Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam (Luận văn thạc sĩ)

Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt NamNghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

TRAN THI THUY AN

AN INVESTIGATION ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN

VIETNAMESE EFL REFUSALS

(Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học

trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam)

M.A THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201

THAI NGUYEN – 2018

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

TRAN THI THUY AN

AN INVESTIGATION ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN

VIETNAMESE EFL REFUSALS

(Nghiên cứu sự chuyển đổi về ngữ dụng học

trong cách nói từ chối của sinh viên Việt Nam)

M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION)

Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201

Supervisor: Dr Duong Duc Minh

THAI NGUYEN – 2018

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deep thanks to people who have assisted me when

I carried out the research

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my supervisor, Dr Duong Duc Minh for his encouragement and guidance throughout the research who gave me his precious comments, expert advice and most of his kind encouragement during my doing research

Also, I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to all of the lecturers and the staff of the Department of Post-Graduate Studies at School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their valuable lectures and supports

I am greatly indebted to my colleagues and students at Thai Nguyen College

of Education, Thai Nguyen School of Foreign Languages, University of Wollongong, Australia for their enthusiasm, helpfulness, care and patience towards my data collection which grant great contributions for my thesis

Finally, I would like to express my special thanks to my parents, my husband and other members in my family for their love, care, support and encouragement so that I could accomplish my study

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby declare the thesis entitled

An Investigation on Pragmatic Transfer in Vietnamese EFL Refusals

is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at the School

of Foreign Languages - Thai Nguyen University and this thesis is in total fulfillment

of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts This thesis has not been submitted for any degree and any other university or institution

Signed

Date

EFL learners

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

B.A: Bachelor of Arts

DCT: Discourse Completion Task

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

ESL: English as a Second Language

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Classification of DCT 19

Table 3.2 The semantic formulas used in the analysis of data (Beebe et al., 1990 and modified by Phuong, 2014) 20

Table 4.1: Refusals to a request of higher status person 23

Table 4.2: Examples of semantic formula 24

Table 4.3: Refusals to a request of lower status person 25

Table 4.4: Examples of semantic formula 25

Table 4.5: Refusals to an invitation of higher status person 26

Table 4.6: Examples of semantic formula 26

Table 4.7: Refusals to an invitation of lower status person 27

Table 4.8: Examples of semantic formula 27

Table 4.9: Refusals to an offer of a higher status person 28

Table 4.10: Examples of semantic formula 28

Table 4.11: Refusals to an offer of a lower status person 29

Table 4.12: Examples of semantic formula 29

Table 4.13: Refusals to a suggestion of a higher status person 30

Table 4.14: Examples of semantic formula 30

Table 4.15: Refusals to a suggestion of a lower status person 31

Table 4.16: Examples of semantic formula 31

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Research Questions 2

1.4 Significance of the study 2

1.5 Scope of the study 2

1.6 Outline of the study 3

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Pragmatic Transfer 4

2.2 Factors affecting pragmatic transfer 5

2.3 Speech Acts 6

2.4 Refusal as a Speech Act 8

2.5 Classification of Speech Acts 9

2.6 Studies on the Speech Act of Refusals 12

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 17

3.1 Research approach 17

3.2 Subjects of the study 17

3.3 Instrument 17

3.4 Data collection procedure and analysis 19

3.4.1 Data collection procedure 20

3.4.2 Data Analysis 20

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 22

4.1 Refusals to requests 23

4.1.1 Refusal to a request of salary payment (higher) 23

4.1.2 Refusal to a request of staying late (lower) 25

4.2 Refusals to invitations 26

4.2.1 Refusal to an invitation to a restaurant (higher) 26

4.2.2 Refusal to an invitation to a boss party (lower) 27

4.3 Refusals to offers 28

4.3.1 Refusal to an offer to pay for a vase (higher) 28

4.3.2 Refusal to an offer to an executive promotion (lower) 29

4.4 Refusals to suggestions 30

4.4.1 Refusal to a suggestion to have more conversation in Foreign Language (higher) 30

4.4.2 Refusal to a suggestion to write a reminder (lower) 31

4.5 Choice of semantic formulae used in refusals of Vietnamese EFL learners 32

4.5.1 ‘Explanation’ 32

4.5.2 “Gratitude’ 33

4.5.3 Positive feeling & Regret 33

4.5.4 Direct ‘No’ 34

4.5.5 Social Status 35

4.5.6 Social Distance 35

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS 37

5.1 Semantic formulae for the speech act of refusals used by native speakers of Vietnamese, Native English and Vietnamese EFL learners 37

