher uses video of native speakers to teach students more effectively - Using pictures to show how to use non-verbal language when giving and responding compliment Suggested compliment lesson plan for English speaking class 40 Hope to provide a useful material for English learners; the author suggests a lesson plan to apply in classroom Purpose: This lesson encourages children to think of the feelings of others Students discover that it feels good to make others feel good Duration: One Forty five -Minute Class Period Objectives: The learner will: - state what they like about a classmate - respond appropriately when receiving a compliment Materials: - Paper and pencils - Three faces drawn on the chalkboard or large paper (see Anticipatory Set) - A jar containing a slip of paper for each student on which the teacher has written a specific a compliment Instructional Procedure: * Draw three large faces on the chalkboard or large sheets of paper, one face should be a "happy face", one a "straight mouth face" and one a "sad face" Have the faces displayed so that they are spaced apart Ask students to remember how they felt walking into the classroom on the first day of school, were they a little frightened or worried that they wouldn't know anyone? Then ask the students to look at the faces and to go stand by the face that best shows that feeling Take some time to ask several students to tell why they choose that face Then ask them to move to the face that shows how they feel about being in that classroom today (Presumably, several students will move from the "straight" or "sad" face to the happy face If everyone begins at the happy face, that's wonderful, just skip the next question and go on.) Now ask, what things happened in the classroom that caused 41 the change? What makes this classroom a good place to be? Are there things students can say that will also make them appreciate each other? * Ask students if they know what it is called when someone says something nice about a person Explain that the word is called a compliment Discuss the meaning of the word "compliment." - Discuss how it feels to receive a compliment (Often compliments will cause persons to smile and they will feel happy.) - Remind students to say, "Thank you," after they have received a compliment * The teacher should write a compliment to each student on a slip of paper and put it into a container (Try to identify something unique and specific about each student.) To practice receiving compliments, the teacher will randomly pull compliments out of the container and give the compliment to the intended person The teacher should remind the students to respond appropriately to the compliment * The teacher should then write each student's name on a piece of paper and place it in another container Students may pull names out of the container, making sure not to get their own names Students should write or draw a compliment to the person whose name they drew Remind students that a compliment is something nice that will make a person feel good Allow time for students to formulate compliments Some students may require compliment starters such as: o I like you because… o You are a friend because… o Thank you for… - Have students take turns paying compliments to each other in front of the class and thanking each other for the compliments - Ask students how it felt to receive a compliment Ask students how giving a compliment to someone made them feel 42 Part C : Conclusion Some major differences in the way the English and Vietnamese giving and responding to compliments Living in society that the globalization is changing so quickly, people have to deal with many challenges when communicating with the one who from another country In reality, the biggest problem that prevents the interchange among countries is the culture gap or communication breakdown Acknowledging this problem, most of language teaching classroom in Vietnam today have been changing their traditional method, which emphasizes the dominant role of teacher in class into a new one which focuses on the role of learners This method emphasizes the role of the learners by encouraging them to turn what they learn into language in use The present study also proves that studying what is applied in real context is very important With the realistic evidence of survey, this thesis reveals some interesting differences between the ways the English and Vietnamese giving and responding to compliments One must bear in mind that the speech event of complimenting and responses are “dependent on shared beliefs and values of the speech community coded into communicative patterns, and thus can interpreted apart from social and cultural context” (Saville-Troike, 1982:44) As indicated in the introduction, the first part of this paper has tried to give a brief review of some theorical background The second part presents some of the results of data analysis on both cultures‟ compliments, in which the answers for three questions :What, how to compliment on and how to response it are given; then, there are the suggestions for applying compliment in real life and suggested teaching application The last, the conclusion summarizes the main findings of the research As analyzed above, the safest topic in both cultures is work accomplished and then talent and ability When S want to compliment on other appearance, there are some notices such as: the Vietnamese can compliment on almost everything in daily life, except something belongs to what we call “taboo” such as the word 43 “sexy”; the English does not want to mention