politeness phenomena in english and vietnamese through using imperative mood within thang long university education environment = hiện tượng lịch sự trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English and in Vietnamese ……… 14 1.2.2.1.. Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in Vietnamese ……… 16 C

List of tables and figures

Table 2.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers ……… … 23 Table 2.2 Groups of situations and characteristics of each group ……… 27 Table 2.3 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers ……… 28 Table 2.4 English native speakers’ sayings vs Vietnamese native speakers’ sayings …… 35

Figure 2.1 Requests with Imperative Mood in English and Vietnamese ……… 36 Figure 3.1 Frequency of using Imperative Mood when making requests in English……… 38 Figure 3.2 Frequency of using Imperative Mood when making requests in Vietnamese … 39

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of authorship ……… i

Acknowledgements ……… ii

Abstract ……… iii

List of graphs and tables ……… iv

PART A INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1 Rationale of the study ……… 1

2 Aims of the study ……… 2

3 Scope of the study ……… 2

4 Structure of the study ……… 2

PART B DEVELOPMENT ……… 4

Chapter one: Theoretical background ……… 4

1.1 The Imperative Mood ……… 4

1.1.1 Definition of Mood ……… 4

1.1.2 The Imperative Mood in English ……… 7

1.1 3 The Imperative Mood in Vietnamese ……… 10

1.2 Politeness phenomena through using Imperative Mood to make Requests 12 1 2.1 Definition of politeness ……… 12

1.2.1.1 Face and face work ……… 12

1.2.1.2 Politeness ……… 13

1.2.1.3 Social variables affecting politeness ……… 14

1 2 2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English and in Vietnamese ……… 14

1.2.2.1 Making a request ……… 14

1.2.2.2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English ……… 15

1.2.2.3 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request

in Vietnamese ……… 16

Chapter two: A study of how Imperative Mood is practiced within Thang Long University Educational Environment 2.1 Thang Long University in brief ……… 17

2.2 Research questions ……… 17

2.3 Research methods ……… ………… 17

2.4 Research design ……… ………… 18

2.4.1 Data collection instruments ……… 18

2.4.2 Contents of the questionnaires ……… 19

2.4.3 Participants ……… 22

2.4.4 Procedure ……… ………… 22

2.5 Results of the MPQ ……… 23

2.5.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers ……… 23

2.5.2 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers ……… 27

2.6 Results of the DCT ……… ……… 28

2.6.1 English native speakers’ sayings vs Vietnamese native speakers’ sayings 2.6.2 Conclusion ……… ……… 35

2.7 Data analysis ……… ……… 36

Chapter three: Findings and discussions ……… 38

3.1 Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood when making polite requests of English native speakers ……… 38

3.2 Overall findings and discussions of using Imperative Mood when making polite requests of Vietnamese native speakers ……… 39

3.3 Comparison of using linguistic structures to make requests between English and Vietnamese native speakers ……… ……… 40

PART C CONCLUSIONS

1 General conclusion ……… 42

2 Limitation ……… 43

3 Recommendations for further research ……… 44

4 Implications……… ……… 44

REFERENCES……… ……… 46

APPENDIX A: METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE (MPQ) ……… I APPENDIX B: DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASK (DCT) ……… X

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

English is one of the most important languages in communication It plays a very important role in many aspects of everyday life such as: Education, culture, technology, science, etc… What is noticeable is that learning English becomes an increasing need for many people in society They study English for various purposes: for job, for promotion, for going abroad… In Vietnam, English is very popular and is being taught widely

In Vietnam, with the open-door policy of Vietnamese government, English, day by day, affirms its dominated role for international communication English is taught compulsory in many schools in Vietnam Also, it becomes a compulsory subject in many universities and schools, for example, Thang Long University Although English has been taught in Vietnam for several years but only, grammatical correctness seem to be highly appreciated in teaching This way of teaching and learning is not effective enough to provide cultural factors to make cross-cultural communication successful Therefore, learners do not know what to say in order

to have a contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication Even today many Vietnamese teachers of English still appreciate grammatical correctness over appropriateness in communication They still enjoy grammar translation method As a result, students cannot communicate orally in an appropriate way despite their rather good linguistic competence

It is obvious that learning a second language means learning a second culture To study the second language, one needs to be provided not only linguistic knowledge and interaction skills but also cultural knowledge Nowadays, cultural factors are included in the course design However, they are often treated as optional supplement to stimulate interest or improve background knowledge Understanding cultural factors is an important key to succeed in learning English Although teachers have created more opportunities for them to use English effectively, Vietnamese students may face with many difficulties in communication because they tend to use English based on their native culture – Oriental culture As a result, sometimes, when they communicate with foreigners, they may make unfriendly or impolite or even rude social expressions unnoticeablely So as to communicate well across culture, firstly,

learners must understand deeply about their own culture Then, they must be aware of the English speaking culture They must ensure the hidden parts of culture including politeness Politeness is a very important part of social interaction In order to facilitate students at Thang Long University in improving their oral communication, the author of this thesis wants to study the politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using Imperative Mood to make requests

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to find out:

 Do English native speakers use Imperative Mood to make polite requests in the Educational Environment?

 How do Vietnamese teachers and students at Thang Long University use Imperative Mood to show their politeness when making a request in the Educational Environment?

 How do the English native speakers and the Vietnamese native speakers differ in using linguistic structures to make requests in the social situations studied?

3 Scope of the study

The study focuses on politeness phenomena shown by both English and Vietnamese speakers who are Vietnamese students and teachers at Thang Long University when using Imperative Mood to make requests

4 Structure of the study

This thesis is structured in three parts: Part A – Introduction, Part B – Development and Part C – Conclusions Part B is composed of three chapters as follows:

The purpose of Chapter one (Theoretical background) is to introduce the key theoretical

concepts that the study is based on

Chapter two (A study within ThangLong University Educational Environment) introduces

the questions the present study attempts to answer It also describes the procedures and instruments used to collect the data, the participants in the study, as well as the way the data were analyzed Besides, a tentative analytical framework is also presented

Chapter three (Findings and discussions) presents the results of the study and discusses

the differences and similarities politeness phenomena in English and Vietnamese through using Imperative Mood to make requests

Finally, part C – Conclusions will summarize the most important findings of the study as

well as present all the limitations, the implications of the study and recommendations for further studies

A good starting point is Jesperson‟s (quoted in Palmer F R (1986) discussion of mood He talks of the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods „They express certain cases, the choice of mood is determined not by the attitude of the actual speaker, but by the character of the clause itself and its relation to the main nexus on which it is dependent Further, it is very important that the speaker of mood only if the attitude of mind is shown in the form of the verb: mood thus is a syntactic, not a notional category.‟

According to Finch, G (2000), mood is a “Feature displayed by verb phrases It refers

specially to the way in which the verb expresses the attitude of the addresser towards the factual content of what is being communicated, i.e., whether it is being asserted, questioned, demanded or wished for”

And dictionary definitions usually refer to verbal inflections The notion of mood is

intimately connected to the modal concepts In International Encyclopedia of Linguistics

OUP 1992 Vol.4 (145), modality is proposed for the grammatical category, but traditional

studies talk of modality „In the traditional sense, mood is a purely morphological category of

the verb, and the term will here be restricted to this sense Mood is, therefore, one way in which modality can be expressed.‟

The diverse category of mood indicates what the speaker is doing with a proposition in

a particular discourse situation This includes the status of the utterance as IMPERATIVE (a

command) or HORTATIVE (an exhortation) The CONDITIONAL mood may mark SUBJUNCTIVE may be used in a subordinate context Other types of clauses, including declarative sentences, will appear in the INDICATIVE mood Declarative sentences may be further qualified for EPISTEMIC moods (possibility or probability), which indicate the degree

of commitment the speaker attaches to the truth of the proposition The most commonly expressed mood distinction is between the indicative the imperative Mood may be expressed

inflectionally or by auxiliaries or particles, but never derivationally – Palmer (1986) Mood

and Modality, Cambridge – New York CUP

It is because of the restrictions of the term „mood‟ to verbal morphology that Lyons

(1977) can remark: „mood is a grammatical category that is found in some, but not all,

languages For it is probably the case that formal markers of modality are found within the grammars of all languages, though not always within the verb.‟

A review of previous studies on mood

As far as we are concerned, mood has not been adequately discussed though it is an immense and important area We do not attempt to provide a full picture of the approaches that

we deal with In various places, we limit ourselves to giving the flavor of ideas and analyses Our aim is to concentrate on the studies that are likely to be of relatively lasting significance

Palmer, F.R in his work „Mood and modality‟ (1986) assumes that mood and modality are grammatical categories which are confusing notions to the learners of English He also points out the differences between epistemic modality and deontic modality A considerable of his work is spent on the discussion of mood However, this study is carried out on the English and Latin backgrounds, which does not contribute much to our investigation on the Vietnamese language

Huddleston (1984) deals with the classification of clause types, in which he points out the different criteria for the syntactic and semantic categories He also presents the close inspection on different mood constructions What is noticeable in his work is the focus on the correlation between syntactic categories of declarative, interrogative, exclamative, imperative and semantic categories of statement, question, exclamation, directive, which is not fully

studied in the previous research works Huddleston (1995) also used the term analytic mood

