a study on disagreeing strategies commonly employed in english with reference to those in vietnamese

THESIS A STUDY ON DISAGREEING STRATEGIES COMMONLY EMPLOYED IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THOSE IN VIETNAMESE.. THESIS A STUDY ON DISAGREEING STRATEGIES COMMONLY EMPLOYED IN ENGLISH

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A STUDY ON DISAGREEING STRATEGIES COMMONLY EMPLOYED IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THOSE IN VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG CHIẾN LƯỢC BÀY TỎ SỰ BẤT ĐỒNG THƯỜNG DÙNG TRONG TIẾNG ANH CÓ LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGHIÊM THỊ THU HÀ

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A STUDY ON DISAGREEING STRATEGIES COMMONLY EMPLOYED IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THOSE IN VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG CHIẾN LƯỢC BÀY TỎ SỰ BẤT ĐỒNG THƯỜNG DÙNG TRONG TIẾNG ANH CÓ LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGHIÊM THỊ THU HÀ

Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang

Hanoi, 2016

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report

entitled “A study on disagreeing strategies commonly employed in English

with reference to those in Vietnamese” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2016

NGHIÊM THỊ THU HÀ

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Date:………

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from

a number of people

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Assoc.Prof

Dr Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported

me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to all my lecturers, colleagues, staff and students at Hanoi University of Industry and many others, without whose support and encouragement it would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

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ABSTRACT

Based on the theoretical framework of pragmatics, this study investigates the ways in which the speech act of disagreeing is expressed by Vietnamese people and native speakers of English There were 80 people participating in the study (40 Vietnamese teachers in HAUI and 40 native English speakers), who were randomly selected from the researcher’s colleagues, neighbors and acquaintances of different ages, genders and social status The participants were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher, which was about three situations, and react to them via making disagreements Respondents were expected to disagree with the three situations that they had to express their disagreement

The main findings of the study are prominent strategies for disagreeing commonly employed by English speakers with reference to similarities and differences in disagreeing strategies commonly employed by Vietnamese under investigation according to age, gender, and social status This study also suggests some implications for teaching the politeness strategies in English to EFL learners in Vietnam

Hearer Relative power Rating of imposition Speaker

Situation Hanoi University of Industry

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2.1 The five general function of speech act 14

Table 2.2.The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structure 33

Table 4.1 The common strategies for disagreeing in English and

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

Chapter 1 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the research 1

1.2 Aims of the research 3

1.3 Objectives of the research 3

1.4 Scope of the research 4

1.5 Significance of the research 4

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis 5

Chapter 2 6

LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Review of previous studies 6

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas 6

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam 8

2.2 Review of theoretical background 9

2.2.1 Theoretical framework 9

2.2.2 Theoretical background 11

2.3 Disagreeing in Vietnamese and English 28

2.4 Chapter summary 35

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Chapter 3 36

METHODOLOGY 36

3.1 Research-governing orientations 36

3.1.1 Research questions 36

3.1.2 Research setting 36

3.1.3 Research approach 37

3.1.4 Data collection and data analysis 38

3.2 Research methods 38

3.2.1 Major methods vs supporting methods 38

3.2.2 Data collection instruments 39

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques 40

3.3 Chapter summary 41

Chapter 4 42

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 42

4.1 Strategies for disagreeing employed by English and Vietnamese people 42 4.1.1 Results of the survey 42

4.1.2 Realizations of strategies for disagreeing in English and Vietnamese 44 4.1.3 The strategy employment for expressing disagreement by English and Vietnamese speakers 54

4.2 Major cross-cultural similarities and differences in using the strategies to express disagreement by English and Vietnamese speakers 58

4.2.1 Similarities 58

4.2.2 Differences: 59

4.3 Implications of the research findings 61

4.3.1 Implication on teaching English disagreeing strategies to EFL Vietnamese learners 61

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4.3.2 Implications on learning English disagreeing strategies 62

4.4 Chapter summary 63

Chapter 5 64

CONCLUSION 64

5.1 Recapitulation 64

5.2 Concluding remarks 64

5.3 Limitation of the current research 66

5.4Recommendations for further research 67

APPENDIX 1 1

BẢNG CÂU HỎI KHẢO SÁT 1

APPENDIX2 4

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE 4

IN ENGLSH 7

In Vietnamese 13

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the research

Language enables us to communicate ideas, thoughts, emotions, and information Communication can only succeed with both linguistic competence and knowledge of social values, status, norms, and relations among individuals, which is known as communicative competence Communicative competence is defined as “the ability not only to apply grammatically correct sentences but also know when and where to use the sentences and to whom” (Richards, Platt, & Platt 1992: 65) Put in another way, communicative competence is the ability to use language correctly and appropriately Lacking communicative competence would result in impoliteness, misinterpretation, culture shock and/or communication breakdown (Saville - Troike M 1986)

Since the Doi Moi (Economic Renovation) policy in 1986, English has been

considered by Vietnamese people as a key factor facilitating this economic development policy The Vietnamese see English as the key to opening doors

in science, technology, commerce, and to the better living standard that they crave (Denham, 1992) The Vietnamese government has also emphasized the role of English in the socio-economic development of the country Therefore, the demand for English proficiency in jobs, business, and communication has been increasing all over the country ELT is gaining higher status, with English becoming a preferred foreign language for teaching in Vietnam English is a compulsory subject for national final examinations, and has recently become compulsory in all levels of education

As indicated above, there is an urgent need to improve Vietnamese students' communicative competence besides their grammatical and lexical knowledge

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Verbal communicative competence has recently been gaining increasing emphasis in English teaching in Vietnam for the purpose of effective communication Among the four English language skills (i.e listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking is considered the most important in this period of globalization of Vietnam Learners of English should be aware

of socio-cultural factors for effective communication in the target language (Downes 1984), and Vietnamese learners of English are not an exception Disagreeing is chosen for investigation in this study not accidentally First, in the notional-functional framework (Van Ek, 1976) disagreeing is among those functions which ‘express intellectual attitudes’ (Hatch, 1992) In general, communicative functions are not only lan guage-specific; they are culture-specific as well The difference in the ways in which languages realize the same function seems to make it problematic for language learners to say the right thing at the right time Second, a number of studies concerning different speech acts, such as thanking, advising, requesting, apologizing etc., has been carried out in this college However, none of the research has focused on disagreeing Thus a comparison of the ways used to realize the speech act of disagreeing by English native speakers of English and native speakers of Vietnamese is considered to be valuable to the teaching and learning of spoken English here in Vietnam

This study is motivated by the speech act theory initiated by Austin (1962) and refined by Searle, J.R (1969, 1975), the politeness theory posited by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), Leech,G (1983) and works on the same issues in non-western languages by Wierzbicka, A (1985) and Gu, Y (1990), etc

Within the same socio-cultural background, there seems to be few problems

in oral communication; yet people of different cultures may find trouble knowing how, when to say what to whom in a second or foreign language Among many socio-cultural aspects, disagreeing is of great interest to the

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researcher of this study for the following reasons: first, ways of expressing disagreement are considered by previous researchers to have caused difficulties for language learners in oral communication; second, there have been studies on such issues as advising, requesting, apologizing, and thanking

in the target language with reference to Vietnamese as the first language, yet disagreeing is of only few Vietnamese researchers’ concern in their own contexts For these two reasons, this study would aim to look at the speech act

of disagreeing by English speakers with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents The findings of this study would contribute to better understanding and knowledge of the English language from the socio-cultural aspect, which would help Vietnamese students of English learn to communicate spoken English more effectively

It is hoped that within these theoretical approaches and notions, a description

of the speech act of disagreeing and the strategies explored in its realization will be made The effects of socio-cultural parameters on the choice of appropriate strategies will be investigated empirically to reveal the similarities and differences between the two languages under study

1.2 Aims of the research

The study is carried out for the following aims:

i To help Vietnamese learners of English know what politeness strategies are commonly employed in expressing disagreement in English and Vietnamese

ii To help teachers apply successfully the results of the research in teaching EFL learners the disagreeing strategies in English

1.3 Objectives of the research

To gain the aims mentioned above, two objectives can be proposed as follows:

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i Pointing out the major similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in the employment of politeness strategies for expressing disagreement

ii Providing some possible implications for teaching the English disagreeing strategies to EFL Vietnamese learners

1.4 Scope of the research

i. Academic scope:

This study was conducted within the verbal aspect of the speech act Degrees

of directness, indirectness, and politeness in expressing disagreement with power-unequal English and Vietnamese are presented

ii. Social scope:

The current study was conducted in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the researcher is living and working The sources are taken from books, journals, newspapers (either online or printed versions), and real-life conversations, which are relevant to the issue under investigation

1.5 Significance of the research

Theoretically, the systematically organized information in the study may help learners gain an insight into disagreement strategies of English and Vietnamese native speakers; it is hoped that the study would find out the similarities and differences of disagreement strategies by English and Vietnamese people; and exploring factors affecting the way disagreement strategies are used by both English and Vietnamese speakers

Practically, it is expected that the study will contribute to the literature of the area of interest (disagreement strategies), and help to improve communication between speakers of English and Vietnamese people in light of cross-cultural aspects

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1.6 Structural organization of the thesis

This study consists of five chapters as follows:

objectives, scopes, significance, and structural organization of the study

previous studies on the area under investigation, and review of theoretical background of the study

research methods employed in the study

findings

the study, and recommendations for further research are presented

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Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of previous studies

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas

The works covering the issue under investigation of disagreeing strategies in English, among which some referred to their first language for comparison and contrast will be presented in this section of the study

The study by Behnam & Niroomand (2011) investigates the ways power relations influence politeness strategies in disagreement In order to determine whether and to what extent the realization of the speech act of disagreeing and the of appropriate politeness strategies by Iranian EFL learners, in a university setting, across different proficiency levels (intermediate and upper-intermediate) differ in relation to people with different power status a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was completed by 40 Iranian EFL learners who were placed at two different levels based on their scores on a proficiency test The DTC consists of five scenarios in which the subjects are expected to disagree with two higher statuses, two with peers and one with a lower status The selection of disagreement situations in DCT were based on relative power and status of people The findings of this study provide some evidences for the relation between the learners' level of language proficiency and type and frequency of disagreement and choice of politeness strategies associated with people with different power status In conclusion, it was argued that the results can be closely related to learning contexts and textbook contents Finally some suggestions such as making learners aware of second language pragmatic rules and socio-cultural constraints on speech acts as well as grammatical rules in order to have a successful communication were put forward regarding the issue

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The work by Choyimah and Latief (2014) aims at finding out patterns of the relationship between students’ strategies in disagreeing and their English proficiency using qualitative conversational analysis Students joining Seminar on Linguistics course in the School of Culture Studies at University Brawijaya (UB) Indonesia in the odd semester of 2010-2011 were the participants of this research They were classified into four levels of language proficiency: pre-intermediate, intermediate, pre-advanced, and advanced according to their TOEFL scores The data of this study were students’ utterances containing the force of disagreement, their TOEFL scores, and their responses to interviews The findings of this research suggest that students’ strategies in disagreeing can be classified into two macro strategies: direct and indirect strategies Direct strategy covers four micro strategies: refusal, denial, correction, and strong criticism Indirect strategy was represented in four micro strategies: mild-criticism, internally-contrasting, reminding, and suggestion Besides, the findings revealed that students having higher levels of English proficiency tended to use indirect strategies, but those

at lower levels used direct ways in disagreeing

The research by Kreutel (2007) analyzes the devices used by learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in order to perform the speech act of disagreement in their L2 Data from 27 ESL learners were gathered by means

of discourse completion tests and compared to baseline data from 27 native speakers of English It was found that non-native speakers use mitigational devices such as hedges or explanations less frequently than native speakers, but often resort to undesirable features such as the "blunt opposite" or message abandonment Moreover, three additional features of target-like disagreement expression were identified, namely, suggestions, exclamations, and a "sandwich pattern of mitigation." The data suggests that high lexico-grammatical proficiency does not necessarily imply high pragmatic

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competence The findings are discussed in light of Wolfson's Bulge Theory, and teaching implications are discussed

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

In the study by Kieu (2006), the speech act of disagreeing in English and Vietnamese within the theoretical frameworks of pragmatics and conversation analysis is presented The study gave an insight into such issues as politeness, its notions and relations with indirectness, strategies and linguistic devices used to express disagreement tokens in the English and Vietnamese languages and cultures Linguistic politeness is carefully examined in its unity of discernment and volition The findings exhibit that the differences in choosing politeness strategies to perform disagreements by speakers of English in North America and speakers of Vietnamese in Hanoi result from the differences in their assessment of socio-cultural parameters and social situations Although indirectness might be used in some contexts as a means

to express politeness, there is no absolute correlation between politeness and indirectness in the two languages and cultures under investigation The study found that English and Vietnamese speakers adopt the same strategies in regards to preference organization, compliment responses and negotiation of disagreements On the whole, disagreements are inclined to be hedged or delayed by a variety of softeners and/or other devices However, they tend to

be overtly stated in responses to self-denigrations The English informants show a trend towards compliment acceptance and appreciation, while the Vietnamese prefer to refuse and negate prior complimentary tokens in spite of their similar strategies in adopting mid-positions The accounts for this phenomenon can be found in the Vietnamese community-based solidarity and the Anglophone individualistic satisfaction

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This first section of the literature will help the researcher to conduct her empirical study on disagreement strategies in English and refer to Vietnamese

as the first language

2.2 Review of theoretical background

Review of concepts and theoretical frameworks is employable as tools for the current research

In other words, speech acts are considered as basic or minimal units of linguistic communication that are performed in authentic situations of language use (Searle 1969) Speech acts include compliment, apology, request, disagreeing or promise, which are used to name communicative intentions of speakers, which help to distinguish human noise from any other natural noise

Intentions of speech acts are speakers’ intentions and hearers’ interpretation

of the intentions The circumstances surrounding utterances can help both the speaker and the hearer to comprehend correct information These circumstances are called speech events, in which conversers interact via languages conventionally for successful comprehension (Yule 1996) In other

In terms of opinion giving, the speech act of disagreement is considered as a face-threatening verbal behavior in which people can show their dissatisfaction or opposition; therefore, applying an appropriate strategy to show disagreement to interlocutors with different social statues can decrease the possible danger of threatening the face of the addressee And in the process of selecting strategies, power can play a crucial role Brown and Levinson (1987) for example assert that "power is an asymmetrical social dimension of relative power" (p 77) The relative power of the addressee, the degree of imposition and the social distance that exists between the speaker and the addressee are the main points that an individual considers to estimate the degree of the seriousness of an FTA (Brown & Levinson, 1987)

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2.2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.2.1 Theory of speech acts

* Definition of speech acts:

Speech acts is a term taken from the word of philosophers of languages, John Searle and John Austin in particular who assumes that in saying something, a speaker also does something Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are sort of other things we can do with words We can make requests, ask questions, give orders, make promises, give thanks, offer, apology and so on Speech act theory was first formulated by the philosopher John Austin (1962) in his influential work,

study of language use

Since its initiation, it has been inherited, refined, and developed by a

number of philosophers and linguists as Levinson (1983:226) claims, “Of all

the issues in the general theory of language usage, speech act theory has probably aroused the widest interest”

That wide interest in the speech act theory can clearly be seen from Blum- Kulka’s review:

“Speech acts have been claimed by some (Austin,1962;Searl,1962,1975)

to operate by universal principles, and claimed by others to vary in conceptualizations and verbalizations across cultures and languages (Wierzbicka,1985) Their modes of performance carry heavy social implications (Ervin-Tripp,1977) and seem to be ruled by universal principles

of cooperation and politeness (Brown and Levinson,1978;Leech,1983).And yet, cultures have been shown to vary drastically in their interactional styles, leading to different preference for modes of speech act behavior Culturally

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coloured interactional styles create culturally determined expectations and integrative strategies; and can lead to breakdowns in intercultural and

(Blum- Kulka et al.,1989:1) Austin (1962) classified speech acts as involving three acts, which are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary These three kinds of acts constitute what human beings do with words In the following example:

Speaker: I’ve just made some tea

The first dimension, locutionary, is a phonetic act, a linguistic act, a

referring act, an act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression So with the above example, the meaning of the words uttered by the speaker comes exactly from the words themselves (meaning the speaker has just made some

tea) The second dimension, illocutionary, is the act of performing an

utterance with a purpose, or, in other words, the speech contains a force The speech can be understood as an offer of some tea by the speaker for the

hearer In the third dimension, perlocutionary, the speaker intends to have an

effect when producing an utterance with a function So for the above example, the hearer may get some tea as the result of the speaker’s speech These ultimate effects are dependent on the context of the utterance and therefore can be unpredictable The hearer may understand the speaker’s intention correctly and does what his/her interlocutor wants, or he/she may deliberately ignore the speaker’s want or desire

Based on Austin’s work, Searle (1969; 1975) put forward the notion of direct and indirect speech acts Direct speech acts refer to a transparent relationship between form and function Indirect speech acts display no such