5.2 Pragmatic transfer in the semantic formulae used in refusals of Vietnamese EFL learners 38

5.3 Implications 38

5.4 Limitations 39

5.5 Recommendations for Future Studies 39

REFERENCES 41

APPENDIX 45

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the study

Language is the carrier of culture and culture the substance of language: The two cannot exist separately (Romaine, 2000) To succeed in communicating with others, one must be aware of the culture behind the language used in communication (Tanck, 2004) When speaking a foreign language, the issue of culture becomes critical English as Foreign language (EFL) learners, especially those with languages different and distant from English psychologically, culturally, phonologically, and syntactically, may struggle when attempting to communicate in English Non-proficient language learners are not only jeopardized by their imperfect language knowledge but obstructed by their inadequate knowledge of culture

To compensate for their lack of knowledge, EFL learners may fall back on their own linguistic cultural reservoir, translating utterances from their mother tongue and applying their own cultural rules when communicating in English (Al-Eryani, 2007; Lauper, 1997) This might lead to pragmatic errors that could result in misunderstanding and embarrassment or pragma-linguistic failure (Riley, 1989; Thomas, 1983; Umale, 2011)

This is especially important nowadays as “cross-cultural communication is becoming an integral part of life, with globalization and rapid advances in new technology” (Umale, 2011, p 19) In addition, employment opportunities in the local and global market increasingly demand good language proficiency and communicative ability Therefore, teaching pragmatic rules in a way that they would involve communication strategies and speech acts will give students the English knowledge and communicative competence that will secure good job placements after graduation

The phenomenon of pragmatic transfer and their motivating factors have been investigated in several speech acts in different languages, such as English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Arabic and Portuguese (Byon, 2004) Several cross-cultural studies proved that pragmatic transfer is evident in L2 speech

performance As for Asian languages, except for Japanese, the number of ILP studies

is limited To this date, there has been no single attempt to study pragmatic transfer

in Vietnamese speech acts of refusal To this date, there has been no single attempt

to study pragmatic transfer in Thai Nguyen university students’ speech acts of refusal

1.2 Aims of the study

The present study aims to investigate the semantic formulae for the speech act of refusal by native speakers of Vietnamese, native English and Vietnamese EFL learners then explore whether the pragmatic transfer exist in the semantic formulae of Vietnamese English language learners Taking the refusal speech act as a case in point, it sought to discover how Vietnamese EFL university students used English when refusing requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions presented to them in a set of scenarios The study examines whether the responses appropriate pragmatically and accurate linguistically and the factors that could have influence them

1.4 Significance of the study

Many cross-cultural refusal studies have a methodological problem, in that they are focused mainly on oral interactions, even though data were often collected via written surveys In addition, no attention, as far as I can find, has been given to refusals within mountainous students who are studying EFL Therefore, it is important to investigate refusal patterns when learning English of these students, especially in Thai Nguyen University

1.5 Scope of the study

This study will only focus on investigating the pragmatic transfer used in refusals of students Thai Nguyen University The native Vietnamese students will come from College of Education, native English students will come from University

of Wollongong, Australia and non-native EFL students will come from School of Foreign Languages – Thai Nguyen University

1.6 Outline of the study

This paper’s contents were arranged in an order which reveals information

from theoretical to empirical

Chapter I: INTRODUCTION, gives an overview of the study More

particularly, it includes statement of the problem, the main reasons leading to this research, intentional aims, objectives as well as brief description of scope and significance, methods, and design of the inquiry

Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW, clarifies theoretical background and

related preceding studies relevant for the research Both positive impacts and disadvantages will be exposed in this section

Chapter III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, focuses on eliciting

research questions, research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis

Chapter IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION, helps to examine the

semantic formulae for the speech act of refusals used by native speakers of Vietnamese, native English and Vietnamese EFL learners then find out the pragmatic transfer which exist in the semantic formulae used in refusals of Vietnamese EFL learners

Chapter V: CONCLUSION, briefly summaries the main points of the paper,

provides essential findings, displays existing limitations together with implications and gives suggestions for further studies

