(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) The use of politeness in making suggestion in English and Vietnamese

THE USE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN MAKING SUGGESTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE Sử dựng chiến lược lịch sự khi đưa ra lời gợi ý trong tiếng Anh... vi TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS NPS: Negativ

THE USE OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN MAKING SUGGESTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Sử dựng chiến lược lịch sự khi đưa ra lời gợi ý trong tiếng Anh

THE USE OF POLITENESS IN MAKING SUGGESTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Sử dụng chiến lược lịch sự khi đưa ra lời gợi ý trong tiếng

Anh và tiếng Việt

M.A MINOR THESIS

HANOI – 2012

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Đỗ THị Mai Thanh, M.A

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PART I: INTRODUCTION ………

I Rationale……… ………

II Aims………

III Scope……… …

IV Research questions ………

V Research methodology……… ……

VI Design of the study ………

PARTII:.DEVELOPMENT ………

Chapter 1: Literature review ……… ………

1 Culture………

1.2.Cross culture communication………

1.3 Politeness and face………

1.4 Politeness in cross cultural communication………

1.5 Positive politeness strategies………

1.6 Negative politeness strategies………

1.7 Speech act………

1.8 Suggesting as a speech act………

Chapter 2: Data analysis and findings………

2.1 Comments on survey questionnaires and informants………

2.2 The sequence of importance of some factors affectings S‟s choice of suggesting………

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parameter………

Chapter 3:Some applications of politeness in suggesting in English teaching and

learning………

Part III: Conclusion

3.1 Summary of major findings………

3.2 Suggest for further study

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TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS

NPS: Negative politeness strategies PPS: Positive politeness strategies FTAS: Face of threatening acts

List of tables

Table 1: Possible strategies for doing FTAs ( Brown and Levinson, 1987)

Table 2: Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Nguyen Quang, 1999:130)

Table 3: The in formants‟ status parameters

Table 4: The sequence of importance of some factors affecting S‟ ss choice of suggesting

Table 5: Politeness in suggesting as seen from English informants „parameter Table 6: Politeness in suggesting as seen from Vietnamese informants ‟parameter Table 7: Realization of positive politeness strategies in suggesting

Table 8: Realization of negative politeness strategies in suggesting Table 9: the utterances are used in making suggestion among informants

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

I Rationale

To our understanding, language is a great heaven prize and treasure for human in order to fulfill our vital needs as the social beings: communication Language appeared, remains and flourishes along with human history With the seen development of language and language studies at the moment, there

is no need in proving the crucial and irreplaceable position of language in human life

Language is not only for communication but also for cultural exchange among nations It is difficult to imagine what our lives would be like without language

Cross – cultural communication is an interesting and attractive field for us

to find out the similar and different language when studying speech acts such as: greeting, advising, promising, and suggesting… among countries in the world

There are many ways to make suggestion in Vietnamese and English But

to make suggestion in an effective way is by no mean easy People often have difficulties in making appropriate suggesting in another language

This leads the author to the research into “ The use of politeness strategies

in making suggestion in English and Vietnamese” to find out the similarities and differences in making suggestion in Vietnamese and English

II Aims of the study

The aims of the study are:

- To investigate ways of suggesting in Vietnamese and English

- To compare and contrast the use of politeness strategies in suggesting in given Vietnamese and English suggesting situations

- To contribute to raising language teachers‟ and students‟

awareness of cross – cultural differences in the speech act of suggesting

III Scope of the study

In all aspects of politeness, the study only deals with verbal aspects, in the light of the politeness theory by Brown and Levinson

The paper is aimed to investigate the English – Vietnamese cross – cultural interaction in making suggestion in both languages English and Vietnamese The data analysis is mainly taken in to account of interviews with informants

to examine politeness strategies based on collected situations of the act of suggestions The data were collected by conducting surveys with questionnaires In addition, the data from the informants are also utilized in the study

IV Research question

1 How are politeness strategies manifested in suggestion in English and Vietnamese?

2 What are the implications for teaching and applying the speech act suggesting in cross cultural communication in Hai Phong private university

