Pragmatic transfer in interlanguage requesting by vietnamese learners of english

Studies ofspeech act realization have at least highlighted ILP research in five ways Liu, 2002: first,these reports suggested that even quite proficient learners tended to have less cont

Chapter I: Introduction

I.1 Rationale for the study

With the advent of today's global economic system, we observe an increasing degree ofcommunication across different cultures between people of different languages In order to besuccessful in communication, it is essential for second language learners to know not justgrammar and text organization but also pragmatic aspects of the target language (Bachman1990)1 ‘Pragmatic competence’ can be specifically defined as “knowledge of communicativeaction and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according tocontext” (Kasper 1997)

The study of the learner language has been a growing source of concern in pragmatics inrecent years The pragmatic perspective toward the learner language led to the birth of a newinterdiscipline, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) ILP studies are concerned with languagelearners’ performance and acquisition of pragmatic competence in their second language Theinfluence of language learners’ linguistic and cultural background on their performance oflinguistic action in a second language has been a focal concern in ILP Among non-structuralfactors interacting with pragmatic transfer is second language proficiency, which has beenfound to constrain pragmatic transfer in requesting (Blum-Kulka, 1982)

A number of ILP studies, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, regarding the use of pragmaticrealization patterns and strategies have been conducted on a number of languages such asEnglish, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean, etc.Informants examined ranged from the English learners of Hebrew as TL (Blum-Kulka, 1982;1983; Olshtain, 1983), the German learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; House, 1988;DeCapua, 1989), the Danish learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; Trosborg, 1987;Faerch & Kasper, 1989), the Japanese learners of English as TL (Takahashi & Dufon, 1989;Beebe et al, 1990), the Hebrew (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981), the Russian (Olshtain, 1983), theGerman (House, 1988), the Spanish (Scarcella, 1983), the Venezuelan (Garcia, 1989), and the

Japanese (Beebe et al, 1990; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993), and the Thai learners of ESL(Bergman & Kasper, 1993) Up till now, the following speech acts have been investigatedcross-linguistically: request (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; House & Kasper, 1987; Faerch &Kasper, 1989; Takahashi & Dufon, 1989), complaint (DeCapua, 1989), and apology (Cohen &Olshtain, 1981; Olshtain, 1983; Trosborg, 1987; House, 1988; Garcia, 1989; Beebe et al,1990; Bergman & Kasper, 1993), refusal (Beebe et al, 1990), and correction (Takahashi &Beebe, 1993)

Besides, some other non-linguistic factors, such as discourse accent (Scarcella, 1983) andpoliteness orientation and styles (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993) were also investigated Studies ofspeech act realization have at least highlighted ILP research in five ways (Liu, 2002): first,these reports suggested that even quite proficient learners tended to have less control over theconventions of forms and means used by native speakers in the performance of linguisticaction; second, there were differences between learners’ and native speakers’ sociopragmaticperceptions of comparable speech events that were systematically related to differences intheir speech act performance; third, pragmatic transfer at the pragmalinguistic andsociopragmatic levels persisted at higher levels of proficiency; fourth, learners produced morespeech than native speakers did when the task was less demanding on their control skills; fifth,researchers should pay close attention to the constraints of different data collectioninstruments on learners’ performance (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993:63)

There have been studies on similarities and differences in the realization of speech acts byVietnamese speakers and English speakers

Nevertheless, pragmatic transfer, which has been a focal concern in interlanguage pragmatics,has not been investigated in studies on Vietnamese learners of English

Requests, along with the speech acts of apology and refusal, have received substantialattention in second language acquisition research (Ellis, 1994) Tam (1998) has investigatedhow the form of requests made by native Australian speakers differs from that by Vietnameselearners of English with respect to the use of strategies, internal modifications, and externalmodifications, and how these forms vary in relation to the variables of Power, Distance andRanking of imposition She found that Vietnamese learners were limited in modifying theirrequests syntactically and lexically as well as internally While, the choices of request strategy

by the Australian speakers and Vietnamese speakers were similar in some situations,differences that were also found suggested that the Vietnamese speakers lack the pragmaticknowledge of the appropriate strategy However, the study still did not include data for L1Vietnamese to provide confirmation of pragmatic transfer and did not look at the performance

of learners at different levels

Addressing differences between English and Vietnamese in request perception and production,this study will deal with pragmatic transfer of requesting by Vietnamese learners of English.With the aim of finding useful information on the development of pragmalinguisticcompetence, we pay attention to language proficiency effects on Vietnamese learners’performance of request in English Specifically, we are going to examine whether Englishlanguage proficiency affects Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting Besides,the influence of gender on Vietnamese learners’ pragmatic transfer in requesting is also going

to be investigated for the first time

I.2 Aims of the study

The study aims to find out:

- the influence of contextual factors on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English inthe realization of request

- the influence of English proficiency of Vietnamese learners on their pragmatic transferfrom Vietnamese to English in the realization of request

- the influence of Vietnamese learners’ gender on their pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese

to English in the realization of request

I.3 Scope of the study

The study is limited to the investigation of requesting and request realization in ten situations.The survey does not cover paralinguistic and nonverbal aspects although their importance incommunication is undeniable The informants of the survey include 21 native Englishspeakers and 48 Vietnamese learners of English (28 intermediate learners and 20 advancedones, 30 female learners and 18 male ones) All the native English speakers are working inVietnam

The informants are not varied and numerous enough for the author to come to ‘fixed’conclusions However, the study is expected to point out the influence of contextual factors,learners’ proficiency and gender in English on pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English

Chapter II: Literature review

I.1 Speech act

When we are producing utterances containing grammatical and lexicological factors, we areperforming actions through these utterances It means utterances not only contain a message, italso have a social force For example, when we say ‘I promise I’ll do it’, not only information

is conveyed but the act of promising is also constituted The actions performed via utterancesfor the purpose of communicating are called speech acts A speech act is separated into threeacts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (Austin, 1962)