Finally, REFERENCES and APPENDICES are also listed sufficiently at the

end of the research

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Pragmatic Transfer

disagreement about how to define the scope of pragmatics According to Olshtain and Cohen (1989), pragmatic transfer refer to L2 learners’ strategy of incorporating native-language-based elements in L2 production The proposed definitions reflect the problem According to Wolfson, “the use of rules of speaking from one's own native speech community when interacting with members of the host community or simply when speaking or writing in a second language is known as sociolinguistic or pragmatic transfer” (1989, p 141) Since then, pragmatic transfer in EFL has received considerable attention and becomes an important source of cross-cultural communication breakdown (e.g Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990) A good example of pragmalinguistic transfer is provided by Takahashi and DuFon’s (1989) study which examined nine Japanese English ESL learners’ use of indirectness in two request situations They found that the L2 learners at beginning proficiency level were either too direct or too indirect in their choice of indirectness in one of the situations Byon (2004) also identified and described socio-pragmatic features of Americans learning Korean as a foreign language in the Korean communicative act of requests The semantic formulae usage patterns of the learners of Korean as a foreign language were consistent with those of the American ENSs, indicative of an L1 transfer effect

Regarding pragmatic transferability, Takahashi (1993, 1996) maintains that if L1 strategy is perceived to be frequently used and assumed to be appropriate enough, this strategy would more likely be transferred to the L2 context Her second transferability criteria, that is equivalence of strategies in L1 and L2, is perceived the equivalent of the L1 and L2 pair of a request strategy in terms of contextual appropriateness Based on the two above criteria, she proposed a pragmatic transferability scale, which posits that strategies rated high for contextual appropriateness and viewed as contextual equivalents are more transferable, whereas

those that are rated low for appropriateness and considered contextually different are less transferable

2.2 Factors affecting pragmatic transfer

Occurrences of pragmatic transfer may be influenced by various factors including L2 learners’ perception of language distance between their L1 and L2 (e.g Takahashi, 1996), learning context (e.g Takahashi & Beebe, 1987), instructional effect (e.g Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Kasper, 1982), L2 proficiency (e.g Olshtain & Cohen, 1989; Takahashi & Beebe, 1987), and length of time in the L2 community (e.g., Félix-Bradsefer, 2004) The study by Robinson (1992) suggests that L2 learners may be more prone to transfer their pragmatic L1 knowledge when they hold a universalist view More specifically, these studies demonstrated that L2 learners may not transfer L1 pragmatic features to the L2 if they perceive them as language specific

Recently, Phan (2001) listed twelve socio-cultural factors that, in his point of view, may affect the choice of directness and indirectness in communication:

1 Age: the old tend to be more indirect than the young

2 Sex: females prefer indirect expression

3 Residence: the rural population tends to use more indirectness than the urban

4 Mood: while angry, people tend to use more indirectness

5 Occupation: those who study social sciences tend to use more indirectness than those who study natural sciences

6 Personality: the extroverted tend to use more directness than the introverted

7 Topic: while referring to a sensitive topic, a taboo, people usually prefer indirectness

8 Place: when at home, people tend to use more directness than when they are elsewhere

9 Communicative environment/setting: when in an informal climate, people tend to express themselves in a direct way

10 Social distance: those who have closer relations tend to talk in a more direct way

11 Time pressure: when in a hurry, people are likely to use direct expressions

12 Position: when in a superior position, people tend to use more directness

to their inferiors These factors help to determine the strategies used when speakers perform the act of refusing

The present study was intended to address the issue of pragmatic transferability by examining the transferability of English refusal strategies when Vietnamese learners of English realize English refusals in corresponding L2 contexts

2.3 Speech Acts

The concept of speech acts was first developed by Austin (1962), and defined

as a set of utterances by which people perform a specific function such as apologizing, complaining, requesting, refusing, complimenting, or thanking Austin (1962)

identified three different features of speech acts: (i) locutionary, (ii) illocutionary, and (iii) perlocutionary acts Locutionary act refers to a literal meaning of an

utterance; illocutionary act refers to an intended meaning of an utterance; and perlocutionary act is the actual effect by saying something For example, one performs a locutionary act when s/he describes the thermal condition of a room by

saying it is hot here In this description, the thermal condition of the room is given by the word hot and the room itself is referred to by the word here However, if one says

the same thing expecting some actions to be taken such as opening a window or turning on an air-conditioning unit to lower the room temperature, then s/he is performing an illocutionary act The opening of the window or turning on the air-conditioning then is the effect of the utterance, which is a perlocutionary act

