A contrastive analysis of moderating criticism The use of disjuncts as mitigating hedges in verbal communication

A contrastive analysis of moderating criticism: The use of disjuncts as mitigating hedges in verbal communication Hoàng Thị Sáu Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Englis

A contrastive analysis of moderating criticism: The use of disjuncts as mitigating hedges in

verbal communication

Hoàng Thị Sáu

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Ph.D Huỳnh Anh Tuấn

Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract This thesis presents an attempt to analyze similarities and differences

contrastively in the use of disjuncts as hedges in mitigating the criticisms between Northern Vietnamese learners of English and Southern English native speakers Specifically, it studies and contrasts the use of two types of disjuncts from pragmatic perspective in every day verbal communication basing on the data collected from survey questionnaires Special emphasis is given to the responses in five situations in which nine parameters are included, namely close friend, someone you dislike, your acquaintance, your sister/brother, your aunt/uncle, your colleague (same sex), your colleague (opposite sex), your boss (younger than you), and your boss (older than you) The findings provide the evidence that disjuncts are seen as a useful tool in mitigating and softening the weight and, perhaps, the negative effects on criticizing which is considered as a highly sensitive speech act in every day social interaction and

interpersonal communication

Keywords Ngôn ngữ; Giao tiếp; Trạng ngữ tình thái; Tiếng Anh

Content

1 Rationale

It can not be denied that language plays an important part not only in recording and understanding culture but also in communication among people who share or do not share the

same nationality, social or ethnic origin, gender, age, and occupation Furthermore, “language not only has a great impact on our thinking and behaviors but also on others" (Karmic,

1998:79) Hence, understanding social conventions and attention to such important concepts as politeness, and face –threatening act, will certainly enable us to better comprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thus helping eliminate culture-shocks, misunderstandings and communication-breakdown

Despite good awareness of the ultimate objective of learning a foreign language toward successful communication, many Vietnamese learners of English must concede that a good command of a foreign language or success in foreign language learning lies only in mastering grammar rules and accumulating as much vocabulary as possible The importance of vocabulary and grammar has been proved in Laufer and Hulstijn (2001), Putri (2010), Aquilina (1988) and

in many other researches In spite of different approaches to the matter, these authors state one thing in common that both vocabulary and grammar are vital aspects in language However, it lies in the fact that even when language learners produce grammatically well-formed utterances, they may experience unwanted culture shock and communication breakdown when running into

a real and particular context of situation This unexpected incidence occurs due to their insufficient knowledge and awareness of social norms and values, roles and relationships between individuals, especially those from the target culture

Of the universal human speech acts, criticism is considered a high face-threatening act, and a high- demanding politeness in communication, especially in intercultural communication

In addition, criticisms are socially complex even for native speakers Furthermore, many local and foreign studies regarding the speech act of criticizing have been carried out in different languages and in interlanguage of English learners of different language backgrounds such as House and Kasper (1981), Tracy, Van Dusen, and Robison (1987), Tracy and Eisenberg (1990), Wajnryb (1993; 1995) and Toplak and Katz (2000), Minh (2005), Hoa (2007), and others The findings of the previous studies were mainly discussed in the light of cross-cultural perspective Yet, hedging in criticizing from pragmatic perspective is still an area available for more exploration This research, therefore, has chosen hedging as a potential subject The study is done not only to see the similarities and dissimilarities in the use of hedges to criticize between the two cultures Another goal of this research is to raise the awareness of both teachers and learners of English about the necessity of hedging in language, and to give teachers several suggestions in teaching this language phenomenon to their students