When we make an utterance, we perform an act of saying something, which is a locutionaryact It is simply an act of producing a linguistically, well-formed and meaningful expression

The illocutionary act is the function of utterance that the speaker has in mind When we say

‘I’d like a cup of tea’, we not simply say the sentence but we also intend to require someone togive us a cup of tea Thus, the illocutionary act is performed for communicative function and it

is considered the most important of the three dimensions of a speech act Yule claims ‘ the

term speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of

an utterance.’ (1996,49) There may be no one-to-one correspondence between syntactic formsand illocutionary acts For example, the statement ‘ I’m cold’ may have the illocutionary act ofrequesting somebody to turn on the heating system

When we make an utterance, we intend to have an effect on the hearer and that is theperlocutionary act For example, when we say ‘I’d like to have a cup of tea’, we wish thehearer to give you a cup of tea The act of giving you a cup of tea done means that theperlocutionary perfomed

As the illocutionary act is the most important, Searle (1969) has set up five types of speechacts as follows:

♦ Declarations: are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterances (bringabout states of affairs such as firings, namings, )

♦ Representatives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be thecase or not (E.g: assertions, conclusions, )

♦ Expressives: are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels They denote thespeaker’s physical state or attitude (E.g: pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, )

♦ Directives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to get someone else to dosomething (E.g: commands, requests, suggestions, )

♦ Commissives: are those kinds of speech acts that the speaker uses to commit themselves tosome future action (E.g: promises, threats, refusals, pledges, )

I.2 Speech act of requesting

Requesting is defined as an act of requiring the other(s) to do something performed throughutterance(s) in interaction As the speaker makes a request, s/he desires the hearer’sexpenditure of time, energy or material resource In other words, requests impose thespeaker’s interest on the hearer They can be regarded as a constraint on the hearer’s freedom

of action Thus, requesting is considered one of the most sensitive illocutionary acts incommunication

Requests are complex speech acts which involve a relationship of different elements These

elements have been identified by Blum-Kulka (1991) as the request schema which includes

requestive goals subject to a cultural filter, linguistic encoding (strategies, perspective andmodifiers), situational parameters (distance, power, legitimization) and the social meaning ofthe request according to cultural and situational factors Whereas, Gordon and Lakoff (1971)claims the combination of the three factors: the literal meaning of the sentence, the perceivedcontext, and a so-called conversational postulate, helps the hearer interpret the speaker’sutterance intended as a request

Politeness can be manifested through general social behaviour as well as linguistic means.This assumption, however, emphasizes once again on the fact that politeness cannot andshould not be assessed out of context, since from a pragmatic point of view, all utterances inconversation are interpreted firstly contextually and only secondly literally (Coulmas, 1981).The hypothesis that, what is implied and/or meant at a discourse level varies according to thecontext of the utterance, was originally introduced by Grice, in 1968

Every utterance has always been looked upon in the social context in which it is uttered.Embedded in a social context the function of a greeting, an apology or a compliment differs inits form Obviously politeness is culturally determined and undergoes gender differences Thismeans for example that Americans differ in their polite behavior massively from Japanese orIndian politeness norms Furthermore it is a recognized fact that within one culture there areexisting different polite social behavior structures between females and males But somethings can be said as true overall It is true that politeness expresses concern for the feelings ofothers The strategies to do so differ from situation to situation and can be expressedlinguisticly as well as non-linguisticly In addition, politeness theories distinguish betweenreferential and affective function of language use and between negative and positivepoliteness If we look at personal face to face interactions there is more to being polite thanjust opening the door and listening to the communication partner Everyone has to establish apublic self-image, which is scientifically called face Yule defines face by saying: “It refers to

that emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else torecognize.”

Therefore, politeness can be defined as being aware of another person’s face and presentingone’s own face To accept somebody’s face means using strategies which are eitherthreatening or saving respectively and which express a negative or a positive face Using thesestrategies helps to establish social distance, respect, deference or closeness, solidarity orfriendship, depending on the situation and the used strategies On the one hand, if something issaid which could be seen as a threat to somebody else’s self image, it is called a facethreatening act Face-threatening acts (FTA), are liable to threaten or damage the Hearer’spositive face, i.e expressions of disapproval/criticism, accusations, contradictions,interrupting, expressions of violent emotions, etc., and threaten his/her negative face, i.e.orders, requests, remindings, offers, promises, etc Moreover, certain acts can also be facethreatening to the Speaker’s positive face, such as expressing thanks, excuses, acceptance ofoffers/apologies, etc., as well as his/her negative face, such as apologies, acceptance ofcompliments, confessions/admissions of guilt or responsibility, etc On the other hand,reducing the possibility of a threat to someone’s self image is seen as a face saving act Beingpolite means trying to save another persons face We can either contribute to the needs of ourcommunication partner or not Expressing polite behavior can be done either by employing anegative face or by using a positive face

A person’s negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to

be imposed on by others The word ‘negative’ here doesn’t mean ‘bad’, it’s just the oppositepole from ‘positive’ A person’s positive face is the need to be accepted, even liked, by others,

to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared byothers In simple terms, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is theneed to be connected

Thus, the Speaker should adopt certain strategies, in order to maintain his or her own faceundamaged and at the same time to minimize the possibility of affecting the positive ornegative face of the Hearer

It is generally accepted that various markers contribute to the politeness of an utterance andthe explanations of their existence are placed within a broad framework of cultural differences

As aforementioned, it is undoubtful that different socio-cultural norms are reflected in alllevels of the linguistic code Therefore, when observing politeness norms the researchershould always take account of the relationship between the Speaker and the Hearer and thenature of the interaction in which they are involved (Leech, 1983) A politeness strategy isemployed by the ‘weightiness.’ The weightiness is calculated by speakers from the socialvariables such as power difference between speaker and hearer (P), the perceived socialdistance between speaker and hearer (D), and ranking of imposition (R) R differs from culture

to culture because they are how threatening or dangerous in a specific culture P, D and R donot have any absolute value Mainly a speaker values them according to the situation andculture subjectively Thus, weightiness is calculated as follows

Wx = D (S, H) + P (S, H) + Rx

Leech (1983) sees cultural rules at work in expressions of politeness and attempts tocategorize in more detail some of the underlying intent behind these forms by articulating a set

of rules or Politeness Maxims at work in polite dialogue

1) Tact maxim: minimize cost and maximize benefit to other

2) Generosity maxim: minimize benefit and maximize cost to self.

3) Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other.

4) Modesty maxim: minimize praise and maximize dispraise of self

5) Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self andother

6) Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy between self and other.

While these maxims do not seem to contradict each other in principle, failure to recognizethese maxims as they are expressed in particular utterances can lead to what Thomas (1983)calls “cross-cultural pragmatic failure” (p 92) Thomas indicates that pragmatic failure canoccur at two levels: failure to understand which proposition the speaker has expressed andfailure to understand the pragmatic force of the speaker’s utterance The potential of pragmaticfailure is apparent when reviewing specific contrastive examples of politeness features acrosscultures.

II.2 Politeness-Directness-Indirectness

Politeness is a number of different general principles for being polite in social interactionwithin a particular culture S.Blum-Kulka has defined politeness as the interactional balanceachieved between the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness

If the Speaker decides to perform a FTA, then Brown and Levinson (1978) suggest aframework that determines the choice of his/her strategy:

Even though certain pragmatic features do manifest themselves in any natural language, the

issue of universality of Politeness phenomena is challenged since the system of variant

patterns governing the linguistic expression of Politeness, derives from different norms andvalues that are culturally bound (Sifianou, 1989) This is the main source of criticism forBrown and Levinson’s theory of politeness, which has shown to be inadequate especially asfar as face is concerned, since its exact content is culturally specific

Different languages have different ways of marking politeness People from some culturestend to favour directness, while people from other cultures favour less directness Even so,directness may also vary in relation to social context The relationship between directness andpoliteness as examined by Blum&Kulka (1987:133 ff.) illustrates that while these notions may

be related, they are not one and the same This field of research suggests that politeness may

be better defined as doing what is appropriate in a given cultural context

The relationship between directness and indirectness and politeness is examined first in ageneral way, and subsequently using examples from cross-cultural research on speech acts andpoliteness Perhaps the most common comparison involves Americans and Europeans versusJapanese and other Asian cultures In Asian cultures, the importance of remaining in “goodface” assumes a particularly high value (Ho, 1975) Holtgraves and Yang’s (1990) comparison

of Korean and American speakers showed Koreans significantly more likely to use very politeforms A study by Kim and Wilson (1994) arrived at similar findings relative to Korean-U.S.differences Coulmas (1979) found apologies to be far more common in Japanese culture, tothe extent that they are often used in occasions when Americans would say “thank you.”Comparing Hebrew, English, and Chinese expressions of apology, Olshtain and Cohen (1983)found Chinese more polite than English, and English speakers more polite than Hebrew

“While Hebrew speakers may appear somewhat rude to native English speakers whenexpressing regret, Chinese speakers may appear overly polite, even obsequious” (p 30) Innegotiating contexts with Japanese, Deutsch (1983) and Rowland (1985) noted that Americansare known for their rudeness and brusqueness

II.3 Politeness-Directness-Indirectness in requests

While the overall distribution along the scale of indirectness follows similar patterns in alllanguages, the specific proportions in the choices between the more direct and less directstrategies were found to be culture-specific Choice of politeness strategies is influenced byboth situational and cultural factors which interact with each other

Proper request expressions are often preceded by prerequests that are face-saving for bothinterlocutors Prerequests check feasibility of compliance and overcome possible grounds forrefusal For example, by first asking “Are you free tonight?” the speaker might try to checkphysical availability of the interlocutor Since no actual request has been issued, a negativeanswer at this preliminary stage is face-saving Speakers can also back out of admitting arequestive intent and the hearers can avoid a requestive interpretation of the prerequest

Sometimes the prerequest may also function as an indirect request and can be an effectivestrategy to achieve the speaker’s goal In response to “Are you free tonight?” the interlocutormight offer help, “Do you need help with your paper?” In this case, the speaker spares theneed for an explicit request and again saves face

Nine sub-levels of strategy types are brought up by Blum-Kulka (1989) according to the

Clean up this mess, please.

2 Explicit performatives (The illocutionary force of the utterance is explicitly named by the

speakers.)

I’m asking you to clean up the kitchen.

I’m asking you not to part the car here

3 Hedged performatives (Utterances embedding the naming of the illocutionary force.)

I’d like to ask you to clean the kitchen.

I’d like you to give your lecture a week earlier

4 Obligation statements (The illocutionary point is directly derivable from the semantic

meaning of the locution.)

You’ll have to clean up the kitchen.

Ma’am, you’ll have to move your car

5 Want statements (The utterance expresses the speaker’s intentions, desire or feeling vis á vis

the fact that the hear do X.)

I really wish you’d clean up the kitchen.

I really wish you’d stop bothering me

Conventionally indirect strategies

6 Suggestory formulae (The sentence contains a suggestion to X.)

How about cleaning up?

Why don’t you get lost?

So, why don’t you come and clean up the mess you made last night?

7 Query preparatory (The utterance contains reference to preparatory conditions, such as

ability or willingness, the possibility of the act being performed, as conventionalized in anyspecific language.)

Could you clean up the kitchen, please?

Would you mind moving your car, please?

Non-conventionally indirect strategies (hints)

8 Strong hints (The utterances contains partial reference to object or to elements needed for

the implementation of the act, directly pragmatically implying the act)

You have left the kitchen in a right mess.

9 Mild hints (Utterances that make no reference to the request proper or any of its elements

but are interpretable through the context as requests, indirectly pragmatically implying the act)

I’m a nun (in response to a persistent hassler).