According to him, these moods show clearly the contrast between factual assertion and factuality and/or non-assertion Besides, English also uses the inflectional system And we have the distinction:

non He was downstairs then (factual assertion)

- He is downstairs now

- He may be downstairs now (possibility)

- He must be downstairs now (certainty)

Halliday, M.A.K (1994) provides a fresher viewpoint on the language He sees language as a sophisticated tool for accomplishing a number of central functions such as ideational, interpersonal, and textual And the interpersonal function is reflected in the system

of mood He summarizes the formal realization of mood in the light of systemic-functional grammar that the clause consists of two functional constituents: a mood element and residue

A growing recognition of the importance of studying Vietnamese has urged linguists and language teachers to do more research in some recent years There have also appeared some articles that describe Vietnamese rather thoroughly A great number of descriptions have been done by Nguyễn Kim Thản (1963), Đinh Văn Đức (1986), Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1996), Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1999), Đỗ Hữu Châu (2003), etc In the mood section, they state different ways in which mood may be formed It should be noticed in the works of these linguists and language teachers that they give the priority to the formal construction of the mood And they spend a very small number of pages on the problem of mood, especially on imperative mood

in the Vietnamese language

Perhaps more interestingly, it is fairly clear to see that this gap is partly narrowed by several Vietnamese linguists and language teachers Cao Xuân Hạo (2001) and Diệp Quang Ban (2005) are among those who try to analyze the problem of mood in the light of systemic-functional grammar They pay attention not only to the structures of the mood but the functions and meanings as well Though their approach to the problem is different from those already done in the past, it provides a useful semantic framework for the discussion of mood

Pham Thị Hoa (1985) carries out a research on interrogative mood in English and in Vietnamese She presents a contrastive picture of the different types of interrogative sentences

in English and in Vietnamese including their structures and meaning Her contribution to this study to this area is undeniable

Ngô Đình Phương (2004) approaches this issue from the perspective of functional grammar He reserves a few pages for differentiating the mood construction between English and Vietnamese However, he does not go into detailed discussion on the imperative mood in the English and Vietnamese languages

systemic-Other Vietnamese linguists and language teachers have carried out studies in which various issues related to the concepts of mood in Vietnamese are compared with those in English Nguyễn Quang (1999) studies the compliments and response to the compliments in American English and Vietnamese Hà Cẩm Tâm (2005) attempts to uncover how the requests are formed by Vietnamese learners of English These studies have provided some significant insights into differences of the two languages in terms of pragmatics

Nguyễn Văn Độ (1999) studies means of language to make requests in English and Vietnamese This study has provided a very thorough insight into the relation between language and culture and we will return to his discussion in the next chapters, in which his discussion is taken as the analytical approach (framework) in our study

1.1.2 The Imperative Mood in English

This part deals with imperative mood in English, which has not yet been paid adequate attention to The ways in which imperative mood is viewed by different trends of grammar, including traditional and systemic-functional perspectives, are worth taking serious consideration This part involves how imperative mood is realized in English from the traditional view It is hoped that this part can provide a rather basic knowledge about the imperative mood in English

In order to state general traditional point of view about the imperative mood in English,

it is necessary to refer to “A comprehensive grammar of the English language” by Quirk et al (1985)

Imperatives are traditionally thought of as the form used for giving orders Quirk et al (1985) used the terms “command” to refer to the imperative mood Commands are defined as

sentences which normally have “no overt grammatical subject” and “whose verb is in the imperative”

E.g Be careful!

Read the instruction carefully!

Huddleston (1984) shares the same assumptions about the structural differences between imperative and declaratives Imperatives have their first verb not a tensed form but a base form (with no proceeding “to”), and have no subject This is understandable since an imperative normally refers to some future action which the hearer is urged to perform Its subject is semantically predictable, and therefore dispensable, while the verb phrase is required to make no distinction of tense, number and person

Traditional grammar deals with different subtypes of imperatives To begin with, we should consider the most central and common category of imperatives Such clauses have no subject, but it is plausible to say that “you” is understood as subject or “you” as subject-argument In Quirk et al‟s view, the clause patterns of the imperatives show the same range and orderings of elements as declaratives

E.g SV: Jump!

SVC: Be reasonable!

SVOA: Put it on the table

The Imperative verb, however, is severely restricted as to tense, aspect, voice and modality There is no tense distinction and very rarely do the perfect aspect and the progressive form occur Although the first verb is in the base form, the auxiliary “do” is introduced in the formation of negatives (more specifically those with a negative verb phrase)

as in: Don‟t / Do not stay along! and emphatic positives as in Do take care! “Do “is added, moreover, even when the first verb of the positive is the base form of the operator “be”: Don‟t

There is, however, a type of imperative in which a grammar subject is present

E.g You shut up!

