EXCLAMATIONS IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE

ABSTRACT This study looks at Exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives.. To achieve this end, descriptive method is used to

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS SUMMARY

Field: English Language Code: 8220201

EXCLAMATIONS IN ENGLISH WITH

REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE

(CÂU CẢM THÁN TRONG TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ

LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ TRANG

Hanoi, 2018

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

(CÂU CẢM THÁN TRONG TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ

LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYEN THI TRANG

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung

Hanoi, 2018

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

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

Exclamations in English with reference to 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

A special thanks goes to the teachers, friends at Faculty of Post Graduate, Hanoi Open University, students at People‟s Public Security University of Technology and Logistics as well as 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 owe the completion of this dissertation to my parents and my husband and two daughters, who always given me their love, understanding and encouragement throughout my study

Finally, my sincere thanks are due to all of you who will give me some comments after reading the thesis

To all mentioned and to many more, my heart extends the warmest thanks

ABSTRACT

This study looks at Exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives The major concern is finding out the linguistic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese exclamations as well as discussing the similarities and differences between them To achieve this end, descriptive method is used to investigate the linguistic and cultural features of exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese and find out the similarities and differences between them from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives Basing on the qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study has pointing out the various features of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese from 173 examples Syntactically, this special means of expression in the two languages can

be in the form of single words, complete sentences Also, exclamations can combine with another interjection or other word classes to form complete and incomplete sentence In terms of pragmatics, exclamations have different functions to show anger, disappointment, surprise, sadness, regret, refusal, warn, happiness, support, request and the like Furthermore, the cultural aspect is also embeled in exclamations of the two languages In addition, experimental method, error analysis and statistical technique are applied as the supporting ones to find out the particular mistakes made by students at People‟s Police university of Technology and

Logistics when using and translating English exclamations Besides, a questionnaire

was distributed to one hundred students at People‟s Public Security University of Technology and Logistics who acted as significant means to collect reliable data and information for research from students‟ habits in using and translating English and Vietnamese Exclamations in order to enhance the effectiveness in teaching, learning and translating English and Vietnamese exclamations at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics The above features of exclamations and their similarities and dissimilarities are discussed in details in the following chapters

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Speech Acts Classification by Austin and Searle 15Table 4.1 Exclamations as interjections 42Table 4.2 Summary of cultural features of English and Vietnamese exclamations 55Table 4.3 Summary of cultural features of Vietnamese exclamations 57

TABLE OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III LIST OF TABLES IV

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the research 3

1.3 Scope of the research 3

1.3.1 Academic scope 3

1.3.2 Social scope 3

1.4 Significance of the research 4

1.5 Design of the study 4

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Review of Previous Studies 5

2.1.1 Review of Previous Studies Overseas 5

2.1.2 Review of Previous Vietnamese Studies 7

2.2 Theoretical background 8

2.2.1 Syntactic theories of English exclamation 8

2.2.1.1 Definition and classification of the sentence 9

2.2.2 Pragmatic theories 11

2.2.2.1 The concept of pragmatics 11

2.2.2.2 Speech Acts Theory 12

2.2.2.3 Exclamations and speech acts 15

2.2.2.4 Language and culture 18

2.3 Theoretical framework of the study 19

2.3.1 An overview of exclamations in English 19

2.3.2 An overview of exclamations in Vietnamese 21

2.3.2.1 Syntactic features of Vietnamese exclamations 21

2.3.2.2 Pragmatic features of Vietnamese exclamations 23

2.4 Summary 29

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 30

3.1 Research-governing orientations 30

3.1.1 Research approaches 30

3.1.2 Research questions 30

3.1.3 Research setting 31

3.1.4 Principles for data collection and data analysis 31

3.2 Research methods 34

3.2.1 Data collection techniques 34

3.3 Summary 34

CHAPTER 4 SYNTACTIC, PRAGMATIC AND CULTURAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH EXCLAMATIONS WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE 36

4.1 Syntactic features of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese 36

4.1.1 Syntactic features of English exclamations 36

4.1.2 Similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations in terms of syntactic features 44

4.2 Pragmatic features of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese 45

4.2.1 Pragmatic features of exclamations in English 45

4.2.2 Similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations in terms of pragmatic features 52

4.3 Cultural features of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese 53

4.3.1.Cutural features of English exclamations 54

4.3.2 Cultural features of Vietnamese exclamations 55

4.3.3 Similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations interms of cultural features 57

4.4 Difficulties in using English exclamations faced by the students of the People‟s Police University of Technology and Logistics 58

4.4.1 Common mistakes made by students at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics when using exclamation in English and Vietnamese 58

4.4.2 Suggestions for teaching and learning English exclamations at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics 59

4.4.3 Suggestions for People‟s Public Security of Technology and Logistics students to translate English exclamations into Vietnamese 62

4.4.4 Summary 64

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUDING REMARKS, LIMITATION OF STUDY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 65

5.1 CONCLUDING REMARKS 65

5.2 LIMITATION OF STUDY 66

5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTHER STUDY 66

5.3.1 Suggestions on Language Teaching 66

5.3.2 Suggestions on Language Learning 67

5.3.3 Suggestions for further study 68

REFERENCES VIII

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

This thesis reports the result of investigating into the linguistic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese exclamations as well as discussing the similarities and differences between them Moreover, the students‟ attitudes towards the learning of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese as well as how to enhance the effectiveness in teaching, learning as well as translating English and Vietnamese exclamations at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics

is also paid attention to This introductory chapter provides a detailed description of the problem the thesis attempts to solve, states the aims of the study and presents an overview of the thesis

1.1 Rationale

Along with the language development of human society, English is considered as the most popular language to exchange information and ideas among different nations as well as cultures The need of learning English becomes more and more urgent in order to meet the demand of integration into the world economy and exchange of culture with other countries It is undoubted that both Vietnamese and foreigner desire to master English as the native speakers; Nevertheless, they often have a lot of difficulties that prevent them from gaining successful conversations One of the reasons for these problems lies in the way people understand and use exclamations Exclamation is inevitably frequent in our society

As usual, the term “exclamation” is used sloppily to refer to the kind of phenomena

An exclamation is a pragmatic construction whose role is to express the speaker‟s emotion and feeling However, even if we agree that this is a meaningful distinction, the term exclamation remains a sloppy concept It is an evidence of a reflection of the speaker‟s emotion and feeling Its use and realization may differ considerably from language, from culture to culture, pragmatically In daily conversation, thanks to exclamation, people can easily express their feeling and thought When there are differences and similarities across cultures in its use, they are often peculiar and unpredictable Therefore, it is obvious It is, when many pragmatists claim that exclamation is a unique characteristic of a particular culture

A universal view, however, is that the consciousness of the use of exclamation is very much associated with personal character of the speaker as well as the context and situation in which it occurs Although there is likely no exact evidence to predict what one really feels through exclamation, psychological, and pragmatic

analysis may be helpful to do so They do not only cover the earlier mentioned functions but they also reveal what the speaker really means and would like to express through their exclamations It is the reason why many studies on exclamation have compared different languages to English Languages covered by these studies include English, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Turkish, French,

German, Setswana, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese and Austronesian languages

During the course of English, Vietnamese students in general as well as students at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics in particular have chance to deal with many aspects of English language Surely, they also have a lot

of difficulties in studying and using English, which include the studying and using English and Vietnamese Exclamations Furthermore, in Vietnamese settings, one of the four types of sentences is exclamations and that type receives little attention from learners and thus, there have not been many studies on exclamations Studying exclamations becomes our interest then Besides, they also recognize that using exclamations in daily communication helps their words become more natural, persuasive and thoughtful Learning English we should learn how to use English exclamations correctly and effectively However, the system of English exclamations is very complex As clearly seen, there are certain similarities and differences of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese The relationship between the two languages will naturally be the root of mistakes made by Vietnamese learners of English Some linguists say, making mistakes is a motivation to encourage the process of learning language Nevertheless, the major important is how to identify mistakes and correct them When learning exclamations in general and English exclamations in particular, Vietnamese students often commit mistakes

Moreover, for nearly 8 years of teaching English, I have experienced that when having exclamations in textbooks and relevant materials, students often find difficult to translate these forms into Vietnamese They speak English in a rough way without using exclamations that makes the conversation less natural than the native English speakers do

With the above reasons, I have the desire to conduct a study on exclamations

in English with reference to Vietnamese so as to solve this problem for Vietnamese students as well as the other English ones I do hope the research will be fueled most effectively to help students at People‟s Police university of Technology and

Logistics understand and use Exclamations correctly and effectively in their speech and writing as well as translating English exclamations appropriately in every context

1.2 Aims and objectives of the research

The study aims at investigating exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives to find out the linguistic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese exclamations as well as discuss the similarities and differences between them so that this study will help Vietnamese students in general and students at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics in particular have better understanding of the linguistic and cultural features of exclamations in both languages Therefore, they can use and translate them correctly as well as effectively in their speech and writing

This study has three objectives: First of all, identifying the syntactic, pragmatic and cultural features of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese Moreover, finding out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives The last but not least, giving some suggestions for teaching, learning and translating English exclamations at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics effectively

1.3 Scope of the research

1.3.1 Academic scope

Within the academic scope of the study, exclamations will be mainly examined in utterances used in English stories as well as poems with reference to Vietnamese Moreover, the thesis will focus on the following linguistic features such as syntactic, pragmatic and cultural features of exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese 173 examples of exclamations are mainly collected from such various sources such as English and Vietnamese novels, stories and poems by different writers or poets In addition to that, films on the internet is also a great source of information for English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese It is clear that exclamations are studied in the research will be mainly in written texts

and little in spoken discourse

1.3.2 Social scope

The study collects data regarding features, the use and the translation of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese from stories novels, films,

websites and survey questionnaire4.4.2 Suggestions for teaching and learning English exclamations at People’s Police university of Technology and Logistics

s The survey questionnaires designed in this research focus primarily on the use of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese and on reliable data and information for research from students‟ habits in using English exclamations The participants of the research would be one hundred students at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics who acted as significant means to collect the students‟ most common mistakes This thesis focuses on analyzing the mistakes on exclamations to help students avoid those mistakes They are in their early twenties and the number of females participating in the research is equal to the number of males

1.4 Significance of the research

Theoretically, apart from completing my M.A course, the thesis will find out the linguistic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese exclamations from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives as well as discuss the similarities and differences between them

Practically, through the research, teachers and students in my university can have better knowledge about English and Vietnamese exclamations by using and translating them properly in the relevant context in their teaching and learning process in their daily life

1.5 Design of the study

This thesis shall be presented in five chapters, starting with Introduction in

which we present the reason of the study, the history of the study, the aims, the

methods, and end with Conclusion The second chapter, named Literature Review,

gives a critical review of the previous studies relating to the research problem under investigation and presents the theoretical background employed as tools for

conducting the whole research The Methodology chapter provides the information

by which the research is conducted with a method section answering two main questions: How the data was collected or generated; and how it was analyzed The

fourth chapter includes all the findings and suggestions throughout evaluation of the investigation, which logically lead to inferences and conclusions

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the research discusses the major theoretical issues on exclamations in general, English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese in particular relating to the study The discussion aims at giving theoretical foundation

on which to clarify English exclamation with reference to Vietnamese in their speech or writing This chapter focuses on the following issues: (1) Review of previous Studies, (2) Theoretical background, (3) Theoretical framework To achieve the aims, the author focus on the background of word classes and sentence

in general and on exclamation in particular is done A brief review of the latter will

be studied on, too

2.1 Review of Previous Studies

2.1.1 Review of Previous Studies Overseas

The terms “Exclamations” catches much attention of linguistics There have been a lot of authors whose studies generally relate to them However, their approaches are different in some ways

Quirk et al (1972 & 1985) use the term “exclamative” to refer to the

grammatical category They recognize several different form types that can be used

as exclamations, but still prevail in the belief that there exists an exclamatory form type on a par with declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives Since the publication, these books have been the standard reference work used by professional grammarians David Crystal (1995) explores the many facets and varieties of the English language, bringing life to this large and complex subject Rarely has a book so packed with accurate and well researched factual information been so widely read and popularly acclaimed David Crystal analyzes four types of sentence functions: Statements, questions, commands, and exclamations Exclamations can have either minor or major sentence status and are mainly investigated in syntactic form

Andrew Radford (1997) provides a concise, clear, and accessible introduction

to current syntactic theory Radford defines an exclamative as “a type of structure used to exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance etc.” and goes on to say that “in

English syntax, the term is restricted largely to clauses beginning with Wh- Exclamative words like “what! or how!” The use of the word “structure” seems to

indicate that he regards the exclamative as a syntactic phenomenon In terms of

pragmatics, there is only the research of Beijer F (2001) In this research, the

author aims at separating what has been called exclamatives from other kinds of expressive/emotional utterances The term “exclamative” does not refer to a

syntactic phenomenon, but to a pragmatic one To prove the originality of this study, the writer presents the previous studies that have been conducted in the different study on the pragmatic analysis and the utterance

The first research is written by Adrefiza from the University of Jambi entitled,

“A Socio Pragmatic Analysis of Exclamation and its Realization in Australia English and Bahasa Indonesia” He used socio-pragmatic approach as the way of analysis while the purposes of this research are to describe the sociolinguistic and pragmatic expressions of exclamations performed by Australians and Indonesians according to the age and gender of the speakers of both language, and also to describe their implication in language teaching He found that both Australians and Indonesians had different sets of exclamatory word/phrase/expression, they occurred unpredictably but seemed to be systematic in their form or contractions Both languages had several common exclamatory word – most of them were not phonologically and semantically similar

The second previous study is done by Zahroh (2006) who conducted

a research entitled “A Socio-Pragmatics Analysis of Apologizing Utterance in Aristocratic Movie Manuscript” she clarifies the meaning and the reasons of apologizing in Aristocratic movie manuscript Her finding are, first, there are four strategies and six sub categories that match with the available four strategies and eight subcategories in the underlying theory Second, all the data of apologizing utterance have six intentions, they are declaring, describing, expressing sorrow, committing, informing and requesting Third, apology is employed because the speaker really wants to apologize to the listener and ask forgiveness The research above is different because the writer presents different object and source of data The writer object is speech act of exclamatory utterance the writer uses fantasy movie as the source of data However, the research above adopts similar approach

of socio-pragmatics

The third previous study is Tina Sarwoningsih (2003) that is entitled “ An analysis of the use of speech act of request in The Harry Potter movie manuscripts (Socio- Pragmatics approach)” She focus on five types of request of expression, namely request for action, request for permission, request showing happiness, showing respect, showing anger, showing being afraid, and showing solidarity The

research above is different with the writer here, because the researcher uses request utterance as the object of the research, but the writer here uses speech act exclamatory utterance The similarity of this research is the source of data used by Tina Sarwoningsih is Harry Potter movies and also the use of socio-pragmatics as approach While in this research, the writer is not only going to analyze the speaker‟s intention by employing speech act theory, but also the form of the utterances based on grammatical rules The writer is sure that this research has not been analyzed yet

2.1.2 Review of Previous Vietnamese Studies

In Vietnamese, we cannot but mention Nguyễn Thiện Giáp, Ðoàn Thiện Thuật & Nguyễn Minh Thuyết (1998) According to these authors, exclamative theory was developed greatly from 18

th

to 20th century Those who advocated this theory were Humbon, Stundan, Russo, saying that human‟s language derived from the sounds of anger, joy, sadness, anguished cried expressed when we were moved

In some cases, exclamations are signals of our emotion and thoughts In the other one, the relationship between the sounds of words and emotive state of human is considered such as the combination of sound causing the impression in our soul that

is similar to the one caused by things

Besides that there have been some publications on sentence types including

exclamations such as Câu trong tiếng Việt (Cao Xuân Hạo,1998); Ngữ pháp tiếng

Việt phần câu (Diệp Quang Ban, 2004); Nghiên cứu về ngữ pháp tiếng Việt

(Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1963); Câu trong tiếng việt (Nguyễn Thị Lương, 2005); etc

However, there has not been so far a study on syntactic features of exclamations in English and in Vietnamese So it is necessary to do a research on this matter to have a deeper understanding about exclamations in the two languages

The last but not least, in the doctoral thesis of Nguyễn Thị Hồng Ngọc, the author focus on syntactic and semantic features of Vietnamese Exclamations Besides, other features of exclamations such as pragmatic is also in the author‟s care in order to help readers understand more about Vietnamese Exclamations

From the review of all previous studies above, it is obvious that researchers

in Vietnam as well as in other countries have gained deep insights and made significant findings in this field However, the study of Exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese still awaits deeper investigation, which is why the present study hopes to fill in the gap to make significant contribution to the

teaching, learning English Exclamations in Vietnam in general and at People‟s Public Security of Technology and Logistics in particular

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 Syntactic theories of English exclamation

Syntactics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed This type of study generally takes place without considering any world of reference or any user of forms When accessing to the work of “Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt- Phần câu” by Diep Quang Ban (2004), it provides a better insight of sentence types, especially exclamations That is the reason why we, in our writing, focus much on the opinions

of Diep Quang Ban (2004) and it seems that his ideas rule out for the syntax of Vietnamese exclamations According to him, to study exclamations, we need to take syntax, communicative function, mood and structure, and text as well into consideration In terms of syntax, exclamations consist of some minor clauses and they are the ones formed by exclamatory expressions that function as a sentence with no syntactic features Exclamations give expression to the speaker's affective

stance or attitude From time to time, an exclamation is realized by an interjection

which is a word or a sound used to express a sudden feeling or emotion Interjections belong to the oldest form of the spoken language and represent the most primitive type of utterance Sometimes an exclamatory construction co-occurs with interjections Interjections are a mark of emotive emphasis in speech The most common interjections in English as explained by Svartvik & Leech (1985: 117) such as Oh!(surprise); Ah! (satisfaction); Aha! (Jubilant satisfaction or recognition); Wow! (Great surprise); Yippee! (Excitement or delight); Ouch or ou! (Pain); Ugh! (disgust) Eckersely & Eckersely (1981: 315) add the following to the list like hello! (Surprise in addition to its use as a greeting), hey! (Someone want to attract attention) or Alas! has a literary form expressing sorrow or disappointment Interjections are the factors that have no lexical meaning and they are used as an indefinite sound, which are used to express physical or mental reactions and have

no representative meaning For this reason, exclamations are ungrammaticalized to separate subject or predicate in sentences

[1] Ah! Here it is!

[2] What a lovely dog that was, whoo!

In terms of communication, exclamations are used to express feelings caused

by physical and mental impulse (including reprimand, compliment, swear, etc which have no direct representative meaning)

In terms of mood and structure, exclamations consist of only mood expression but not residue In terms of texts, exclamations are minor clauses and this type of sentence has no separation between theme and rhyme

All exclamation expressions have their own forms and they are independent of the remaining parts of a sentence (so we can name them exclamation expressions) Not all exclamation expressions function in the mood structure, but within the relation of mood structure, exclamation is categorized in terms of exclamatory factors Thus, we then pay much attention to the factors, which have an impact

on the syntax of exclamation Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a speaker‟s knowledge of sentences and their structures Moreover, syntax refers to the way words are arranged together, and the relationship between them

An exclamation (also called an interjection) is a word or phrase that

expresses strong emotion, such as surprise, pleasure, or anger Exclamations often stand on their own, and in writing they are usually followed by an exclamation mark

rather than a full stop For example, [3] How beautiful! Or [4] Ow! [5]That hurt! Exclamations are also used to express greetings or congratulations like [6] Hello!

Or [7] Well done, lads!

2.2.1.1 Definition and classification of the sentence

The sentence is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms Students are introduced to it in our early school years, and it quickly becomes part of our linguistic awareness Those who learned some traditional grammar will remember

the old definition of a sentences as “ a complete expression of a single thought” It

is obvious, as students look through the pager number of sentences patterns in English These patterns can be grouped into two main types, on the basis of whether they are formed in a regular or irregular way Regular sentences are often referred to

as a majorsentences, irregular ones as minor sentences The major sentences are ones which can be broken down into a specific and predictable pattern of elements Alexandra Grammatical School (300 – 200 BC) has considered that sentences are the combination of words to express complete thoughts Sentences are the largest unit of grammatical organization within parts of speech (e.g noun, verb, adjective…etc.) are said to function From the above definitions, the following are

some main features of sentences such as the largest unit of grammatical organization, The basic unit of written English language communication, it constructed by grammatical rules and express a thought and the speaker‟s feelings and attitude In English and Vietnamese, most of the grammaticians share similar classifications of sentence of purposes

In terms of purposes, sentences may be classified 4 types in terms of purposes:

A declarative sentence is used to make a statement; An interrogative sentence is used to pose a question; An imperative sentence is used to give a command or to implore or entreat; An exclamatory sentence is used to express astonishment or extreme emotion For example,

[8] How enjoyable we were when the dawn came and our flag was still there!; [9] How did you do your hair! (exclamation formed as a question);

[10] Peter just won 500 dollars! (exclamation formed as a declarative sentence)

If we consider sentences in syntactic aspect sentences may be divided in to four major syntactic classes whose use correlates with different communicative

functions Alexander (1988) cites that sentence is a complete unit of meaning When

we speak, our sentences may be extremely involved or unfinished, yet we can still convey our meaning through intonation, gesture, facial expressions, etc When we write, these devices are not available, so sentences have to be carefully structured and punctuated A written sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop (.), a question mark (?) or an exclamation mark (!) Quirk et al (1972) find

out four major classes in which simple sentences may be divided, and the division seems to have been made on the basis of (syntactic) form and (pragmatic) function:

(i) Statements: Sentences in which the subject is always present and generally precedes the verbs They are used to confirm the existence of things or the characteristics, actions or states of things such as “Kama will come here today”

(ii) Questions are sentences which seek information They fall into three

main types, depending on the kind of reply they expect and or how they are

constructed For example: Are they ready?; Where are you going?; Will you lie

travelling by train or by bus? Sentences marked by one of the following criteria:

a The placing of the operator in front of the subject, as in “ Will Kama come here today?”

b The initial positioning of a wh – element as in “When will Kama come here?”

c Rising question intonation as in “Kama will come here today?”