These subcategories of conventional indirectness vary across languages in conventions ofform In Australian English, the most frequently employed strategies were found to be

“can/could you ~,” “will/would you ~,” and “would you mind ~.” In Hebrew, “can you ~,”

“possibility (ef_ar + infinitive),” and willingness/readiness (muxan + infinitive) seem to be

most commonly used See below for distribution of substrategies of conventional indirectness

in four languages However, the substrategies are probably used in varying proportions indifferent situations Most strategies are limited by language and situation except for abilityQuestions that are found to be used by speakers in all languages and all situations

III Pragmatic transfer

III.1 Pragmatic transfer

Kasper defined pragmatic transfer as “the influence exerted by learners’ pragmatic knowledge

of languages and cultures other than L2 on their comprehension, production, and acquisition

of L2 pragmatic information” (Kasper, 1992; 1995) while Bee viewed pragmatic transfer as

‘transfer of sociocultural communicative competence in performing L2 speech acts or any

other function of language, where the speaker is trying to achieve a particular function oflanguage,’ (Bee, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990:56)

Pragmatic transfer manifested itself in two ways or categories, namely pragmalinguistic andsociopragmatic (Kasper,1992) Both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic are terms derivedfrom Leech’s (1983:10~11) treatment towards the scope of pragmatics and which Thomas(1983) picked up in classifying the types of pragmatic failure Pragmalinguistics, in Leech’s(1983) definition, refers to our linguistic knowledge of language use, and sociopragmatics isrelated with how our sociological knowledge influences our interaction

Kasper (1992) saw it fit to introduce both terms to categorize the learners’ pragmatic transfer,for she remarked that “Leech’s (1983) distinction between pragmalinguistics andsociopragmatics, applied by Thomas (1983) to identify two major types of ‘pragmatic failure’,

is equally suitable to broadly separate the two main loci of pragmatic transfer” (Kasper,1992:208)

A pragmalinguistic transfer is the influence of the learner’s knowledge about the illocutionaryforce or politeness value assigned to particular linguistic form-functions in the native language(NL), which, when mapped by learners into the perception and production of a similarsituation in the target language (TL), sounds different to native speakers In Kasper’s words, it

is “the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to a particularlinguistic material in NL influences learners’ perception and production of form-functionmappings in TL” (Kasper, 1992:209)

By a sociopragmatic transfer, it is a process “operative when the social perceptions underlyinglanguage users’ interpretation and performance of linguistic action in TL are influenced bytheir assessment of subjectively equivalent NL contexts” (Kasper, 1992:209)

In order to investigate whether or where transfer occurs, ILP researchers usually compare thefollowing three data sources by adopting the design originally developed by Selinker (1966,1969) : (1) the L1 baseline data from native speakers of the learners’ native language (NL);

(2) the IL data from the learners; and (3) the target language baseline data from native

speakers of the learners’ target language (TL) (see Kasper, 1992) Similarity in tems ofresponse frequencies in NL, IL, and TL leads us to claim positive transfer; and similarresponse frequencies in NL and IL with different response frequencies between NL and TLand between IL and TL evidences the fact of negative transfer In this study, the product-oriented research following the above design will be called the studies on “pragmatictransfer” They ought to be distinguished from the studies on “pragmatic transferability,”

which shed light on the conditions for pragmatic transfer to occur.

III.2 Studies on Sociopragmatic Transfer

By focusing on the speech act of correction performed by Japanese learners of ESL, Takahashiand Beebe (1993) evidenced the case of negative transfer at the sociopragmatic level The dataelicited from the 12-item discourse completion test (DCT) revealed the following: theJapanese ESL learners transferred Japanese style-shifting patterns into English by selectingdifferent strategies according to the speaker’s higher or lower status vis-8-vis the hearer Thesame tendency was also identified in Japanese ESL learners’ performance of refusals in theorder, frequency, and content of semantic formulas (Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990).Takahashi and Beebe attributed the distinctive style-shifting patterns observed between theJapanese and the American groups to the differential conceptualization of linguistic politenessbetween these two groups: Japanese consider it polite to emphasize the status difference whenthere actually exist such differences, whereas, from the American perspective, being polite isconveyed by denying that status differences do exist Takahashi and Beebe (1993) also foundthe two cases of L1 influence attributable to the different “politeness orientation” (Brown &Levinson, 19 8 7 )’ between Japanese and Americans According to Takahashi and Beebe, theAmericans favored the use of positive remarks, such as “That was a great account,” beforesaying “but” in correcting the lower status interlocutor’s statement Both the Japanese L1

speakers and Japanese ESL learners, however, showed their reluctance to use such positiveremarks in the same situations This demonstrated the Japanese L1 influence of a “lesspositive” politeness orientation as compared to the American politeness orientation.

Takahashi and Beebe further pointed out the tendency that the Japanese L1 speakers andJapanese ESL learners more often used formulaic expressions than the Americans did The use

of correct socially conventionalized formula is the prescribed norm as what Ide (1989) called

‘Ldiscernment politeness.” Takahashi and Beebe thus extrapolated that the above tendencywas a result of L1 transfer of “a belief in the efficacy of choosing the appropriate expressionaccording to relative status” (p.146)

Related to the issue of transfer of L1 politeness style, Garcia (1989) reported similar findings.Garcia investigated the English IL apologies performed by Venezuelan Spanish speakers in arole play situation She found that the L2 learners transferred their L1 positive politenessstrategies (i.e., friendly, but not contrite, expressing themselves in terms of solidarity with theinterlocutor) to the L2 contexts Since the target language speakers Brown and Levinson(1987) proposed two types of politeness: positive politeness, which is redressive actiondirected to the addressee’s positive face (i.e., the want to be approved); and negativepoliteness, which is redressive action to maintain the addressee’s negative face (i.e., the want

to be unimpeded) Transfer in Interlanguage Pragmatics: New Research Agenda 3 employednegative politeness strategies ( i.e., deferential, self-effacing toward the interlocutor) in thesame situation, the observed transfer was characterized as “negative” transfer

The study of IL apology conducted by House (1988) revealed the transfer of L1communicative style, rather than that of L1 politeness orientation Using an 8-item DCT as thedata-eliciting instrument, House examined the English apology performed by German learners

of British English House found that both the German speakers and German learners of BritishEnglish exhibited less routinized, specific, situation-bound excuses The native British Englishspeakers, on the other hand, more frequently used their routinized apology “sorry.” Thus, she

claimed evidence of the transfer of the German preference for less routinized apologyexpressions to the L2 contexts House further demonstrated another case of transfer of L1communicative style to L2 contexts According to House, the German learners of BritishEnglish transferred their L1-based self-oriented strategies (e.g., expressing lack of intent), incomparison with the British English speakers’ preference for the use of other-oriented apologystrategies (e.g., showing concern for the hearer).

