a politeness strategy in expressing sympathy by american and vietnamese speakers = chiến lược lịch sự trong việc diễn đạt sự cảm thông của người mỹ và người việt nam

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts……….10 Table 2: The external modifications………...26 Table 3: Sympathy strategies by American and Vietnamese speakers ……….29 Table

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background and significance of the study … 1

1.2 Objectives ……… 2

1.3 Overview of the study……… 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Speech acts ……… 4

2.2 Politeness……… 7

2.2.1 Theory of politeness……… 7

2.2.2 Social factors affecting politeness ………8

2.2.3 The notion of face ………

2.2.4 The notion of positive and negative politeness……… …….9

2.3 Directness and indirectness……… 10

2.3.1 Direct speech acts………… 10

2.3.2 Indirect speech acts………… 11

2.4 Cooperative principles……… 12

2.5 The speech act of comfort……… 14

2.6 Politeness in expressing sympathy………… 14

2.7 Sympathy and antipathy…… ……… 17

CHAPTER 3: METHODLOGY 19

3.1 Research methods of the study……… 19

3.2 Research questions……… 19

3.3 Research design……… 19

3.3 1 Selection of subjects……… 19

3.3.2 Data collection instruments…… 20

3.3.3 Data collection procedure… .23

3.4 Analytical framewor……… 24

3.4.1 Internal modification……… 24

3.4.2 External modifications…… 25

3.4.3 The Head Act formula…… 26

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 29

4.1 The choice of strategy……… 29

4.2 The choice of External modification or Supportive Moves 30

4.3 The internal modifications……… ………….31

4.4 The realization of sympathy expression……… 32

4.5 Summary of major findings……… 33

4.6 Discussion of findings……… 34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 37

5.1 Conclusion……… 37

5.2 Implications……… 38

5.3 Suggestions for further study……… 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B IV APPENDIX C VIII APPENDIX D……….…….XII

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts……….10 Table 2: The external modifications……… 26 Table 3: Sympathy strategies by American and Vietnamese speakers ……….29 Table 4: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between

two nations……… 30

Table 5: The range of selected internal modifications by two nations……… 31 Table 6: The realization of sympathy expression……… 32 Table 7: The realization of preferable sympathy structures……… 36

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: The choice of sympathy strategies ……… ….29 Figure 2: Different types of sympathy External Modifications……… 31

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background and significance of the study

English has been one of the compulsory subjects in Vietnamese universities for many years However, the tendency in teaching and learning English has placed a great emphasis on communicative competence That means it requires the learners to be able

to use the language grammatically, appropriately ad effectively In other words, the learners must have the ability to say the right thing in the right situation in order to get what they want Nevertheless, the process of teaching and learning in Vietnam, communicative competence has been paid little attention Therefore, learners have difficulties in oral communication though they can read or write well Furthermore, since the open door policy and recent social development, more and more Vietnamese people have been now working in foreign companies and have to speak English in their work; the need for oral communication in English is increasing Apart from the grammatical and lexical knowledge, much awareness in verbal communicative competence has been paid attention to In addition, in order to achieve the communicative goals and avoid misunderstandings, learners have to develop a sense of socio-cultural appropriateness However, despite this increasing emphasis on sealing, both teachers and learners still have difficulties in direct interaction with foreigners due

to the lack of knowledge of when, how and to whom to say what

With an aim to improving learners‟ communicative competence, there have been many English and Vietnamese cross-cultural studies on the realization and the usage of such speech acts as thanking (Tam, 1990), offering (Lan, 2000), apology (Van, 2000), inviting (Hien, 2002), prohibiting (Thuc, 2001), etc Those studies have shown similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of linguistic element

Further, Vang‟s study (1990) in requests raises some significant concerns in cross- cultural issues relating to request His study shows that there are potential differences in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests between Vietnamese subjects and Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese learners of English

Similarly, in a study on complaining; Hanh (2003) pointed out the similarities and differences in formulation of the speech act of complaint with respect to the use of complaint strategies, directive acts and external modifiers IT also showed a variety of differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers It concludes that complaints can be realized in a great variety of forms depending on a particular context These studies have provided some significant insights in to both the problems Vietnamese learners of English as well as area where Vietnamese learners have fewer difficulties

However, to date a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in American and Vietnamese has not yet been adequately investigated Therefore, the aim

of this study is to compare the realization of the speech act of sympathy by Vietnamese native speakers and the American speakers in order to fill in the gap in research in this area

This study concentrates on answering the following questions:

1 What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy

in the contexts studied?

2 What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in the contexts studied?

2 The scope of the study

This study is aimed at comparing sympathy expressions in Vietnamese with those in English with particular references to the theory of speech acts Besides, it is to uncover differences in sympathy expressions of the two populations in terms of linguistics

The study focuses mainly on verbal communication and the analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaire on expressing sympathy The target groups who express sympathy are common American and Vietnamese speakers in all situations from work to private home Further, the study is confined to ten selected situations In such situations, the Speaker is familiar with the Hearer

3 The organization of the study

The study is divided into three main parts

PART A INTRODUCTION introduces the background, the significance, the objectives and the design of the study

PART B DEVELOPMENT focuses on the theoretical issues related to the topic of the study Firstly, it presents and discusses the issues of speech acts and the speech act of comfort including the theory of politeness Then the notions of directness and indirectness in sympathy together with the matters of the conversational maxims, the cooperative principles are dealt with

It also presents the research questions and the design, the research methods including the selection of subjects, data collection instruments, the procedure of the data collection, and finally analytical framework of the study

Besides, this part reports some findings on the strategy and the choice of external and internal; modifications as well as the sympathy expression realization in relation to the variables of Power, Social Distance and Ranking of seriousness in the context studied PART C CONCLUSION offers an overview of major findings and implications for ELT in Vietnam and suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides the literature review including the notions of speech act theory, classifications of speech acts, some major issues of politeness in the performance of speech acts in general Besides, this chapter also deals with the issues

of directness and indirectness, the cooperative principle, the speech act of comfort Lastly, a view of politeness in expressing sympathy and the matters of sympathy and antipathy are also presented in this chapter

1 Speech act

This section begins with a brief overview of the theory of speech acts and then the speech act classifications

The theory of speech acts has been so far developed by many pragmatists such

as Austin (1962), Grice (1975), Searle (1969), Levison (1983), Brown & Yule (1983) and others What they share is that a speech act is a unit of speaking and each unit performs certain functions in interaction such as request, invitation, complaint, apology, prohibition, etc Speech Act theory began with the work “How to do things with words”

by John Austin (1962) Austin was convinced that we do not just use language to make utterances, but to perform actions It was this conviction which led him to a theory of what he called illocutionary act

The speech act theory was then developed by another philosopher, John R Searle He states that language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as requesting, threatening and promising, etc That one performs in speaking (Searle, 1969, p24)

Sharing the same idea, Nunan (1993: 65) finds out that “when using language,

we not only make propositional statements about objects, entities, states of affairs and

so on, but we also fulfill functions, such as requesting, denying, introducing, apologizing, etc.”

When uttering a sentence, the Speaker is not only characteristically performing several acts but also bringing a bout certain effects on the Hearer According to Austin (1962), and Searle (1969), a speech act always consists of three related acts: Locutionary act, Illocutionary act and Perlocutionary act First, the locutionary act is simply the act that we perform in saying something or producing a meaningful

linguistic expression In Searle‟s view, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by expressing his/her intention to get someone to do something, to assert something… in a way that the listener can realize the speaker‟s intention For example, one might say

“I‟m sorry to hear that you failed the exam”, this is an act of expressing sympathy When one says “I think you are playing music too loudly.” (1) This is an act of complaining

Perlocutionary acts are the effects of the illocutionary act The Hearer understands and gets the message as the Speaker intended and performs the act that the Speaker wanted him to fulfill Normally, the intended meaning is distinguished in the forms or structure, the literal meaning of which does not directly relate to the intended meaning When saying (1), the Speaker wants the Hearer to recognize the effect he intended, to turn the music down

Of these three dimensions of an utterance, the illocutionary act is the only act that puts the communicative force into the utterance That is why illocutionary act carrying the illocutionary force is the most important and the most discussed In Searle‟s view (1969), language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as promising, advising, agreeing, complaining, and expressing sympathy that one performs in speaking Further, Searle (1990:351) states that illocutionary acts are the central to speech act theory He divided illocutionary acts into five major categories: Directives, Representatives, Expressives, Commissives and Declaratives

Representatives are speech acts by which Speaker commits himself to the belief that the propositional content of the utterance is true Statements of fact, affirmations, belief and conclusions are examples In using a representative, the Speaker makes the words fit the world (belief)

Example 1:

A It‟s hot here

B He could not finish his final test of English

Directives are speech acts that embody an effort on the part of the speaker to get the Hearer to do something, to “direct” him/ her towards some goals They are commands, orders, requests, advice, invitations, etc In using a directive, the Speaker attempts to make the world fit the words (via the Hearer)

Example 2:

A Please bring me the menu

B Could you get me a glass of water?

Commissives are speech acts that Speaker uses to commit himself to some future course of action They express what the Speaker intends Speech acts belonging

to this group are promises, threats, refusals, etc In performing a commissive, Speaker makes the world match the words (via the Speaker)

Example 3:

A I promise to give the book back to you after I finish reading it

B We will not return until mid-night

Expressives are speech acts that express an inner state like feelings or attitudes

to some prior action or state of affairs These can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes

or dislikes, etc With an expressive, Speaker makes the words match the world (feeling)

Example 4:

A I am thankful for such good friends

B What a beautiful lady!

Declaratives are speech acts that make the world change via utterances By using a declarative, Speaker wants to make both the world match the words and the words match the world

Example 5:

A I now pronounce you husband and wife

B Hereby, I declare this meeting open

In this example, when (B) is said, a change really takes place people start to make speeches or address the meeting and so on

It can be seen that expressing sympathy is of Expressive type of illocutionary act when people offer sympathy; they want to share others their feelings, especially

their sadness or disappointment In Wikipedia, sympathy is defined as “a social affinity

in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings It also can mean being affected by feelings or emotions.”

For example, when your son knew that he did not pass the entrance exam to university, you might say to him: “I am sorry for that but you can try next time.”

2 Politeness

In this section, a brief discussion of politeness theory is provided and its influence on the performance of speech acts in general and speech acts of sympathy in particular is discussed

Yule (1996:60) also defined politeness in an interaction as “the means employed

to show awareness of another person‟s face In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in situation of social distance or closeness.”

Interestingly, politeness norms vary from culture to culture though there exist many common principles of politeness and what is polite in this culture may be impolite in another culture For examples, in daily greeting routines, Vietnamese often have the habit of asking each other questions such as “Where are you going?” or “What are you doing?” As for Vietnamese, this way of greeting is said to be popular and polite because it shows the care for the hearer However, if an American man was asked such questions, he would think that Vietnamese were so impolite and curious

2.2 Social factors affecting politeness

When we communicate with each other, our choice of expressions in a given context will be influenced by numerous factors that identify our faces in society According to Crystal (1992), the language we use has a clear link to the following identities:

- Physical identity: Sex, age, physical type and condition

- Psychological identity: personality, intelligence, etc

- Geographical identity: accents, dialects, linguistic areas, etc

- Ethnic and national identity: ethnicity and nationalism

- Social identity: Class, status, role, distance

- Contextual identity: settings, participants and activities

Among those identities, psychological identity is said to be one important factor that affects Vietnamese people‟s choice of politeness strategy Unlike the American, Vietnamese people are more reserved In other words, they are shy when expressing their thoughts using politeness strategy

Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that there are three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate, polite expressions in performing a FTA under a certain circumstance, outlined as follows:

- The social distance (D) of the Speaker and the Hearer

- The relative power (P) of the Speaker and the Hearer

- The absolute ranking of imposition (R) in the particular culture

The social distance in Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) terminology is a symmetricsocial dimension of similarity/difference within which the Speaker and the Hearer stand for the purposes of this act In effect, it is the degree of familiarity and solidarity the Speaker and the Hearer share as represented through in-group or out-group membership

The assessment of D will usually be measures of social distance based on stable social attribute and reflex of social closeness is, generally, the reciprocal giving and receiving of positive face

The relative power (P) is defined by Brown & Levinson (1987) as an asymmetric social dimension of relative power or more simply it is the power of the Speaker with respect to the Hearer In reality, the power is the degree to which the Speaker can impose his/her own plans and his own self-evaluation (face) at the expense

of the Hearer‟s plans and self-evaluation Generally, there are two sources of P, either

of which may be authorized or unauthorized In most cases, an individual power is drawn from both these sources, which may overlap

2.3 The notion of face

Within their everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their

expectations concerning their public self-image, or their face wants will be respected

According to Brown &Levinson (1977:61), face is the public self-image that every ember wants to claim for himself, that is emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize “Face” closely relates to the concept of politeness This is a highly abstract notion but significant to understand politeness

According to Yule (1996), if a speaker says something that represents a threat to

another individual‟s expectation regarding self-image, it is described as a face

threatening act (FTA) On the contrary, the speaker can say something to lessen the

possible threat This is called a face saving act Yule also points out that there are

many different ways of performing face saving acts because it is generally expected that each person will attempt to respect the face wants of others

2.4 The notion of negative and positive face

Brown and Levinson (1978: 61) distinguished two components of face: positive face and negative face ,which were two related aspects of the same entity and referred

to two basic „desires‟ or „wants‟ of any individual in any interaction An individual‟s positive face was reflected in his or her desire to be liked, approved of, respected and appreciated by others An individual negative face was reflected by the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chose

According to Yule (1996, p62), a face saving act which is oriented to the person‟s negative face will tend to show deference, emphasize the importance of the interruption This is also called negative politeness A face saving act which is concerned with the person‟s positive face will tend to show solidarity, emphasize that both speakers want the same thing, and that they have a common goal This is also called positive politeness

3 Directness and indirect speech act

Pragmatic literature classifies speech act according to the degree of their explicitness or directness Speech acts could be replaced on a continuum ranging from the most direct down to the least direct act which may even be confused with normal constative utterance It is important that speakers be aware of this continuum because the degree of explicitness that is opposite for a given social context is vital to observe Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause undesirable effects

3.1 Direct speech acts

Direct speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its felicity conditions (especially the structural ones) There are three basic types of direct speech acts, and they correspond to three special syntactic types that seem to occur in most of the world‟s languages

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts

Speech act Sentence

type

Assertion Declarative Conveys information,

either true or false

“I passed my final exam.”

Question Interrogative Elicits information “Did you pass your final

“Pass your final exam!”

Although assertions, questions and orders are fairly universal, and most of the world‟s languages have specific syntactic constructions that distinguish them, other speech acts do not have a syntactic construction that is specific to them Please have a look at the sentence below

(A) If you move, I‟ll shoot you!

Most American speakers would have no difficulty identifying such an utterance

as a threat However, English has no special sentence form for threats The construction used in (A) is not specific to the speech act of threatening Such a construction might also express a promise, as in:

if-(B) If you pass your final exam, I‟ll buy you a new motorbike!

Or simply a cause and effect relationship between physical events:

(C) If you heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, it will boil

A consideration of the syntactic means available for expressing the various speech acts leads us to recognize that even for the three basic speech acts laid out in the table above, speakers may choose means of expressions other than the basic type associated with the speech act is question

To some extent, this just reflects the existence of a diversity of means expression, but a more pervasive reason is that speakers may use indirect rather than direct speech acts

3.2 Indirect speech acts

Indirect speech acts rely more on context in order to reconstruct the underlying speech acts performed They are used all the time, and become second nature to us Please take a look at the following example

A: Has our son gone to bed yet?

B: His computer is running

In this example, the speaker A has asked a Yes/No question However, speaker

B did not follow up with such a reply The point here is that B has just violated one of the aforementioned Gricean maxims (Relevance) But B‟s response is not irrelevant In B‟s response,, it is understood illiterally His answer assumes the son often works on hiss computer until he is in bed This is just one of many cases of an indirect speech act These acts violate at least one of the maxims Good listeners/speakers notice that the maxim is intentionally being violated, and can identify its intended meaning with the knowledge of the context of the situation

Leech (1983:108) has proposed a theory of politeness based on the cost and benefit to the Hearer and the amount of optionality given to the Hearer He claims that one can increase the degree of politeness by increasing degree of indirectness of the illocution because “indirect illocutions tend to be more polite since they increase the degree of optionality and because the more indirect an illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be” Therefore, in Leech„s (1983) view, the more optionality that the Speaker allows for the Hearer, the more polite the Speaker sounds

For example, in communication with a student, the teacher may say: “Could you tell me your answer?” The teacher‟s utterance is used in a polite and indirect way By doing so, the teacher (a) respects her student and encourages him to be self-confident enough to speak out the answer, (b) does not use the power of teacher in the student, and (c) gives a soft and nice request without imposing the reaction of the student by using soft words like “Could … please ” Let us take another example When your

friend‟s house is broken in and a lot of her savings are stolen, you might say: “Don‟t be sad….”

4 Cooperative principles

The causes of a conversation depend upon the various speakers‟ approach to the interaction The way in which people try to make conversations work is called the Cooperative Principle We can understand it partly by noting those people who are exceptions to the rule, and are not capable of making the conversation work We may also find it useful deliberately to infringe or disregard it – as when we receive an unwelcome call form a telephone salesperson, or where we are being interviewed by a police officer on suspicion of some terrible crime

Grice (1975) proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share

a cooperative principle Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers The principle can be explained by four underlying rule or maxims They are also sometimes named Grice‟s or Gricean maxims They are the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner These maxims will be easier to understand when we have a look at this example: if a woman is helping a man build a house, she will hand him a hammer rather than a tennis racket (relevance), more than one nail when several are needed (quantity), straight nails rather than bent ones (quality) and she will do all this quickly and efficiently (manner)

 Maxim of Quality: speakers should be truthful They should not say what they think is false, or make statements for which they have no evidence For instance, if I say to someone visiting a Vietnamese newly-born baby: “Do not say “the baby is so strong”, the implicature is that I believe to do so would make the baby‟s family unhappy as it is their superstition that saying so would make the baby worse Similarly, this can also work with questions If you ask me, “What is conversational implicature?”

I will assume that the question is sincere and that it carries the implicature that you don‟t know what it is, that you want to know, and that you think I can tell you

 Maxim of Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as is required for the conversation to proceed It should be neither too little, nor too much (It is nor clear how one can decide what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given case) For example, someone said to me about the local football team “They are doing a good

job.” This implicature was that they were not on the top If they had been, the speaker would have said so

 Maxim of Relevance: speakers‟ contributions should relate clearly to the purpose of the exchange For example, I say to a friend “Are you coming to the theatre tonight?” and she replied “It‟s Peter‟s staff Christmas party” This would seem to be at

a completely irrelevant remark if I did not know that Peter is her husband and that they always go to each staff parties

 Maxim of Manner: speakers‟ contributions should be perspicuous: clear, orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity For example, “I got home and took a bath.” Carries the implicature that I did those things in that order

All these maxims can be flouted Deliberate lies, rhetorical questions tautology and even metaphors could be regarded as flouting one or more of them; and how often do

we try to change the subject with a tempting red-herring if we don‟t like the way the conversation is going? The co-operative principle does not hold well in all conversations all the time; but it does explain how we generally manage to understand what people mean, even if it is not exactly what they say

Grice does not prescribe the use of such maxims Nor does he suggest that we use them artificially to construct conversations But they are useful for analyzing and interpreting conversation, and may reveal purpose of which (either as speaker or listener) we were not previously aware Very often, we communicate particular non-literal meanings by appearing to “violate” or “flout” these maxims

5 The speech act of comfort

The Random House Dictionary provides a useful, non-technical definition of comfort: “A written or spoken expression of one‟s feelings of freedom from worry or disappointment or consoling, giving relief in affliction” Comfort has been of special interest to several scholars, who have gone beyond this definition to draw our attention

to other important features Comfort is supposed to be an FEA (face-enhancing act) for the hearer (H) (cf Kerbat-Orecchioni, 1997: 14), because the speaker (S) undertakes in this speech act to show sympathy for and soothe H‟s sad or hurt feelings, to encourage him/her, to show S‟s willingness to help H, etc The language philosopher Austin pointed out that some utterances, such as comfort are more than expressions of how the

speaker feels Each is also an action in the social world, which Austin (1962) called a

In summary, sympathy is triggered by the realization of a negative emotional state of another person It can cause some emotional response in a person, yet there is little evidence to suggest that it is associated with a bodily sensation Sympathy can be expressed to another person, but it is restricted to situations when the people are in contact with each other Since sympathy can be experienced in situations when one does not know another person or has no contact with that person, this feature cannot be regarded as an invariant of the meaning

6 Politeness in expressing sympathy

As all linguistic actions involve face-threat of some kinds, people have to resort

to politeness principles or strategies when performing face-saving acts (FSAS)

Leech (1983:160) introduces a number of maxims, which are necessary as he urges, in order to explain the relationship between sense and force in human conversation They range from those which have very extensive but by no means universal applicability, to the some what idiosyncratic The main maxims are:

- Tact maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which employ cost to other

+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to other

- Generosity maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs to self

+ Maximize the expression of cost to self

- Approbation maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of other

+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which express approval of order

- Modesty maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of praise of self

+ Maximize the expression of dispraise of self

- Agreement maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of disagreement between self and other

+Maximize the expression of agreement between self and other

- Sympathy maxim:

+ Minimize antipathy between self and other

+ Maximize sympathy between self and other

From face-saving view, Brown and Levinson formulate a theory in which politeness is seen as strategic choices that interactants have to make only when face interests are at risk the fundamental assumption of this theory is the combination of the view of communication as purposeful – national activity and the concept of “face” Instead of principles, they suggest a set of five strategies in relation to face work

Strategy 1: Bald on record

Strategy 2: Positive politeness

Strategy 3: Negative politeness

Strategy 4: Off record (implicature)

Examples from Brown and Levinson‟s polite strategies

Bald – on record

- An emergency: Help!

- Task oriented: Make me a coffee!

- Request: Keep quiet

- Alerting: Fasten your seatbelt

Positive politeness

- Attend the hearer: You must be tired; you have been working since early morning How about some rest?

- Avoid disagreement:

A: How is she, small?

B: Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, and um, not really small but certainly not very big

- Assume agreement: So when are you coming to see us?

- Hedge opinion: You really should sort of try harder

Negative politeness

- Be direct: I‟m looking for a pen

- Request forgiveness: You must forgive me but…

- Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?

- Pluralize the person responsible: We forgot to tell you that you needed to buy your plane ticket by yesterday

Off and on Record

- Give hints: It‟s a bit cold in here

- Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible

- Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he‟s a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen Hawking, genius and so on)!

According to Brown and Levinson (in Thomas, 1995:169), the first decision to

be made is whether to perform the face threatening act (FTA) or not If the speaker decides to perform the FTA, he or she should adopt certain strategies The choice of strategy will be made on the basis of the speaker‟s assessment of the size of the FTA The speaker can calculate the size of the FTA on the basis of the parameters of power (P), distance (D) and rating of imposition (R) These combined values determine the overall “weightiness” on the FTA which in turn influences the strategy used Therefore, the speaker can use statements which are not directly addressed to the other These statements are technically described as being off record (hints) In contrast to such off record statements, the speaker can directly address the other as a means of expressing his/her needs The most direct approach, using imperative forms is known as bald on record (Yule, 1996:63)

7 Sympathy and antipathy

Sympathy means a "feeling with” objects; and that distinguishes it from antipathy Moreover, sympathy involves some reasoning and is thus on a level with social values and above antipathy

Sympathy usually indicates a sharing of the joy or sorrow that another feels At the least, it leads to an understanding of the other and consequently tends to bring personalities into closer social interaction One doubts if it could be reduced to the level

of "consciousness of kind” or “gregariousness," since they descend too deeply to be called sympathetic relationships For two organisms to be in sympathetic contact, they

must have similar sensory equipment This neurological likeness may exist only in imagination, as in the case of the little girl who is sad when her doll is ill This identification of feeling may also be seen in the story of a woman who sympathizes with her cat when it bears kittens or of the master who sat sadly by his dog as it licked its wounds

In antipathy, there is usually no indication that the individual recognizes any sensory equipment at all in the object This means that an individual is unable to sense the experiences of the object It holds just as true for the individual bearing a repellent mark as for an inanimate object, and it is one of the chief barriers to the alleviation of prejudice

Sympathy and antipathy both represent identification with objects, and the attraction or repulsion may be equally strong, but the attitudes b6hind them differ both

in kind and in polarity An antipathy is not toward a whole person, for it does not invade the realm of personality, even when it appears to do so It is always directed toward some particular mark That is why one person can withdraw from another, when the latter bears some disliked trait This introduces the problem of interpersonal relationships: antipathy may be extended to many people when antipathy is felt to one characteristic Numerous interviews demonstrate that people may be thus avoided; they may still have likable traits; yet there is no way of avoiding the disliked object without also keeping away from the individual

Of the two feelings, sympathy is awakened much more slowly, for one may avoid a person who bears an antipathetic trait, then recall later that one should have been sympathetic It is possible, for instance, to be antipathetic to crossed eyes and yet sympathetic with the individual However desirable such an awakening may be, it does not happen often: antipathies usually do not arouse sympathetic sentiments Indeed, they often preclude the development of sympathetic social interaction, as in those cases where race prejudice is sup- ported by antipathies We would be very close to reality if

we spoke of "response" in matters arousing sympathy and of “reaction" where antipathy operates

In this chapter, the major issues of speech act theory and politeness in general and speech act of comfort and politeness in expressing sympathy in particular have been discussed Besides, this chapter has also compared sympathy and antipathy and

reviewed the issues of directness and indirectness and the cooperative principle Next chapter will reveal the study methodology

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the following issues have been investigated Section 3.1 points out the aims of the study whereas section 3.2 presents the research questions Section 3.3 describes the research design The last section introduces the analytical framework of the study

1 Aims of the study

This study aims to find out:

1 The politeness strategies that Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy

in the contexts studied

2 The politeness strategies that American speakers use in expressing sympathy in the contexts studied

2 Research questions

In order to identify the politeness strategies preferably used by Vietnamese and American speakers in expressing sympathy, these research questions will be addressed:

1 What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy

in the contexts studied?

2 What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in the contexts studied?

3 Research design

In this section, all the issues involved in the design of the research will be discussed: the subjects, data collection instruments, contents of questionnaires, and procedures of data collection

3 1 Selection of subjects

Data was collected from two groups of subjects: one group of American speakers of English and one group of Vietnamese learners of English The first group consists of 30 American speakers of English, 10 of whom are working in the offices in Hanoi, 7 are teaching English at English centers and universities, 7 are educators in American, 6 are tourists to Hanoi Their ages range from 20 to 50 years old Most of them have graduated from universities; some of them hold M.A degrees in linguistics

or many other fields They are of both sexes

The second group includes 30 Vietnamese subjects 15 of them are students at Hanoi University, 15 are officers in Hanoi They are all of little command of English Their ages range from 20 to 38 years old

Both groups of subjects were asked to assess the bank of 10 situations with a pragmatic questionnaire and a Discourse Completion Task

Meta-3.2 Data collection instruments

3.2.1 Brief review of data collection instruments

According to Tam‟s (1998) research, several methods have been used in researching speech acts In terms of ethnographic methods, researchers may observe or record naturally occurring speech acts, along with the information about the age, sex, status, culture, relationship on the interactants Every method has its advantages and disadvantages The good point of this method is that the researcher can obtain linguistic strategy actually used in various contexts in a given language and culture However, this method is time and money-consuming This method also seems to be hardly possible for the fact that Vietnamese learners of English seldom have the chance of operating within a real target language environment and for many reasons they do not want to be recorded

Multiple choice methods, in which a series of questions are prepared with answers and the subjects are asked to choose the answers they think are the most appropriate, has been used by many researchers This method enables the researchers to get information from a large number of the subjects in a short time However, it does not provide as many possibilities in the case of open-ended questions and the subjects may become inactive when answering the questions for the design of the questionnaire

In this study, for the collection of sufficient data within the time and resource constraints available, the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (Cohen, 1996 – quoted in Tam, 1998, p.47) seems to outweigh its advantages

It allows elicitation of data from a large sample of subjects relatively easily, using the same situations where contextual variables can be controlled Further, the DCT is an effective means of studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a socially appropriate response and is a good way to gain insight into social and psychological factors that are likely to affect speech and performance (Beebe, 1985) Moreover, Cohen (1996) assumes that the DCT and other written approaches not only save time

but also can provide comparable data to that collected from oral role-play He also concludes that “discourse completion tests are an effective means of gathering a large amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification of semantic formulas, and ascertaining the structure of speech act under consideration”

Based on the theory of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), two questionnaires are applied into the study: Meta-pragmatic questionnaire (MPQ) and the Discourse Completion Task (DCT)

3.2.2 Variables manipulated in data collection instruments used in the study

Among the social factors affecting the realization of sympathy expressions, the social factors (Social distance, social power and the severity of offence) are the variables of interest in this study Brown and Levinson argue that three variables: the relative power P, the social distance D and the seriousness of the sympathy has an effect on the realization of the speech act

The variable power (P) in Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) terms is defined as either by the authority of one interactant over the other, or by the lack of authority The variable power is classified into: +P, =P and –P If +P refers to situations where the speaker has greater power than the Addressee while –P refers to situations where the speaker has less power than the Addessee, and =P referes to situations where the speaker and the Adressee are equal in power However, the variable power will be controlled in this study which means the variable P is equal across the situations studied Therefore the two variables D and R have been paid much attention to

The variable social distance (D) refers to the closeness or familiarity between participants According to Brown and Levinson (1978, p.85), the variable D is also divided into: +D, -D and =D Last but not least, the ranking of seriousness of the act (R)

is also of importance This variable indicates how troublesome an act is in a specific context in a specific culture

In short, these variables will be taken into consideration in building situations for a MPQ and a DCT However, two of these three variables will be controlled in this study due to these reasons As we may know, it is common sense that the speakers only express their sympathy to their close friend, their relatives or a member of their family and vice versa the hearers just share their sadness, disappointment or worry to someone they feel close, familiar with in their relationship It means that the variable P and D are

controlled which means that Power between the speakers and the hearer are equal (=P) and their social distance are close (-D) Within the limited time and because of the nature of the speech act of sympathy, the researcher intended to keep R constantly high during the study in order to identify the seriousness of sympathy on the hearers as well

as to find out the strategies used in the given situations The detailed questionnaires will

be discussed in the following parts

3.2.3 The content of the questionnaires

This section will provide the content of the MPQ and the DCT and samples of two questionnaires will be presented The formats of these two questionnaires were adapted from Tam‟s research (1998) In order to provide the subjects with a clear idea

of the content so they were able to decide what and how to respond in a relevant way to

a certain situation, clear instructions were given at the beginning of the questionnaires Both questionnaires were in English and subjects were asked to answer questions in English

MPQ questionnaire was designed to test the reliability of the situations that would be used in the data analysis The purpose of the MPQ was to see how the subjects assessed the social variables reflected in the sympathy expression situations and to establish the valid and reliable situations for the study

The MPQ included two parts: Part A and B The first part provided general information about subjects while the second part consisted of given situations At the beginning of the questionnaire, a clear instruction was given to help the subjects get a clear idea of the content and decide how to response in a relevant way to each situation Furthermore, information about the subjects‟ language, gender, age, occupation and their education were also added The Vietnamese version of questionnaires were made for Vietnamese subjects to response whereas the English version of questionnaires for American subjects The MPQ consisted of 10 situations, each of which was followed by two questions and three levels In order to ensure the objectivity and reliability, the informants are asked to fill in the two questions relating to the variable R Based on

their assessment of the variable, subjects rated each question from not depressing at all

to not very expressing to very depressing for question 1 and from rarely to not very often to very often for question 2 (See Appendix A)

 Discourse Completion Task (DCT)

The open-ended DCT questionnaire was designed to elicit sympathy expressions from the subjects in the chosen situations The DCT was also divided into two parts: Part A and B Part A of the DCT us the same as in described in a MPQ whereas part B included the chosen situations from the MPQ A DCT will be built on the most frequently and very depressing situations collected in the MPQ Each situation was followed by such words as “You say: ……… ” or “You do:……….”

Here is the sample of the DCT

Could you please read depressing situations carefully and write down what you would normally say or do when you were in these situations

1 Your close friend told you that she was dismissed

a You say:

b You do:

(See a full version of the DCT in Appendix B)

3.3 Data collection procedure

Before building up questionnaires for the data collection process, the researcher did a small survey to the foreigners, here the American native speakers of English In the survey, the Americans were invited to check whether the 10 situations suggested were reliable or whether they often expressed sympathy in those situations in daily life

Besides, the situations were also checked in terms of language and grammar so that they would sound the most natural Those situations reflected various constellations of the variables under the study, namely: the relative P is equal and D is minus power of the speaker (P), the social distance (D) between the interactants, the ranking of seriousness of the sympathy (R) and the frequency of the speech act of sympathy In this study, the variable P and D were controlled Then the Metapragmatic questionnaire (MPQ) and the DCT were built up and distributed to the American and Vietnamese subjects The MPQ and DCT were completed by 30 American speakers of English and 30 Vietnamese The purpose of the MPQ was to find out how the subjects assessed the social variables in the certain situations and to see how frequent the

situations happened in their daily life Then the rating by Vietnamese subjects was analyzed to see the differences in their choice of strategies and linguistic forms in their sympathy expressions

That is what described the data collection procedure The next section is the presentation of the result of MPQ

The result of MPQ by American native speakers was used to specify the assessment of the social assigned to each situation From those situations built by the MPQ which satisfied the constellation of P, D and R values as required by the research design were chosen for analysis

4 Analytical framework

The data were processed contrastively It was analyzed to find out the similarities and differences in expressing sympathy between American speakers and Vietnamese speakers Moreover, the data was also analyzed contrastively to find out the influence of age, gender and social status on the choice of sympathy strategies

In order to find out the strategies employed to express sympathy, the data analysis is based on a general formula of Blum-Kulka et al (1989) They are: the Head Act, the internal modification and external modification The Head Act is the core of

the utterance For example, in “John, get me a beer, please I am very thirsty” the

section in bold is the Head Act and the rest is the modification or supportive moves (Blum-Kulka, 1989)

4.1 Internal modification

According to Blum-Kulka (1985), internal modifications are elements which can perform as indicating devices affecting pragmatic force, or as a social- pragmatic device affecting the likely social impact of the utterance These elements may either soften the impact of an utterance on the Hearer, i.e downgraders, or strengthen that impact, i.e upgraders

For instance, when one wants to express her/his sympathy to other‟s property loss, one might say: “I was sorry to hear about that” With the inclusion of Internal modifications, the speaker can express their comfort by adding an element of the degree

of their sympathy

Trosborg groups downgraders and upgraders into sub-categories as follows:

1 Downtoners are adverbials that express tentativeness: just, simply, maybe, possibly, etc

2 Understaters are modifiers that under-represent the state of affairs: A little, not many, quite, few, some, etc

3 Intensifiers are adverbials or adjectives intensifying part of a proposition: so, terribly, quite, very, really, etc

4 Commitment upgraders are sentence modifiers expressing a special commitment towards the proposition: I am sure, I am certain, it is obvious, surely, etc

5 Subjectivizers are modifiers that the sympathy expresser use to show his/her own opinions to the other: I think, I am afraid, in my opinion, etc

Besides, one might use interrogative, past tense, conditional clause, embedding and modals to express their sympathy to others

4.2 External modifications

External modifications or Supportive moves are elements whose function is to mitigate or aggravate the speaker‟s sadness and these elements are external to the Head Act, occurring either before or after it The categories of supportive moves can appear

in the form of, explanations, grounders or disarmers which the speaker signals his/her desire to explain which implies that he/she acknowledges the imposition on the hearer

The followings are the categories of supportive moves For example, when one

is too sick to attend his/her friend‟s party, his/her friend might say: “I‟m so sorry that you cannot come I hope you can come another time” The last sentence as an External modification helps the hearer feels good and be more optimistic in this bad mood

Table 2: The external modifications

Attention getter Utterances that S used to lead H

to the issue he/she was going to raise

Well, my friend, don‟t worry

Exclamation Utterances that S used to Really? Is everything