(iii) Commands: Sentences which instruct someone to do something They normally have no overt grammatical subject and whose verbs are in the imperative

mood (Come here today!, Sit down!, Don‟t laugh!)

(iv) Exclamations are sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by

“what” or “how” without inversion of subject and operator, exclamations are used

to express the degree of emotion, attitude of speakers towards things or phenomenon

[11] What nice clothes she wears!

(Quirk et al, 1972) [12]How tall a man he is!

(Quirk et al, 1972)

2.2.2 Pragmatic theories

2.2.2.1 The concept of pragmatics

According to George Yule (1996), Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader) This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context influences what is said This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at

an interpretation of the speaker‟s intended meaning It explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said

On the assumption of how close or distant the listener is, speakers determine how much needs to be said Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance

According to wikipedia.org, pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance knowledge about of the status of those involved, the inferred intent of how the meaning of a sentence changes depending on how and where it is expressed Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implication, talk in interaction and other

approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics Moreover, if there is a context to be brought into consideration, then you are engaged in pragmatics Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker or writer and interpreted by a listener or reader Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning

In oxford Advanced Learner‟s dictionary, pragmatics is known as the study of the way in which language is used to express what somebody really means in particular situations, especially when the actual words used may appear to mean something different

In short, Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms Thus, pragmatics is appealing because it is about how people make sense of each other linguistically, but it can be frustrating area of study because it requires us to make sense of people and what they have in mind

2.2.2.2 Speech Acts Theory

As we seen, successful communication takes place when speakers share knowledge, beliefs and assumptions and when they adhere to similar rules of cooperative interaction Language, however, is not only a vehicle to exchange thoughts and ideas, we often use utterances in order to perform social actions and functions If a teacher in a class room tells a student “I will have to inform your parents about your behavior”, it usually is not only a statement that imparts information, it may also have the power of a threatening act By making this statement, the teacher may also have performed a threatening act Similarly, when

one friend tells another “You look great today”; this utterance serves not only a

description but functions mainly as a “compliment” It is possible to say that since the publication of J.L Austin‟s “How to do things with words” (1962) speech act has attracted an enormous amount of attention, from linguists, philosophers, psychologists etc And they come to agree that speech act theory is theory of

language action that means “speech act theory has to do with the functions and uses

of language, so in the broadest sense we may say that speech acts are all acts we perform through speaking, all things we “do” when we speak” According to Austin

(1962), a speech act performed through an utterance includes three components

What is said, the utterance, can be called the locution What the speaker intends to

communicate to the addressee is the illocution The message that the addressee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says is the per locution If the communication

is successful, the illocution and the per locution are alike or nearly alike According

to Austin (1962) and Searle (1969, 1976) a speech act is defined as a function of the

language within which an utterance serves a purpose in any exchange of communication, and the action is conveyed by means of speech acts Therefore, we perform speech acts when we want to offer something, apologize for something, ask for something, invite someone, refuse or accept something and etc Austin (1962) was dissatisfied with the traditional concentration on referential meaning and the truth and falsehood of statements This led him to focus the attention from studying sentence-meaning to study the utterance–meaning (Leech, 1983, p 321) Therefore,

he developed the first approach to a new theory that has been famous as a Speech Act Theory The ideas are further developed by another philosopher and that is John Searle (1969) who both has added to them and has regrouped them more systematically into five broad types based on the speaker‟s intention : declaratives, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives Types of related acts in producing an utterance, as mentioned above, Austin (1962:321) has identified three distinctive levels of actions beyond the act of utterance itself (the action of saying something, what one does in saying it, and what one does by saying it and dubs these the “ locutionary”, the “ illocutionary” and “ perlocutionary” act, respectively

(i) Locutionary act

This is the basic act of utterance, producing a meaningful linguistic expression Suppose, for example, that a dancing girl utters the words, “The bar is closed so early, it is only 23.30”, reported by means of direct quotation She is thereby performing the locutionary act of saying that the bar (i.e the one she is tending) is closed at 23.30 (from the time of utterance), and what is said is reported

by indirect quotation

(ii) Illocutionary act

This is an act performed via the communicative force of an utterance In engaging in locutionary acts, we generally also perform illocutionary acts such

as informing, exclaiming, advising, undertaking…i.e utterances which have a certain (conventional) force For example, in saying “The bar is closed so early, it is only 23.30”, the dancing girl is performing the illocutionary act of expressing a pity

because she wants to stay much longer and perhaps also the act of urging the manager to open his bar longe

(iii) Perlocutionary act

This is what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring etc Unlike locutionary and illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts are performed only on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended In the above example, the dancing girl intends to

be performing the perlocutionary acts of persuading the manager to open the bar longer and of regretting for having to part everyone earlier than she expected.The theory of speech acts is developed mainly by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969, 1979) The central assumption in the theory of speech act is that the minimal unit

of communication is not a sentence or other expressions but rather language act In another term, human language can be viewed as actions Individuals perform things by saying different kinds of language acts such as refusals, requests, promises, and the like Austin (1962, p 67) studied speech acts from the following perspective: ―to consider from the ground up how many senses there are in which to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something and even by saying something we do something According to his view, any utterance is composed of the following acts: the elocutionary act (the actual words the speaker is saying), the illocutionary act (the intention of the speaker) and the elocutionary act (the effect of utterance on the hearer) For examples, the speech

act “exclaim about the weather” can be performed in the following ways:

[13] How wonderful it is!;What a wonderful day! It is so wonderful today!

Isn‟t it wonderful! It is such a wonderful day!

From the above things about general speech acts we want to study a small

scale that is Exclamative mood which is involved in the fifth kinds of speech act

Speech acts are generally defined as the actions that are involved when one says

something

According to “Lectures on Discourse Analysis” of Ho Ngoc Trung (2013), Austin and Searle respectively grouped speech acts into five classes as in the table below

Table 2.1 Speech Acts Classification by Austin and Searle

2.2.2.3 Exclamations and speech acts

According to Yule (1987, p.4), pragmatics is “ the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and users of those form” It involves speaker or writer‟s meaning In other words, it is also considered as the study that deals with the analysis of what people mean by utterances rather than what words and phrases might mean by themselves One of the central concepts of pragmatics is the observation that utterances perform actions, which are known as speech acts As Yule (1987) stated when making an utterance, the speaker performs an action that consists of three acts: Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts Exclaiming – An illocutionary act to express people attitude or feelings to entities

in different situations is a natural act showing our abundantly introvert sides and multi–leveled emotions in daily conversations This one is a speech act showing temporary emotion and contemporary feelings but not an act performed consciously at all Moreover, the demand of expressing emotion is really remarkable and the like is done so often everywhere and every time However, it does not mean that whenever we want to show our feeling, we use exclamations

We only exclaim when our feeling is existing and contemporary and importantly at

an extreme degree Usually, when the speaker‟s feelings are strong, this extreme emotion need to be express, and then exclaiming meets that demand If

“exclaiming” is simply showing emotion or attitude, people can express their emotion through declaratives or through the acts of remarking, commenting… The peculiarities of exclamations have much to do with their pragmatic roles as utterances which relate specifically to the speaker‟s participation in the act of communication An exclamation is “ speaker – oriented” When we exclaim, our feelings are extremely strong and sometimes we are under the feeling of “lost for words” because when we want to express our feelings, which leads to the case that

we are all thumbs and express what we feel inadequately we would like somebody

to know how we feel, but at the moment when we feel the urge to give vent to our feelings, we cannot express them adequately (“I don‟t know how to say what I feel”)

The appearance of the most influential collection of Austin‟s paper (1962) (How to do things with words) was very timely, coinciding as it did with a growing frustration within linguistics Whatever the explanation, it is a source of mild pride that „the father of Pragmatics‟ On the other hand, it is not wrong when we say that John Searle “saves” us from the potential anarchy of Austin‟s little book in speech acts, grouping them according to common functional characteristics such as: representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaratives In this subpart, it is expressives that is focused on particularly The illocutionary point of this class is to express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs specified in the propositional content A look at the conditions of expressives in Searler‟s speech acts (1976:12) is taken then Exclaiming, as other expessives meets the conditions that he proposed, so that they have their own conditions:

Propositional content condition: When exclaiming, the speaker needs to express her feelings to something This emotional state then is not a clause but still has the clausal function

Preparatory condition: Supposing that besides the ability of using words to form exclamations, the speaker is really under a strong stimulus

Sincerity condition: The speaker must have real emotions or feelings She, however, has or does not have intention and desire to say how she feels about what happened or is happening

Essential condition: The speaker can express her emotion

In summary, the conditions of exclamations have the following features: Firstly, they are emotionally triggered but they do not propotionalise their emotive content, they are directly emotive Secondly, they have propositional contents indicating high positions on degree or quantity scales These scalar features may

be explicit or inferable Finally, they express deviations from norms, not explicitly, but through a generalized implicature triggered by the emphatic stress Exclamatory sentences are used to show the following illoculationary acts such as anger, disappointment, surprise, sadness, regret, refusal, warn, happiness, support, request

and the like and the like As we seen, successful communication takes place when speakers share knowledge, beliefs and assumptions and when they adhere to similar rules of cooperative interaction Language, however is not only a vehicle to exchange thoughts and ideas, we often use utterances in order to perform social actions and functions If a teacher in a class room tells a student” I will have to inform your parents about your behavior” , it is not only a statement that imparts information, it may also have the power of a threating act By making this statement, the teacher may also have performed a threating act Similarly, when one

friend tells another “you look great today”; this utterance serves not only a

description but functions mainly as a “compliment”.It is possible to say that since

the publication of J.L Austin‟s “ How to do things with words”(1962) speech act

has attracted an enormous amount of attention, from linguists, philosophers, psychologists And they come to agree that speech act theory is theory of language

action that means “ speech act theory has to do with the functions and uses of

language, so in the broadest since we may say that speech acts are all acts we perform through speaking all things we do when we speak According to Austin

(1962), an utterance includes 3 types of speech act What is said, the utterance, can

be called the locution What the speaker intends to communicate to the addressee is the illocution The message that the addressee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says is the per locution If the communication is successful, the illocution and the per locution are alike or nearly alike.The exclamatory speech is a part of pragmatic subject It belongs to the classification of speech act that is an expressive one Exclamation is inevitably frequent in our society A universal view, however,

is that the consciousness of the use of exclamation is very much associated with personal character of the speaker as well as the context and situation in which it occurs Basically, in order for an exclamation to occur, the speaker must have something to feel or to want at least something to share with the hearer Although there is likely to be no exact evidence to predict what one really feels through exclamation, psychological, and pragmatic analysis may be helpful to do so For

example, [14] How beautiful! The basic function of this utterance is to indicate

and express a strong feeling or emotion of the speaker in expressing surprise,

it is the expression of speaker‟s feeling about the situation For instance, [15] What

a woman!; [16]Damn it! The expression of this utterance has a strong

connotation and a very sensitive meaning, the expression occurs when the

speaker‟s emotion is out of control such as annoyance, disgusted, stress, or a great anger The same kind of exclamatory case can be found in movies As we all know, movie is an audio-visual art In movie especially in Harry Potter movie, for instance, the speaker shows strong feeling or emotion, such as surprise, anger or joy

by uttering [17]“…blimey, that‟s one big women!…” the utterance shows the speaker‟s emotion about what the speaker saw The form of utterance [18]“…I love

magic!…” the intention of the speaker in this utterance is to express pleasure and

surprise In the utterance [19]“ piss off! ” the speaker has strong emotion, the

speaker is angry with the second speaker This utterance categorized as expressing annoyance In this thesis, the purpose of studying the pragmatic functions of exclamations is to detect speech acts that can be performed through exclamations

2.2.2.4 Language and culture

According to Kramsch (2003:3) language is the principle means whereby we conduct our social lives When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound

up with culture in multiple and complex ways Kramsch argued that words people utter express facts, ideas or events that are communicable Words also reflect their authors‟ attitudes and beliefs, their points of view, which are also those of others In both cases, language expresses cultural reality Language plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining what we call culture, including conventions, habits and interpretive practices of individuals and communities Through language we create and share with others identities, categories, attitudes, values and belief structures The study of how a particular culture uses language can reveal important aspects of sociality and behavior, including how people organize activities, socialize new members, build or resist authority, use literacy tools, worship, argue, and imagine Language is not only a rule-governed system with its own internal rules and logic (learned by every child in the community), but a system of tools for the constitution of social life and culture For anyone acquiring a new language and approaching a different culture, one of the first seemingly simple lessons to be learned are how to form an exclamation Culture has a great influence on the origin and development of language This is the reason why content of language is closely linked to culture Besides words and expressions, exclamations are considered a special language units because they reflect cultural characteristics of different countries Culture is embodied quite clearly in exclamations Each culture has its own identity and their different ways of using exclamations show their cultural

identity For the English people, since God is considered the highest and the most

important, their most commonly used interjections are Oh my God! or my God! However, Vietnamese people respect trời or giời the most This explains why the Vietnamese use such exclamations as [20]Trời ơi!, [21]Giời ơi!, [22]Trời Phật ơi

or [23]Trời! very often

In brief, language and culture always exist together and reinforce each other The relationship between them is so inextricable that we could not understand or appreciate the one without the knowledge of the others

2.3 Theoretical framework of the study

2.3.1 An overview of exclamations in English

According to David Crystal (1995), exclamations are sentences which show

that a person has been impressed or roused by something They often take the form

of a single word or short phrase - a minor sentence such as [24] Gosh!, [25]Oh!

[26]dear!, or [27]of all the nerve! But exclamations can have major sentence

status too, with a structure which differentiates them from statement, questions

and directives Their first element begins with what or how and is followed by a

subject and a verb

[28] What a lovely day it is! What a mess they have made!

[29] What a beautiful house you have!

It is such a nice house!

Your house is so nice!

Nice house!

How nice a house!

Isn‟t the house nice!

So nice a house!

(David Crystal, 1995)

All the above sentences are so-called exclamations because they convey strong feeling of speakers towards something, here, it is a new house Besides David Crystal‟s definition of exclamation, there are many different ones For instance,

Quirk et al (1972) define exclamations as sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by what or how, without inversion of subject and operator In

addition, they use the term exclamative to refer to a grammatical category For

example, a specific clause type

[30] What nice clothes she wears!

Andrew Radford (1997) defines an exclamative as a type of structure used to

exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance, etc and goes on to say that, in English syntax,

the term is restricted largely to clauses beginning with wh-exclamative words like

what or how The use of the word structure seems to indicate that he regards the

exclamative as a syntactic phenomenon, whereas, with Rosengren (1997) and others, argue that the exclamative is a pragmatic phenomenon

Following Bolinger (1989) who states that in the broadest sense, exclamations

are thus anything at the end of which one would put an exclamation mark This of course is circular, but it does give a basis for searching out a corpus of examples

Although there are many opinions about exclamations, One of the most important steps is to take all the definitions of terminologies concerning exclamations into a consideration Most of them are listed as follows:

Exclamations: They are sentences that express strong feelings (for example how you feel when you are happy, angry or surprise…) They begin with a capital letter and end with an exclamation mark (!)

Exclamatives: Radford (1997:506) has defined an exclamative as a “a type of sentence used to exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance etc.”

Expressive: In Searle‟s speech acts, they principally express social interactions with the hearer

In this study, the author claims that exclamations are considered as words like

interjections, structures or complete sentences which often begins with What as determiner in noun phrases or How as a degree word with adjectives or adverbs

They are used to express the speaker‟s feeling or attitude such as surprise, happiness, anger, pity and the like They also not only start with a capital letter just like all sentences start with a capital letter but also end with an exclamation mark (!)

2.3.2 An overview of exclamations in Vietnamese

In traditional grammar, exclamation is considered as a type of sentence This section will give an overview of syntactic and pragmatic features of Vietnamese exclamations described by serveral Vietnamese authors

2.3.2.1 Syntactic features of Vietnamese exclamations

According to “Câu cảm thán trong tiếng Việt” of Nguyễn Thị Hồng Ngọc, in terms of syntax, exclamations consist of some minor clauses and they are the ones formed by exclamatory expressions that function as a sentence with no syntactic features For this reason, exclamations are ungrammaticalized to separate subject or predicate in sentences

(i)Exclamations formed by using interjections or exclamatory idioms

Exclamations in Vietnamese have particular forms They are often used with interjections such as ôi, quá, thay, sao, chao ôi, ô hô, a ha, ái chà, ấy, âu etc or groups of interjections: ôi chao ôi, ôi cha mẹ ơi, ôi trời ơi, thương ơi, ôi dào, ôi thôi,

ái chà chà, ôi thôi thôi etc; pronouns expressing degree of feeling: biết bao nhiêu, biết bao, etc; and adverbs: quá, ghê, vô cùng, etc The interjections or exclamatory idioms are present together with residue and have experiential meaning Interjections and some idioms are used to form exclamation expressions but they do not participate in the structure of mood structure They function individually as part

of a complex sentence In other words, these interjections function individually as sentences or subordinates of sentences.This exclamations of these types are the words or interjections such as: ơi, ôi, ái, úi, úi chà, úi chà chà, ó, ủa and the like

[31] Ha, ha, ha! Ông Varne vui vẻ cười phá lên và ném tảng đá ra xa

(A.Belaeva, Trên vực thẳm) [32] Chà! Chà! Béo ơi là béo!

( Nguyễn Công Hoan, Đồng bào có ma) [33] Ôi chao ôi, cái ngày mẹ nó xuống ổ vui thật là vui, hơn cả cái ngày nó ở đồng bằng mới về!

(Nguyễn Quang Sáng, Con gà trống)

Special Vietnamese exclamations are phrases that have lexical meaning and idiomatic features (i.e the meaning hidden does not function directly) And the common expressions are “ới cha mẹ ơi”, “trời ơi”, “trời ơi là trời”, “trời đất ơi”,

“trời cao đất dày ơi”, “trời phật ơi”, “chúa ơi” or “đồ khỉ”, “chết”, “ấy chết”, “chết chưa”, “chết cha rồi”, and the like and the colloquial swears such as : “mẹ kiếp”,

“cái đồ khốn kiếp”, “ cái đồ chết tiệt”, “tiên sư nhà nó”, “tiên sư bố nó”, “ đồ ba que

xỏ lá”, “ đồ đểu”, “ đồ mất dạy”…

[34] Mẹ kiếp! Chư xưa nay có mua mũ bao giờ đâu mà tóc chả đỏ!

(Vũ Trọng Phụng, số đỏ) [35] Cha mẹ thói đời ăn ở bạc!

(Thương vợ, Trần Tế Xương)

(ii) Exclamations created by particles – thay, cho, thay cho, nhỉ

According to“Câu cảm thán trong tiếng Việt” of Nguyễn Thị Hồng Ngọc, in terms of syntax, Vietnamese exclamations are also formed with strongly emotional expressions All exclamation expressions have their own forms and they are independent of the remaining parts of a sentence (so we can name them exclamation expressions) Not all exclamation expressions function in the mood structure, but within the relation of mood structure, exclamation is categorized in terms of exclamatory factors Thus, we then pay much attention to the factors, which have an impact on the exclamation classifications The particles “thay, cho, thay cho” function in order to bring the exclamative modality to the sentence and they exist as special elements forming expressions of exclamation mood These factors appear right after verbs or adjectives but there is no additional function for that verb or adjective and they just make exclamations When using “thay, thay cho”, the sentences have the following features:

+ “Thay” is used more commonly in arts and “cho” is in daily conversations

+ “Thay / cho” stand right after verbs, adjectives to express exclamatory content

+ Sentences with “thay/cho” are formed according to the structure:Verb / Adjetive + thay / cho + Noun

It is hard to find out sentences that have “thay / cho” situated before verbs When these two factors are absent, the exclamations marked with the

word position in which verbs or adjectives standing before are words referring

to a mental phenomenon

( Nguyễn Du, Truyện Kiều)

(iii)Exclamations formed by adverbs

Adverbs function as extra factors to express exclamatory meaning for sentence Many adverbs are positioned at the end of a sentence and the most common ones like “lắm, quá thế, ghê, la thật, cực kỳ, dường nào, nhường nào, biết mấy”, … etc

[37] Làm quái gì một con chó mà lão có vẻ băn khoăn quá thế!

(Nam Cao, Lão Hạc )

(Nam Cao, Chí Phèo)

(iii) Some exclamatory questions in Vietnamese

There are special questions, not pure questions used to seek for information They are also different from rhetorical questions that don‟t need answer, because both speaker and hearer can understand what is being asked These questions forms are used as exclamative purpose Therefore, exclamation can be created from these special forms Sentence with surface structure that looks like a question but has no answer or can‟t be answered are so-called exclamatory question Vietnamese exclamatory questions are

formed by these ways: Biết + Wh–question

[39] Biết bao giờ mẹ lại về với con?

(Nam Cao, Từ ngày mẹ mất )

Exclamations used with Wh-question “đâu” or “nào đâu” which are put

at the beginning of the sentence: Ðâu + the core of sentence

[40] Ðâu tiếng làng xa vãn chợ chiều?

(Huy Cận, Tràng giang )

It is very difficult to realize the form of exclamations in Vietnamese because of vague signals However, it can‟t be denied that there is no much difference between a statement and an exclamation in Vietnamese

2.3.2.2 Pragmatic features of Vietnamese exclamations

According to “Câu cảm thán trong tiếng Việt” of Nguyễn Thị Hồng Ngọc, Vietnamese ones also prove to have various features in terms of pragmatics People

often express exclamations in a special and unexpected situations They can feel the world around them such as a social life, the relationships between people and all things Those create strong feeling for them It can be positive or negative

Based on the meaning, it is easy to divide the Vietnamese Exclamations into two large groups:

Group 1: Positive emotions such as pride, hope, praise, etc

Group 2: Negative sentimental emotions such as: resignation, disappointment, anger, fear, etc

In each of these large groups, based on the emotion field, they can be subdivided into smaller groups: Synonyms and hierarchies of emotional expressions from low to high based on levels of emotion, The increase of emotion is indicated

by the sensation For example,

[41] Chả nước mẹ gì cả!

(Vũ Trọng Phụng, số đỏ) [42] Con Ba Bớp lại chạy mẹ nó đâu mất rồi!

[43]Mẹ kiếp! Chứ xưa nay có mua mũ bao giờ đâu mà tóc chả đỏ!

(Vũ Trọng Phụng, số đỏ) [44] Anh là người sung sướng vì anh sớm biết theo cái hướng của anh, không cần thiên hạ, còn tôi, ngày ngày hai buổi đi về tôi có phải là tôi đâu, cái đời tôi thật

là khốn nạn quá!

(Nhất Linh, Giấc mộng từ Lâm)

After having researched the documents and research works relating to the field, in this thesis, Vietnamese exclamations are categorized into pragmatic features as follows

(i) Exclamations are as means of showing surprise

Exclamations are widely used to denote surprise in every language, and

Vietnamese is not an exception Such exclamations as ô kìa, ôi chao, ái dà are seem

to be used to demonstrate surprise In the following cited text, some of these expressions are applied effectively to show surprise in different situations:

[45]Ô! Cả con Mây cũng về kìa Aí dà! Cả con Én nữa! Sao nó béo đẹp thế…

( Phùng Phương Qúy, Ma rừng) [46] Ôi chao! Một con gà

( Nguyễn Quang Sáng, Con gà trống)

(ii) Exclamation expressing pity

Pity is a concept which Vietnamese writers have attempted to use in various expressions to convey However, exclaimations have become one of the most powerful tools to cover the idea of pity effectively Such common exclamations like

thương nhiều,ơi, dạ, ối giời ơi, tiếc quá, rất tiếc, ối trời cao đất dày ơi, hỡi…” are

widely used to denote this concept Let consider the following example:

[47] Thương anh nhiều, anh chiến sĩ của tôi ơi!

Điểm tựa trên cao, anh đứng giữa đỉnh đồi

(Lê Đức Thọ, Điểm tựa)

With the use of exclamation “anh chiến sĩ của tôi ơi!”, poet Lê Đức Thọ has

pleased his demanding readers by expressing how pity for his friend In poem, Exclamations also important to express people sadness or regret A series of exclamations in progressive sequences appear in the lines of poetry:

[48]Ta muốn thâu trong một cái hôn nhiều

Và non nước, và cây, và cỏ rạng,

Cho chếnh choáng mùi thơm, cho đã đầy ánh sáng

Cho no nê thanh sắc của thời tươi;

Hỡi xuân hồng, ta muốn cắn vào ngươi!

(Xuân Diệu, Vội vàng)

“ Ta muốn cắn vào ngươi!” is the expression of passion increasingly The author used exclamations to express regret All things in the world are not able to make the day become fun The author‟s feeling is very clear, the poet exclaimed in

both regret and sad feeling: Hỡi xuân hồng, ta muốn cắn vào ngươi!

(iii)Exclamations used to express a refusal

In Vietnamese, exclamations are also used to introduce refusals to raise their politeness In our culture, refusing to an offer has been regularly seen However, it

can be combined with such expression like chết nỗi, dạ, ấy, ơ, kìa, bẩm không ạ,

thôi to please listeners:

[49] Speaker 1: Ơ kìa! Làm sao mà không đi học?

In Vietnamese, exclamations are also can express a thank you It is clear in this following example

[50] Speaker 1: Ngủ sớm đi con, ngủ ngoan để mẹ còn làm việc, nếu con ngủ luôn bây giờ thì…

(v) Exclamations expressing doubts

Apart from the features that have been discussed above, expressing doubts is also another feature of Vietnamese exclamations While communicating,

exclamations like có lẽ, hay là, hừm, thật thế ư, thật không, lại chả giỏi… can be

employed to introduce doubts The below examples are clear demonstrations for the features

là đội sổ Đi bộ đội cũng thế binh nhất là đứng đầu đơn vị Hiểu chưa?

(Phùng Phương Qúy, Chàng Binh Nhất) [52] “ Có lẽ mẹ ốm thật rồi Hay là em ốm? Hay mẹ đã quên con rồi!” Bố nó thì nghe nói đã về ở hẳn với bà kia

(Võ Thị Hảo, Ngậm cười)

(vi) Exclamations extending concern, sympathy

Showing concern or sympathy is considered an important aspect of our emotional world The most effective way to show one„s sympathetic attitude is

using exclamations like lạy trời ơi, thôi thì, ôi dào, tội nghiệp quá, thương quá, and the like In the following example, exclamation ―lạy trời lạy đất” is employed to

show how sympathetic the character is towards his son„s situation:

[53] Đau đớn thay phận đàn bà,

Kiếp sinh ra thế biết là tại đâu!

( Nguyễn Du, Văn chiêu hồn)

[54] Biết thôi, thôi thế thì thôi mới là !

(Nguyễn Khuyến, Khóc Dương Khuê)

(vii) Exclamations expressing fears

Like people in other cultures in the world, when having fears, Vietnamese have tendency to use exclamations to exclaim their feelings Some exclamations

like thôi chết, trời ơi,ối làng nước ôi, cứu, … can be effective in this situation and

using them can help speakers to calm them down In addition to that, when an exclamation is expressed in the state of being frightened, speakers may have the purpose of informing others of their fears as in the following situation:

[55] Thôi chết ! hay là chuyển dạ? Trời ơi!

Ánh mắt thất thần vụt nhìn xuống dưới, rồi dáo dác nhìn lên, nhìn

ngang, như thể tìm một bóng người, một chỗ trú chân

(Đào Trung Hiếu, Bão ngầm, p10)

It is clear that This is an utterance in the famous story named Bão ngầm

written by Đào Trung Hiếu The character use the phrase “Thôi chết !” and “ trời

ơi!” to express fears

(viii) Exclaimations expressing a warn

[56] … Còn anh chưa lao ra, cấm thằng nào manh động rời khỏi chỗ nấp Nghiêm cấm nổ sung khi tao chưa có lệnh!

( Đào Trung Hiếu, Bão ngầm, p.16)

In this situation, the speaker want to express a warn by using exclamatory act

“ Nghiêm cấm nổ sung khi tao chưa có lệnh!”

(ix) Exclamations used as a way of looking for help

[57] Situation1: In the following situation, the younger sister is doing her homework and she finds this homework is hard She becomes happy when her older sister comes back home and exclaims: “A! Chi đã về rồi!” On one hand, she

is really excited to see her sister back and besides, what embedded in her excitement is her hope for the sister‟s help of doing homework

[58] Situation2: A schoolgirl finds a bug beside her foot and exclaims “ Eo ơi! Con bọ to quá!”

She tries to get attention from her friends and looks forward to receiving help When hearing this exclamation, all people know that she is afraid of worms and she expects someone to come nearer and take the worm away from her

(x) Exclamations expressing advice

Introducing advice may be the first pragmatic feature of Vietnamese exclamations discussed in this thesis When giving advice, speakers have tendency

to use words that can please listeners The Vietnamese people often use such

interjections like Ơ, ấy, chết nỗi, kìa, này, thôi, thôi nào, làm gì mà, to accompany

with their advice in order to place great value on the advice In this example,

[59] Em ơi! Buồn làm chi

Anh đưa em về sông Đuống

( Hoàng Cầm, Bên kia sông Đuống) [60]Mother: Ơ! Sao còn thức đến giờ này,thôi ngủ đi con nhé!

Daughter: Con học nốt đã

The mother really wants her daughter to go to sleep earilier, she gives her

daughter advice by exclaming “…thôi ngủ đi con nhé !”

(xi) Exclamations denoting happiness

Delight or joy is likely to be easily expressed by using Exclamations A

variety of Vietnamese exclamations like a, ơ, sướng quá, hoan hô, a ha have been

employed to demonstrate this common state of mind In the following cited text,

exclamation “Vui thật là vui!” has successfully conveyed the writer„s intention to

show out the delight of the character when having chance to try the food they like:

[61] Ôi, cái ngày mẹ nó xuống ổ, chao ôi, vui thật là vui!

( Nguyễn Quang Sáng, con gà trống, p.74)

(xii) Exclamations showing compliments

Also, it is common to see compliments expressed by such

exclamations as ô chao, chà, giỏi, tốt, thật là giỏi, tuyệt vời,… in Vietnamese

Remarkably, even an ordinary word can act as exclamations to show compliments:

[62]Cô y sĩ trẻ của bản gió đây hả? Ôi chao! Vừa xinh, vừa giỏi Em thật là tốt!Học xong biết về với dân bản…thật chả ai bằng đâu

(Phùng Phương Qúy, Ma rừng,p.166)

If someone does not have any clues of context, we hardly find out the real thought of the speaker “Ôi chao ôi! Bà chị hôm nay trẻ trung gớm!” functions as an

exclamation Though the speaker 1 wants to give a compliment by exclaiming for

the speaker 2 to understand it

(xiii) Exclamations expressing pain

This is the last pragmatic function of Vietnamese exclamations discussed in the study Like the language of English, exclamations are considered a powerful tool to convey pain in Vietnamese When feeling painful, Vietnamese people usually give out the typical exclamations and without these expressions, the

Vietnamese cannot communicate his pain Ái, úi, ôi, ái ui, and the like seem to be

the most effective expressions to convey pain The following example will support for that

[63] Ôi, sao cái lưng của mẹ nó lại đau thế này?

Generally speaking, Vietnamese exclamations are used to express various feelings and emotions of speakers It helps convey the emotive aspect from the speaker to the listener in a smooth manner However, in English exclamations, the Vietnamese ones are also accompanied with body language to play the expressive and emotive function in communication

on focus, thus there are no differences of sentence subtypes between English and Vietnamese, the detailed subtypes are complete or incomplete, major or non-major, simple, complex or compound (ranking of structure) and statements, questions, commands or exclamations (ranking of purpose) Then exclamations are studied in detail The chapter has reviewed various research works of various scholars both in English and Vietnamese Besides, the theoretical background has been discussed thoroughly in this chapter, from speech act theory, to exclamations theory, to the relationship of different concepts withexclamations The details of the theoretical background in this chapter would be helpful to the following chapters

Chapter 3

METHODOLOGY

In order to fulfill the aim of the thesis, error analysis, this chapter deals with the study of the thesis, the methodology To have an effective investigation, a flexible combination of serveral methods will be used which are descriptive method, contrastive analysis, error analysis as well as questionnaires This chapter starts with research-governing orientations, then research methods It focuses on the survey questionnaire All the data collected for the survey questionnaire will be sources for the next chapter

3.1 Research-governing orientations

3.1.1 Research approaches

With the purpose of finding out the similarities and differences of linguistic features of exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese, linguistic orientation is based on to provide expected research results Because of the frequency of occurrences of exclamation less than the narration, the author have to gather a large amount of exclamation in English with reference to Vietnamese To have an effective investigation, a flexible combination of serveral methods will be used

First of all, Descriptive method is to describe syntactic, pragmatic, cultural features of exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese

In addition, contrastive analysis is employed to find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives

Moreover, error analysis is used to find out the particular mistakes made by students at People‟s Public Security of Technology and Logistics when using exclamations in English

Finally, questionnaire is used to find out the mistakes made by Vietnamese students in using and translating English exclamations From that, it helps the research give several suggestions for teaching, learning as well as translating English exclamations better

3.1.2 Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives of the research, chapter four of this thesis would be conducted to find answer to the following questions

(i) What are the syntactic, pragmatic and cultural features of English exclamations?

(ii) What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese exclamations from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives?

(iii) What should be done to help teachers and learners of English at People‟s Police university of Technology and Logistics learn and translate English exclamations effectively?

3.1.3 Research setting

The study is conducted in the educational environment with the aims at helping language learners master English and Vietnamese Exclamations from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perfectives The materials related to the topic are collected from research works, course books, dictionaries, survey questionnaire and websites Then the most suitable ones are chosen for the theoretical background of the study

The data setting is the most important step in any research This procedure consists of three main stages Firstly, the paper is carried out by 173 examples of English exclamations with reference to Vietnamese collected by the writer from different English and Vietnamese books, research works and internet sources in order to make the corpus of this thesis Secondly, the collection of grammatical books and related literature were done to hold up the Chapter II Books on grammar, syntactic, pragmatic, and stylistic means and culture as well as language are used for the need to set the theoretical basic for this thesis to be carried out Lastly, survey questionnaire is used to find out and collect mistakes made by Vietnamese students in using English exclamations so as to investigating some suggestions for teaching, learning and translating English exclamations at People‟s Public Security of Technology and Logistics was pointed out Accordingly, the data are likely to provide a detailed description of how exclamations are used in different contexts

3.1.4 Principles for data collection and data analysis

This study is conducted on the exclamations in English with reference to Vietnamese The criteria for data collection and data analysis are described thoroughly regarding the objectives of the research In the study, English and Vietnamese exclamations will be investigated from syntactic, pragmatic and cultural perspectives