In the negative, the subject follows “don‟t”

E.g Don‟t you dare to talk to me like this!

In general, it is assumed that the imperative will have only 2nd person forms, referring

to the hearer It is easy enough to see why, if the speaker merely presents (to the hearer) a proposition for action Lyons (1977:747) argues that imperatives can only be, strictly, 2ndperson and never 3rd person Nevertheless, in the following examples, the subjects are 3rdperson

E.g Someone open this door!

Everybody shut the eyes!

Don‟t anyone move!

The fact that there is no agreement here, we have “don‟t” not “doesn‟t”, is a strong

reason for taking “don‟t” as a base form, but „the imperative construction is the only place

where we find a non-tensed inflectional negative” (Huddleston; 1984: 360) Normally the

subject of an imperative will express a semantic argument representing the addressee(s) or

some (specific or non-specific) member (of the set of the addressees) “Everybody stands still”, for example, will be interpreted pragmatically as “All of you stand still” This is why “you‟ can generally be added in a tag (Everybody close your eyes!)

If the imperative is defined as presenting a proposition for action by the hearer, then clearly it can only be the 2nd person But could it not be presented for action by someone else, even though it is the hearer who is addressed? There is no very definite answer to this

The second subtype of imperatives is marked by the presence of “let”, more

specifically of what Huddleston (1984;36) calls “grammaticalised let” as opposed to “lexical

let‟ (the verb means “allow” that we find in “He won‟t let us go to the beach) In this sub

category of imperative, both the addressee and the speaker are involved in the performance of the action

E.g Let‟s go for a walk!

In summary, traditional grammar distinguishes imperative mood and other types in terms of the inflectional form of the verb It is argued, however, that there is no verb lexeme in English with overtly distinct forms for imperative and there is no justification for assigning different verbal inflections Departing from the traditional usage of the term, imperatives are

applied to a clause type, not marked inflectionally on the verb

1.1.3 The Imperative mood in Vietnamese

As mentioned above many Vietnamese linguists and language teachers have discussed imperative mood in Vietnamese

Đỗ Hữu Châu (2003) claims that mood is a syntactic category of the verb reflecting the relation between the content of the sentence and the reality Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1996) shares the same view when he regards mood as an aspect of the verb It can be assumed that the former markers are given priority to in the discussion of mood Sentences are, as a consequence, classified upon their formal markers

Nevertheless, according to Cao Xuân Hạo (2001), there no clear cut among different types of traditional sentences in Vietnamese if the sentence syntactic structure is taken as the criterion He states that the structure of the indicative sentence is the typical one in the Vietnamese language Other types of sentences can be formed by using the same structure or adding some modal particles In his opinion, imperative mood in Vietnamese should be treated

as the modality of the predicate

In summary, the mood in former traditional grammar books was seen to have an association with the inflectional form of the verb

Verbs in Vietnamese, to a certain extent, are different from those in English The distinctness of the verbs is confirmed by two points Firstly, Vietnamese verbs are not inflected whereas verbs in English bear inflectional form Secondly, Vietnamese verbs have no primary tense as the English verbs do There are good grounds here for arguing that there exists only sentence mood in Vietnamese (no verbal mood like English)

Cao Xuân Hạo (2001) and Diệp Quang Ban (2004) are those who try to make a distinction between the notion of mood in English and in Vietnamese Diệp Quang Ban (2004) comes up to a conclusion that in inflecting languages (like English, a semi-inflectional

language), verbal mood is used to refer to interpersonal function whereas in isolating languages (like Vietnamese), sentence mood is used instead Sentence mood is believed to hold a close association with types of sentences classified upon illocutionary acts in Vietnamese traditional grammar, which declaratives (indicatives), interrogatives, imperatives and exclamatives The classification of mood in terms of these was also made by Huddleston (1984) On the other hand, as far as semantics is concerned, these mood classifications may be viewed in terms of epistemicity (in cases of indicative and exclamative sentences) and deonticity (in cases of imperatives)

An imperative sentence is typically used to issue what is called a directive – a command, a request, an order, o prohibition, and the like However, some of the key issues that arise as a consequence here are what makes a typical structure of the Vietnamese imperative sentence Cao Xuân Hạo (1991) includes the following features in imperatives:

1 The speaker (who gives a command, a request, an order, etc) is ellipsed 1st person

2 The hearer (who receives a command, e request, an order, etc) is implicit 2nd person

3 The mood indicators are some imperative markers (hãy, đừng, đi, chớ, nhé etc)

(The Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts- 2006)

