Pragmatic transfer in complimet responses by vietnamese learners of english

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH BA Thesis Field of study: English Lang

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF

ENGLISH

BA Thesis Field of study: English Language Teaching

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to give my deep gratitude to Mrs Bui Lan Chi, whose comments and suggestions were very useful to make my thesis possible Next, I also would like to thank my friend, Mr Tran Quang Nhat, who helped me deliver the Discourse Completion Task questionnaires to American native speakers Moreover, I really appreciate the great help of English majored and non-majored students of Can Tho University as well as American native speakers who participated in my thesis Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to English Department of Can Tho University for offering the most favorable conditions to help me complete this thesis

TÓM TẮT

Nghiên cứu này nhằm khảo sát sự khác nhau giữa cách đáp lại lời khen của

học tiếng Anh khi đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh Công cụ duy nhất để thu thập

số liệu cho luận văn này là “phiếu thu thập số liệu.” Phiếu thu thập số liệu với hai phiên bản: một bản bằng tiếng Anh và một bản bằng tiếng Việt được thiết kế bao gồm tám tình huống, dựa trên bốn chủ đề khen ngợi: bề ngoài, sở hữu, kỹ năng và tính cách Những lời đáp lại lời khen được thu thập từ 30 người, được chia thành

ba nhóm: nhóm người Mĩ bản ngữ, nhóm người Việt bản ngữ và nhóm người Việt học tiếng Anh Kết quả cho thấy sự khác biệt lớn trong cách đáp lại lời khen giữa người Mĩ bản ngữ và người Việt bản ngữ, tập trung vào hai hướng: tần suất của chiến lược đáp lại lời khen và nội dung của chiến lược Ngoài ra, kết quả cũng cho

lược và nội dung của những chiến lược Kết luận rút ra giúp cung cấp thêm nguồn tài liệu cho việc sử dụng thích hợp tiếng Anh trong giao tiếp đa ngôn ngữ và nâng cao ý thức của người Việt học tiếng Anh về khả năng ngữ dụng và ý thức về sự khác biệt văn hóa khi giao tiếp, sử dụng tiếng Anh như một ngoại ngữ

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to investigate the differences between compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and by American native speakers as well as the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English To collect data, Discourse Completion Task was employed as the only instrument The Discourse Completion Task questionnaires with two versions: one in English and one in Vietnamese were designed to include eight scenarios based on four compliment topics: appearance, possession, accomplishment/skills and personality traits The compliment responses were collected from thirty people who were divided into three groups: American native speakers (ANS), Vietnamese native speakers (VNS) and Vietnamese learners of English (VLE) The results revealed a significant difference in compliment responses by American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers focusing on two dimensions: the frequency of compliment response strategies and the content of the strategies Moreover, the results also demonstrated evidence of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners of English This pragmatic transfer was at two levels: the levels of the frequency of compliment response strategies and the level of content

of the strategies The findings helps to provide more literature for the appropriate use of English language in intercommunication and raise the awareness of Vietnamese learners of English about pragmatic competence and cross-culture when communicating in English as a foreign language

TABLE OF CONTENT

Acknowledgements i

Abstract (Vietnamese) ii

Abstract (English) iii

List of Tables vi

List of Figures vii

Abbreviations viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims and significance of the present study 1

1.2.1 Aims of the study 2

1.2.2 Significance of the present study 2

1.3 Organization of the thesis 2

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Communicative competence 4

2.2 Pragmatic competence 5

2.3 Pragmatic transfer 6

2.4 Speech act theory 6

2.5 Compliments and compliment responses 7

2.5.1 Definition of compliments 7

2.5.2 Lexical and syntactical features of compliments 7

2.5.3 Compliment topics 7

2.5.4 Classification of compliment response strategies 8

2.6 Inter-language studies on compliment responses 9

2.7 Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses 10

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHOD 12

3.1 Research questions 12

3.2 Hypotheses 12

3.3 Participants 12

3.4 Data collection instrument 13

3.4.1 Rationale for using DCT 13

3.4.2 Description of DCT questionnaire 13

3.5 Data analysis 13

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 15

4.1 General results 15

4.2 Vietnamese native speaker group vs American native speaker group 15

4.2.1 Differences in the frequency of compliment response strategies 16

4.2.2 Differences in the content of compliment response strategies 18

4.3 Vietnamese learners of English and pragmatic transfer 20

4.3.1 Pragmatic transfer in the frequency of compliment response strategies 20

4.3.2 Pragmatic transfer in the content of compliment response strategies .23

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS, SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION 26