Vaezi (2011) also defined speech act as a functional unit in communication

It is an act that speakers implement when making utterances All languages have almost unique ways of performing speech acts Although speech acts are universals, the method used in performing speech acts is dissimilar in different cultures (Vaezi, 2011)

To put it more succinctly, a speech act is an action performed by an utterance (Belza, 2008; Bruti, 2006) The utterance usually carries an attitude, and this attitude

corresponds to the speech act being performed (Bach, 2007) The listener’s understanding of the attitude leads to understanding the speech act

Since the intended meaning of speech acts or illocutionary acts is a vital component of speech acts, Austin (1962) presented a classification of illocutionary acts based on the function of the verbs used However, because of “the ungrounded nature, unclarity, and overlap of these classes” several researchers have proposed different taxonomies of illocutionary acts (Horn & Ward, 2004, p 64) For example, Searle (1976) proposed five classifications for illocutionary acts, which are defined

in the following manner

• Representatives (or Assertives) are speech acts in which a speaker commits

to the truth of the expressed statements (e.g., describing something)

• Commissives are speech acts in which a speaker commits some future actions

(e.g., promising, guaranteeing, and swearing)

• Directives are speech acts in which a speaker requests the hearer to perform

a particular action (e.g., commanding, requesting)

• Expressives are speech acts in which a speaker expresses his/her feelings

(e.g., thanking, apologizing, welcoming)

• Declarations are speech acts that change the reality in accord with the

proposition of the declaration (e.g., nominating, resigning)

Speech acts can also be realized directly or indirectly, but they are frequently carried out indirectly in our everyday lives to soften the force of the act (LoCastro, 2012) When a speech act is performed indirectly and thus the linguistic form does not explicitly represent the speaker’s actual intention, an addressee needs to infer the intended meaning of the speaker’s utterance Understanding of the speaker’s actual intention requires the addressee to consider the meaning of the utterance in a particular context Furthermore, in order to appropriately respond, the addressee also needs to know the appropriate practices of speech acts in a given speech community

Examples of speech acts include requesting, offering, apologizing, complimenting, congratulating, sympathizing, and refusing, all of which are

language-based actions Because the present study focuses on refusals as produced

by native speakers of Vietnamese, Vietnamese EFL speakers and native speakers, the following section reviews the literature on this particular speech act

2.4 Refusal as a Speech Act

Refusal is a “face-threatening act that tends to disrupt harmony in relationships” (Umale, 2011, p 18) Due to its sensitivity, a refusal can be perceived differently between speaker and listener It is a negative response to another speech act issued in the form of a request, invitation, or suggestion (Abdul Sattar, Che Lah,

& Suleiman, 2011) Due to the nature, refusals can affect people’s relationships adversely if perceived as impolite or uncaring According to Umale (2011), refusals may damage the positive face of the speaker and threaten the negative face of the listener Therefore, the author continues to “mitigate threats to face” caused by refusals, speakers can use politeness strategies (p 19)

Among recent studies that have been carried out on the refusal speech act, Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) found that Japanese refuse differently according to the status of interlocutors, while Americans are more affected by the degree of familiarity or the social distance between interlocutors Japanese display a different frequency of semantic formulae between higher and lower status requesters, while Americans do not These studies are cross-cultural – in other words, comparative-cultural – rather than intercultural

Gass & Houck (1999) also defined refusals as speech acts that occur as negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions While some researchers view refusals as Commissive speech acts (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2004; García, 2007), refusals may not always fall into this category as they are not always rejections and sometimes involve negotiation in which the participants

do not even know what the final outcome will be In addition, Farnia and Wu (2012) investigated the refusals to invitation by use of a written discourse completion test and an immediate structured interview aimed to examine their perception concerning their cognition and language of thought in the process of refusing The findings showed that both groups used similar types of refusal strategies, but they differed in

the frequency of the refusals In addition, the most frequent refusal strategies were found to be statements of regret, excuses, reasons and explanation and expression of negative ability and willingness