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relationship, and thus, their illocutionary force does not derive from the surface structure In other words, indirect speech acts consist of two acts, a primary illocutionary act and a secondary act where the primary act operates through and in force of the secondary one Indirect speech acts are considered universal across languages and make up the majority of everyday conversations

In a nutshell, an action created via an utterance is made of three acts :

* Classification of speech acts

Originally, Austin (1962) classified illocutionary acts into five basic

categories which are verdictive, expositive, exercitive, behabitive and

10-16) developed an alternative taxonomy of the fundamental classes of illocutionary acts The taxonomy consists of five categories or five types of general functions performed by speech acts:

1 Declarations: Speech acts that bring some change to the reality of the

world in accord with the proposition of the declaration E.g declaring, christening, baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife

2 Representatives: The speech acts commit the speaker to the truth of

the expressed proposition (e.g., reciting a creed, asserting, disagreeing)

3 Expressives: The speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and

emotions towards the proposition, e.g congratulations, excuses and

thanks

4 Directives: The speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a

particular action, e.g requests, commands and advice

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5 Commisives: The speech acts that commit a speaker to some future

action, e.g promises and oaths

G.Yule ( 1996: 55) summarizes the five general functions of speech acts with their key features in the following table:

Speech act type Direction of fit S= speaker

“As defined in speech act theory, direct acts are those where surface

form matches interactional function, as ‘Be quiet!’ used as a command, versus

an indirect ‘It’s getting noisy here’ or ‘I can hear myself think’ ”

This argument is clarified by Yule (1997: 54-55) when he suggests basing on the relationship between the three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, and imperative) and the three general communicative functions

we have an indirect speech act”

For example, the declarative structure, “It’s cold in this room” can

function as a direct speech act if it is used to make a statement (i.e I hereby tell you about the weather.) but it can also function as an indirect speech act if

it is intended as a command/request (i.e I hereby request you that you close the door)

2.2.2.2 Disagreeing as a speech act

According to Wierzbicka (1987), disagreeing is a dual act, an act of saying 'what one thinks' and indicating 'that one doesn't think the same as the earlier speaker' Disagreeing is the act of showing that the second speaker does has a different view or opinion Let us look at the example by Pomerantz (1978) given below:

(1) a The! No, it’s not really important

Pomerantz (1978) Compliment responses

It is observable that the act of disagreeing, like any other speech acts, possesses both illocutionary force and propositional content These two properties of speech acts are realized syntactically, and the correct understanding of the intended illocutionary force is inevitably dependent upon the context In terms of syntax, there is no necessary correlation between structural forms and illocutionary forces

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Practically, disagreements can be performed in all the three forms, namely, declarative, interrogative and imperative forms respectively as in:

(2) a Good shot

In this example, the hearer exhibits a strong display of disagreeing with the proffered evaluation in the declarative statement In the following example:

(3) a Gee, Hon, you look nice in that dress

(Pomerantz 1978: 87)

In this example, in response to her husband’s compliment that she looks good

in the dress, the wife makes a second evaluation (i.e her own evaluation), which is in disagreement with the husband’s comment to some extent The

phrase “just a rag” is selected by the recipient as a contrastively classed

evaluative term to the positive evaluation “nice” by the speaker (i.e the husband)

(4) a Laura’s the best!

(6) a Well we’ll haftuh frame that

→ b Yee- Uhmhh it’s not worth fra(hh)mi(h)ng

(7) a: … you’ve lost so much weight

→ b: Uhh hmhh uhh hmhh well, not that much

(Pomerantz 1978: 98)

(8) a Tch! No, it’s not really important

→ b Well, I think it’s very important

The recipient in (6) seems to delay his/her disagreeing response by starting his/her opinion with ‘Yee’, in (7) with the long “Uhh hmhh uhh hmhh well”, and (8) with “Well” before saying what they really think (as opposite to the speaker) Disagreements as seconds to compliments are often marked as qualifications of the prior compliments rather than direct contrastive opinions