5.1 Discussions of the findings 26

5.2 Implications 27

5.3 Limitations 27

5.4 Suggestions for further research 27

5.5 Conclusion 28

REFERENCES ix

APPENDIX A xi

APPENDIX B xii

APPENDIX C xiii

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Herbert's taxonomy of compliment responses

Table 2.2 Contrastive studies on compliment responses

Table 2.3 Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses Table 3.1 Grouping of participants

Table 4.1 Number of agreement and on-agreement strategies produced by three

groups: American native speaker group (ANS), Vietnamese native speaker group (VNS) and Vietnamese learners of English group (VLE) Table 4.2 Number of compliment response sub-strategies produced by American

native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers

List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Communicative language competence in the Common European

Framework (CEF)

Figure 4.1 Differences in agreement and non-agreement strategies produced by

American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers

Figure 4.2 Differences in compliment response sub-strategies produced by

American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers

Figure 4.3 Pragmatic transfer in agreement and non-agreement compliment

response strategies by Vietnamese learners of English

Figure 4.4 Pragmatic transfer in compliment response sub-strategies by

Vietnamese learners of English

Abbreviations

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter includes three parts: (1) the rationale for this study, (2) the aims and the significance of the present study, and (3) the organization of the thesis

1.1 RATIONALE

In the intercommunication, the misunderstanding and the communication

pragmatic knowledge Smiling, for instance, in Korean culture means that a person

is foolish or thoughtless However, on the island of Puerto Rico, a smile can have many positive meanings: “Please”, “Thank you”, and “You’re welcome.” (Tanka and Baker, 2002, p.313) These misunderstandings were demonstrated to be due to the effects of the mother tongue on the interpretation and the production of the foreign language These effects were investigated in a number of previous studies and called the “pragmatic transfer” While people can forgive the mistakes of pronunciation and grammar, they may consider the inappropriate use of language forms as rudeness Therefore, pragmatic transfer plays an important role in the field of Pragmatics and Applied Linguistics

Vietnam has been co-operating with many foreign countries, using English

as the international language It is required that the Vietnamese have to speak English not only fluently but also appropriately There have been a number of studies on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English in the speech acts

of refusals, apologies, requests, compliments… However, very few studies focused

on the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English in compliment responses Hence, conducting study in this line helps to provide more literature on the issue of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses in the process of teaching and learning English It also contributes to raise the awareness of Vietnamese learners of English about pragmatic competence and cross-culture It is also hoped that the communication breakdowns in the intercommunication between Vietnamese non-native speakers of English and native speakers of English can be reduced

1.2 AIMS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT STUDY

1.2.1 Aims of the study

This study aims at finding out the differences in compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and American native speakers as well as the evidence

of pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English

1.2.2 Significance of the present study

As discussed in the previous section, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners

of English The findings help to provide more literature on pragmatic transfer issue Therefore, it is hoped to make the process of teaching and learning English more effective The communication breakdowns caused by pragmatic transfer in compliment responses can be avoided some-how

1.3 ORGANISATION OF THE THESIS

This thesis consisted of five chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) Literature review, (3) Research method, (4) Results, (5) Discussions, implications, limitations, suggestions and conclusion

Chapter 1 presents the rationale for conducting the study on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners of English Moreover, the aims and the significance of the present study as well as the organization of the thesis were also included in this chapter

Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the thesis topic as well as summarizes and analyzes the previous studies In this chapter, the “communicative competence”, the “pragmatic competence”, the theory of “speech acts”, the