2.5 Classification of Speech Acts

Austin (1975) establishes five categories of speech act based on broad classes

of illocutionary force They are as follows Verdictives are acts in which a verdict or

appraisal is given, usually by someone in a position of power to give that appraisal

Exercitives involve the exercise “of powers, rights, or influence.” Austin’s examples

of exercitives include “appointing…urging… warning” Commissives commit the

speaker to an action or intention; they include promises as well as mental commitments like taking one side of an argument (Austin, 1975)

The last two of Austin’s categories are broader than the first three, and defined

in a vague way that Austin acknowledges as problematic Behabitives have to do with

social behavior, including “apologizing, congratulating, commending, condoling,

cursing, and challenging.” Austin acknowledges the broad scope of this category, but

moves on to describing the even vaguer expositives, which he defines as “making plain

how our utterances fit into the course of an argument or conversation, how we are using words, or, in general, are expository” Examples are ‘I reply’, ‘I argue’, ‘I

concede’, ‘I illustrate’, ‘I assume’, ‘I postulate’” (Austin, 1975)

Searle (1976) challenges Austin’s taxonomy on the basis of the categories that Austin himself admits are problematic Searle establishes a set of features that vary across speech acts and creates a taxonomy of speech acts based on variation in these

features Searle lists twelve of these features, which he calls “dimensions of

variation”, but the following three are most significant for his purposes First is

illocutionary point, the purpose of a speech act Searle illustrates illocutionary point

by comparing requests with commands: while they are different speech acts with different amounts of force behind them, they share the purpose of getting the addressee to do something Second is direction of fit: whether the words comprising the speech act are intended to match the world, as in assertions and descriptions, or the world is intended to match the words of the speech act, as in promises and

requests Searle’s example of world-to-word fit is a shopping list used by a man

in a grocery store; his example of word-to-world fit is a detective following the shopper around the store and writing down everything he buys Third is expressed psychological state, which is less precise but can still be generalized across classes of speech act If a speech act contains propositional content, the act must also express the speaker’s attitude toward that content (Searle, 1976) Although Searle’s taxonomy

is superior to Austin’s in that it begins with a strict set of organizational principles and holds to them However, the application of these principles to his categories is not without fault

This study assumes that there is the possibility that the norms of the L2 might turn to be at work when using one’s L1 in producing different speech acts Therefore, Beebe et al (1990, as cited in Farnia & Wu, 2012, p 174) classification which offers the refusal strategies, consisting of Direct Refusals, Indirect Refusals and Adjuncts to Refusals seems suitable to this study as follows:

A Statement of regret (e.g., “I’m sorry ”; “I feel terrible ”)

B Wish (e.g., “I wish I could help you ”)

C Excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “My children will be home that night.”;

“I have a headache.”)

D Statement of alternative

1 I can do X instead of Y (e.g., “I’d rather ”; “I’d prefer ”)

2 Why don’t you do X instead of Y (e.g., “If you had asked me earlier,

I would have ”)

E Set condition for future or past acceptance (e.g., “If you had asked me

earlier, I would have ”)

F Promise of future acceptance (e.g., “I’ll do it next time”; “I promise I’ll ”

or “Next time I’ll ” using “will” of promise or “promise”)

G Statement of principle (e.g., “I never do business with friends.”)

H Statement of philosophy (e.g., “One can’t be too careful.”)

I Attempt to dissuade interlocutor

1 Threat or statement of negative consequences to the requester (e.g.,

“I won’t be any fun tonight” to refuse an invitation)

2 Guilt trip (e.g waitress to customers who want to sit a while: “I can’t

make a living of people who just order coffee.”)

3 Criticize the request/requester, etc (statement of negative feeling or

opinion); insult/attack (e.g “Who do you think you are?; That’s a

terrible idea!”)

4 Request for help, empathy, and assistance by dropping or holding the request

5 Let interlocutor off the hook (e.g “Don’t worry about it.” “That’s

okay.” “You don’t have to.”)

6 Self-defense (e.g “I’m trying my best.” “I’m doing all I can do.” “I

no do nutting wrong.”)

J Acceptance that functions as a refusal

1 Unspecific or indefinite reply

2 Lack of enthusiasm

K Avoidance

1 Nonverbal (a Silence, b Hesitation, c Doing nothing, d Physical departure)

2 Verbal (a Topic switch, b Joke, c Repetition of part of request etc

(e.g., “Monday?”), d Postponement (e.g., “I’ll think about it.”), e Hedging (e.g., “Gee, I don’t know.” “I'm not sure.”)