The disagreement markers are often used with qualifications such as though,

more stamina and more self-confidence to express their disagreement than to express their agreement Especially, in the case of English culture, speakers are expected to express their disagreement implicitly or tacitly, rather than to perform it explicitly or frankly, as they would in the case of agreement It is

of When faced with FTAs, speakers may choose between various strategies

to reduce or eliminate the seriousness of the threat by either softening their communicative tokens or implicitly expressing them The choice of politeness strategies is said to be affected by three variables relative power (P), social distance (D) and ranking of imposition (R) (Fraser 1990)

In a nutshell, from the view of speech acts theories, disagreeing which belongs to representatives that make the words fit the world of fallacy or truth, and which is an FTA that needs to be hedged to weaken the potential threat, is a communicative illocutionary act

1978, 1987) (Nguyen Duc Dan 1998, Nguyen Quang 2003)

In her cross-cultural study on politeness, Blum-Kulka (1987: 131) suggests

that politeness is “(i) a function of redressive action with the latter having

correlative relationship with indirectness, (ii) an interaction achieved

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between two needs, the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid

such a definition, Blum-Kulka implies the tendency that the more indirect we

go, the more polite we become More correctly, she places politeness on the same par with negative politeness by challenging the claim that there is a direct relationship between indirectness and politeness Intuitively speaking, it

seems workable as seen in Anglophone cultures

Politeness is defined as 'having, showing the possession of good manners and consideration for other people' (Hornby 1988: 646) Being linguistic polite means using appropriate language and successful communication As indicated by Ide (1988: 371):

“In speaking, we think of the content of what is to be conveyed,

and at the same time of the linguistic expressions that will make the utterance appropriate to the given situational context Appropriate speech establishes smooth communication The language use associated with smooth communication is what is

Nguyen Quang (1994: 23) provides a satisfactory definition of politeness (which is adopted as a working definition of politeness for this study), not

“leaning” to any side of the coin, and with no bias against either positive or negative politeness, but reconciliation of the two extremes He confirms that

“politeness is any communication act (either verbal or non-verbal, or both) that is intentionally and appropriately meant to make another person/ other

mentioned in the scope of the study, the thesis author in convinced that this definition covers both ends of the continuum of positive and negative politeness by implying that politeness involves taking into account the

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feelings of others (Holmes, 1992: 296) and it is the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face (Yule 1996: 60), used to show concern for people’s face (Brown and Levinson 1987)

Politeness can be considered the attempt to establish, maintain and save face during conversations (Richards 1985) The face here can be understood as

“the public image of a person It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize” (Yule 1997: 60) The two typical types of face are positive and negative A negative face means the need to be independent, to have freedom of action and not to be imposed by others; a positive face means the need to be accepted, or liked by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by other people (Yule 1997) To put in a simple way, a positive face means the need of approval, and a negative face means the wish

to be independent

Rules of politeness:

According to Lackoff (1973: 199), there are three rules of politeness as follows:

Rule 1: Don’t impose: In this rule, there is an acknowledged difference in

power and status between participants According to this rule, the speaker avoids, mitigates, asks permission or apologizes for making the hearer do things he or she does not want to do

Rule 2: Offer options: In this rule, participants have relatively equal status

and power, but are not socially close The speaker wishes to persuade the hearer to do something, he or she will use some phrase so that his or her opinion can be ignored within being rejected

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Rule 3: Encourage a feeling of camaraderie (i.e feel good): This rule is

applied to close friends In this rule, any topic of conversation is a fair game, assuming that any topic can be discussed with close friends

One thing to bear in mind is that these rules are only considered appropriate

to Westerners’ notion of politeness, which highlight non-imposition and freedom of action, and thus cannot be perceived as universal To non-Westeners (including Vietnamese), impersonalisation is not always considered as politeness

Principles of politeness

According to Leech (1983), there are six maxims, which govern the principles

of politeness as follows:

1 Tact maxim: minimize cost to the other, maximize benefits to the other

2 Generosity maxim: minimize benefits to self, maximize cost to self

3 Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of the other, maximize dispraise of self

4 Modesty maxim: minimize praise of self, maximize dispraise of self

5 Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and the other, maximize agreement between self and the other

6 Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and the other, maximize sympathy between self and the other

In these six maxims, self refers to the speaker and the other refers to the hearer

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Brown and Levinson’s Politeness strategies

Brown and Levinson (1987: 69) suggest a set of strategies for avoiding or minimizing face-threatening acts (FTAs) The figure below describes strategies for doing FTAs:

Figure 1 Possible strategies for doing FTAs

(Brown and Levinson, 1987: 69) According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 60), it should be necessary to notice that the more an act threatens S’s or H’s face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy

As can be seen from Figure 1,S can choose either to do or not to do the FTA

If S decides to do an FTA, he can choose one of the four possibilities

S goes off record if he produces statements that are indirectly addressed to H

H can act as if the statements have not been heard Linguistic structures of

off-record strategies include metaphor and irony, rhetorical questions, or all

1.Without redressive action, baldly

With redressive action

2.Positive politeness

3.Negative politeness

pen” is generally known as bald on record (without redressive action,

baldly) (Yule, 1997: 63)

With redressive action, S gives face to H That means he attempts to

counteract the potential face damage of the FTA by doing it in such a way that no face threat seems to be intended or desired S in general recognizes H’s face wants and himself wants them to be achieved Redressive include positive politeness and negative politeness

“Positive politeness is oriented toward the positive face of H, the positive self image that be claims for himself […] Negative politeness, on the other

hand, is oriented mainly toward partially satisfying (redressing) H’s negative face, his basic want to maintain claims of territory and self-determination”

(Brown and Levinson, 1987: 70) Nguyen Quang (2003) explains that a human being is both a social being and

a conscious being As a social being, he wants to maintain others’ positive face with positive politeness realized in 17 positive-politeness strategies and

as a conscious being he wants to maintain others’ negative face with negative politeness realized in 11 negative-politeness strategies These politeness strategies (positive and negative) are employed to bring the social harmony The following figure shows the strategies for performing disagreement in English by Nguyen (2003, p.18):

Direct disagreement Softened disagreement Strengthened disagreement

3 Disagreeing 4 Giving gift to H 25.Using accusatory/Imperative you Straightforwardly/ 5 Making offer/promise 26 Using rhetorical questions Flat disagreement 6 Seeking explanation 27 Being ironic

7 Showing partial agreement 28 Using intensifiers

8 Asserting common ground

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21 Repeating

22 Giving positive comment

23 Using modal auxiliaries

24 Overgeneralizing

Figure 1: Strategies for performing a disagreement

As can be seen from Figure 1, to perform a disagreement, S can choose not to do the FTA (Strategies 1-2) or to do the FTA (Strategies 3-28) To do the FTA, S can perform a direct disagreement (Strategy 3), a softened disagreement (Strategies 4-24) or a strengthened disagreement (Strategies 25-28)

2.2.2.4 Social factors affecting politeness strategies

Brown and Levinson (1987: 15) argue,

“In broad terms, research seems to support our claim that three

sociological factors are crucial in determining the level of politeness which a speaker (S) will use to an addressee (H) : these are relative power (P) of H over S, the social distance (D) between S and H, and the ranking of impositions (R) involved in doing the face-threatening act (FTA)”

These authors claims further that other linguists, including Lakoff (1977b), Leech (1983),and others, also give prominence to the same three factors with similar remarks Thus a number of researchers have the same point of view that P,D, and R are the three most crucial sociological dimensions affecting the choice of politeness strategies in communication The three social factors that affect politeness strategies are social distance of the speaker and hearer (or symmetric relation) (also called D); relative power of the speaker and hearer (an asymmetric relation) (also called P); absolute ranking of impositions in a particular culture (called R) (Brown and Levinson 1987)

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Social distance (or symmetric relation or D) is a reciprocal social measure,

where the two participants should be mutually aware of their social distance

If the distance between the speakers are large, the more polite they should be Leech (1987) stated that when horizontal distance decreases (e.g., in communication with familiars or intimates), the need for politeness is less

We look at the following examples about asking the time:

(Leech, 1987:98) Sentence (9) is considered more polite than (10), which means D is high in (9) and low in (10)

Relative power (P) is about the relationship between employees and bosses

or determined individually within specific relationships In this relationship, one person can impose things on the other Power is a complex social variable that is composed of various socially and individually determined factors The following situations were given by Van Dijk (1989):

• Two people must be both aware of the power difference between them

• Relationships between groups classes, or other social formations and members of the groups

• The ability for the speaker (S) to control the hearer (H), where S and H are individuals or groups

• Power needs a basis, e.g wealth, position, privileges, or membership in

a majority group

• Power may be domain specific, e.g., teacher-student in a school setting According to Brown and Levinson (1987), evaluations of P vary across cultures Gender and age social groups which are traditionally associated with

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power in the Western society Gender and age fit the above features of power: for example, men are more powerful than women, the elders are more privileged than the youth

Rank of imposition is the degree of threat associated with a particular FTA

in relevant cultures Imposition is defined by Brown and Levinson (1987: 77)

as “a culturally and situationally defined ranking of impositions by the degree

to which they are considered to interfere with an agent’s wants of determination or approval (his negative and positive fact wants)” For example, the speaker’s lack of care about the hearer’s positive face: mentioning of taboo topics inapropriate to the context, or raising emotional or divisive topics about politics, race, or religion (Brown and Levinson 1987) Politeness and politics are constantly interacting For example, in stating a political opinion that may be viewed as controversial by the hearer, the speaker is not cooperating with protecting the positive face of the hearer N.Quang (1998: 5) proposes 12 factors that may affect the choice of D/I in conversations:

self-1 Age: the old are inclined to use indirect strategies

2 Sex: females tend to be more indirect

3 Residence: rural inhabitants prefer indirect expressions

4 Mood: people are likely to be indirect when they are upset

5 Occupation: people of social sciences may use more indirectness compared with people of natural sciences

6 Personality: extroverted speakers have tendency to use less indirect strategies than introverted ones

7 Topic: sensitive or taboo topics make conversational participants more indirect in using language

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8 Place: people are likely to be more indirect at work than at home

9 Communicative environment/setting: speakers tend to speak indirectly

in a formal setting and directly in an informal setting

10 Social distance: those who have close relationship do not use many

elaborate or indirect expressions

11 Time pressure: speakers may be more direct when they have time-limit

12 Position: social superiors tend to use more directness than their

inferiors

Nguyen Quang (2002: 128-129) also introduces five aspects of S over H as

below:

Power of social status (higher/same/lower ), Power of age (Older, Same,

younger), Power of gender (Male vs female), Power of qualifications ( Higher, Same, Lower), Power of economic status

In this study, the author chooses the first three aspects to put in her survey for

the investigation into the use of politeness strategies and the degree of

directness- indirectness in the act of disagreeing in Vietnamese and English

languages and cultures

This second section of this literature review chapter (theoretical background)

will help the researcher to build up a theoretical frame for this study This

means the researcher will employ the theory reviewed in this section to

develop the survey questions and to analyze the data collected in order to

answer the research questions presented in Chapter 1 of the study

2.3 Disagreeing in Vietnamese and English

Disagreeing as a speech act is initially discussed in 2.2.2.2 of this study

In this section, it is investigated relative to the notion of adjacency pairs as a

dispreferred response to assessment with a number of relevant utterances

from publications in Vietnamese and English

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The notion of adjacency pairs has been introduced and discussed by

many linguists, including Levinson (1983) and Yule (1997)

Schegloff & sacks (1973, cited in Levinson, 1983: 303) offer as a

characterization along the following lines:

Adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are:

i Adjacent

ii Produced by different speakers

iii Offered as a first part and a second part

iv Typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second

(or range of second part)-e.g offers require acceptances or rejections, greetings require greetings, and so on

Yule (1997: 77-78) argues that in an adjacency pair, the utterance of a first

part immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of the second part of

the same pair For example, a first part that contain an assessment is typically

made in the expectation that the second part will be an agreement An

agreement is structurally more likely than a disagreement

That leads to the concept of preference structure or preference organization

‘Preference’ here is used to mention a socially determined structural pattern and

dose not refer to any individual’s mental or emotional desires

“The central insight here is that not all the potential second parts to a

first part of an adjacency pair are of equal standing: there is a ranking

operating over the alternatives such as there is at least one preferred and one

dispreferred category of response” (Levinson, 1983: 307)

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Levinson also explains that in essence, preferred seconds are unmarked-they

occur as structurally simpler turns, whereas dispreferred seconds are marked

by various kinds of structural complexity

Thus the preferred is the structurally expected next act, while the dispreferred

is the structurally unexpected next act The general patterns are presented in

the table below:

First part

Second part Preferred Dispreferred

Table 2.2.The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures

(Following Levinson, 1983: 336, cited in Yule, 1997: 79)

Yule (1997: 81) also proposes the patterns associated with dispreferred

seconds in English These are presented as a series of optional elements as

below:

delay/hesitate Pause; er; em; ah

express doubt I’m not sure; I don’t know