Politeness strategies in sympathy expressions in english with reference to vietnamese equivalents

THESIS Field: English Language POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN SYMPATHY EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ BÀY TỎ SỰ CẢM THÔNG TRONG TIẾNG A

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

Field: English Language

POLITENESS STRATEGIES

IN SYMPATHY EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH WITH

REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ BÀY TỎ SỰ CẢM THÔNG TRONG TIẾNG ANH LIÊN HỆ VỚI TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

LE THI LAN ANH

Hanoi, 2018

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

POLITENESS STRATEGIES

IN SYMPATHY EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH WITH

REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ BÀY TỎ SỰ CẢM THÔNG TRONG TIẾNG ANH LIÊN HỆ VỚI TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

LE THI LAN ANH

Field: English Language Code: 8220201

Hanoi, 2018

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

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

- “Politeness Strategies in Sympathy Expressions in English with Reference to Vietnamese Equivalents - Nghiên cứu chiến lược lịch sự bày tỏ sự cảm thông trong tiếng Anh liên hệ với tương đương trong tiếng Việt” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2018

Le Thi Lan Anh

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Ph.D Pham Thi Tuyet Huong Date:

I wish to express my sincere thanks to all teachers of Hanoi Open University, with whom I have taken courses, or come into contact during this time I am especially appreciative of the support and the constructive comments on the thesis‟s proposal I received from them

I would like to express my warmest thanks and enormous gratitude to the participants who participated in my surveys to help me to have data collection to fulfill my paper

To my family and friends, I am really grateful of their unshakable love and endless support Had it not been for their launching pad, I could never have had enough courage and energy to complete this study

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the politeness strategies employed by native English speakers and Vietnamese speakers to express sympathy It seeks what politeness strategies English and Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy, and then how Vietnamese speakers should apply these politeness strategies in their daily communication The data was analyzed using a Discourse Completion Test and relying on the models proposed by some pragmatists, such as Austin (1962), Levison (1983), Searle (1990) about the speech acts, politeness, the issues of implicature and politeness in expressing sympathy The findings of the study indicates that English speakers express their sympathy directly while the Vietnamese prefer using roundabout and indirect expressions of sympathy They use a variety of external modifications Furthermore, English speakers use a wide range of internal modifications like the interrogatives, modals, intensifiers, subjectizers, downtoners and commitment upgraders to release discomfort of the hearers On the other hand, Vietnamese speakers use a lot of external modifacations with explanation, advice and promise to soothe the hearers On the basis of the findings, certain implications for teaching and learning English language have been proposed, limitations have been pointed out and the further research has been suggested

LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES

Figure 1: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers 39

Figure 2: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by 40

English speakers 40

Figure 3: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions chosen by English speakers 42

Figure 4: The realization of communicative purposes used by English speakers to express sympathy 43

Figure 5: Sympathy strategies by Vietnamese speakers 44

Figure 6: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by Vietnamese speakers 45

Figure 7: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions used by Vietnamese speakers 47

Figure 8: The realization of communicative purposes used by Vietnamese speakers to express sympathy 48

Figure 9: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers and Vietnamese subjects 50

Figure 10: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between the two nations 52

Figure 11: Summary of the similarities and differences of clause types of sympathy expressions in English and Vietnamese speakers 54

Figure 12: The realization of communicative purposes used to express sympathy 55

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts 12

Table 2: The External Modifications made by Blum-Kulka et al (1987) 34

Table 3: Sympathy strategies by the English speakers 38

Table 4: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by English speakers 39

Table 5: Summary of clause types of sympathy expressions chosen by English speakers 41

Table 6: The realization of communicative purposes used by English speakers to express sympathy 42

Table 7: Sympathy strategies by Vietnamese speakers 44 Table 8: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications by

Table 13: Summary of the similarities and differences of clause types of sympathy

expressions in English and Vietnamese speakers 53

Table 14: The realization of communicative purposes used to express sympathy 54

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS D: distance

DCT: Discourse Completion Task

FSAS: Face-saving acts

FTA: face-threatening act

MPQ: Meta-pragmatic Questionnaire

P: power

R: ranking

LIST OF APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE A 65

APPENDIX B Discourse Completion Task B 69

APPENDIX C METAPRAGMATIC QUESTIONNAIRE C 73

APPENDIX D Discourse Completion Task D 77

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv

ABSTRACT v

LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

LIST OF APPENDIXES ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Methods of the study 3

1.5 Design of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Previous Studies 5

2.2 Some Concepts for the Study 6

2.3 Speech Act 7

2.4 Politeness 10

2.4.1 Theory of Politeness 10

2.4.2 Social Factors Affecting Politeness 11

2.5 Directness and Indirectness 12

2.5.1 Direct Speech Acts 12

2.5.2 Indirect Speech Acts 13

2.6 Co-operative Principles 14

2.7 The Issues of Implicature 18

2.8 Speech Act of Comfort 21

2.9 Politeness in Expressing Sympathy 22

2.10 Summary of the Chapter 26

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 27

3.1 The Research Questions 27

3.2 Issues in Data Collection 27

3.2.1 Reasons for the Choice of Using the DCT 27

3.2.2 The DCT in Speech Act Studies 28

3.3 Data Collection Instruments 29

3.3.1 Variables 29

3.3.2 The Content of the Questionnaires 30

3.4 Data Collection Procedure 32

3.5 The Subjects 33

3.6 Analytical Framework 33

3.7 External modifications 34

3.8 Summary of the chapter 37

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 38

4.1 Politeness strategies are preferably used by English speakers in expressing sympathy in the certain contexts 38

4.1.1 The Choices of Strategies by English speakers 38

4.1.2 The Choice of External Modification by English speakers 39

4.1.3 The Internal Modification by English speakers 40

4.1.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions by English speakers 42

4.2 Politeness strategies are preferably used by Vietnamese speakers in expressing sympathy in the certain contexts 43

4.2.1 The Choices of Strategies by Vietnamese speakers 43

4.2.2 The Choice of External Modification by Vietnamese speakers 44

4.2.3 The Internal Modification by Vietnamese Speakers 46

4.2.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions by Vietnamese Speakers 47

4.3 The similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese in expressing sympathy 49

4.3.1 The Choices of Strategies 49

4.3.2 The Choice of External Modification 50

4.3.3 The Internal Modification 52

4.3.4 The Realization of Sympathy Expressions 54

4.4 Implications 57

4.5 Summary of the Chapter 58

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 60

5.1 Summary of Findings 60

5.2 Concluding Remarks 60

5.3 Recommendation for Further Study 61

REFERENCES 62

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the study

Cross-culture communication describes the ability to form, foster and improve relationship with others It is based on the knowledge of many factors, such as the cultural values, perceptions, manners, social structures, decision-making practices and the understanding of how members of various communities communicate both verbally and non-verbally, in person, in writing or in any other modes of communications

However, people often fail to achieve the communicative goals due to misunderstanding people from other cultures because people from different cultures encode and decode messages differently, increasing the chances of miscommunication In other words, when miscommunication occurs, it means that the speaker fails to get the speaker‟s intended meaning from the utterance Therefore, researchers need to probe into specific cultures to exploit concrete speech acts to identify the different patterns and discourse strategies

With its importance, Cross-culture Communication has been the topic of a large number of Master Dissertations A number of aspects of Cross-culture Communication have been researched to be figured out like greetings, requesting, prohibiting, thanking or apologizing Research by Cenoz & Valencia (1996) Cross-Cultural communication and inter-language pragmatics: American

vs European Requests; Trosborg (1987) Apology strategies in native & native; Liao & Bresnahan (2006) A Contrastive pragmatics study on American English and Mandarin refusal strategies have pointed out some difficulties in acquiring a speech community‟s rules for appropriate language use like stated in Tam (1998) Requests by Australian Native Speakers of English and Vietnamese Learners of English; Phuong (2009) A Cross-Culture Study on Apology and responding to Apologies in English and Vietnamese All these dissertations have indicated similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of linguistic elements However, one kind of emotion that is not easy

non-to express is expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese and it has not been

realization of the speech-act of sympathy made by Vietnamese speakers and native English speakers to fulfill the gap in this area

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

AIMS OF THE STUDY

The aim of the study is to investigate major similarities and differences in expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese, particularly the communicative strategies used to express the sympathetic emotion It aims at providing a better insight into cross-culture similarities and differences between the two languages and cultures to help language users avoid communication breakdown

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

❖ Providing a general picture of the theory of speech acts and politeness

❖ Comparing and contrasting the communicative strategies used by Vietnamese and English when they want to show their sympathy in verbal communication

to find out major similarities and differences in expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese in terms of linguistics in contexts studied

❖ Contributing to raise cross-culture awareness among users of English and Vietnamese languages

3 What are the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese

in expressing sympathy in terms of linguistics in contexts studied?

The researcher needs to probe into specific contexts for the exploitation of concrete speech acts and try to identify different patterns and discourse strategies

1.3 Scope of the study

The study is limited to the data obtained from the survey questionnaire on ways

of expressing sympathy in English and Vietnamese The answers from informants in the survey questionnaire and direct interviews are used as linguistic inputs Due to the limited time and the scope of the Thesis, only 55 English speakers and 60 Vietnamese were chosen for data analysis The study is also restrained to verbal aspects of the act of expressing sympathy only No matter how important non-verbal aspects such as paralanguage and extra-language are, they are excluded within the study Only Vietnamese Northern dialect and English native speakers are chosen for contrastive analysis By English native speakers, the author means those who speak English as their mother-tongue The study just focuses on social relationship and ignores the kinship between the informants (Speakers) and the communicative partners (Hearers) as it is pre-supposed that in family relationship, sympathy is seemed to be expressed more directly and frequently The informants were asked to express their sympathy to a certain person only, not a thing or an object

1.4 Methods of the study

The survey is carried out with the following tools

(i) Relevant publication

(ii) Survey questionnaires

(iii) Statistics, description and analysis of the collected data

(iv) Consultation with the supervisor

(v) Interview colleagues, friends and graduates

(vi) Personal observation

These methods have been used to research speech acts, choices of linguistic forms or the choice of polite strategies in interaction to highlight some similarities and differences of expressing sympathy in terms of linguistics between English speakers and Vietnamese speakers in certain contexts

1.5 Design of the study

The study consists of five chapters, references and appendixes

Chapter 1: Introduction - Rationale, aims of the study, methodology and the outline are addressed in this chapter

Chapter 2: Literature Review The chapter focuses on the theoretical issues related to the topic of the study To be begin with, it presents the issues of speech acts and the speech act of comfort including the theory of politeness After that, the notions of directness and indirectness in sympathy, the matters of the conversational maxims and the cooperative principles are pointed out

Chapter 3: Methodology of the Research The research questions, the design, research methods including the selection of subjects, data collection instruments, the procedure of the data collection and analytical framework of the study are dealt with in this part

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Discussion This section is about some findings on the strategy and the choice of external and internal; modifications and sympathy expressions in relation to the variables of power, social distance and ranking of seriousness in the studying contexts

Chapter 5: Conclusion In this part the author aims at reviewing the research findings and suggests some recommendations for Vietnamese users of English and further studies

References and appendixes come at the end of the study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, an overview of the theoretical background of the research is indicated It highlights the notions of speech act theory, classifications of speech acts, some major issues of politeness in the performance of speech acts in general Besides, this chapter also deals with the issues of directness and indirectness, the cooperative principle, the speech act of comfort Then the conversational maxims and the issues of implicature are also analyzed

2.1 Previous Studies

The study of speech acts from a linguistic perspective, comparing either the linguistic realization of speech acts in different languages or the speech acts produced by native speakers and second language learners has been conducted by both Vietnamese and foreign linguists Research by Trosborg (1987) Apology strategies in native/non-native; Liao & Bresnahan (1996) A contrastive pragmatics study on American English and Madarin refusal strategies has revealed some difficulties in acquiring a speech community‟s rules for appropriate language use

The studies of speech acts, face-threatening acts as requests, advice, refusals, apology like in Tam (1998) Requests by Australian native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English; Phuong (1999) A cross-cultural study on advertising in English and Vietnamese have also pointed out similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of linguistic elements

Furthermore, Vang‟s (1990) study on requests raises concerns in cross-cultural issues about requests The research indicates that there are potential differences

in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests between Vietnamese subjects and the Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese learners of English

In addition, in a study on thanking, Tam (1990) pointed out a diversity of differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers One of the

English, Vietnamese speakers apply their native norms in speaking English, and they do not express their thank when native speakers expect it, thus they are considered to be impolite

These studies have provided some significant insights into both the difficulties of Vietnamese learners of English as well as where Vietnamese learners have fewer difficulties

However, a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in English and Vietnamese has not been thoroughly researched Therefore, the writer aims

at comparing the realization of the speech-act of sympathy by Vietnamese native speakers and English native speakers to fulfill the gap of research in this area

2.2 Some Concepts for the Study

Language was born to communicate, so it is closely linked to the culture in which

it exists and serves Culture definitely is the background for language to develop, and in return, language operates to serve culture In fact, they are really inter-related and inter-dependent Through language, speakers expose their culture, and with knowledge of the cultural background, hearers may realize their partner‟s culture in spite of the fact that individuals differ in the way they use

It is the fact that there is no clear cut between cultures, which often causes difficulties for foreigners in communication with people from different cultures Therefore, it is very necessary for cross-cultural communicators to be aware of what the pragmatics is and what the differences between their cultures are in order to avoid culture shock and to ensure successful communication

According to Levinson, S C (1983:21), “pragmatics is the study of the relationship between language and context that are basic to an account of language understanding” Pragmatics, on the whole, investigates the way in which language is appropriate to the context in which it occurs Therefore, pragmatics goes beyond the meanings implied in individual words and word order

As for Richards (1992:284), pragmatics focuses on the three main aspects:

- How the interpretation and use of utterances depend on knowledge of the real

world

- How the speakers use and understand speech acts

- How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speakers and the hearers

Yule (1986:87) defines cross-cultural pragmatics as the study of differences in expectations based on cultural schemata is part of a broad area of investigation generally

2.3 Speech Act

The theory of speech act has been so far developed by many pragmatists as Austin (1962), Levinson (1983), Hymes (1964), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975) They all define that speech act is a unit of speaking and each unit performs certain functions in interaction such as greetings, congratulations, invitations, complaints, apology, prohibitions, etc Speech Act theory began with the work

“How to do things with words” Austin (1962) claims that we do not use language just to make utterances but to perform actions, which led him to a theory of what he called illocutionary act

The speech act theory is stated by the other philosophers, like John, R.S (1969), Brown, P & Levinson, S (1987) and Yule, G (1996) that language is a part of a theory of action, which means that when saying something, the speaker also wants to do something For example, if a person says: “I‟ll give you a hand when you are in need.”, both the addresser and the addressee understand that the utterance not only conveys the information but is also interpreted as a promise Sharing the same view, Nunan (1993) points out that when using language, we not only want to make propositional statements about objects, entities, state of affairs but we fulfill other functions as suggesting, requesting, denying, introducing or apologizing For instance, if someone says: “I think you should turn down the radio The baby is sleeping.” This is an act of complaining, or “I regret to inform you that you were dismissed.” means an act of expressing

When uttering a sentence, the speaker does not only characteristically perform several acts but also bring about certain effects on the hearer According to Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), a speech act always consists of three related acts: Locutionary act, Illocutionary act and Perlocutionary act First, the speaker‟s locutionary act is simply the act that we perform in saying something

or producing a meaningful linguistic expression In Searle‟s view, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by expressing his/her intention to get someone to do something, to assert something… in a way that the listener can realize the intention For example if one says “It‟s a pity that he was rejected from Yule University”, which is the act of expressing sympathy The Perlocutionary acts are the effects of illocutionary act The addressee understands the intended meaning

of the addresser and performs the act that the addresser wants him to do The intended meaning is usually disguised in the form of structures, the literal meaning if which does not directly relate to the intended meaning

Of these three dimensions of an utterance, the illocutionary act is the only act that puts the communicative force into the utterance That is why illocutionary act carrying the illocutionary force is the most important and the most discussed Further, Searle (1990) divided illocutionary acts into five major categories namely Directives, Commissives, Representatives, Expressives, and Declaratives

(1) Directives: The addresser tries to make the addressee do something with

words like ask, request, dare, invite, insist, beg… This directive function may be

realized by a wide range of forms like imperative statements, questions or a statement whose illocutionary force is that of a directive For instance, if someone says “I am starving”, it acts as a request to have something to eat

(2) Commissives: The addresser commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course

of action with verbs like pledge, swear, undertake, guarantee… Like directives,

commissives may vary in strength They may be very strong and highly hedged

in either positive or negative directions For example, one may say “Don’t worry! I’ll lend it to you tomorrow” Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the

appropriate forms used for commissive vary according to social relationship between participants in a speech event

(3) Representatives: The addresser asserts a proposition to be true, using such

verbs as “affirm, report, conclude, assert, admit…”

(4) Expressives: Expressives are speech acts that express an inner state like feelings or attitudes to some prior action or state of affairs These can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes or dislikes, etc With an expressive, the

addresser makes the words match the world (feeling) For instance, “What a nice day!”

(5) Declaratives are speech acts that make the world change via utterances By using a declarative, the addressee wants to make both the world match the words

and the words match the world For example, when the host says “I declare the meeting open”, it means it is time to start to make speeches

As clearly indicated, expressing sympathy is of expressive types of illocutionary act when people offer sympathy They want to share others their feelings, especially disappointment and sadness In Oxford student‟s dictionary of current English (1995), sympathy is defined as “the ability of sharing the feelings (troubles, pain) of others, feeling of pity or sorrow for somebody” For instance, when someone is shocked, disappointed and full of grief, one might say:

❖ What awful news! I am sorry

❖ I‟m sorry to hear such bad news

❖ I‟m terribly sorry to hear that

❖ I really don‟t know what to say I can‟t believe it I‟m very sorry

❖ If there‟s anything I can do, just let me know

❖ I‟m sorry Is there anything that I can do to help?

❖ Please accept my sincerest condolences/sympathies

Furthermore, Yule (1996) also defined politeness in an interaction as “the means employed to show awareness of another person‟s face In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in situation of social distance or closeness.”

Goffman (1967:65) defined face as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during particular contact Face is an image of self-delineated in terms of approved social attributes – albeit, an image that others may share as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or religion by making a good showing for himself.” Within politeness theory, face is best understood as every individual‟s feeling of self-worth or self-image; this image can be damaged, maintained or enhanced through interaction with others

In fact, politeness norms vary from culture to culture though there exist many common principles of politeness and what is polite in this culture may be judged

as impolite in another culture For example, in Vietnamese daily conversations,

we can ask others “How old are you?” or “Have you tied the knot?” to express our care for others However, they are considered impolite or curious in other cultures

2.4.2 Social Factors Affecting Politeness

When we communicate, the expressions in given contexts will be influenced by various factors

Crystal (1992) states that language has a clear link to the following identities:

- Physical identity: sex, age, physical type and condition

- Psychological identity: personality and talent

- Social identity: class, role, status and distance

- Geographical identity: accents, dialects and linguistic areas

- Ethnic and national identity: ethnicity and nationalism

- Contextual identity: settings, participants and activities

The most important factor that affects the Vietnamese‟s choice of politeness strategy is psychological identity

Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that there are three independent variables that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate, polite expressions in performing aface threatening act (FTA)under a certain circumstance, outlined as follows:

- The social distance of the Speaker and the Hearer

- The relative power of the Speaker and the Hearer

- The absolute ranking of imposition in the particular culture

The social distance in Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) terminology is a symmetricsocial dimension of similarity/difference within which the Speaker and the Hearer stand for the purposes of this act In effect, it is the degree of familiarity and solidarity the Speaker and the Hearer share as represented through in-group or out-group membership

The relative power is defined by Brown & Levinson (1987) as an asymmetric social dimension of relative power or more simply it is the power of the Speaker

with respect to the Hearer In reality, the power is the degree to which the Speaker can impose his/her own plans and his own self-evaluation (face) at the expense of the Hearer‟s plans and self-evaluation Generally, there are two sources of power, either of which may be authorized or unauthorized In most cases, an individual power is drawn from both these sources, which may overlap

2.5 Directness and Indirectness

Pragmatic literature classifies speech act according to the degree of their explicitness or directness Speech acts could be replaced on a continuum ranging from the most direct down to the least direct act which may be confused with a normal constative utterance It is crucial that speakers are aware of this continuum because the degree of explicitness that is opposite for a given social context is vital to observe Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause undesirable effects

2.5.1 Direct Speech Acts

The degree of politeness is accompanied with directness and indirectness Direct speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its felicity conditions (especially the structural ones) There are three basic types of direct speech acts, and they correspond to three special syntactic types that seem to occur in most of the world‟s languages

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts

Speech act Sentence type Function Examples

Assertion Declarative To convey information

either true or false

He has got 3 gold medals

Question Interrogative To elicit information Has he won the

game?

Orders and

requests Imperative

To cause others to behave in certain ways Keep quiet!

Although assertions, questions and orders are fairly universal, and most of the world‟s languages have specific syntactic constructions that distinguish them, other speech acts do not have a syntactic construction that is specific to them For instance: “If you do not try hard, you will fail the exams.”

This is simply a cause and effect relationship between physical events

Or to express a threatening, one might say: “If you keep coming to work late, you will be dismissed”, which is specific to the speech act of threatening

A consideration of the syntactic means available for expressing the various speech acts leads us to recognize that even for the three basic speech acts laid out

in the table above, speakers may choose means of expressions other than the basic type associated with the speech act is question To some extent, this just reflects the existence of a diversity of means expression, but a more pervasive reason is that speakers may use indirect rather than direct speech acts

2.5.2 Indirect Speech Acts

It is a common knowledge that directness, indirectness and politeness are closely interlinked and associated with different speech acts

Blum-Lulka (1987:131) believes: “Politeness is defined as the interactional balance achieved between two needs: the need to pragmatic clarity and the need

to avoid coerciveness This balance is achieved in the case of conventional indirectness, which indeed received the highest ratings for politeness''

It might be the case that when giving a face-threatening act, indirectness degree

is measured as an indicator of reducing or minimizing the threat, which is equal

to

politeness Direct strategies, in the favor of pragmatics clarity or coerciveness, can be considered to be impolite because they indicate a lack of

non-concern with face and non-conventional indirect strategies can be considered as impolite because they indicate a lack of concern for pragmatic clarity

Leech (1983) suggests that given the same prepositional content, it is possible “to increase the degree of politeness by using a more and more indirect kind of illocution'' because indirect illocution is regarded as more polite by increasing the degree of option

If a teacher says to her student:

Could you say again your example, please?

She uses her utterance in a polite and indirect way By doing so the teacher (1) encourages her/his student to be self- confident enough to say the example again, (2) does not use the power of teacher on the student, and (3) gives a soft and beautiful request but does not impose the reaction of the student by using words like ''Could'',''Please''

Blum-Kulka also thinks ''Indirectness does not necessarily imply politeness that

is the reason why the most indirect strategies cannot obviously be regarded as the most polite ones '' The hearer's face can be threatened by the utterance:

“Khiếp ở đâu ra mà bẩn như ma bùn thế ?”