Adjuncts to Refusals

Adj1 Statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement (e.g “That’s a good idea ”

“I’d love to ”)

Adj2 Statement of empathy (e.g “I realize you are in a difficult situation.”)

Adj3 Pause fillers (e.g “uhh”; “well”; “oh”; “uhm”)

Adj4 Statement of gratitude or appreciation (e.g “thanks”; “I really appreciate it”)

2.6 Studies on the Speech Act of Refusals

The cross-cultural studies reveal the difference between the same acts in a variety of cultures These studies allow for identifying potential pragmatic failures committed by non-native speakers and finding ways to teach pragmatics that would prevent these failures Beebe, Takahashi and UlissWeltz’s (1990) groundbreaking work in cross-cultural studies of refusals has contributed to the development of the methodology and the taxonomy that are frequently utilized in other studies

In their taxonomy, refusal strategies fall into two broad categories: Semantic formulas and Adjuncts A semantic formula, or a strategy, is a set of expressions, which could be a word(s), a phrase(s) or a sentence(s), and can function as a refusal

An adjunct is a set of expressions that supplement a refusal, but by itself cannot function as a refusal Semantic formulas are further divided into direct and indirect realization of refusals

Among those studies focusing on the refusals of L2 learners, some examined how the L1 sociocultural norm has affected the L2 learner’s refusal performance, i.e., pragmatic transfer Beebe et al (1990) found that Japanese learners of English resemble native speakers of Japanese, and differ from native speakers of English in their refusals, indicating the existence of pragmatic transfer phenomenon While Japanese were more affected by the status of the interlocutors, Americans refused differently according to the degree of familiarity with the interlocutors With regard

to the content of semantic formulas, the researchers found that the excuses the American-English group used tended to be more specific than those of the Japanese-Japanese and Japanese-English groups Similar tendencies were found by Beebe and Cummings (1985, 1996)

Beckers (1999) compared German and American refusals and concluded that German refusals are less direct than American refusals In another study, Nelson, Al Batal and El Bakary (2002) used DCT with 25 Egyptians and 30 Americans but in a spoken form in their home countries and in the participant’s native language They concluded that the frequencies of the direct and indirect refusal strategies are almost equal Kwon (2004) compared English and Korean refusals in their native languages and found that Americans do not take into account status as much as the Koreans did

In addition, while Koreans have a tendency to give reasons, Americans do not favor that

Felix-Brasdefer (2003) investigated the speech act performance of native speakers of Mexican Spanish, native speakers of American English, and advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language in refusals in six different situations (two invitations, two requests, and two suggestions) of equal and high status using enhanced role plays and retrospective verbal reports Results show that learners differed from the native groups in the frequency, content, and perceptions of refusal strategies Among the learners, negative pragmatic transfer was found in the frequency, content, and social perceptions of refusal strategies

A study of socio-cultural transfer and its motivating factors within the realization patterns of the speech act of refusals by Jordanian EFL learners was carried out by Al Issa (2003) EFL refusal data were collected using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) The DCT was then followed by semi-structured interviews Using semantic formulae as units of analysis, EFL refusal responses were compared with similar data elicited from native speakers of English responding in English and native speakers of Arabic responding in Arabic The results showed that socio-cultural transfer influenced the EFL learners’ selection of semantic formulae, the length of their responses, and the content of the semantic formulae The cases of transfer were seen to reflect cultural values transferred from Arabic to English

The culture of Vietnam is greatly influenced by Chinese culture, French civilization, Buddhist philosophy, Christianity and Communism, as well as the ongoing globalization process (Dao 2000; Tran 1998; Jamieson 1991) However,

traditional Vietnamese culture is still preserved while accumulating and localizing foreign cultural influences (Ngo 2001; Tran 1998)