V Method of the study

The following methods are resorted to:

- Conducting survey (with questionnaires as a data collection instrument)

- Consulting the supervisor

- Reading relevant publications

- Conducting personal observations

VI Organization of the study

The study will be organized into the following structure::

Part I: INTRODUCTION outlines the rationale, the methodology, the aims, the scope, the significance and the organization of the study

Part II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW reviews the theoretical issues It briefly present and discusses the theory of cross – cultural communication and summaries of politeness strategies, summaries of works on suggestion Chapter 2 DATA ANALYSIS presents and discusses similarities and differences in using politeness strategies in making suggestion in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 3 Some applications politeness strategies in teaching English Part III: CONCLUSION

Summary of major findings and suggestion for further study Suggestion for further study

PART II : DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1

LITERATURE REVIEW

I.1 CULTURE

According to H Triandis (1994:23), “Culture is a set of human-made

objective and subjective elements that in the past have increased the probability of survival and resulted in satisfaction for the participants in a ecological niche, and this became shared among those who could communicate with each other because they had a common language and they lived in the same time and place.”

Hoopes (1979:3) defines that: “ culture is the sum of ways of living,

including valuable ness, beliefs, esthetic, standards, linguistic, expression, patterns of thinking, behave norms, and styles of communication which a group of people to assume its survival in a particular physical and human environment Culture and the people who are part of it interact So culture is not static Culture is the response of a group of human being to valid and particular needs of its members It , therefore, has an inherent logic and an essential balance between positive and negative dimension”

Levine and Alelman (1993) consider culture as “ a shared background

( for example national, ethnic, religious) resulting from a common language and communication style, customs, beliefs, art, music and all the other products of human thought made by a particular group of people at a particular time It also refers to the informal and often hidden patterns of

human interactions, expressions and view points that people in one culture share”

Culture is always changing because culture consists of learned patterns of behavior and belief, cultural traits can be unlearned and learned a new as human need change Obviously, language cannot occur alone and is never separated from social activities and its culture

I.2.Cross – cultural communication

Cross – culture can be understood as “ the meeting of two cultures or

languages across the political boundaries of nation-state ”s ( Kram, 1998:

81) The relationship between culture and communication is often compared with the bond between the voice and the echo

According to Richard (1985:92) “ cross – cultural communication is an

exchange of ideas, information, etc… between persons from different backgrounds There are more problems in cross – cultural communication than in communication between people of the same cultural background each participant may interpret the other‟s speech according to his or her own cultural conventions and expectations If the cultural conventions and misunderstandings can easily arise, even resulting in a total break down of communication This has been shown by research into real life situations, such as job interview, doctor -patient encounters and legal communication”

Thus cross – cultural communication is a field of study that deals with these questions, concerning with the communication between/among interlocutors of different cultural background in an attempt to avoid misunderstanding, cultural shock and even conflicts In other words, cross

cultural communication studies are cultivating cultural fluency, the awareness

of the ways cultures operate in communication, and the abilities to respond effectively to cultural differences ( Lebaron, 2003)

I.3.Politeness and face

Many linguists share their understanding and their concern on the concept

of politeness Brown and Levison (1990: 2), in their introduction to

“Politeness- Some Universals in Language Usage”, emphasize that “the issues of politeness raise sociological speculations of this scale, they also touch on many other interests and many other fields.”

Cutting (2002: 44-45) views that “in pragmatics, when we talk of

politeness, we do not refer to the social rules of behavior, we refer to the choices that are made in language use, the linguistic expressions that give people space and show a friendly attitude to them”

It is true to say that politeness is a pragmatic phenomenon Politeness lies not in the form and the words themselves, but in their function and intended social meaning

Politeness, in terms of cultural aspect, is defined as “a fixed concept, as in

the idea of „polite social behavior‟, or etiquette, within a culture” (Yule,

1996: 60)

Richards (1985:281) identifies politeness as “the attempt to establish,

maintain, and save face during conversation” Brown and Levinson (199)

analyze politeness and say that in order to enter into social relationships, we

have to acknowledge and show an awareness of the face

„Face’, the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself, consisting in two related aspects:

Negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to

non-distraction- i.e to freedom of action and freedom from imposition

Positive face: the positive consistent self-image or „personality‟ (crucially

including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants

We should be aware of the fact that it is a universal characteristic across cultures that speakers should respect each other‟s expectations regarding self- image, take account of their feelings, and avoid face threatening acts Cutting (2002: 45) analyzes the view of Brown and Levinson (1990) of politeness and face: “ When face threatening acts (FTAs) are unavoidable, speakers can

redress the threat with negative politeness (which does not mean being

impolite) that respects the hearer‟s negative face, the need to be independent,

have freedom of action, and not be imposed on by others Or they can redress

the FTA with positive politeness, that attends the positive face, the need to

be accepted and liked by others, treated as a member of the group, and to know one‟s wants are shared by others”

Brown and Levinson (1990: 69) suggest five possible strategies for avoiding face threatening acts (FTAs) or for mitigating the face threat, which

are illustrated in the table 1 below

on record 2.positive politeness

Do the FTA with redressive action

4.off record 3.negative politeness 5.Don‟t do the FTA

Greater

Table 1: Possible strategies for doing FTAs ( Brown and Levinson, 1987)

For example, in term of suggesting speech acts:

1 without redressive action: means direct suggestions, such as: “ I suggest”

2 on record (with redressive action): means to suggest explicitly with or without politeness strategy,

3 off record: means not to suggest explicitly but give a listener a hint so that he or she can infer that the speaker means a suggestion don‟t do the FTA: means giving up suggesting

Brown and Levinson number those five strategies to prove that the greater the face threat is, the greater the numbered strategy should be employed

Brown and Levinson implicitly consider negative politeness to be “more polite” than positive politeness This can be seen from the diagram when they

number the former and the latter 2 and 3 respectively Nguyen Quang (1999: 129) analyzes that it is this point of view of Brown and Levinson that more or less decreases their diagram‟s universal value, and he proposes another (see

Figure 2)

FTA encounter

4 Don’t do the FTA Do the FTA

2 With redressive action

Positive Negative politeness politeness Without redressive action

Table 2: Possible strategies for doing FTAs ( Nguyen Quang, 1999:130)

I.4 Politeness in cross – cultural communication

Despite of cultural differences, an action or utterance of face threat, in any culture yet at some different levels, can lead to communication discord or offense Therefore, every cultural has its own politeness strategies of mitigating the face threat to others in interpersonal communication That is why the issue of politeness has been taken into great started quite recently

Goffman (1967) describes politeness as “the appreciations and individual

shows to another through avoidance or presentation of rituals” (p.7) Lakoff

(1973)suggests that if one wants to succeed in communication, the message must be conveyed in a clear manner Fraser and Nolan (1981) define politeness as a set of constraints of verbal behaviors Leech (1983) sees it as forms of behaviors aimed at creating and maintaining harmonious interaction

He also considers the politeness principle as part of the principles for interpersonal rhetoric He presents six maxims for the politeness principle (p 132- 139):

- Tact maxim : minimize cost to other maximize benefit to other

- Generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self Maximize cost to self

- Approbation maxim: minimize praise of self Maximize dispraise

partners They define face as “ the public self image that every member wants

to claim for himself”

Linguistics 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

I.5 positive politeness strategies and positive politeness strategies

Positive politeness strategies seek to minimize the threat to the hearer‟s positive face They are used to make the hearer feel good about himself, his interests or possessions, and are most usually used in situations where the

audience knows each other fairly well In addition to hedging and attempts to avoid conflict, some strategies of positive politeness include statements of friendship, solidarity, compliments According to Brown and Levison

(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

I.6 Negative Politeness and negative politeness strategies

Negative politeness strategies are oriented towards the hearer‟s negative face and emphasize avoidance of imposition on the hearer These strategies presume that the speaker will be imposing on the listener and there is a higher potential for awkwardness or embarrassment than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous so the speaker is more apt to include an out for the listener, through distancing styles like apologies

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 unimpeded” Agreeing with Brown and