The verb of the imperative mood can be seen as device for the speaker to indicate that

he wishes the hearer to do what is meant by the verb According to Nguyễn Kim Thản (1963),

imperative mood in Vietnamese is identified by the imperative markers “đừng”, “chớ”, “ đi” ,

or by tone Nguyễn Kim Thản assumes that these particles indicate the action of making a request, a command, etc of the speaker whereas the verb is used to refer to the action expected

to be done by the hearer

Different types of imperatives in Vietnamese

1 Unmarked imperatives: the unmarked imperatives have no mood element

Such sentences have no subject, but it is plausible to say that the 2nd person

is understood as the subject

E.g

2 Marked imperatives

Positive imperatives

The imperative form occurs with a variety of modal particles to express polarity In the Vietnamese language, “hãy”, “đi” and some modal particles such as “nào”, “nhé,” “nhỉ”, “thôi” are the positive imperative mood markers

E.g Cho tớ mượn quyển sách nhé!

There are imperatives in which a subject is present The imperative is often defined as presenting a proposition for action by the addressee, syntactically filled by the 2nd person As such, the 2nd person is the implicit subject of the imperative

E.g (Cậu) cho tớ về cùng sau giờ học nhé!

Negative imperatives

The imperatives in Vietnamese are negated by adding the negative words

“đừng”, “chớ”, “không được”, in initial position before the verb These particles are assigned with negative meanings and neutral tone However, they never occur with other negatives like “chưa”, “chẳng”, “nỏ”, etc

E.g Đừng có đứng gần cửa sổ đấy

1.2 Politeness phenomena through using Imperative Mood to make Requests

1 2.1 Definition of politeness

First of all, within an interaction, the essential notion of „face‟ is worth of proper consideration

1.2.1.1 Face and face work

In everyday social interaction, to be respected and recognized, people try to keep their

public self-image, which is called face

According to Richard (1985), “the positive image or impression of oneself that one

shows or intends to show to the other participants is called face”

E Goffman (1973) was the first person who discussed „face‟, but Brown and Levinson (1987) developed this into a key concept of politeness theory Brown and Levinson distinguished two related aspects of face as followings:

 Negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, right to non- distraction

– i.e to freedom of action and freedom of 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 interaction Face work, therefore, proves to play an important part in making a conversation work either negatively or positively When the face is kept, the relationship is maintained without much difficulty

1.2.1.2 Politeness

In order to maintain each other‟s face, the interlocutors have to take into account the consideration of politeness

Politeness is defined in Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary as “things you

say or do simply because it is social correct to do or say them, rather than because you mean them sincerely” What should be discussed, then is in what standard people can judge

something they (or others) do or say means politeness, or rather, in what view something is socially correct This issue should be considered under each other‟s culture for judging things

In accordance with two kinds of face in Brown and Levinson‟s view: negative and positive faces; politeness is divided into two types: negative and positive politeness

According to Brown and Levinson, positive politeness is concerned with the actions people take to maintain their face and that of the other people they are interacting with Positive face has to do with presenting a good image of oneself and securing the approval of others Positive politeness consists of acts, which are designed to preserve or restore the Hearer‟s positive face, by stressing the Speaker‟s sympathy with a social closeness to the Hearer One linguistic way of doing this would be to link the Speaker and Hearer together by using the pronoun forms: we, us or our

Negative politeness is the effort not to be coercive against imposition on others, in other words, not to poke one‟s nose into other‟s privacy Negative politeness consists of acts

which are designed to preserve or restore the Hearer‟s negative face, by expressing the speaker‟s reluctance to impose his or her wants on the hearer One way of doing this would be

to say something like: “I don‟t like to bother you but…” The tendency to use negative politeness forms, emphasizing Hearer‟s right to freedom seen as deference strategy

It should be noted that neither negative nor positive politeness is thoroughly good or bad This depends much on culture, i.e this culture is more or less in favor of the former or later viewpoint of politeness as people in that country consider it to be appropriate to show concern for or interest in each other‟s business

1.2.1.3 Social variables affecting politeness

According to Brown and Levinson (1987), there are three social variables (P-power, social distance, and R-Ranking of imposition) that usually affect the realization of speech acts Therefore, they claim that the choice of appropriate polite expression in a given context depends on a number of factors which have been grouped into a simple formula Here are the three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of politeness strategies

D-in performD-ing a Face-threatenD-ing act D-in a given context:

 The relative power (P) of the S and the H (a symmetric relation)

 The social distance (D) of the S and the H (an asymmetric relation)

 The absolute ranking of imposition in the particular culture

(Brown & Levinson, 1987, p74)

1 2.2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English and Vietnamese

1.2.2.1 Making a request

In “Study about the relation between language – culture”, Nguyễn Văn Độ (2004) assumes that: Making request is sending signals from the speaker to the hearer in order to express an intention or a wish with the speaker‟s attitude so that the hearer will do something for the benefit of the speaker or, sometimes, of both the speaker and the hearer

In this study we are just interested the language used to make requests in English and

in Vietnamese in a university educational environment

1.2.2.2 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in English

The English imperative is formed simply by using the bare infinitive form of the verb

Be is the only verb whose infinitive form is in different from the second-person present

indicative form The subject of the sentence can only be you (the second person)

The use of imperative mood can easily be considered offensive or inappropriate in social situations due to universally recognized politeness rules Therefore, exhortations are often formulated indirectly, as questions or assertions:

 Could you come here for a moment?

 I beg you to stop

and not as commands like in the following examples:

 Come here

 Stop!

As a matter of fact, politeness strategies (for instance, indirect speech acts) can be much more appropriate in order not to threaten a conversational partner in his needs of self-

determination and territory: according to Brown-Levinson 1978, the partner's negative face

shouldn't be threatened As a result, the imperative mood isn't necessarily the most used form

to express a request or prohibition

On the other hand, the risk of threatening someone‟s needs of self-determination isn‟t always really serious The imperative mood's appropriateness depends on several factors like psychological and social relationships, as well as the speaker‟s basic communicative intention

(illocutionary force) For example, the speaker may have the simple intention to offer something, to wish or permit something, or just to apologize, and not to manipulate his

conversational partner In these cases, no restriction will be placed on the use of imperative:

 Come to the party tomorrow!

 Just smoke it if you want it

 Have a nice trip!

 Excuse me!

1.2.2.3 Imperative Mood and Politeness shown when making a request in Vietnamese

It is common and not impolite to use imperatives in Vietnamese Vietnam is an Oriental country, so negative politeness is not always put in a high place Vietnamese people tend to use more positive politeness to show concern to others and narrow the distance between the speaker and the hearer For Vietnamese people, requests in Imperatives are considered polite, especially, when the word „please‟ is added in front of the main verb of the requests, they assume that their politeness and well-behaviour are shown Vietnamese people think that using imperatives which have internal modifications to make requests is still polite

or very polite in most of the situations

In Vietnamese, requests using Imperative Mood usually have subjects, especially when the Hearer has higher relative power to the Speaker

E.g Anh xem hộ em cái máy tính với!

Moreover, using particles expressing Mood when making requests, such as nhé, với,

một lát … can help to avoid the face threatening act to the Hearer These may help the

Imperative Requests are polite and can show the Speaker‟s gratitude to the Hearer

(According to Nguyễn Văn Độ, Tìm hiểu mối liên hệ Ngôn ngữ - Văn hóa, 2004)

In some cases, requests with Interrogatives neither emphasize the politeness nor reduce the requests‟ pressure on the Hearer but have unexpected effect For example:

(a) Thầy giúp con với vs (b) Thầy có giúp con với không? (61:242)

Nguyễn Đức Hoạt assumes that (a) sounds much stronger and urgent than (b) Thus,

in Vietnamese, it is impossible to make a conclusion that requests with Interrogatives are more polite than Imperative

2.1 Thang Long University in brief

Thang Long University is a young institution which has been developing for 20 years and it has a group of qualified and enthusiastic teachers and active students Students are able

to acquire new knowledge and skills from their teachers, from their friends very fast Moreover, it is undeniable that many students can enrich their own knowledge by self – study

at home or in the library In short, Thang Long University Environment is advanced, fair and potential one for people to work and study

multiple-In this study, in order to collect sufficient data within the time and resource constraints available, the written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) has been chosen as the means to collect data for its many advantages

Beebe and Cummings (1996) reported that DCT‟s are „a highly effective means of instrumentation‟ (p.198) They found that DCTs enable researchers to (i) gather large amounts of data quickly; (ii) create an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategies that will likely occur in natural speech; (iii) study the stereotypical, perceived requirements for socially appropriate responses; (iv) gain insight into social and psychological factors that are likely to affect speech act performance; (v) ascertain the canonical shape of speech acts in the minds of the speakers of the language and (vi) vary the situational control variables that may affect speech behavior (p.80)

However, they state that the data may (i) differ from actual wording used in real interaction; (ii) differ in the range of strategies used; (iii) differ in length of responses or the number of turns it takes to fulfill the function, and (iv) lack depth of emotion that in turn qualitatively affects the tone, content, and form of linguistic performance As for the range of strategies, several studies concluded that there was no difference between role-plays, natural observation, and written questionnaires Eisenstein and Bodman (1993) reported that the main difference between these methods was in the degree of interaction The findings show that the difference in the length of speech found among the oral role-plays, DCTs and natural speech was mainly due to the repetitions, hesitations, and longer supportive moves found in oral interaction

In comparison with other instrumentation, the DCT appears to be the most favourable and most effective means of eliciting a large amount of data quickly which can create an initial categorization of semantic formulae or linguistic structures of speech acts in certain situations In spite of its short comings, the DTC can be a useful tool for providing a preliminary investigation at certain cultural differences in the performance of making requests

2.4 Research design

2.4.1 Data collection instruments

The data collection instruments include two questionnaires:

 the Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) was also designed to test the validity and reliability of the situations that will be used in the study

 the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was designed to elicit forms of making requests from English native speakers and the Vietnamese teachers and students

at Thang Long University

2.4.2 Contents of the questionnaires

The Metapragmatic consists of 10 situations (scenarios), of which 5 situations for students and 5 situations for teachers, which were taken from personal experience and observations with a number of teachers and students at Thang Long University Each situation

is followed by four questions of the “forced choice response formats” (De Vaus, 1985) of the type of “choosing between attitude statements‟ Each question elicits judgements on one contextual variable

For example:

METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE (MPQ)

Could you please read the situations and tick (√) the answers in the appropriate box?

Situation 1 You are a student in the English class, but you still don‟t know many other

students You want to borrow a book from the girl/boy sitting next to you What will you say

in English?

A How do you rate the relative power (authority

or right) of the Speaker with respect to the Hearer

in this situation?

B How do you rate the relationship between the

Speaker and the Hearer?

Distant Fairly close Very close

C How much would the Speaker‟s request affect

your feelings if you were the Hearer?

Not at all A bit Much

The result is interpreted as follows:

Question A:

- X % of people choose answer 1, meaning X% of them think that S has lower power than H

- Y% choose answer 2, meaning Y% of them think that S has equal power to H

- Z% choose answer 3, meaning Z% of them think that S has higher power than

 How do you rate your saying?

 How do you rate the urgency of the situation?

The collected data were then analyzed both as preliminary results and in terms of the results of the survey The collected comments were taken into consideration in revising the final versions of the DCT All the mistakes and weaknesses were collected and corrected in order to make a pilot DCT, which was also delivered to two English and two Vietnamese participants While originally the instructions asked the participants to say how they would make requests in each of the situations, the sentence „please write down exactly what you would say in a normal conversation‟ is then followed One Vietnamese answered the situation

in an indirect way instead of in the direct one as required Therefore, the instructions had to be clarified Luckily, there was no problem with the space left for participants to write down the answers

Finally, the second questionnaire, the open-ended discourse completion task (DCT), including 10 situations Here is a sample item of DCT:

DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASK (DCT)

Could you please read the situations and write down exactly what you would say directly in a normal conversation?

Situation 2 You want a friend you know well to give you a lift after the lesson What will you

say in English?

You say: ……… The situations in the questionnaires are designed to reflect real-life situations They are intended to elicit the ways of making requests used in normal conversations The questionnaires are in English and Vietnamese The English-native-speaker participants are asked to answer all 10 situations in English, and their answers are considered the standard sayings for later comparisons The Vietnamese student participants are asked to answer 5 situations, the Vietnamese teacher participants are asked to answer 5 other situations which are

in Vietnamese A full version of MPQ is provided in Appendix A and a version of DCT is in Appendix B The two questionnaires were then translated into Vietnamese

2.4.3 Participants

The questionnaires were delivered to Vietnamese native speakers who are teachers and students at Thang Long University directly and English native speakers living and working in Vietnam via email or directly

The youngest participants must be at least 18 years old (they are students) Other criteria were also taken into account: country of birth, gender, occupation, time of studying English, students‟ English level However, these parameters were intended to have no influence on our data analysis

in each situation The results of the MPQ by the English participants were used as the baseline for the selection of the 10 valid and reliable situations for the DCT The ratings by the Vietnamese participants were kept and used in later analysis to shed light on differences and similarities in their choice of Imperative Mood to make requests

Secondly, after the 10 situations had been tested for the validity and reliability, the DCT was prepared and administered The DCTs were administered to 5 groups of intended informants: 10 English native speakers, 7 Thang Long English-major teachers, 7 other Thang

Long teachers, 20 Thang Long English-major students, 20 other Thang Long non-major students All the 64 responses are collected and the data were analyzed

2.5 Results of the MPQ

2.5.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers

The results of the MPQ for English native speakers are shown in the following table:

Relative power Relationship Effect of the saying Urgency Politeness

Table 2.1 Results of the MPQ for English native speakers

1 Situation1 You are a student in the English class, but you still don’t know many other students You want to borrow a book from the girl/boy sitting next to you

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 1, meaning that S and H are not familiar with each other

- Question C: 70% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H, 30% of them think that the requests they make are quite reasonable

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is not urgent at all and their sayings are fairly polite

2 Situation 2 You want a friend you know well to give you a lift after the lesson

- Question A: 80% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal, 20% choose answer 1, Lower

- Question B: 100% of the participants choose answer 3, meaning that S and H are very familiar with each other

- Question C: 90% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is quite urgent and their sayings are informal, not polite very much

3 Situation 3 You are a student in the English class, you want to borrow a pen from your teacher

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is lower

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other

- Question C: 90% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is not urgent at all and their sayings are very polite

4 Situation 4 You are one of students who are already in the lift and the door is going to close At the same time, your close friend is coming very near and she/he also wants to be in the lift

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 3, meaning that S and H are very familiar with each other

- Question C: 90% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is very urgent and their sayings are fairly polite

5 Situation 5 You are in the English class, you want your teacher to explain the lesson again

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is lower

- Question B: 70% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other

- Question C: 90% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H, 10% of them think that the requests they make are quite reasonable

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is fairly urgent and their sayings are very polite

6 Situation 6 You are a teacher in the English class, you want to borrow a book from your student

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is higher

- Question B: 90% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other 10% of them choose answer 1, Distant

- Question C: 100% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is not urgent at all and their sayings are fairly polite

7 Situation 7 You are a teacher in the English class; you want one of your students

to close the window

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is higher

- Question B: 90% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other 10% of them choose 1, Distant

- Question C: 70% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H, 30% of them think that the requests they make are quite reasonable

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is fairly urgent and their sayings are very polite

8 Situation 8 You are a teacher but today you are busy and cannot lecture to the class You want to ask a colleague to lecture to the class for you

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other

- Question C: 90% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is very urgent and their sayings are fairly polite

9 Situation 9 Your computer has a problem You want your colleague to come and see it for you

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other, 20% choose answer 3, very close

- Question C: 70% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H, 30% of them think that the requests they make are quite reasonable

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is very urgent and their sayings are fairly polite

10 Situation 10 The dictionary you need is out of your reach while it is next to your mate You want him/her to pass it to you

- Question A: 100% of the participants agree that the relative power in this situation is Equal

- Question B: 80% of the participants choose answer 2, meaning that S and H are relatively familiar with each other, 20% choose answer 3, very close

- Question C: 70% of them think that that the requests they make are very reasonable and can be done by H, 30% of them think that the requests they make are quite reasonable

Moreover, they all agree that this situation is fairly urgent and their sayings are not polite

In conclusion, it is shown in table 2.1 that the social status and social distance are the two variables which make some differences between situations whereas nearly all the participants believe that their sayings have great influence on the H in most situations So, the two variables, the social status and the social distance, and two other investigations, the urgency of the situations and the politeness of the sayings, will be the analytical framework of

the study Some situations which have the same characteristics can be grouped in five groups

of situations as the followings:

Table 2.2 Groups of situations and characteristics of each group

Group 1(sit 1) Equal, distant, not urgent

Group 2 (sit 2, 10) Equal, fairly close, fairly urgent

Group 3(sit 4, 8, 9) Equal, fairly/very close, fairly/very urgent

Group 4 (sit 3, 5) Lower, fairly close, not urgent

Group 5 (sit 6, 7) Higher, fairly close, not urgent

 Group 1: including situation 1 with the social factors like: S has equal power to H; S and H are distant to each other, the situation is not urgent so their sayings are fairly polite

 Group 2: including situation 2 and situation 10 with the same social factors like:

S has equal power to H; S and H are fairly close to each other, the situation is fairly urgent so the sayings are not polite

 Group 3: including situation 4, 8, 9 with the same social factors like: S has equal power to H; S and H are fairly close to each other, the situation is very urgent so their sayings are fairly polite

 Group 4: including situation 3, 5 with the same social factors like: S has lower power than H; S and H are fairly close to each other, the situation is not urgent so their sayings are very polite

 Group 5: including situation 6, 7 with the same social factors like: S has higher power than H, S and h are fairly close to each other, the situation is not urgent

so their sayings are fairly or very polite

2.5.2 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers

The MPQ was translated into Vietnamese The Vietnamese participants were also asked to do the same job The results are illustrated in the following table:

Relative power Relationship Effect of the saying Urgency Politeness

Table 2.3 Results of the MPQ for Vietnamese native speakers

It is surprisingly interesting that the Vietnamese participants tended to think that the hearers in these situations are inclined to willing to response to the requests, in other words, their feelings are positively affected In addition, the Vietnamese participants seem to consider the social distance closer than the English ones As regards the relative power both groups of participants provided almost the same assessment