Scarcella (1983) also reported the case of transfer of L1 communicative style bySpanishspeaking English learners Specifically, she investigated the “discourse accent,” whichwas defined as the use of conversational features in L2 in the same way in which they are used

in L1 Scarcella obtained 15 dyads of spontaneous conversation data which consisted ofSpanish/ Spanish (L1) , English/English (L1) , and English (L11 /English (IL) dyads Despitethe Spanish learners’ high proficiency in English, L1 transfer was evident in the followingmanner: more frequent verbal exchanged backchannel cues and more frequent pause fillerswere observed in Spanish L1 and English IL, as compared to native English speakers Someother studies yielded the findings that the degree of appropriateness in realizing a given L1speech act influenced the realization of the same act in L2 Olshtain (1983) was among them.Olshtain examined the extent and type of transfer in the speech act of apology performed byEnglish- and Russian-speaking learners of Hebrew as L2 The data were elicited by asking thesubjects to respond in Hebrew to the verbal cue issued by the investigator for eight situations

By comparing the average frequency of all apology semantic formulas in Ll, except “offer ofrepair,” Olshtain found the following: the highest degree of apology overall was in English,somewhat lower in Russian, and the lowest in Hebrew A similar trend was observed in theHebrew IL of Russian-speaking learners, somewhat less strongly in the Hebrew IL of English-speaking learners, thereby displaying the negative transfer from L1 sociopragrnatic knowledge(see below for the analysis based on the learners’ language-specificity perception) Similarfindings were obtained for the Hebrew speakers learning English as L2 (Cohen & Olshtain,1981) Namely, the nonnative use of apology semantic formulas was overall considerably less

than that of the native English speakers and more closely reflected the use of the formulas bythe native Hebrew speakers.

In Robinson (1992) as well, findings similar to Olshtain7s were reported, but for the speechact of refusal attempted by Japanese learners of English Robinson investigated the underlyingprocess of making IL refusals in the performance on a DCT She analyzed the data obtainedfrom the learners’ concurrent verbal reports and the retrospective interviews with them.According to Robinson, one of her subjects apparently transferred the Japanese preference fornot saying “no” to a request to her IL English discourse Robinson observed that

“sociopragmatic transfer prompted at least part of this subject’s confusion over what to say”(p.57) in a less familiar, American cultural context (“You are asked to function as a secretary

of your department’s student association”)

III.3 Studies on Pragmalinguistic Transfer

Pragmalinguistic transfer is the “process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness valueassigned to particular linguistic material in L1 influences learners’ perception and production

of form-function mappings in L2” (Kasper, 1992, p 209) Pragmalinguistic transfer wassubstantially evidenced by Blum-Kulka (1982, 1983) in her study on request realization byEnglish learners of Hebrew as L2 As a case of positive transfer, Blum-Kulka found that theEnglish learners of Hebrew successfully transferred the following crosslinguistically sharedstrategies: imperatives, ability questions, ‘ why not ‘ questions, and ‘ Do you mind if…?’forms However, negative transfer was also found to be operative in their IL The learnerstended to inappropriately use the Hebrew ability (“can you”) questions, resulting in fomswhich did not carry the pragmatic force of a request Blum-Kulka described this observedtendency as a case in which the apparent similarity in form and function across the twolanguages does not hold for all contexts Negative pragmalinguistic transfer was also noted inthe choice of directness levels in request realization: the English learners of Hebrew preferredless direct strategies in L2 than the native Hebrew speakers, thereby conforming more to theirL1 indirect strategies.”

Deviations in the choice of directness levels in request realization have been substantiallyevident in the studies conducted in the framework of CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech ActRealization Patterns) project By using the DCT eliciting technique, House and Kasper (1987)examined the request realizations of German learners of British English and Danish learners ofBritish English in five request situations One of their major findings was that both Germanand Danish learners of English deviated from the British English norm and followed their L1noms in their choice of the directness of the request in two of the five situations For instance,those L2 learners favored the use of direct imperatives, while the native speakers preferred touse more indirect preparatory questions The data were also analyzed along the dimension ofinternal and external modifications Negative pragmalinguistic transfer was observed in fewersyntactic downgraders for both learner groups Transfer was also operative differentiallybetween these two learner groups: the “Blum-Kulka (1982) pointed out that the Englishlearners of Hebrew overall followed their L1 preference for more indirectness Blum-Kulka

interpreted this as evidence for transfer of social noms In this sense, then, the obtained

tendency here can be considered as a case of “sociopragmatic transfer” (see also Kasper,1992)

III.4 Studies on Transferability

The condition of transfer occurrence was technically referred to as transferability (Kasper,1992) Takahashi (1995:11) observed three dimensions of transferability in SLA research,namely the study on the developmental sequence of transferability, linguistic markedness, andnon-surface form transfer And these three dimensions, Takahashi further indicates, areusually approached in interlanguage pragmatics research from the perspective ofpsycholinguistics (Olshtain, 1983; Olshtain and Cohen, 1983; 1989; House and Kasper 1987;Kasper, 1981; Bodman and Eisenstein, 1988; Robinson, 1992; cited in Takahashi, 1995,pp.46-49)

Takahashi (1992:69-124; 1993:50-83) made an explicit investigation on transferability of fiveindirectness strategies realized by the “conventions of usage” of Japanese indirect requests

when Japanese learners of English realized English indirect requests in four situations.Takahashi used informants representing two proficiency groups: beginning-intermediate levelstudents, considered as low ESL group, and advanced students, high ESL group They werepresented with an acceptability judgment task for five indirect request expressions inrespectively Japanese and English for each situation The transferability rate was computed foreach strategy for each situation by subtracting the acceptability rate of the English indirectrequest from the acceptability rate of the corresponding Japanese indirect request Theobtained transferability rate was considered as the “psycholinguistic markedness” of eachstrategy, which determined its language-specificity or neutrality This study manifested thatcontextual factors play a major role in determining transferability at the pragmatic level Theresults also displayed that some proficiency effected on the transferability of those indirectnessstrategies

Following the initial findings, further attempts were made to explore the type of contextualfactors that were most likely to affect transferability, and to expound the relationship betweenthe proficiency effects on the transferability of the indirectness strategies

The transferability of the five indirectness strategies realized by the Japanese learners ofEnglish was further discussed in Takahashi (1995) The study showed that the Japaneselearners differentially transferred the Japanese indirectness strategies Furthermore, Takahashidetected that the transferability of each L1 request strategy was determined by the interactionbetween politeness and conventionality perceived in each strategy and the degree of mitigationrequired in each imposition context In addition, the transferability rate was influenced by theproficiency factor However, there was not a definite tendency for a positive correlation or for

a negative one between L1 transfer and proficiency

III.5 TL pragmatic proficiency and its relation to negative pragmatic transfer

In the area of pragmatic transfer, the following nonstructural factors have been explored in theinteraction with transfer: sociopsychological factors, length-of-residence factors, learning-

context factors, and linguistic proficiency factors Compared with the other factors, ILPresearchers have put more emphasis on the investigation of the effect of proficiency onpragmatic transfer.

Concerning the function of the learner’s fluent TL pragmatic knowledge in negative pragmatictransfer, two views were presented Takahashi and Beebe (1987; 1993) held that TLproficiency was positively related with pragmatic transfer In other words, the more highlyproficient learners had control over TL to express the NL native speakers’ sentiments at thepragmatic level, the more likely they would transfer their NL sociocultural norms than lowproficient learners They claimed that their hypothesis was rested on the observation of someproficient Japanese ESL learners who used more typically Japanese formal tones in refusing in

TL Their findings were supported by Maeshiba et al (1996)

An opposite view was proposed by Takahashi & Dufon (1989), Robinson (1992) andTakahashi (1996) Takahashi & Dufon (1989) displayed that beginning-level Japanese learners

of ESL were similar to the Japanese control group with an NL-based pattern of bimodaldistribution of indirectness Advanced students, on the other hand, were found not to transferthe Japanese hinting strategies and thus posed more directness strategies in their IL requests.Robinson (1992) made similar conclusion about her informants’ realization of refusals Shereported that her lower and higher proficient Japanese ESL learners were both aware of thedifferences in appropriate American and Japanese situations of the speech act However, thelower proficient students were more influenced by their NL refusal style, whereas the moreproficient learners knew how to apply the rules of English in doing the discourse completiontest (DCT) items on refusals Another more recent challenge for Takahashi & Beebe (1987;1993) came from Takahashi (1996) who reported that the distribution of negative pragmatictransfers was conditioned by the imposition and form of request As for the role of TLpragmatic proficiency in negative pragmatic transfer, it was found that a learner with advancedpragmatic knowledge about TL would not be likely to commit more transfers (Takahashi,1992; 1993)

III.6 Gender and TL Pragmatic Transfer

Together with age, personality and proficiency of the speaker (Ellis, 1994; Odlin, 1989; Takahashi, 1996), gender is a factor that leads to variation in the patterns and likelihood of transfer

Holmes (1995) looked at gender differences in apologies and found both similarities

and differences between males and females The most obvious differences that this

study found were the following three points: (1) Women used significantly more apologies than men did; (2) Women used most apologies for the hearers of equal power, while menapologized to women of different status; (3) Women used most apologies for female friends whereas men used most for socially distant women (pp.379-380) Differences resulting from gender in the realization of speech acts in a lot of cross-cultural studies show that gender may effects on pragmatic transfer

Hisae Kuribara Shea (2003) found that gender had much less influence than social distanceand relative status on the frequency of strategies of complaining by Japanese speakers ofEnglish living in America (JEAs), Japanese speakers of Japanese living in Japan (JJJs), andAmerican speakers of English living in America (AEAs) It is the same in the case of manyother studies That is why gender has received little attention in research into pragmatictransfer

Chapter III: Methodology

III.1 Research Questions

In order to achieve the aims of the study, the following questions will be addressed:

- Is pragmatic transfer from Vietnamese to English in the realization of request constrained

III.2 Data collection method

Observational data from authentic interactions are underpresented in ILP Among a limitednumber of studies employing ethnographic research method are Wolfson’s (1989) andBardovi-Harlig and Hartford’s (1990) Ethnographic data is collected through observation andrecording of naturally occurring speech in everyday interactions in a wide variety of situations.While ethnography may reveal the linguistic strategies used in many contexts in a givenlanguage and culture as well as interpersonal situations in which requests have been observed,

it requires us a great amount of time and energy to transcribe taped interaction This limits thenumber of informants and contexts studied Furthermore, it is easy to confront the limits ofcross-cultural comparability due to difficulties in finding equivalent culture-specific speechevents Ethnography seems not to be a good choice if we want to control contextual variablesand investigate a speech act in the same situational and interpersonal context

Role play is another method that has been used in ILP studies Informants are asked to play themselves in a situation orally described by the experimenter While there is nointeraction in closed role plays, partially self-directed interaction between the players in openrole plays allows examination of speech act behaviour in its full discourse context Becauseinstructions to accompany open role plays specify players’ roles, the initial situation and at

role-least one player’s communicative goal, but do not predescribe conversational outcomes norhow such outcomes are reached, the ensuing interaction is real in the context of the play Openrole plays provide a rich data source, representing oral production, full operation of the turntaking mechanism, impromtu planning decisions contingent on interlocutor input, and hence,negotiation of global and local goals They allow us to observe how speech act performance issequentially organized, what kinds of interlocutor responses are elicited by specific strategicchoices and how such responses determine the speaker’s next move The advantage of openrole plays over authentic conversation is its replicability and control of contextual variables.

