A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM CROSS CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Direct and indirect speech acts ………... This saying highlights the importance of inviting in Vietnamese culture, whereinvitation speech acts make up a high proportion in daily interaction

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH

CODE: 32

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDY

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE Supervisor: M.A, Vũ Tuấn Anh

Name of student: Nguyễn Việt Hưng

Date of birth: 05/02/1996

Class: K21A2(2014-2018)

Hanoi - 2018

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A Vu Tuan Anhfor his enthusiastic and useful guidance, insightful comments, and encouragementwithout which my thesis would not have been completed

My special thanks go to all my lecturers in Faculty of English, Hanoi OpenUniversity for their precious assistance, knowledge and enthusiasm

I am grateful to all the participants for their enthusiastic participation in the thesis Especially, I am indebted to my classmates in K21A2, especially Nguyen Huu Chinh and Phan Xuan Nguyen, for their great support

Last but not least, I would like to express my indebtedness to my family, especially

my parents, brothers and sisters who have given me constant support and loveduring the completion of the thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEGDEMENT

PART A: INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1 Rationale ……… 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study ……… 3

3 Scope of the study ……… 3

4 Research questions ……… 3

5 Methods of the study ……… 4

6 Design of the study ……… 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT ……… 5

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW ……… 5

1.1 Politeness strategies ……… 5

1.2 Generalization of speech acts ……… 9

1.2.1 Definitions of speech acts ……… 9

1.2.2 Classification of speech acts ……… 12

1.2.3 Direct and indirect speech acts ……… 15

1.3 Invitations as speech acts ……… 16

1.4 Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics ……… 17

CHAPTER TWO: MAKING INVITATION IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE……… 20

2.1 Categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese ……… 20

2.1.1 Direct invitations in English and Vietnamese ……… 21

2.1.2 Indirect invitations in English and Vietnamese ……… 27

2.2 The similarities and differences in making invitations between English and Vietnamese ……… 34

CHAPTER THREE: APPLICATION FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS IN TRANSLATION ……… 37

3.1 Cultural mistakes ……… 37

3.2 Solutions ……… 39

PART C: CONCLUSION ……… 42

REFERENCES ……… 44

In English

In Vietnamese

Sources from internet

Acquiring a second language demands more than learning new words and another system

of grammar (Levine and Adelman, 1982) The goal of learning language nowadays is to

be able to have effective communication with native speakers However, communicationcan fail to achieve as the misunderstanding of the country’s culture The good knowledge

of the country’s culture can helps learners to interact well with the people in the nativecountry where the language is widely spoken As a result, it is very difficult to combineculture and use cultural knowledge well in learning a language Each language and theculture of the country cannot be separated from each other Each country has its owntraditions, customs, rituals reflected by the language

Understanding social conventions and attention to such concepts as politeness, and face,which are important to members in a particular culture, will certainly enable us to bettercomprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thushelping eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings Problems arise as languagelearners are not competent and fail to understand the cultural- social aspects ofcommunication Take speech acts of invitation as an example Vietnamese saying goes:

"khách đến nhà không trà thì bánh" (when guests come, either tea or cakes should be

served) This saying highlights the importance of inviting in Vietnamese culture, whereinvitation speech acts make up a high proportion in daily interactions Invitingundoubtedly plays an important role in communication in all cultures Wall (1987)indicated that many of our daily social interactions involve making invitations andresponding to them In daily social life, people are sometimes invited to go somewhere or

to do something on important occasions such as weddings, birthdays, and graduations, tosmall ones like movies, eating out, or vendors in the markets invite customers to buy theiritems Take these two following sentences as examples:

(1) Alan and I wanted to have a few people over for a dinner party to celebrate finishing

my dissertation, and we’d like to invite you especially, since you’re chairman (Tillitt &

Bruder, 1999, p.23)

(2) Ăn cho vui Cô Nga (Thach Lam, 2000, p.167)

Invitations help to establish, maintain, reinforce and further strengthen social rapports.Americans and Vietnamese share certain similarities in terms of making and responding

to invitations in social interactions However, differences are undoubtedly numerous.Many cases of making invitations are different in Vietnam and American Mastering how

to make appropriate invitations which are suitable to a particular culture should be taken

in considerations so as not to cause hurts, shocks, misunderstandings, andmisinterpretations A frequently misunderstood area in American verbal interaction is that

of extending, accepting, and refusing invitations (Levine & Adelman, 1982) Moreover,helping Vietnamese learners of English master and use invitation-making effectively is amust

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The thesis aims to find out the good ways to make invitations in Vietnamese and Englishnative speakers In addition, this paper aims to find out the syntactic and culturalsimilarities and differences between spoken invitations in Vietnamese and English nativespeakers

3 Scope of the study

This paper focuses on how to make invitations in English and Vietnamese speakers Thispaper, moreover, aims to analyze the similarities and differences in making invitations inEnglish and Vietnamese

4 Research questions

The research is aimed to answer the following to answer the following questions:

1 How to make spoken invitations in the English culture?

2 How to make spoken invitations in the Vietnamese culture?

3 What are similarities and differences in making spoken invitations in making spoken inthe Vietnamese and English cultures?

4.What are the implications of the similarities and differences in making spokeninvitations in the English and Vietnamese to English learners?

5 Methods of the study

In carrying the research I have adopted such methods of study as descriptive methods, contrastive analysis, statistic techniques and observation.

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three parts:

Part A -Introduction deals with Rationale, Aims, Scope, Research Questions, Methodsand Design of the study

Part B- Development consists of three chapters: Chapter 1 talks about Literature Review,Chapter 2 states on making invitation in English and Vietnamese, some similarities anddifferences between English and Vietnamese invitations

Chapter 3- Application for English learners in translation will be pointed out

Part C - Conclusion will be shown, followed by References part

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Politeness strategies

Politeness, an issue which has a great impact to human being and deeply influences

to human interaction, will be now discussed right in this part because

Politeness is basic to the production of social order, and a precondition of human cooperation … any theory which provides an understanding of this phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundation of human social life.

(Brown and Levinson, 1987)

In language studies, politeness implies the following: "(a) how languagesexpress the social distance between speakers and their different role relationships,(b) "how face-work, that is, the attempt to establish, maintain, and save face duringconversation, is carried out in a speech community" (Richards et al 1985, p.281)

Languages differ in how they express politeness In English, phrases like It’s hot here I wonder if I could open the window? can be used to make a request more

polite In other languages, the same effect can be expressed by a word or particle.Politeness markers and the use of address forms convey differences between formalspeech and colloquial speech

Human communication serves to establish and maintain not only a comfortablerelationship between people but also a social harmony Therefore, in interpersonalcommunication, in terms of politeness, every participant notes social factors such asage, gender, power and distance among the interlocutors Moreover, politeness may

be described as a form of behaviour which is exercised in order to consolidate andpromote relationship between individuals or, at least, to keep it undamaged

According to Leech (1983), politeness means to minimize the effect of impolitestatement or expression (negative politeness) and maximize the effects of politeillocutions (positive politeness) (Leech, 1983) However, the best-known theory isdeveloped by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) Their universalistic formulation ofpoliteness theory is problematic in some aspects

The main issue of politeness is the notion of face Face is defined as “the publicself-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (Brown and Levinson

1987, p.61) "Face" associates with the English idiom to lose face which means “to

do something which makes other people stop respecting you; to not maintain yourreputation and the respect of others” Brown and Levinson treats the aspects of face

as “basic wants”, and distinguishes between positive face and negative face Positiveface is interpreted as the want of every member to be desirable to, at least, someothers, whereas negative face is the want of every “competent adult member” for hisactions to be unimpeded by others (1987, p.62)

Moreover, Yule (1996) argues that in most English speaking contexts, theparticipants in an interaction often have to determine, as they speak, the relativesocial distance between them, and hence their face wants (1996, p.61)

“In everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their public

self-image, or their face wants, will be respected If a speaker says something that

represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image, it is

described as a face threatening act Alternatively, given the possibility that some

action might be interpreted t as a threat to another’s face, the speaker can say

something to lessen the possible threat This is called a face saving act.” (Yule 1996,

p.61)