“pragmatic transfer” as well as the compliments and compliment responses were

described In addition, “inter-language studies on compliment responses” and

“inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses” were presented

Chapter 3 introduces the research questions and the hypotheses as well as describes the collecting data instrument, the participants and the data analysis procedure

Chapter 4 focuses on describing the results found It includes: the overall results, the differences in compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and American native speakers, the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English

Chapter 5 discusses the results and the limitations of the present study Teaching implications are then suggested

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature relevant to the thesis topic and analyses the previous studies It includes seven parts: (1) Communicative competence, (2) Pragmatic competence, (3) Pragmatic transfer, (4) Speech act theory, (5) Compliments and compliment responses, (6) Inter- language studies on compliment responses, (7) Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses

2.1 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

The concept “communicative competence” is comprised of two words in which the word “competence” has been the most controversial term in general applied linguistics since 1960s It came from the classic distinction of Chomsky between “competence” and “performance” According to Chomsky, competence refers to the monolingual speakers-listener's knowledge of language and performance refers to the actual use of language in real situation However, Chomsky received the strong disapproval from advocates for communicative views at the idea of using concept of idealized, purely linguistic competence (Savigon, 1972)

In 1972, Dell Hymes proposed the concept of “communicative competence,” which is considered broader and more realistic Competence is considered not only as the knowledge of but also the ability to use language with appropriate items Therefore, Hymes included both grammatical competence to form correct sentences and ability to use grammatical competence in variety of communicative situation

Since Hymes proposed the concept “communicative competence,” it has been discussed and redefined by many other authors In 1988, Spitzberg defined communicative competence as “the ability to interact well with others” (p.68) He explains the term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness” (p.68) In 1994, a much more complete definition was provided by Friedrich According to him, communicative competence is best understood as “a situational ability to set realistic and appropriate goals and to maximize their achievement by using knowledge of self, other, context, and communication theory to generate adaptive communication performance”

Although communicative competence has been discussed and redefined many times, the basic idea remains knowledge and ability/skills for language use After years of studying communicative competence, many theoreticians in the field of applied linguistics have reached an agreement “that a competent language user should process not only knowledge about language but also the ability and

skills to activate that knowledge in a communication event.” (Bagaric’ & Dijigunovic’, 2007: 73) Since then, communicative competence has widely become the goal of language learning process

2.2 PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

The notion “pragmatic competence” has been mentioned in the communicative competence models of many linguists since 1980 (Canal and Swain, 1980, Bachman and Palmer, 1990, 1996) However, it is more comprehensive in the description of components of communicative language competence in the Common European Framework (CEF) (2001)

Figure 2.1 Communicative language competence in the Common

European Framework (CEF) Communicative language competence

sociolinguistic competence Language competence is defined as knowledge o f

an d ability to use language resources to form well-structured messages Thus it involves lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, orthographic and orthopedic competences Both of the last two components concerns with the appropriate use of language However, sociolinguistic competence refers to the possession of knowledge and skills for appropriate language use in a social context It involves rules of appropriate behaviors, expressions of people's wisdom, differences in register and dialects and stress Whereas, pragmatic competence is defined as knowledge of how verbal acts are understood and performed in accordance with a speaker's intention under contextual and discoursal constraints” (Faerch& Kasper, 1984:214) and ability to apply it Pragmatic competence is

So cio ling uisti c co mpetence

P ra g ma tic co mpetence

Discourse competence

Functional competence

broken down into two sub-components: discourse competence and functional competence Discourse competence is defined as the ability to combine language structures into different types of cohesive texts Functional competence refers to the relationship between utterances and the intentions or communicative purposes

of language users All in all, pragmatic competence is an important component that contributes to the appropriate and effective communication of interactants from different languages

2.3 PRAGMATIC TRANSFER

The term “transfer” is generally used to refer to the systematic influences of existing knowledge on the acquisition of new knowledge The transfer studies originated very early during 1940s and 1950s However, those studies did not address pragmatic issues until recently According to Wolfson (1989), pragmatic transfer has been referred to as sociolinguistic transfer Beebe (1990) considered pragmatic transfer as the transfer of L1 sociocultural competence or cross-linguistic influence Although there are various ideas about pragmatics and about transfer, the term “pragmatic transfer is best understood by Kasper According to him, the pragmatic transfer refers to the influence that previous pragmatic knowledge of L1 has on the use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge

“Pragmatic transfer shall refer to the influence exerted by learners’ pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other than L1 on their comprehension, production and learning of L2 pragmatic information.” (Kasper, 1992: 207)

2 4 SPEECH ACT THEORY

Speech act theory was originated by Austin (1962) He claimed that many utterances are equivalent to actions For example, when we say “This food is very delicious”, we are actually communicating an action like compliments Speech act theory focuses much on the classification of speech acts Austin firstly found a great distinction between constatives and performatives A constative is considered

to convey a message which can be compared with the real world and declared true

or false “The cat is on the table” is an example of a constative On the other hand,

a performative is considered to be a sentence which is not true or false Rather than conveying a message, a performative acts upon the world; it doesn’t say something, it does something “I promise I’ll go back” is an example of a performative According to Austin, performatives include three categories: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts Locutionary acts are defined as the semantic or literal significance of the utterance Illocutionary acts

are the most important It involves the intention of the speaker Perlocutionary acts are the effect the speech act has on the listener

Developing from Austin’s original study, Searle (1962) divided illocutionary acts into five sub-categories: directive, commissive, expressive, representative and declaration

 Directive: The speaker wants the listener to do something

 Commissive: The speaker indicates the she herself will do something in the future

 Expressive: The speaker expresses her feelings or emotional response

 Representative: The speaker expresses her belief about the truth of a proposition

 Declaration: Her utterance results in a change in the external non-linguistic situation

2 5 COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

2.5.1 Definition of compliments

Compliments are positive speech acts that establish solidarity and increase rapport among people For any culture, a compliment must express approval of something that both parties, speakers and addressees, regard positively (Manes, 1983), and it must be valued by the culture indicated (Holms, 1987; Manes, 1983) According to Holms (1988b, p.446), “A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some “good” (possession, characteristic, skill, ), which

is positively valued by the speakers and the hearers.”

2.5.2 Lexical and syntactical features of compliments

Compliments and compliment responses have been widely studied since 1970s While later studies focused on how it differs across cultures, the early studies focused on describing English compliments In 1980, Wolfson and Manes

on their research on American English identified some lexical and syntactical features of English compliments They found English compliments to be formulaic, that speakers use a small number of adjectives, and that compliments and compliment responses could be classified into types of structures: adjective, verb, adverb, and noun “Your blouse looks beautiful!” is an example of

adjectival compliment About 2/3 of adjectival compliments use the words nice, good, pretty, or beautiful (Manes and Wolfson, 1981) Good is often used for performance and nice is mostly used for appearance/attire (Knapp et al., 1984) “I

really love your car!” is an example of a compliment that contains a semantically

positive verb Love and like are used 90% of the time in this type of compliment

Some other positive verbs that are used would be admire and be impressed

Such compliments as “Good boy” and “You’re so sweet” are compliments

on addressee’s personality traits This category of compliments occurs less frequently than those on appearance / possessions and performance / skills / abilities (Holmes, 1988)

2.5.4 Classification of compliment response strategies

The first researcher who discussed compliment responses from the pragmatic perspective was Pomerantz (1978) According to her, in American English the interactant faces a conflict when responding to a compliment: (A) AGREE WITH THE SPEAKER and (B) AVOID SELF-PRAISE (pp 81-82) It means that if the speaker accepts the compliments, s/he may be considered as lacking modesty If s/he rejects the compliments, s/he may be considered as lacking appreciation of the speaker's opinion and value Therefore, they have some strategies to avoid this conflict categorized by Pomerantz as acceptance, rejection, and self-praise avoidance

Elaborating from Pomerantz's taxonomy, Herbert (1986 and 1990) conducted a large scale analysis and ended up with a three-category, twelve-strategy taxonomy (Table 2.1)

Table 2.1 Herbert's taxonomy of compliment responses

Response strategies Example

A Agreement

I Acceptances

1 Appreciation Tokens “Thanks; thank you; (smile)”

2 Comment Acceptance “Thanks; it’s my favorite too.”

3 Praise Upgrade “Really brings out the blue in my eyes, doesn’t it?”

II Comment history “I bought it for the trip to Arizona.”

III Transfers

1 Reassignment “My brother gave it to me.”

2 Return “So is yours.”

B Non-agreement

I Scale down “It’s really quite old.”

II Question “Do you really think so?”

III Non-acceptance

1 Disagreement “I hate it.”

2 Qualification “It’s alright, but Len’s is nicer.”

IV No acknowledgment (silence)

C Other interpretations

I Request “You wanna borrow this one too?”

2.6 INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES ON COMPLIMENT RESPONSES:

Different cultures have different ways of meaning and doing things with

words Compliment responses in particular are also speech acts that differ across

cultures Table 2.2 presents briefly the main findings of studies on differences in

compliment responses between various languages and English

Table 2.2 Contrastive studies on compliment responses

( mo d ified fro m Ura no

compliment responses

into acceptance Holmes

L1 Malay

preferred to acceptances (61.1%) more than Malay (39.9%) Herbert

in American data were acceptance, in South African English larger proportion of

(76.1%) were categorized as acceptance Chen

compliment responses

in Chinese were

“rejecting” Only 4.44% were acceptance

acceptance type responses significantly more often than Thai Nelson,

Interview, observation

Arabic preferred acceptance (67%) more than American English (50%)

Using Pomerantz’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies, these studies ended up with some interesting findings First, Arabic and South African English tend to accept compliments and less likely to reject them than American English Second, Asians are more likely to avoid accepting compliments but rather reject them compared with English Due to the differences in compliment responses between various languages and English, pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by non-native speakers of English is desirable

2.7 INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN

COMPLIMENT RESPONSES

A number of studies have been conducted to demonstrate the existence of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses from various languages to English The findings of these studies are presented in Table 2.3

Table 2.3 Interlanguage studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment

8 American female students

Field notes and

interviews

The only sign of pragmatic transfer was found in the disagree type

in the reject category However, this didn't lead

to miscommunication Jing Qu

(DCT)

There is a significant difference in compliment responses between Chinese and American English

Chinese learners of English reflect their L1 behavior to some extents

Group 2: 10 Emarati

NS of English majors Group 3: 10 Emarati

NS of non-English major

Discourse Completion Task and interviews

Emarati NNS of English brought about some L expressions and strategies

in L2 production which results communication breakdowns

Proficiency didn't play a role in producing target-like compliment

responses Tran

20 NS of Vietnamese

20 Vietnamese learners of English

Naturalized-role plays

The compliment responsestrategy combinations

were found to be transferred from Vietnamese into Vietnamese-English

Since most of these studies (except Tran’s study) based on Pomerantz’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies, the results of pragmatic transfer were not well-shown Differences in each particular strategy, for example, were not presented

Tran’ s study (2008) investigated pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese non-native speakers of English in comparison with Australian native speakers of English The results of Tran’s study showed the evidence of pragmatic transfer performed by Vietnamese learners of English However, Tran (2008) focused on analyzing the content of compliment responses

to investigate the pragmatic transfer in the combination of compliment response strategies

In this thesis, I also use Herbert’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies to classify compliment responses collected However, beside differences

in the content of compliment responses collected, I also focus on investigating the numeric differences in the frequency of compliment response strategies

This study attempts to address the two following questions:

1 What are the differences between compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and by American native speakers?

2 To what extent do Vietnamese learners of English transfer their Vietnamese pragmatic knowledge when responding to compliments in English?