However, it is not certain that language produced by informants in role plays is real becausethey may think they are in an experiment and modify their language consciously orunconsciously Also, the cost of recording and transcription needs to be taken intoconsideration

Multiple choice method gives informants a series of questions with answers Informants areasked to choose the answer they think most appropriate This saves time and energy for bothexperimenters and informants Informants can quickly answer questions and experimenterscan quickly get information from a large population as well as code data The disadvantage isthat possibilities of response are restricted to choices given in the Questionnaire What ismore, the authenticity of information depends on the researcher’s preparation of questions andanswers

Multiple choice method with such advantages and disadvantages has been chosen toinvestigate Vietnamese learners of English and native speakers’ assessment of contextualfactors in this study The limit of the number of the choices, which are points in rating scales,

is not a drawback in this case

The Written Completion Task provides two options: open-ended elicitation and the DiscourseCompletion Task (DCT) Situations are described in writing and space is provided for

informants to supply the speech act under investigation The Written Completion Task hasbeen widely employed in ILP studies A weak point of this method is that language produced

by informants is closer to written norms than to spoken norms Having more time to think andrespond, informants may not provide the response they would if they spoke Besides, manyfeatures of nonverbal communication cannot be recorded

However, the DCT can provide comparable data to that collected from oral role plays.Contextual variables can be controlled in the DCT and the same situations can be used to elicitinformation The DCT helps us get data from a large population without as much time andcost as ethnographic methods and role plays According to Cohen (1996, p.25), the DCT is “aneffective means of gathering a large amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification

of semantic formulas, and ascertaining the structure of speech act(s) under consideration.”

Offering such advantages, the DCT has been employed in this study to elicit how Vietnameselearners of English and English native speakers realize their requests

III.3 Research design

III.3.1 Informants

In order to investigate the influence of Vietnamese ESL learners’ proficiency in Engllish onpragmatic transfer, there are 4 following groups of informants participating in the study:1/ 28 Vietnamese learners of English (intermediate) (VEI)

TOEFL score: 450-550

2/ 20 Vietnamese learners of English (advanced) (VEA)

TOEFL score: >550

3/ 21 native speakers of English (E)

4/ 48 native speakers of Vietnamese (V)

V participate in VEI or VEA

In order to investigate the influence of Vietnamese ESL learners’ gender on pragmatictransfer, there are 4 following groups of informants participating in the study:

1/ 30 female Vietnamese learners of English (VEF)

F participate in VEI or VEA

2/ 18 male Vietnamese learners of English (VEM)

M participate in VEI or VEA

3/ 30 male speakers of Vietnamese (VM)

III.3.2 Data collection instruments

A written questionnaire in the form of DCT was prepared in English and Vietnamese in order

to elicit requests from the British and Vietnamese speakers The relative power of the speakerover the addressee (P), the social distance between the interactants (D), and the ranking ofimposition of request (R) were the variables incorporated into the description of the situations

The Questionnaire used in this study included 20 situations with different social domains anddifferent interlocutor role relationships in terms of relative power and social distance betweenthe interactants The content of the situations is as follows:

1 You are a student You are in a new class for the first day and find out that you forget

to bring a pen You see the person sitting next to you have an extra pen You want toborrow the pen from that person (PEN)

2 On Saturday morning you get up, go into the kitchen and see your younger brothermaking himself a cup of coffee You want to ask him to make you one (COFFEE)

3 You need a new towel Your mother is going to the supermarket You want to ask her

to buy a towel for you (TOWEL)

4 You were sick and absent from your class yesterday Now you want to borrow yourintimate classmate’s notes (NOTE)

5 You are a student Your score in the exam is much lower than expected Exams are notreturned to students so you do not know whether there is anything wrong with yourscore You go to your professor’s office and ask him to check your exam (SCORE)

6 It is your turn to clean the floor today But you have to finish your assignment withintoday You want to ask your roommate to clean the floor for you (FLOOR)

7 You are a manager An employee has not finished a report as you told him You askhim to finish it within today (REPORT)

8 When you are going to a meeting, you find out that you have left a document at theoffice You do not have enough time to go back to your office You phone a juniorcolleague and ask him to bring it for you (DOCUMENT)

9 You are going to a friend’s home After getting off the bus, you do not know how tofind the block T where your friend lives You ask an old woman passing by fordirections (DIRECTION)

10 You want to attend a Spanish language course at a foreign language centre You make

a phone call and ask the receptionist for the date on which the new course begins.(COURSE)

The structure of the pragmatic Questionnaire is as follows:

………

In order to avoid biasing the subjects’ responses, the word “request” was not mentionedthroughout the description in the DCT (Beebe and Takahashi, 1989) And clear instructionswere given at the beginning of the Questionnaire so that the informants would understandexactly what to do

In order to examine the relationship between contextual factors and strategy use, anAssessment Questionnaire was prepared, including the same situations as the DCT Each

situation was rated on a five-point scale in order to elicit judgments on contextual variables.Each situation was followed by five questions and the informants would rate each of thequestions according to their assessment on the scale ranging from 1 to 5

METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE Could you please read the following situations and circle the appropriate answer?

1 It is your turn to clean the floor today But you have to finish your assignment within today You want to ask your roommate to clean the floor for you.

A How WELL-ACQUAINTED are the speaker and the hearer?

1 2 3 4 5very well a little bit not at all

B What is the STATUS RELATIONSHIP between the speaker (S) and the hearer (H)?

1 2 3 4 5S>H S=H S<H

C How REASONABLE is it for the speaker to make the request?

1 2 3 4 5very reasonable unreasonable

D Does the hearer have the OBLIGATION to carry out the request?

1 2 3 4 5 strong obligation no obligation

E How INCONVENIENT is it for the hearer to carry out the request?

1 2 3 4 5very inconvenient not at all

III.3.3 Procedure

Situations in all the questionnaires were randomized The informants were instructed to fill inwhat they would say in each of the situations in the DCT The intermediate and advanced

learners (VEI and VEA) filled in the English and Vietnamese version of the DCT incounterbalanced order

The Assessment Questionnaire was administered a week later The Vietnamese version of theAssessment Questionnaire was completed by the native speakers of Vietnamese (V) and theEnglish version was completed by the native English speakers No time limits were imposed

on completing the DCT and the Assessment Questionnaire

Data from the questionnaires was computed Data from the situations of the DCT were codedusing the categories mentioned in the next part of the chapter (I.4.3.4)

III.3.4 Data analysis

The informants’ assessments of contextual factors obtained from the AssessmentQuestionnaire were analyzed with two sample t-tests so that we could figure out whether thenative speakers of English and Vietnamese were similar or different in their assessments ofeach contextual factors in each context and thus, predict the occurrence of pragmatic transfer

in each context (See IV.1)

The DCT data were coded into the following categories (from Tam , 1998):

1/ Imperative:

- Lend me your car (Trosborg, 1995)

2/ Performative

- I ask/request/order/command you to leave (Trosborg, 1995)

- I’d like to/ want to ask you to present your paper a week earlier (Blum-Kulka, 1989)

3/ Statements of obligation and necessity

- Madam, you’ll have to/should/must/ ought to move your car (Blum-Kulka, 1989)

4/ Statements of speakers’ needs and demands

- I need a pen (Trosborg, 1995)

5/ Statements of speakers’ wishes and desires

- I would like to have some more coffee (Trosborg, 1995)

- I would really appreciate if you lend me your car

6/ Suggestory formulae

- How about cleaning up the kitchen? (Blum-Kulka, 1989)

7/ Query preparatory

♦Reference to hearer’s ability

- Can you pass me the salt?

♦ Reference to hearer’s willingness

- Would you lend me a copy of your book? (Trosborg, 1995)

♦ Permission request

- May/Can I have a match? (Trosborg, 1995)

8/ Non-explicit requests

♦Stating potential grounders

- I’m to be at the airport in half an hour, and my car has just broken down (Trosborg, 1995)

♦Questioning the feasibility of the precondition for the requested act

- You don’t happen to have a pen, do you? (Trosborg, 1995)

♦Questioning the availability of the hearer

- Could you do me a favour? (Tam, 1998)

However, due to the fact that some categories were selected by few informants, the authorrecoded the data into the following four categories:

- Imperative

- Statement (including Performative, Statements of obligation and necessity, Statements ofspeakers’ needs and demands, Statements of speakers’ wishes and desires)

- Question (including Suggestory formulae and Query preparatory)

- Non-explicit requests

The study only concerned the head act of requests The percentage of requests of any strategyfor each context was obtained for each of the groups of E, V, VEI, and VEA Then with nativespeakers data used as the baseline, the comparison of the frequencies of strategies used by thegroups was made to find out pragmatic transfer made by advanced and intermediateVietnamese ESL learners in comparison with predictions of pragmatic transfer in IV.1 (SeeIV.2) Similarly, the comparison of the frequencies of strategies used by E, V, VEM, and VEFwas made to find out pragmatic transfer made by male and female Vietnamese ESL learners incomparison with predictions of pragmatic transfer in IV.1 (See IV.3)

Chapter IV: Presentation and Discussion of results

IV 1 Contextual effects on pragmatic transfer

Context Social

distance

Social power

Reasonability Obligation Inconvenience Transfer

+ = same rating by E and V

- = different rating by E and V

Comparison of the contextual assessments provided by the native speakers of English and thenative speakers of Vietnamese demonstrated that there was agreement in their perception ofsocial distance, reasonability of requesting, obligation to carry out requests and inconvenience

of carrying out requests Among them, obligation to carrying out requests received thestrongest agreement with the same assessments in seven contexts while all the other threevariables were assessed similarly in six contexts The biggest difference between the twogroups occurred in their assessments of social power, where the informants assessed sixcontexts differently

Looking at Table 1, we can see that four contexts, including Floor, Coffee, Direction, andNote were rated similar The likelihood of the occurrence of positive transfer was the highest

in context Direction as the whole five factors were rated similar in this context Theperceptions of social distance and obligation to carry out request were similar in the four

context categorized as similar Hierarchy seemed to be emphasized in the Vietnameseinformants’ minds when they gave the speaker more power over the younger brother than theEnglish native speakers, which made the difference in the two groups’ assessment of socialpower in context Coffee The English and Vietnamese groups agreed on reasonability ofmaking a request in context Note while they disagreed on inconvenience of performing therequest in context Floor

Report was the only situation that was rated different by the two native groups They haddifferent perceptions of all the factors but social power

Positive transfer was, thus, predicted in the four contexts and negative transfer was predicted

in the context of Report That means prediction of positive transfer outnumbered prediction ofnegative transfer

No prediction of pragmatic transfer was made in the contexts of Towel, Pen, Score, Courseand Document because neither similar ratings nor different ratings were outstanding.However, more factors were rated different than similar in the contexts of Towel, Pen, andDocument Only in context Score did similar factors surpass different ones

In short, prediction of pragmatic transfer could be made in half of the ten contexts, of whichfour was predicted to have positive transfer and only one was predicted to have negativetransfer

IV 2 Pragmatic transfer of request strategies and proficiency

According to Selinker’s (1969) operational definition of language transfer, lack of statisticallysignificant differences in the frequencies of a pragmatic feature in the first language, secondlanguage, and interlanguage can be operationally defined as positive transfer Statisticallysignificant differences in the frequencies of a pragmatic feature between interlanguage-secondlanguage and first language-second language and lack of statistically significant differencebetween interlanguage and first language can be operationally defined as negative transfer