Analyzing politeness, the anthropologists Brown and Levinson (1987)

distinguishes between positive strategies of politeness, those which show closeness, intimacy, and rapport between the speaker and the hearer, and negativepoliteness strategies, those which indicate various degrees of social distancebetween the speaker and hearer In this sense, politeness varies to show awareness

of another person’s face in situations of social distance or closeness The choiceofappropriate politeness strategies in a given context depends on a number of factors.Brown and Levinson (1987) groups these factors into a simple formula consisting of

three independent variables, namely the social distance (D) of the speaker and the hearer (a symmetric relation), the relative power (P) of the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking of impositions (R) in the

particular culture

The social distance (D) is a symmetric social dimension of similarity/differencewithin which the speaker and the hearer stand for the purposes of this act In somesituations, D is based on a evaluation of frequency of interaction and the types ofmaterial and non-material goods (embracing face) between S and H The evaluationwill be usually measures of social distance relied on stable social attributes

The relative power (P) which is an asymmetric social dimension is the degree towhich H can impose his own plans and his own self– evaluation (face) at theexpense of S’s plans and self – evaluation Generally, there are two sources of P,either of which may be authorized or unauthorized – material control (overeconomic distribution and physical force) and metaphysical control (over the actions

of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others.Theabsolute ranking (R) of imposition which is situationally and cuturally defined is thedegree to which there is an interference in the speaker’s wants or self-determination

or approval (speaker’s negative and positive wants) There are normally two scales

or ranks which are identifiable 21 for negative–face: a ranking of impositions inproportion to the expenditure of services (including the time provision) and good(including non –material goods such as information, regard expression and otherface payments) As for positive – face, the, ranking of imposition embraces anassessment of the amount of "pain" given to the hearer’s face, based on thedifferences between the hearer’s desired self-image and that presented in facethreatening acts Cultural rankings of facets of positive face (like success, niceness,beauty etc.) can be reranked in specific circumstances, so do the negative facerankings Besides, that there are also personal rankings can explain why some peopleobject to certain kinds of face threatening acts and some do not

These three factors affect indirectness in human interaction, especially in thechoice of politeness strategies which is an essential aspect of inviting Together withcross -cultural perspective, politeness is an another aspect which are used to createthe anlytical framework for data analysis

Basing on the theory of Brown and Levinson (1987), a bank of 6 situations wasdesigned to elicit offers These situations were grouped according to three variables,

namely social distance (D) of the speaker and the hearer, the relative power (P) of the speaker and the hearer (an asymmetric relation), and the absolute ranking (R) of impositions in the particular culture The situations under study were as follows:

The speaker has more power than the hearer; they are unfamiliar with each other The speaker has more power than the hearer; they are familiar with each other The speaker and the hearer are equal in power; they are unfamiliar with each other The speaker and the hearer are equal in power; they are familiar with each other The speaker has less power than the hearer; they are unfamiliar with each other The speaker has less power than the hearer; they are familiar with each other

1.2 Generalization of speech acts

1.2.1 Definitions of speech acts

J Austin (1962) takes the pioneering role in formulating the theory of speech acts.According to him, all utterances should be viewed as actions of the speakers, stating

or describing is only one function of language He points out that the declarativesentences are not only used to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to

do things

Also, in 1962, he defines speech acts as the actions performed in sayingsomething When people produce utterances, they often perform actions via thoseutterances These actions are called speech acts: such as apology, complaint,compliment, invitation, promise, or request A speech act is part of a speech event

The speech act performed by producing an utterance, consists of three related actsincluding locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act They are listed asfollows:

Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression The locutionary act is performed with some purposes or functions in mind

Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of an

utterance In engaging in locutionary acts we generally also perform illocutionaryacts such as informing, advising, offer, promise, etc In uttering a sentence by virtue

of conversational force associated with it

Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such

as convincing, persuading, deterring perlocutionary acts are performed only on theassumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended

Speech acts, since then, developed by many famous philosophers and have beencentral to the works and further developed by many other philosophers and a greatconcern of any research paper in terms of doing researches on linguistic fields

The two other famous linguistic researchers are Schmidt and Richards whoreaffirm that: speech act theory has to do with the functions of languages, so in thebroader sense we might say that speech acts are all the acts we perform throughspeaking, all things we do when we speak The theory of speech acts is partlytaxonomic and partly explanatory It must systematically classify types of speechacts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail It must reckon with the fact that

the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance isoften oblique.

Paltridge (2000) defines that a speech act is an utterance that serves a function incommunication Some examples are an apology, greeting, request, complaint,invitation, compliment or refusal A speech act might contain just one word such as

"No" to perform a refusal or several words or sentences such as: "I' m sorry, I can't, I

have a prior engagement" It is important to mention that speech acts include life interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriateuse of that language within a given culture Socio-cultural variables like authority,social distance, and situational setting influence the appropriateness andeffectiveness of politeness strategies used to realize directive speech acts such asrequests (p.15)

real-Yule (1996, p.47), another famous linguist, defines that "in attempting toexpress themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammaticalstructures and words, they perform actions via those utterances." According to him,actions performed via utterances are speech acts

In daily communication, people perform speech acts when they offer anapology, greeting, complaint, invitation, compliment or refusal Since people often

do more things with words than merely convey what words encode, speech acts have

to be seen from real-life interactions For example, in a classroom situation, when ateacher says:

(1) May I have your attention?

(1) is a request more than a question In the same way, when a student talks to hisfriend,

(2) We’re having some people over Saturday evening and wanted to know if you’d like to join us.

(2) is an invitation more than a question Moreover, speech acts require not onlyknowledge of any languages but also the culture of the country where this language

is use For examples in Vietnamese when we utter:

(3) Where are you going?

(3) means we are greeting the people we meet

1.2.2 Classification of speech acts

According to Yule (1996), there is one general classification system that lists fivetypes of general functions performed by speech acts including declarations,representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives

Declarations are speech acts that change the world via their utterance The

speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order toperform a declaration appropriately For example, "Priest: I now pronounce youhusband and wife."

Representatives are speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the

case or not Statement of fact, assertions, conclusions and descriptions are examples

of the speaker representing the world as he or she believes it is For example, “TheMoon goes round the Earth." or "It is windy today."

Expressives are speech acts that state what the speaker feels They express

psychological states and can be statement of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy andsorrow For example, "What a great party!"

Directives are speech acts that the speakers use to get the Hearer to do

something They express what the speaker wants For instance, "Stand up, please!"

or "Could you open the door?"

Commissives are speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some

future action They express what the speaker intends For example: "I’ll give onehand." or "I’ll be back."

Yule (1996) also presents a table showing speech acts classification as follows:

Table 1.2.2: Speech acts classification

Speech act types Direction of fit S = Speaker

X = Situation

Declarations words change the world S causes X

Representatives makes words fits the world S believes X

Expressives makes words fits the world S feels X

Directives make the world fits words S wants X

Commissives make the world fits words S intends X

The usefulness of speech acts analysis is illustrating the kinds of things we can

do with words and identifying some of the conventional utterance forms we use toperform specific actions However, we need to look at more extended interaction tounderstand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events

However, to compare selected speech acts from two languages, the topic is stillvast and could not be treated exhaustively in any one work The cultural normsreflected in speech acts differ not only from one language to another, but also fromone regional and social variety to another So, different cultures find expression indifferent system of speech acts, and that different speech acts become entrenched,and, to some extent, codified in different languages

Of these types, the characteristics of invitations can be easily recognised incommissives and directives In our daily interactions, inviting is one kind of speechact that is commonly used with high frequency

1.2.3 Direct and indirect speech acts

In the former part, classification of speech acts have been made clear in terms of thespeaker's intention of Yule (1996) This part take a look at another way ofclassifying speech acts

Another approach to distinguish different types of speech acts is based on therelationship between the structure and the function Yule (1996) claims that threestructural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and three generalcommunicative function (statement, question, command/request) can be combined tocreate two other types of speech acts: direct and indirect speech acts The followingexample illustrates this:

Yule (1996) defines that whenever there is an indirect relationship between astructure and a function, we have an direct speech act as in the following examples

(4) Do join me for a coffee? (Le Huy Lam, 2000)

Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, wehave an indirect speech act as in the following examples

(5) Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow? (Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)

It is not only used as a question but also a request, hence it is considered to be anindirect speech act He adds that indirect speech acts are generally associated withgreater politeness in English than direct speech acts

1.3 Invitations as speech acts

There are, first, two concepts that are needed to make clear, namely invite and invitation Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary indicates that to invite means to

ask somebody to come to a social event or to ask somebody formally to go tosomewhere or do something According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’sDictionary, an invitation means a polite request in which a person is asked to come

to an event or to perform some task as in the examples below:

(6) I would like to invite you to a party next Friday.