3.2 HYPOTHESES

It is hypothesized that American native speakers tend to use more agreement

compliment response strategies and fewer non-agreement strategies than Vietnamese native speakers Another hypothesis is Vietnamese learners of English will perform a strong pragmatic transfer when responding compliments in English

Group 2 10 American native speakers (ANS)

Group 3 10 Vietnamese learners of English (VLE)

of Can Tho University They were studying many majors rather than English such

as letter of literature, mathematics teaching, and physics teaching… Their age ranged from twenty to twenty-three years old They came from many different provinces of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam They spoke Vietnamese as their mother tongue

Group 2 consisted of 10 Americans, some of whom were students and some

of whom had different jobs like waitresses, officers, and shop-keepers Their age

ranged from twenty to twenty-five They all live in Virginia, America They spoke English as their mother tongue

Group 3 consisted of ten Vietnamese learners of English They were also

They also came from many different provinces of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam They spoke Vietnamese as their mother tongue In addition, they could speak English as a foreign language

3.4 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENT

The only data collection instrument in this study is Discourse Completion Task (DCT) A DCT item typically consists of a situational description followed

by a brief dialogue, with one turn as an open slot to be completed by participants

3.4.1 Rationale for using DCT

As shown in chapter 2, there are many methods that can be used to collect data for pragmatic transfer study such as observation, interviews, naturalized role-play, Discourse Completion Task However, Discourse Completion Task is chosen as the data collection instrument for my study because of the following reasons First, observation, interviews or naturalized role-play are time-consuming while I have to conduct my study in a very limited time Moreover, the lack of American participants is another reason In Can Tho, it is very difficult to find out ten female Americans It is even more difficult if we ask them to conduct an interview or a role-play With DCT method, I can collect data by emailing DCT questionnaires to my friends in America and get them completed Therefore, Discourse Completion Task is the most appropriate instrument to collect data for

my study

3.4.2 Description of DCT questionnaire

The DCT questionnaire consists of two parts: general information and situations In the first part “general information,” participants were required to provide their general information such as name, gender, age, mother tongue and foreign language The second part consists of eight situations which were designed basing on four topics of English compliments: appearance, possession, accomplishment/skill and personality trait Each topic included two situations

There were two versions of DCT questionnaire: one in English and one in Vietnamese The following example is extracted from the DCT questionnaires (See Appendices A and B)

Scenario 1: You're going to an important interview for your new job in a

large investment company You wear your best suit Your roommates or your family say “Oh! You look good in your suit! All the best with your interviews!”

You respond:

Tình huống 1: Bạn đang chuẩn bị đi phỏng vấn trong một công ty lớn cho

công việc mới trong một công ty lớn Vì thế hôm nay bạn mặc bộ quần áo đẹp nhất của mình Những người bạn cùng phòng hoặc gia đình của bạn nói rằng: “Ồ! Bạn mặc bộ này đẹp quá! Chúc buổi phỏng vấn tốt nhé!”

Bạn đáp lại lời khen:

3.5 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURE

The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively In quantitative

analysis, the compliment responses collected were classified according to Herbert’s taxonomy of compliment responses strategies The frequency of occurrence of compliment response strategies was calculated to show the numeric differences among the groups The qualitative analysis was based on the content of compliment responses

CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

This chapter reports the results of the present study It includes three parts: (1) the overall results of agreement and non-agreement compliment response strategies produced by three groups: American native speaker group, the Vietnamese native speakers group and the Vietnamese learners of English group; (2) the differences in compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers; (3) the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English

4.1 OVERALL RESULTS

The total number of compliment responses collected was 240 in which 175 compliment responses were in agreement strategies and 65 compliment responses were in non-agreement strategies All the groups used more agreement strategies than non-agreement strategies However, among three groups, American native speaker group used the most agreement strategies and the least non-agreement strategies while Vietnamese native speakers used the least agreement strategies and the most non-agreement strategies Table 4.1 will present the number of agreement and non-agreement strategies produced by the three groups

Table 4.1 Number of agreement and non-agreement strategies produced by

three groups: American Native Speakers (ANS), Vietnamese Native Speakers (VNS) and Vietnamese learners of English (VLE)

be presented in two following sections

4.2 VIETNAMESE NATIVE SPEAKER GROUP VS AMERICAN NATIVE SPEAKER GROUP

This section seeks to address research question 1: “What are the differences

in compliment responses by American native speakers and Vietnamese native