anything which is so private like age, salary for example This difference can not illustrate that the English or Vietnamese, who are more friendly, it is only because of the cultural context It is not enough when we only know what to compliment on, sometime, our sweet talk does not get its illocutionary force because we lack of the sincerity in what we are saying This problem calls for the need to mention the way of giving compliment, too There are many requirements but the most important thing that the speaker should pay attention to is „complimenting to the right person in the right context” The difference between two cultures does not only exist in what they give compliment on but also in the way they respond to The result from chapter indicates that English speakers tend to accept the compliments while the Vietnamese speakers prefer to reject them It is because of the different concept of the two cultures In English-speaking society, the norm seems to be to receive the compliment „gracefully‟, that is, to accept it This norm has two aspects One is to meet complimenter‟s positive face needs and the other is to think positively about oneself This kind of reaction relates to the idea of positive politeness.The norm of Vietnamese society, on the other hand, is to be modest All they need to is to appear humble and it shows their thinking in the way of negative politeness by contrast In a nutshell, in small scope, it can not be denied tha “compliments are positive expressions, which are directed either explicitly or implicitly to someone for something valued positively by the speaker and the hearer, and even the whole speech community” (Holmes, 1986) Therefore, with target language learners, it is necessary for them to know how to use this speech act successfully in realistic language The writer hopes to provide a dimension to find out the variable language and culture of the countries in which English and Vietnamese are spoken as mother tongue Suggestion for further research Because of the limination of graduation thesis, this paper only study partialy the act of compliment of English and Vietnamese 44 The further research will focus on “A contrastive study of the ways of giving and responding to compliments by Vietnamese and Vietnamese students of English” This one will provide the language learners a useful material to understand their changing during the period of leaning English From that, they know what they should to improve their language skills : 45 IV: References I: Books A English Austin, J.(1962) How to Do Things with Words Oxford University Press Beak, G.(1988) Asross-cultural study of compliment and compliment response in English and Korean Unpublished doctoral dissertation Seoul Brown, G.&Yule, G.(1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge University Press Chen, R.(1993) Responding to Compliment: A contrasitive Study of Politeness Strategies between American Engish and Chiness speakers Journal of pracmatics 20, 49-75 .Daikuhara, M.(1986) A Study of Compliments from a cross – cultural perspective Japanese vs American English Working papers in Educational linguistics Georhia M.Green (1989) Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding University of Illinois Herbert, R.K.(1986) Say “than you”- or something American speech, 61,7678 Homes, J.(1988a) Compliment and compliment response in New Zealand Anthropological Linguistics, 28(4), 455-508 James.C.(1998) Language and Culture Oxford University Press 10 Leech.G.(1983) Principles of Pragmatics New York: Longman Inc 11 Levinson,S.(1983) Pragmatics Cambridge University Press 12 Mannes, J., and Wolfson, N (1981) The compliment formula In F.Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational Routine, (pp 115-132) The Hague, Mouton 13 Pomeantz, A.(1978) Compliment responses: Note on the co-operation of multiple constraints In J.Shenken(Ed), studies on the organization of conversational Interaction (pp 79-109) New York: academic Press 14 Savignon, S.J (1972) Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign Language teaching Philadelphia, PA: Center for Curriculum Development 46 15 Thomson.N.(2003) Communication and Language Palgrave Macmillian 16 Yule, G (1997) Pracmatics OXford University Press B Vietnamese C n.Nguy n T i (1981) t s vấn v Ngôn ng h c Vi t Nam NXB i h c v Trung h c chuy n nghi p GS.TS.Ch u H u.(2003) ic ng Ng n ng h c – T p hai NXB Gi o d c Kim Li n Th (2003) iáo tr nh Ng d ng h c NXB i h c Qu c gia H N i Ti n.Tr n B (2004) Lu n v n th c s : Nghi n c u giao thoa V n hoá Vi t Canada v cách th c xin ph p M s : 50409 Khôi.Phan.(2009) S ng Trung t m V n ho Ng n ng i h c Vinh ng, tu n báo ng y th b y NXB lao ng, ng T y Th o.Pham Minh.(1996).Ngh thu t ng x c a ng i Vi t NXB V n ho thông tin H N i Th m.Tr n Ng c.(2000) C s V n hoá Vi t Nam NXB Gi o d c II: Websites: http://www.ehow.com/how_2160300_give-good-compliment.html http://hoctienganh.info/english/2009/03/video-learning-english-lesson-21compliments/ 47 ... leading theory, Brown and Levinson claimed that: “Face is something that emotionally invested, and that can be last, maintained or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction” Another... (27% in English and 17% in Vietnamese) And rank in the second position is skill or talents with more than half of ideas are “HA” and ? ?A? ?? Thirdly, “appearance” and “possession” are advisable topics... “Communication is, rather, the successful interpretation by an addressee of a speaker’s intent in performing a linguistics act” (Georgia M Green, Natural Language Understanding, p.1) And ? ?a linguistics