(Tillitt & Bruder, 1999)

According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, an invitation means apolite request in which a person is asked to come to an event or to perform sometask As in the following examples:

(7) Would you like to come over my place on Thanksgiving?

(8) I’d love to Shall I bring anything?

Similarly, Vietnamese dictionary (1994) defines "lời mời" as a wish or a politerequest that somebody does something or goes to somewhere The followingexamples illustrate this:

(9) Anh Tuệ, mời anh vào chơi! (Khai Hung,

1988) (Mr Tue, Come in, please!)

(10) Rước cụ ngồi chơi (Khai Hung, 1988)

(Get - you - sit - play)

In his dissertation, Nguyen Van Lap (2005) points that "Invitations are politeutterances, requesting others to do something together, which satisfies both thespeaker and hearer's benefits

Le Thi Mai Hong (2009) indicates that invitation is the act of inviting or a

requesting to participate, be present or take part in something Invitation is also aspeech act that expresses the speaker’s friendliness, politeness as well as respect andhospitality toward the hearer." In addition, Wolfson (1989) defines invitations asspeech acts that contain reference to time and/or mention of place or activity, andmost important, a request for response

1.4 Pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics

As the study is centered on the speech act of invitations in terms of cross - culturalperspective It is, therefore, necessary to look at some basic information on what iscalled pragmatics and cross - cultural pragmatics.

Pragmatics, since its appearance, has excited great attention from many leadinglinguists Enormous efforts have gone into reaching a satisfactory definition of thislinguistic phenomenon

The notion of pragmatics is clarified by Richards, Platt, & Webber (1992, p.284) asfollows:

Pragmatics includes the study of:

How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of the real world;

How speakers use and understand speech acts;

How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer.

Of the above issues, the study of speech acts is considered to be of highimportance to pragmatics

Yule (1996, p.3) defines pragmatics as follows:

Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.

Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.

Pragmatics is the study of how more get communicated than is said.

Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance.

As "every culture has its own repertoire of characteristic speech acts" and "differentcultures find expression in different system of speech acts and different speech actsbecome entrenched, and to some extent, codified in different languages"

(Wierzbicka (1991, p.25) Nguyen Thien Giap (2007) states that in differentcultures, speech acts are performed in different ways through different languages

Linguists, these days, has studied, contrasted how language is used in differentcultures, which is called contrastive pragmatics Nguyen Thien Giap (2007) addsthat in order to master a language successfully, to carry out effective interculturalcommunication, having the knowledge of the language is by all means insufficient,but the knowledge of pragmatics is a must

Through what has been discussed so far, the speech act of invitations in English andVietnamese is not exception It is about discussed in the study under contrastiveanalysis Cross-cultural perspective, certainly, is a great concern during the datacollection and analysis

CHAPTER TWO: MAKING INVITATIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 2.1 Categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese

Invitations can be in the forms of direct or indirect utterances This paper aims toinvestigating the similarities and differences in terms of syntactic and cross-culturalfeatures of spoken invitations in English and Vietnamese, in the effort of increasingnot only the effectiveness of teaching and learning invitations utterance in Englishand Vietnamese but the ability to use language for Vietnamese learners of English

Nevertheless, there is a little proper work on inviting in both languages Theanalytic framework of this study has been collected from a number of English andVietnamese researches as well as practical textbooks to invitations which containsdifferent forms of inviting These are dissertations by Nguyen Van Lap (2005), LuuQuy Khuong (2004), Tran Yen Bao Tran (2009), and Tillitt and Bruder (1999) Inthese researches and textbooks, different linguistic forms of invitations are specifiedand found out In this study, categories of inviting in English and Vietnamese berespectively discussed

Tilltitt and Bruder (1999) has introduced numerous structures of Englishinvitations used in formal situations to informal ones In his dissertation, NguyenVăn Lap (2005) has introduced forms of Vietnamese inviting including invitations

in with performative verb (mời) and invitations without performative verb Luu QuyKhuong (2007), in addition, has introduced different kinds of direct invitations inEnglish and Vietnamese He indicated similarities and differences between Englishand Vietnamese through contrastive analysis Plus, another research goes to Tran