Vietnamese society is no longer as agriculturally dominated as it once was (Do 2002) It has become industrialized and is subject to increasing globalization A large percentage of the population has to conform to the norms and patterns of industrial life, with changing lifestyles and ways of thinking in the Vietnamese culture, when asking such questions as “Are you married ?”, “How old are you ?”, “How much do you earn a month?”, people simply want to show their concern for others, with no motive other than facilitating and making the distance between communicators closer and friendlier, thus enhancing solidarity These questions, on the other hand, are considered intrusive to privacy in non-Confucian societies Marital status, age, income, and religion are matters that people usually refrain from discussing when they are engaged in everyday social conversation, especially with someone that they

do not know well enough

With regard to politeness strategies in refusals, according to Phuong (2006), Vietnamese have some social norms that require conversants to be able to refuse

in a polite manner This fact has modified the thinking and behaviours of VEs Some have successfully become very fluent in English Nonetheless, when resorting to different ways of refusing, they tend to be more indirect than their English-speaking counterparts This study aims to explore this pragmatic transfer

in English language refusals

Research on the Vietnamese speech act of refusal specifically restricted to directness/indirectness, includes a study on some cross-cultural differences in refusing a request in English and in Vietnamese (Phan, 2001) She found out that both Anglophone and Vietnamese informants tend to use more indirect refusals than direct ones Comparing the degree of directness and indirectness of refusals by Anglophone and Vietnamese informants, all the Anglophone informants are more direct than the Vietnamese ones She made some comparisons and drew some similarities and differences between the two groups The following are some similarities and differences Similarities: - Both Anglophone and Vietnamese informants tend to use

more indirect refusals than direct ones In both Anglophone and Vietnamese cultures, city dwellers are more direct than rural people Rural people, especially Vietnamese, always exceed the urbanites in the degree of indirectness Informants who do not know any foreign languages are less direct and more indirect than those with knowledge of some foreign languages Differences show comparing the degree of directness and indirectness of refusals extended by Anglophone and Vietnamese informants, all the Anglophone informants are more direct than the Vietnamese ones All groups of Vietnamese informants are substantially more indirect than their Anglophone partners

Recently, Phuong (2006) conducted a research to investigate the refusals of request by Australian native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English from cross-cultural pragmatics perspectives She found that refusals of AEs are different from those of VEs, though they do share some similarities Parallel to the differences in culture, AEs and VEs also differ in the ways they say “NO” to their conversational partners VEs are apt to express refusals with caution and/or care VEs used more statements of regret, more statements of sympathy, more adjuncts to refusals addressing term and more reasons/excuses/explanations in their refusals In addition, the excuses/reasons/explanations given by AEs are more related to their readiness to reveal their disinclinations to comply in contrast to VEs AEs are more direct in the ways they refuse: AEs employed more “NO” phrases, more statements

of principles, and more statements of unwillingness/doubt than VEs

AEs and VEs show the same number of SARs when they communicate with people of the three social statuses and social distances, but VEs are more sensitive to the social statuses and social distances of the requesters The gender of conversational partners is relevant: both AEs and VEs used more statements of regret when they refused people of opposite gender than of the same gender: opposite-gender refusals require more elaboration and more care

In sum, although the literature on refusals is abundant, most studies, as mentioned before, have been conducted between English and languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and so on As far as the present researcher’s

smattering knowledge is concerned, however, no systematic study has been done to compare the speech act of refusals between English and Vietnamese Therefore, the researcher intended to hopefully fill this gap in the literature

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research approach

The present study will be quantitative design Descriptive statistics, such as the contents, percentages, frequency counts and order of the semantic formula, were also offered to shed further light on the use of refusal strategies by all three groups

In addition, and examples of the participants’ refusal utterances were presented for a better picture of the use of refusal strategies among the NV, NE and VE groups

3.2 Subjects of the study

There were altogether 90 participants in this study, who could be divided into three groups: native Vietnamese speakers (NV), native English speakers (NE) and the Vietnamese EFL learners (VE) NV included 30 native Vietnamese ranging from 25 years old to 40 years old and they were working at public and private company at the time the data collected Participants of NV were examined that they had no knowledge of English and they could only speak Vietnamese, which could make sure that their answers were not influenced by other languages and cultures NE included

30 students and teachers from Wollongwong University in Australia, aging from 20

to 40 who had no knowledge of Vietnamese They provided us with native responses

to this study VE consisted of 30 students who was studying English linguistics from the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University