Levinson on definition of negative politeness, Nguyen Quang (2003)

emphasized, “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 Asian 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 Mary, could I possibly use your cell phone for a short while? ( Group identity marker : Mary [positive politeness] + conventionally indirect strategy [negative strategy])

I.7 Speech act

it is believed that language is used not only to describe or to inform something, but also to do something J Austin(1962) and J Seark (1969) proposed “ speech act theory” for the very first time Austin suggests that speech act is saying something that has a certain sense and reference like

making request, promise or offer Yule (1996) also defined speech act as “

actions via utterances are generally called speech acts”

I.8 Suggesting – as a speech act

Wierzbicka gives a definition of suggesting as : on making a suggestion, the speaker thinks that it might be a good thing if the addressee did

something He invites therefore, the addressee to imagine himself actually

doing it, so that he can form an opinion about this possibility, and decide whether or not he wants to follow it (1987)

Suggestions belong to the group of directive speech acts which, according

to Searle (1976),are those in which the speaker‟s purpose is to get the hearer

to commit him/herself to some future course of action To put it more simply, directives are attempts to make the worlds match the words Bach and Harnish‟s (1979) definition of directives also implies that the speaker‟s attitude and intention when performing an utterance must be taken as a reason for the hearer‟s action Moreover, one relevant feature affecting directives in opposition to other speech acts, such as representatives or co missives (Searle 1976), refers to the necessary interaction between the speaker and the hearer

in order to get the speech act performed As Trosborg (1995;20) points out,

“ only the case of directives is the hearer‟s subsequent act ( getting things done) part of the speaker‟s intention”

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CHAPTER 2

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

II.1 Comments on survey questionnaires and informants

The data taken from the survey questionnaire is used at the linguistic input There are 5 designed situations Of the 31 English and 25 Vietnamese informants, 40 people have been selected for the analysis (20 English speakers and 20 Vietnamese people) The former group are all English people Obviously, they know very little about Vietnam and have no bias toward answering the survey questionnaire The later group, theVietnamese in the North of Vietnam, is my colleagues at Hai Phong private university and

my Students at Hai Phong Private university 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:

- Age

- Gender

- Occupation The informants‟ status parameters are presented in the table below:

Table 3 : The informants’ status parameter

They are required to list the following factors affecting the choice of making suggestion ( Direct, indirect, formally, informally) in the sequence of importance from 1 (most) to 5 (least):

- The position of the addressee

- The relationship between you and the address

- The topic ( subtle, a taboo…)

- The addressee‟s personality (extroverted, introverted…)

- Your psychological mood The last past of the survey is expected to get the informants ‟suggestion on given situations:

- Situation 1: Your close friend wants to buy a new cell phone

What would you say to suggest her/ him to buy a product of a particular brand, e.g Apple, Samsung, Sony etc

- Situation 2: Your boss wants to go on a holiday, but doesn‟t

know where to go What would you say to suggest her/ him to go China, or Italy…

- Situation 3: Your business partner wants to hold a party at a

restaurant, but doesn‟t know a good restaurant what would you

say to suggest her/ him to hold at Benare restaurant, hiro restaurant or Fat Duck restaurant

Shushi Situation 4: Your brother is ill, he wants to go to a good doctor

What would you say to suggest her/ him

book to study What would you say to suggest her/him

II.2The sequence of importance of some factors affecting S’s choice of suggesting

20 %

32 %

40 %

- A: the position of the addressee

- B: the relationship between the S and the addressee

- C: topic

- D: the addressee‟s personality

- E: the S‟s psychological mood The above factors are assumed to affect the S‟s choice of suggesting

As to most of Vietnamese informants, the most important factors is the position of the addressee (36%) the latter are the relationship (32%) and the topic (28%) the s‟ psychological mood (4%) and the least important one is the addressee „s personality

However the choice of the British informants are quiet different According to the British, the relationship is the most important factor (40% of the informants rank this factor first and 50 % suppose that they are in the second rank) the addressee‟s personality (10%) and the least important one is the addressee‟s personality

To sum it up, the importance of the given factors can be arranged as in the following table:

3 The topic Position

.Table 4 The sequence of importance of some factors affecting S‟s choice of suggesting

To be brief, beside social factor like age and gender, these are also many other ones that affect S‟s making suggestion And due to different cultures the influence of the factors is at variable range Also the importance of those

factors is culturally different

II.3 Politeness in suggesting as seen from informants’ parameter English findings

The overall strategies indicate a higher frequency in the use of NPS by English speaker in suggesting PPS accounts for a smaller proportion However, the distribution of NPS and PPS varies according to different parameters of the informants

People under 30 used more negative politeness oriented than those above

30 in addition, a higher proportion of NPS is seen in the female‟s utterance than the male‟s (28% 27%) while the reverse is true for PPS (22,6% 21,8%)

As far as profession is concerned, students seem to be more NPO than the office and service workers (21,2% - 18,2% - 17,8%) while the reverse order is

Table 6 Politeness in suggesting as seen from Vietnamese informants’ parameter

In term of age, there is hardly any difference in the use of NPS people above 30 use PPS at a maximum: 34,5% Compared to 30,2% by those under

30

Similarly the proportion of NPS used by the male and female is appropriately the same (15% - 13,45%)

There are bigger differences as seen from the professional parameter, 21,2% is the percentage of NPS used by students compared to 11% by office workers and 12,8% by service workers Office workers make use of PPS with the biggest proportion 37% Vs 8,5% by students and 28% by service worker

II.4 Realization of positive politeness strategies in suggesting

presuppose speaker‟s knowledge

reason

Table 7 Realization of positive politeness strategies in suggesting

The table shows the percentage of positive politeness strategies occurrence

in Vietnamese and English in 5 situations It is generally asserted that positive politeness strategies are used more frequently than negative ones in Vietnamese and vice verse in English There are 17 positive strategies but only 9 are found in these situation

Among these strategy 11 “ be optimistic” is chosen as the first frequently used with 16% in Vietnamese and 6% in English

Strategy 5 “ seek agreement” ranks second with 11.55% in Vietnamese and

in English it accounts for 5.4% it is followed by strategy 16 “ encourage”

with 10.4% in Vietnamese whereas these two strategies take modest rate in English with 3.8% and 4.3%

In comparison with others, strategy 4 “ use in group identify maker” takes the forth position with 7.8% After strategy 2 “ exaggerate” with 9.2% in Vietnamese In English both of them occur at lower rate3.6% and 5.4% it seems to be one of the most commonly used strategy in communication in general and in Vietnamese culture in particular

Strategy 1 “notice/attend to hearer” is not highly appreciated in 6 designed situations in Vietnamese however, the English speaker mostly prefer it at the highest rate at 7.6%

It is noticed that strategy 12 „ include both speaker and hearer in the activity‟ is dominated with 7.1 % in all situations and followed by strategy 9

“ assert or presuppose speaker‟s knowledge” with 5.4% And strategy 13

“ give or ask for reasons” with 3.2% in Vietnamese

In short, in communication positive politeness strategies are used frequently and depend on many components of communication

II.5 The realization of negative politeness strategies in Vietnamese and English findings

hedge

Table 8 The realization of negative politeness strategies in Vietnamese and English findings

There are 11 negative politeness strategies but only 5 of them are found in situations In general, English speakers have tendency of using negative politeness strategies than Vietnamese ones

Strategy “question, hedge” is mostly used in 5 situations both in English and Vietnamese 9,1 % in Vietnamese and 22.1 % in English

Both English and Vietnamese are interested in using strategy

“impersonalize S and H” ( 9.5% in Vietnamese and 17.5% in English).according to Brown and Levinson (1997:1990) one way of indicating that speaker does not want to impinge on hearer by avoiding the pronoun “I” and “you”

The third choice of English speaker is strategy “be pessimistic” (7.4%) It

is followed by strategy “ be conventionally indirect” (6.5%) Meanwhile strategy “ be pessimistic” is used the least frequently in Vietnamese (1.5%) This strategy is used based on three important realizations : the use of negative, subjunctive and the use of remote possibility markers