Nevertheless, hedging is a very broad area, and within the limit of the study, it is impossible to discuss all aspects of hedging in language As criticism is an act yielding high risk

of making hearers lose face, it requires different supplementary steps to reduce the weightiness

of the utterance This is where hedging can mostly be seen In daily life, no-one likes to be criticized, and no-one wants to criticize others directly because there still exists the relationship between people, which is considered most important in every society Hence, in forced

situations, people still criticize but soften it by using such disjuncts as “frankly, from my point of view, seriously,…” right before the criticism That is the reason why the use of disjuncts as

mitigating hedges in criticism is chosen for the project

Needless to say, disjuncts as hedging devices used in a certain context for specific communicative intents such as one strategy of politeness and mitigation have great effect on minimizing shocks in communication Therefore, a desire to have a further insight into major similarities and differences in using disjuncts as hedges has inspired the writer to develop the

research entitled “A contrastive analysis of moderating criticism: The use of disjuncts as

mitigating hedges in verbal communication.”

To sum up, it is hoped that this study can provide the increase of some socio-cultural knowledge and awareness of the importance of hedges before criticizing among both teachers and learners of English in order to avoid hurting their partners in every day communication This also helps enhance better cross-cultural communication and foreign language learning and teaching in Vietnam

2 Scope of the study

- The study is confined to the verbal aspects of the act of criticism with the use of politeness and hedging In addition, adjacency pairs are beyond the scope of this paper

- The study strictly pertains to the perspective of pragmatics though the author realizes that syntactic theory and semantics apparently do explain the meaning of the verbal work

- Northern Vietnamese learners of English and Southern English native speakers are chosen for contrastive analysis

- The data are collected by conducting survey questionnaires to examine the ways the Northern Vietnamese and Southern English native speakers use disjuncts as mitigating hedges (30 informants each)

- Hedges under investigation are limited to a single utterance

3 Aims of the study

- To find out the similarities and differences in the way the Northern Vietnamese learners of English and Southern English native speakers criticize using disjuncts as a politeness strategy in mitigating criticism

- To raise both teacher’s and learner’s awareness of the importance of hedges before criticizing

in order to avoid hurting their partners

4 Objectives of the study

In order to achieve the targeted aims, two objectives are put forward:

- The data will be collected by conducting survey questionnaires for the chosen informants in Northern Vietnam and in Southern England (Hedges under investigation are limited to a single utterance)

- The data will be processed and analyzed quantitatively to see how the two groups use disjuncts

as hedges in criticizing situations and to see if there are any distinct features that characterize the way Northern Vietnamese learners use hedges as compared to that of Southern native speakers, through which implications will be drawn out

5 Research questions

What are the major similarities and differences in the ways Northern Vietnamese learners

of English and Southern English native speakers use disjuncts as hedges in mitigating criticism?

6 Methodology

- Quantitative method in the form of survey questionnaires is much resorted to To collect data for analysis, Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) is designed The collected data will be analyzed using comparing and contrasting techniques to find out the similarities and differences

in the ways Northern Vietnamese learners of English and Southern English native speakers perform the act of criticizing using hedges as a politeness strategy

- The questionnaires are delivered directly to 30 Northern Vietnamese learners of English and to

30 English people via e-mails Based on both Vietnamese and English informants’ status parameters, the researcher looks for the Vietnamese subjects of similar parameters in order to have a symmetrical distribution of informants and data for the study

7 Design of the study

The study is composed of three parts:

Part I: Introduction: presents the rationale, scope, aims, research question, and methodology of

the study

Part II: Development: This part consists of four chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background and Literature review :

- Theoretical background: discusses the notions of speech act theory, face, politeness, politeness

strategies, hedges and disjuncts

Chapter 2:: Hedging before criticizing: This chapter explores previous works of criticizing,

hedging, hedging strategies and disjuncts from pragmatic perspective

Chapter 3: Methodology: This chapter states the chosen methods to carry out the study and to

analyze the collected data such as contrastive analysis (CA), and survey questionnaires It also deals with informants and procedures of the data collection

Chapter 4: Data analysis and findings: This chapter analyses collected data to find out major

similarities and differences in the choice of hedging strategies in given situations by Vietnamese learners of English and native speakers of English

Part III: Conclusion: This part summarizes the main findings of the study, provides some

implications for TEFL, and offers suggestions for further research

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