3.3 Instrument

Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was used to collect data since it is a popular instrument used to collect linguistic data and to analyze particular speech acts It is a written questionnaire in which a situation is first briefly presented and then a subject is asked to write her or his response in a blank space that is provided

on the questionnaire The major advantages of using a DCT are its efficiency and consistency A DCT allows for collecting the data in a short period of time and from

a large number of participants It also allows analyzing responses in a consistent manner because the role of the subjects and contextual factors are controlled (Gass

& Houck, 1999) The DCT used in this research requires the participants to mimic a

task they would normally do in their real life (i.e writing emails) By focusing on email correspondences, it is felt that the use of the DCT would be less likely to have

a negative impact on the results than if participants were asked to write what they would say Therefore, the use of the DCT instrument in this study was deemed appropriate

In this study, the Discourse Completion Task consists of eight situations It was divided into four categories: refusals to (1) requests, (2) invitations, (3) offers, and (4) suggestions In each case, the task was designed so that one refusal will be made to someone of higher status and lower status The responses of the three groups will be compared to each other to find out to what extent there is the semantic formulae for the speech act of refusals used by native speakers of Vietnamese, Native English and Vietnamese EFL learners and whether the pragmatic transfer exist in the semantic formulae used in refusals of Vietnamese EFL learners

The 8-items DCT is a form of questionnaire depicting some natural situations

to which the respondents are expected to respond making refusals This test was originally designed by Beebe et al., (1990) and has been widely used since then in collecting data on speech acts realization both within and across language groups The questionnaire used in this investigation involves 12 written situations They were divided into four groups:

- two requests (items 1 and 8);

- two invitations (items 2 and 3);

- two offers (items 5 and 7), and

- two suggestions (items 4 and 6)

Each situation includes one refusal to a person of higher status and one to a person of lower status (see Table 1 below) Requests are defined as polite demands for something; the requester asks a favour of the other person as to borrow class notes Invitations are types of requests as to come to dinner Instead of asking a favour, the inviter is usually attempting to be thoughtful and kind Offers refer to asking individuals if they want something as a piece of cake Suggestions are ideas put forward for people to consider as lecturing less in class

The DCT administered to native Vietnamese was translated into Vietnamese, whereas, the English version was used for EFL learners and native English speakers

To ensure the accuracy of the Vietnamese and English version of the DCT, the English version was translated into Vietnamese by the researcher herself Then, the Vietnamese version was assessed by five experienced teacher who hold a PhD in teaching Vietnamese at Thai Nguyen University Finally, the Vietnamese version was then back-translated into English by a professional translator who has signature and seal at the Department of Justice of Thai Nguyen province The existing drawbacks were resolved during the discussions between the researcher, the professional translator, and the two Vietnamese language experts For validity, the DCT has its face and content validity since it is used widely in relevant studies The content validity of its Vietnamese translation is obtained by submitting the translation to five experts in translation On their suggestions, some rewording was done

Situation

3.4 Data collection procedure and analysis

3.4.1 Data collection procedure

DCT will be distributed to 90 participants by hard copies and Google forms through emails They will be politely requested to write their responses to the situations and then submit and reply it to the researcher The participants will not directly be instructed to refuse the interlocutor but asked to fill in the blanks in the dialogues in accordance with the example given at the beginning of the test Within two weeks, every participant will submit their completed test

3.4.2 Data Analysis

The data were analyzed and coded based on the taxonomy of refusals as developed by Beebe et al (1990) Following the lead of Allami and Naeimi’s (2011) study, the semantic formulas were utilized as units of analysis This taxonomy identifies two direct and eleven indirect refusal strategies together with four adjuncts

to refusals including expression of positive feeling, agreement, pause fillers Since the coding of the data according to the aforementioned taxonomy included an inevitable degree of subjectivity on the part of the coder, another coder, who was an expert in the field, coded the refusal utterances of the subjects of the study, according

to the afore-mentioned taxonomy The inter-coder reliability was found to be 85%, which was considered sufficient to allow the data analysis process to proceed Descriptive statistics, such as percentages and frequency counts, were also offered to shed further light on the use of refusal strategies by three groups

As mentioned above, the data collected from ninety participants will be analyzed via content analysis and in line with the classification of refusal strategies by Beebe et al (1990) Refusal strategies consist of semantic formulas, which are described as “a word, phrase or sentence, which meets a particular semantic criterion

or strategy” (Ewert & Dyzman, 2008 p 39) as presented in the Table below: