A study on politeness strategies manifested in advising in english and vietnamese

Together with other speech activities, advising does a function of identifying a specific culture of people and speech behavior in politeness, which makes the communication light, bright

1 Rationale

English has played a vital role in society and made considerable contribution to education, culture, science and technology The number of people learning English for various purposes (such as for job, business, traveling…) is continually on the increase everyday Therefore different kinds of English teaching and learning materials are available over the world, especially in Vietnam

In our country, English has been regarded as the most important foreign language nowadays, especially since the Vietnamese Government carried out the open door policy English has been taught for a long time in Vietnam It becomes a compulsory subject in most universities and schools throughout the country However, the emphasis on transmission of structural rules and forms often sever as the principal method of teaching English in Vietnamese schools and universities Most of Vietnamese teacher tends to focus

on teaching as much grammar and vocabulary as possible In fact, this method cannot do much help for students to assure a successful communication in daily life The students may get difficulty in achieving contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication Therefore, the failure or the cultural breakdown might easily happen in oral communication even though they learn English grammar well

Thus, cultural knowledge is obviously an important key for Vietnamese students to succeed in learning English because second language learning is second culture learning

In order to acquire the second language, English, it is necessary to learn not only linguistic knowledge and interaction skills but also knowledge of culture When understanding the cultural factors students may have chances to expose themselves to native speaking environments Normally Vietnamese students tend to employ English based on their native culture and cause misinterpretation in oral communication They are sometimes impolite, unfriendly or even hostile by chance Hence, to communicate well across culture students must be aware of their own culture as well as the English culture, especially the hidden part of culture including politeness and politeness strategies, which is really important part

in all social interaction

According to Wierzbicka in “A different cultures, different languages, different speech act” cultural norms reflected in speech acts differs not only from one language to another Like the other speech acts, advising may be different from language to language, culture to culture and community to community It is our essential component in most aspects of human life Thanks to advising human beings seem to be closer, women look prettier, children behave nicer, men are more perfect and home are more civilized Together with other speech activities, advising does a function of identifying a specific culture of people and speech behavior in politeness, which makes the communication light, bright and workable

The author of this study aims to investigate and draw out the politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese

2 Aims of the study:

The aims of the study are:

* To draw out the important role of politeness in social communication, especially in cross

- cultural communication

* To study positive and negative politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese

* To put forward some suggestions for teaching advising situations

3 Scope of the study:

In all aspects of politeness, the study only deals with verbal aspects Paralinguistic and non

- verbal factors are not discussed here

This thesis focuses on positive and negative politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework (1987) Off record politeness strategies, politeness rules and politeness principles are out of the scope of the thesis

The paper is aimed to investigate the English – Vietnamese cross - cultural interaction on speech act of advice Its central focus is on which politeness strategy used in advice in both languages English and Vietnamese The data analysis is mainly taken in to account of politeness based on what is collected from ten situations of case study in which the act of advising occurs and three kind of relations: family relation, social relation, business relation The data were collected by conducting survey questionnaires by author herself In addition, the data from the interviews with informants is also utilized in the study

Examples for illustration are mostly taken from the data and reference is made when they are taken from other sources

A part from that, the study referred to positive sense of advice It does not cover negative senses such as irony, sarcasm, incitement and so on With the limitation of thesis, the response to advice is not regarded

4 Research questions:

The study will focus on dealing with the following questions:

* How are politeness strategies manifested in advising in English and Vietnamese?

* How is the implication of politeness in advising related to the teaching of language?

5 Methods of the study

The major method that the author has employed is quantitative with due reference to qualitative method as this study is mainly about the practical aspects of cross - cultural communication All the considerations and conclusions are mainly based on the data analysis and references Survey questionnaire comes from the daily personal observation The Vietnamese Northern dialect and English speakers at Vietnam are chosen for the contrastive analysis By “English speaker”, the author means the foreigners who mostly come from Western countries and speak English as their first language Approaches and procedures employed to achieve the research goals are as follows:

* To establish a theoretical background, both home and foreign relevant publications are critically reviewed and referred to

* To collect sufficient data, the informants are asked to tick in the appropriate space

* The investigation is resorted to in the investigation with the illustration of tables and charts

* Consultation with supervisor, discussion with colleagues and personal observation are also significant contribution to the study

6 Design of the study:

The study is divided in to 3 parts:

Part A: Introduction (Includes: Rationale, Aims of the study, Scope of the study, Research questions, Methods of the study and Design)

Part B: Development

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background

1.1 Cross – cultural communication

1.1.1 Communication & Communicative competence

1.1.2 Cross - cultural communication

1.2 Speech act

1.2.1 Definition of speech act

1.2.2 Classification of speech acts

1.3 Politeness

1.3.1 What is politeness?

1.3.2 Politeness strategies

1.3.2.1 Positive politeness strategies

1.3.2.2 Negative politeness strategies

1.4 On advice

1.4.1 Definition of advice

1.4.2 Advising as a speech act

1.4.3 Characteristics of advising

Chapter 2: Politeness in advising

2.1 The advising frequency in English and Vietnamese

2.1.1 The data analysis

2.2.2.2 Data analysis and findings

2.2.2.2.1 Politeness in advising as seen from informant parameters

2.2.2.2.2 Positive politeness strategies manifested in English and Vietnamese

2.2.2.2.3 Negative politeness strategies manifested in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 3: Some applications of politeness in advising in English teaching and learning 3.1 Application of politeness advising in the teaching of speaking skill

3.2 Application of politeness advising in the teaching of writing skill

Part C: Conclusion

1 Summary of the major findings

2 Suggestions for further study

Part D: Bibliography

Appendix

This chapter provides of the theoretical background of the thesis It is also divided in to four main sections Section 1 discusses the concept of cross - cultural communication, section 2 positive, negative politeness and section 3 focuses on the issues of the key notion

of Speech Act Lastly, advice is discussed in section 4

1.1 Cross – cultural communication

1.1.1 Communication and communication competence

Communication can be defined as “the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non verbal symbols, oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes” (Canale, 1983:4) It is

a form of social interaction and involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message

Communication competence encompasses an underlying system of knowledge and skills The former refers to what one knows about the language and about other aspects of communicative use; the latter refers to how well one can perform this knowledge in actual communication The theoretical framework for communicative competence proposed by Canale includes four areas of knowledge and skills: Grammar competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence In the Ethnography of Communication, Saville-Troike provides a more elaborate component of communication, which includes:

1.1.1.1 Linguistic knowledge

a Verbal elements

b Non verbal elements

c Patterns of elements in particular speech events

d Range of possible variants (in all elements and their organization)

e Meaning of variants in particular situation

1.1.1.2 Interaction skills

f Perception of salient features in communication situations

g Selection and interpretation of forms appropriate to specific situations, roles and relationships (rules for the use of speech)

h Norms of interaction and interpretation

i Strategies for achieving goals

1.1.1.2 Cultural knowledge

j Social structure

k Values and attitudes

l Cognitive maps/ scheme

m Enculturation process (transmission of knowledge and skills)

(1982:25-26)

Communicative competence therefore involves not only the mastery of language codes but also the rules of speaking, social cultural convention and ability to manage in communicative situations A good communicator is supposed to know when it is appropriate to open a conversation and how, what subjects to choose for particular speech events, which forms of address are to be used to whom, and in which situation and how such speech acts as compliments, request, refusing, etc… are to be given, interpreted and responded to Factors determining their choice of language may include age, sex, social status, goals of interaction and the setting in which communication occurs (Saville Troi, 1982) The nature and extent of this diversity also vary across cultures This is the main subject of discussion in the following section

1.1.2 Cross - cultural communication

1.1.2.1 Definition of cross - cultural communication

So far, there has been no unified definition of culture This word has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilting of the soil Hofstede (1991) noted that in most Western languages, culture commonly means “civilization” or “refinement of the mind” In broader sense, culture is a catchword for all the thinking patterns, feeling and acting, including the ordinary and menial things in life such as greeting, eating, showing feeling and so on Kramsch (1998) suggests defining culture by contrasting it with nature

It is my view that favors the following definition:

“Culture is the systemic, rather arbitrary, more or less coherent, group invented and group shared creed from the past that defines the shape of “reality”, and assigns the sense and

provides the code that tells people how to behave predictably and acceptably, the cipher that allows them to derive meaning , from language and other symbols, the map that supplies the behavioral options for satisfying human needs” (Seelyr,1997:23)

A part from that according to Kramsch cross - culture can be understood as “the meeting of two cultures or languages across the political boundaries of nation states.” (Kramsch, 1998:81) This cross - cultural communication is the exchange and negotiation between individuals who come from different cultural background

Normally, people know how to behave appropriately within their own culture and society, but when they move from country to country, this social etiquette changes For instance it

is quite usual for Vietnamese people to greet each other by saying “where are you going?” Such utterance may be perceived as annoying curiosity by native English speakers because for most Western cultures the individuals and personal privacy come first For Asian cultures, nevertheless the emphasis is on promoting group harmony It should be noted that for the purpose of the study Vietnamese examples in this thesis are translate literally, thus,

in some cases they may sound unnatural in English The nature of difference will be made clearer in the following part

1.1.2.2 Individualism – collectivism in cross - cultural communication

In 1974, Hofstede conducted a large - scale study about the cultural values of people in over 50 countries Based on the result of this research Hofstede (1980, 1991) delineated the two cultural values patterns, labeled individualism – collectivism The data show that the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada (English speaking countries) are highly individualistic while East Asian countries are at the opposite pole, highly collectivistic (1991:53) In Hofstede’s terms, individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after him or herself and his or her family Collectivism as its opposite pertains

to societies in which people form birth inwards are integrated in to strong, cohesive in - groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty (1991:51)

Generally, individualistic and collectivistic value tendencies can be felt in everyday family, school and workplace interaction The typical individualistic values are freedom, honesty, social recognition, comfort, hedonism, personal equity and personal autonomy Nguyen Quang further states that individualistic cultures tend to promote the respect for personal

privacy; therefore, avoidance of “trespassing on the other’s territory” is regarded as polite behavior (2003:19) Whereas the top collectivistic values include harmony, face saving, respect and conformity of parent’s wish It is noticeable that in collectivistic culture the power distance is large Meanwhile for East Asian countries particularly China and Vietnam these values are largely due to the Confucianism doctrine, which maintains that the stability of society is based on unequal relationships between people

The origin of individualism can be traced to various sources Hofstede highlights the correspondence between modernization and urbanization with individualism Another important influence stems from Adam Smith, which assumed that “the pursuit of self interest by individuals through an invisible hand would lead to the maximal wealth of nations.” This is a highly individualistic idea that can be found in most Western societies

In conclusion, individualism – collectivism may be the most important dimension in cultural study It is interesting to find that there is among correlation between the dimensions of individualism – collectivism and the dimensions of negative politeness and positive politeness, small power distance and large power distance, respectively Therefore,

cross-it can serve as guideline for investigating communication behavior of individuals from unalike cultures However, it should be stressed that not everyone in a collectivistic culture

is equally collectivistic in speaking, thinking and behaving, nor are all of the people in an individualistic culture equally individualistic In fact, we can find certain Vietnamese who are assertive and direct in speaking style and behavior Likewise, some European – Americans and Canadians may be as collectivistic as the average Vietnamese or Chinese The truth of the matter should be studied dynamically in relation to the static

1.2 Speech act

Speech act theory was first introduced by the philosopher Austin who originally (1960-52) used the term speech act to refer to an utterance and was later studied by other theorist, such as Hymens (1964), Searl (1969), Levinson (1983), Brown and Yule (1983)… Speech act theory has led to the design of the notional - functional syllabus in English language teaching and speech act analysis has offered a valuable way to look at language function and the connection between function and grammatical forms

1.2.1 Definition of speech act

Although many theorists have studied speech act theory, generally all of them share the

According to Searle (1964:24), language is part of theory of action, and speech act are those verbal acts such as promising, threatening and requesting that one perform in speaking

George Yule (1996:47) defines that actions performed via utterance are generally speech acts and in English, are commonly given more specific labels such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request

Indeed, when expressing themselves, people do not only produce utterance containing grammatical structure and lexical factors but also perform actions through these utterances

In saying “Shall I open the door for you ?” the speaker is making an offer or in saying

“Anh di dau day ?” right after greeting, the Vietnamese speaker does not want to know where you are going, but rather, she is simply producing a greeting routine In real life conversations, these sentences have their uses quite independent from lexical and grammatical forms Richards (1985:104) points out: “Speech acts are acts in nature, not sentences There is no one utterance - one function limitation A single utterance can have more than one function For example, the utterance “I’m thirsty” can be used to perform the acts of statement and request.”

1.2.2 Classification of speech act

On any occasion, according to Austin the action performed by producing an utterance will consists of three related acts: Locutionay act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act

* Locutionary act is the physical act of producing a well - formed and meaningful utterance For example, if we make a simple sentence like “I want to have a cup of coffee.”

We are likely to produce a locutionary act

* Illocutionary act is the force or intention of the speaker or writer behind the words Take the pervious sentence as an example We do not only simply say that sentence but also intend to require the listener to bring us a cup of coffee The illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance We might utter to make a statement, an offer and an explanations or for some other communicative purpose This is generally known as the illocutionary force

* Perlocutionary act is the effect of the illocution on the hearer or the reader It also includes the change to state of mind, knowledge or attitude of the hearer or the reader For the sentence “I want to have a cup of coffee” we wish the act of bringing a cup of coffee to

be done or the perlocutionay force is performed

Related to the notion of illocutionary act is the concept of illocutionary point It refers to the point of purpose of illocution (Searle, 1990:351) Searle identifies five illocutionary points namely declarations, representatives, expressive, directives and comissives

- Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance E.g, Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam

- Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that tell people how and what things are E.g The Earth goes around the Sun

- Expressive are those kinds of speech acts that express feelings and attitudes

E.g Please to meet you

- Directives are those kinds of speech act that speaker use to get someone else to do something

E.g Stand up, please!

- Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future action

E.g I promised not to tell you any more

Another approach to distinguish types of speech act is based on the relationship between the structure and functions George Yule claims that speech acts can be divided in to direct and indirect ones by combining three structures forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three general communicative functions (statement, question, command/request)

+ In direct speech act, the speaker says what she/he means, and there is direct relationship between a structure and function E.g “What time is it?”

+ In indirect speech act there is an indirect relationship between a structure and function In this type of speech act the speaker means more than what she/he simply says, i.e the speaker performs one illocution act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act explicitly

E.g Instead of asking, “What time is it?”(A direct speech act), one could ask, “Could you tell me the time?”(An indirect speech act)

In short, speech act is the act we perform in making a speech The speech act theory helps

us interpret the function and operation of language

1.3 Politeness

1.3.1 What is politeness?

In general, politeness means showing consideration to others A polite person is purposed

to make others feel good Being linguistically politeness requires people to speak appropriately according to the kind of relationship between them Inappropriate language use may be considered rude and may lead to communication breakdown For example using an imperative such as “stop complaining!” to a superior at work is likely to earn the clerk a reprimand or being excessively polite to a friend can be considered as being ironic

or sarcastic Obviously, politeness is a key element in cross-cultural studies

The notion of politeness has been largely discussed Lakoff sees politeness as “a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” (Eden 2001:2) This author connected politeness with Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP), which is based on the assumption that people are cooperative and aim to be as informative as possible in communication Yule specially lists the characteristics of politeness, including “being tactful, generous, modest and sympathetic toward others” (1997:60)

Leech (1983) defines it as “strategic conflict avoidance, which can be measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a conflict situation, the establishment and the maintenance of comity” (Watts, 2003:50) Brown and Levinson (1987) emphasize politeness as strategies employed by a speaker to obtain a variety of objectives such as promoting or maintaining harmonious relations In interaction, there is a narrower type of politeness at work, which serves as a crucial concept for people to conduct their communicative behavior

1.3.2 Politeness strategies

Linguists have stated different ways of expressing politeness strategies Among them, the most influential theory of politeness is put forward by Brown & Levinson According to Thomas the Brown and Levinson’s “has been extraordinarily influential and very widely discussed” (1995:176) Although there might be some criticism, such as a few overlaps and borderlines between positive and negative politeness, their theory can reliably serve as a theoretical framework for cross - cultural research

1.3.2.1 Positive politeness strategies

Positive politeness shows the closeness, intimacy and rapport between the speaker and the hearer According to Brown and Levinson (1987:101), “positive politeness is redress directed to the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the action, acquisition, values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable In positive politeness the sphere of redress is widened to the appreciation of other’s wants in general

or to the expression of similarity between egos and other’s wants” In order to be polite the S’s concern to the listener and hopes to satisfy the listener and hopes to satisfy the A’s communicative need should be shown during a conversation

1.3.2.2 Negative politeness strategies

Negative politeness in Brown & Levinson (1987:129) is “redressive action addressed to the addressee’s negative face: his want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded” Agreeing with Brown & on definition of negative politeness, Nguyen Quang (2003) emphasizes, “Negative politeness is in any communicative act which is appropriately intended to show that the speaker does not want

to impinge on the addressee’s privacy, thus enhancing the sense of distance between them.”

It is believed that there are eleven negative politeness strategies to avoid the FTAs

In short, “negative politeness” involves the speaker and hearer’s independence This is also known as the “formal politeness strategy” which creates the distance between the speaker and hearer In most English speaking countries, people are more inclined to employ negative politeness strategies However, what politeness strategy is preferred by what culture suggests a problem In many Oriental Languages, including Vietnamese, negative politeness is not always put in a high place Vietnamese people tend to use positive politeness to show concern to others and narrow the distance between the speaker and the hearer However, in reality there are some overlaps and borderlines between PPS and NPS, i.e people sometimes use both negative and positive politeness marker in one utterance as

in the following examples:

Kevin, could I possibly use your computer for a short while? (Group identity marker: Kevin [Positive politeness] + conventionally indirect strategy [Negative strategy] )

1.4 On advice

1.4.1 Definition of advice

This is a definition abstracted from the Oxford dictionary (1995): “Advice is the giving of one’s opinion about what somebody else should do or how he/she should behave.”

According to Wierzbicka (1987:181), advice is an official speech act It is regarded as one

of the essential communicative activities in order to show concerns and other psycho - cultural aspects in social interaction

Normally a piece of advice offered is not necessarily based on any general views and principles it maybe purely personal In an informal situation, for example, English people say “If I were you, I would leave the country soon.”

The speaker seems to be implying and in fact, this is often what he actually says but in an informal situation, he may say “Brantley, I advise you to leave the country soon, because the white people are going to be destroyed.”

The fact that the phrase “I advise you” is seldom used in ordinary speech because it sounds very stiff and formal

1.4.2 Advising as a speech act

According to Wierzbicka (48,181), advice is known to have two sets of syntactic frames One, which is rather official verb, takes that - clause and is closely to inform, as well as to advise

The other can be performed by means of a bare imperative (“Hand it this way, he advised”), and like ask, suggest and many other speech act verbs, refers to a possible future action of the addressee The speaker thinks that he knows what the addressee should do and

he says so, confident that it will be a good thing if the addressee follows the proposed course of action The speaker rather expects that the addressee will welcome his opinion Advice, in the later meaning, is an official speech act It is the speaker’s responsibility to convey the relevant information whereas in the former meaning of advice It is assumed that the addressee will act upon the information received

1.4.3 Characteristics of advising

First, the attentive characteristic of advising is that the addresser often speaks with the gentle miner and soft voice when giving advice In Hoang Phe’s viewpoint when the

adviser gives his opinion to the addressee about what he should do or what he should behave, his saying would often gentle and soft

Second, advising is often performed (in writing) by institutions addressing individuals It is also the characteristic of lawyers, agents and other professional people who need to convey information to their clients and other members of the public, implying that they are acting

in the addressee’s interest Their responsibility is to convey the relevant information upon which the addressee will respond

Despite the fact that advising may be different from language to language, culture and community to community, it is nevertheless our essential components in most aspects of human life Thanks to advising, human beings seem to be closer, woman looks prettier, children behave nicer, and men are more perfect and home are more civilized Together with other speech activities, advising does a function of identifying a specific culture of people and speech behavior in politeness, which makes the communication light, bright and workable

culture-to-We cannot deny that there are more and more centers that are advisory related to many fields in our life Actually, everyone wants to work better, live longer and behave nicer so

we need advice Rich or poor, young or old, happy or unhappy each of us wish to be paid attention We want to be heard, to be listened and understood thoroughly For example, some people always achieve success in their work, earn a lot of money and get along with colleagues at office as well as everyone outside their home but they do not live in a happy atmosphere in their own home It means that being husbands and fathers at home they try to control their wives and children like a boss in their house Their action and attitude will make the children rebellious and leave home as soon as possible to get out of their father’s iron hand Therefore, in this case they need help to make home life happier Another example, a little girl was very sad because she got bad mark and their mother punished her

We could lift her pain and made her happy by giving a piece of advice

Through these examples, we see that it is necessary for us to give advice however; it is not simple because giving a piece of advice is affected by many factors basing on each particular situation For instance, we are able to replace the standard imperative form in the following sentence: “Let him do in his own way!” by “You should let him do in his own way” or “I think it will be a good thing if you let him do in his own way” etc…

Actually, we cannot live without advice because we need advising and need giving advice The important thing is that everyone knows how to be nice when giving advice We should not say anything represents as a FTA (Face threatening face) because it is generally expected that each person will attempt to respect the face wants of others Look at the following example (Kahn, M in The TAO of Conversation):

Sally and Paul are addressing to go out with friends; Sally finishes dressing and turns to Paul for comment

Paul: I would be really embarrassed to be seen with you wearing all that make up

Sally, in tears, cancels their plans on the spot The evening is in ruins

In fact, Paul expressed his feeling and did not care Sally’s thought His utterance did not follow the politeness strategies so it made Sally move to tears He could choose the following way to express his opinion on Sally:

Paul: I love the dress so much and you really look graceful in it, but to tell you the truth I really do not love the make up

Sally: What is wrong with it?

Paul: There may be nothing with it, Sally It is just a bit heavier than I like and it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable If you would not mind, I would be really grateful if you would tone down a bit

In the second utterance, Paul also tells the truth but in a better way of expressing He has done his best to honor his love and concern for Sally sacrificing his truth

The necessity of politeness in conversation is illustrated in more detail in a very famous novel “Chi Pheo” of Nam Cao:

1 3 ! " # :# 3 2 3 ; < &

(… Strongly throwing five pence on the ground, he told him

- Get it and go away, then work for good or you just sponge upon others forever?

- I do not come here to ask for five pence

Seeing that he was rude and able to make trouble he softens his voice

- Well, take it I have no more

It is common that we do not only use language as an instrument to transfer ideas If we convey our ideas in a polite way when advising someone, we will get a nice response from the hearer The fact is that we are able to use imperative structure to give an advice to somebody but with the soft voice and smooth manner, we will win the hearer

2.1 The advising frequency in English and Vietnamese

As mentioned above, advice is very necessary in our life, however the frequency of giving advice in English and Vietnamese depends on many factors, especially on culture

In most Western countries, the independence and individualism are highly appreciated All members from grandparents, parents and children have freedom to do anything and make their own decision in their life Especially the life style of children in Western society is different from one in Vietnam When they are eighteen years old, they are encouraged to

friends rather than become too emotionally dependent on their children In addition, with less emphasis on tradition, on religion and on the economic dependence Western people seem less likely to remain in marriage In fact, any social or economic pressure in marriage does not tie them down Therefore, we can see that there are and more and more divorce today Actually, each generation becomes more independent in their life style That is the reason why their concern for each other is not so strong and giving advice is not as frequent

as they do when they are in the same house

Their life style is not only reflected in family but also in the whole community According

to Abraham and Mackey in “Contemporary American Society”, most Americans often move from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city and coast to coast We rarely find anyone who lives all his/her life in one community They move so frequently that they do not have chance to know their neighbors He added that is the reason why Americans tend

to have a more casual attitude about friendship than others are In this community, they respect the other people’s freedom and independence so much so giving advice is not as frequent as in other society

In comparison with those societies there is no doubt that Vietnamese families are more closely too united In some families, there are four generations to live together Parents take care of the children carefully and keep an eye on their children’s action They usually have meals together and talk during meal so the relationship becomes closer

Apart from that, Vietnamese often live in a certain community and get on well with their neighbors People in the same family regard it as their duty to help and advise other to overcome trouble and make life better

It cannot be denied that advising is heard more frequently in Vietnamese community because of above characteristics Besides this, friendliness, hospitability and superstition included make them lazy to take part in conversations Their concern for each other increases the quantity of advising speech act when communicating casually or intentionally

In conclusion, in the Vietnamese culture which based on community life and economic dependence the speech act of advising is of higher frequency than that of Western culture

in general

The result of the data collection may help clarify this assumption

2.1.1 The data analysis

The data taken from the survey questionnaire is used as the linguistic input The survey concentrates on whether giving advice or not on the suggested situations There are fifteen situations has been designed for family relation, social relation and business relation Of the 31 English speakers and 25 Vietnamese informants, 40 people have been selected for the analysis (20 English speakers and 20 Vietnamese people) The former group are all European – Canadians and Australians, speak English as their mother tongue Most of them are reporters and go on business at Vietnam News Agency – Tran Hung Dao Street – Hanoi The rest are tourists I met these tourists at some famous places of Hanoi, such as West Lake and Sword Lake etc… Obviously, they know very little about Vietnam and have no bias toward answering the survey questionnaire The later group, the Vietnamese in the North of Vietnam, is my colleagues at Panasonics Company and my students at Language Link Centre Since the survey questionnaire was administered in Vietnam by the author herself, she was able to have face to face contact with the informants It is the author’s assumption that the status parameters of the informants may affect the way people communicate, therefore informants from both groups were asked to provide information about their:

* Area where they spend most of their time

They are required to stick in one of the three columns if necessary or not to give someone

a piece of advice in the following situation:

Column 1: Highly necessary Column 2: Necessary Column 3: Unnecessary The purpose is:

* To investigate the occurrence frequency of advising in Vietnamese and English

* To find out the similarities and differences in giving advice between Vietnamese and English

2.1.2 English findings

The advising frequency in English

2 Your mother makes friend with a married man 0% 20% 80%

4 Your father drinks a lot with his friends after work 25% 25% 50%

5 Your father always asks your mother for money 0% 25% 75%

1 Your roommate does not care much about her study 0% 10% 90%

2 Your neighbor has a party and makes noise all night 20% 30% 50%

4 Your girl friend wears a lot of make up while coming to class 10% 40% 50%

5 A boy phone you every night and flirts you although you really

do not like

10% 35% 55%

1 Your manager likes hearing false flattery from his colleagues 0% 20% 80%

2 Your assistant does not go to work on time 10% 15% 75%

3 Your colleague wants to move to another office with high salary 0% 10% 90%

4 One of your staff always make phone call for private purpose

during working hours

10% 10% 80%

5 Your colleagues always make joke at someone’s behavior 5% 0% 95%

As you can see in the table, English speakers do not want to poke their nose in to other’s business, social relation as well as in their family Most of them choose to tick in the third column and the percentage of “highly necessary” column is the lowest

2.1.2.1 In family relation:

Overall, a majority of the informants think that it is not necessary to give advice in family relation As in situation 1, only 5% of people ticked in the first column and 25% in the second column Meanwhile most of them (70%) agree that they should not give advice when their daughter wears a lot of jewelry while going out with her boy friend This

indicates that people generally respect their daughter’s freedom The author assumes that the only informant, who considers it highly necessary, may be just an exception

In situation 2, 20% of the informants think it is necessary and 80% unnecessary No one considers it highly necessary to advise his or her mother when she makes friend with a married man When considering their background the author finds that half of them are office staff and live in urban areas

In situation 3, the number of people who ticked in highly necessary column is similar to the number of people in necessary column (20%) However, a large number of them (60%) thought that this is only their brother’s thing so they should not interfere

We get the same feedback in situation 4 and 5 As we can see in the chart, most of informants (50%, 70%) would not do anything if their father drank a lot with his friends after work or asked their mother for money It is interesting to note that some informants provide extra information, saying that their fathers often drink after work and this happens regularly It does not matter for them

From what has been presented so far we can roughly conclude that in the Western culture

in general people can act in their own way if it does not affect the others

2.1.2.2 In social relation

It can be easily observed from the table that English speakers give the similar feedback for

5 situations in social relation This reflects individualistic values, which emphasize the importance of personal time, plan and freedom

In situation 1, nobody (0%) expressed his/ her idea when his/ her roommate does not care much about her study This result perhaps makes many Vietnamese people surprised because they think that Western people live together in the same room without having influence on each other’s Only two informants highly agreed that everybody should give advice when their close friend loves a married man (situation 3), wears a lot of make up while coming to class (situation 4) and a boy phone you every night A large number (20%, 40% and 35%) shared the same idea Meanwhile most of them (70%, 50% and 55%) give their idea in the opposite way

2.1.2.3 In business relation

It is noticeable that in situation 1 and 3 nobody shares their idea in the highly necessary column Some office staff informants said that they only concerned their work Therefore,