(Few, you look as if you were covered in mud)

And of course it is not as polite as:“Rửa mặt đi em.”(Wash your face)

2.6 Co-operative Principles

The success of conversation depends upon speakers‟ approaches to the interaction The way in which people try to make conversations work is called the Cooperative Principle

In order to examine the Cooperative Principles, we will first outline briefly the basic concepts behind the Cooperative Principles and Maxims Previous work by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) had largely been concerned with the relationship between direct and indirect speech acts, and the concept that you could „do‟ things with words: language is as much of an action as opening a door or closing

a window These proponents of the theory had moved away from the truth values

approach, and the reliance on sense and reference as the source of meaning (e.g Frege & Russell) There was also a growing interest in the meaning of utterances rather than just sentences It had been noted that at the discourse level there is no one-to-one mapping between linguistic form and utterance meaning A particular intended meaning (which could be produced via a direct speech act) can in fact

be conveyed by any number of indirect speech acts

Grice (1975) is concerned with this distinction between saying and meaning How do speakers know how to generate these implicit meanings, and how can they assume that their addressees will reliably understand their intended meaning? His aim is to discover the mechanism behind this process

One of the examples given by Grice implicating the intended meaning is as follows:

A: Is there any sugar left?

B: I’m going to the supermarket in five minutes

In the above example, a competent speaker of English would have little trouble inferring the meaning that there is no more sugar at the moment, but that some will be bought from the supermarket shortly

In daily life a person unconsciously communicates with others in many ways such as language, gestures and expressions In communication, he/she is expected to give or share information with others In order to make a conversation understood by the speaker and the hearer, there must be the general principle of language use, which is called the cooperative principle (Renkema, 1993) The principle states that the speaker gives contribution in conversation in which the speaker is engaged This cooperative principle contains four categories, which are formulated as basic rules or maxims „Maxim is a set of norms which language users adhere to in order to uphold the effectiveness and efficiency of communication‟ (Hatim and Mason, 1990) Those four maxims are maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relevance and maxim of manner The norms and examples of Grice‟s (1975) maxims are indicated in detail as follows

(a) Maxim of quantity demands the speaker‟s contribution informative as is

required and no more informative than is required Below are the examples of an utterance that obey the maxim of quantity and one that violates the maxim!

Example of obeying:

A Where are you going?

B I’m going to the post office

In the example, B gives comments to A‟s statement without adding other

information

Example of disobeying / violation:

A Are you going to work tomorrow?

B I am on jury duty, but I’ll have to go to the doctor in the evening I have asked the manager for permission

In this example, B‟s reply violates maxim of quantity because B does not give information as required by A, i.e yes or no Instead, B gives more information which is not required or expected at all

(b) Maxim of quality requires the speaker not to say what is believed to be false

and for which the speaker lacks adequate evidence Below are the examples of the utterance that obeys the maxim of quality and that one violates the maxim! Here is the example of obeying If A asks:

A: Why did you come late last night?

B: The car was broken down

In the example, B gives the truth that his car was broken down so that he came late

Example of disobeying / violation:

A: “The Teheran’s in Turkey, isn’t teacher?”

B: “And London’s in America I suppose.”

In the example, B‟s reply is supposed to suggest that A is incorrect and B

violates the maxim of quality

(c) Maxim of relevance required the speaker to be relevant Below are the

examples of utterance that obeys the maxim of relevance and that one violates the maxim

Example of obeying:

A: “Where is my box of chocolates?”

B: “It is in your room.”

In the example, B‟s reply relates to the question, not talking about something else Example of disobeying / violation

A: “Where’s my box of chocolates?”

B: “I don’t know mine either.”

In the example B‟s answer is not relevant to A‟s question B says something else which is not about A‟s problem at all

(d) Maxim of Manner requires the speaker to avoid obscurity of expression

and ambiguity Maxim of manner demands the speaker to be brief and orderly Below are the examples of utterance that obey the maxim of manner and that one violates the maxim

Example of obeying:

A: Where was Alfred yesterday?

B: Alfred went to the store and bought some whiskey

In the example, B‟s answer obeys the manner maxim: be orderly because she gives a clear explanation where A was

Example of disobeying / violation:

A: Why was he arrested?

B: He stole the money from the bank

In the example, B‟s statement is ambiguous It can be interpreted that B didn‟t steal the money which is stored in the bank He had gone the bank first and he stole the money in another place Another interpretation is that he stole the money stored in the bank He got the money by robbing the bank

Levinson (1983) stated that Grice‟s maxims above specify what participants have

to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, cooperative way: The participant should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly while providing

These maxims specify what participants have to do in order to communicate in a cooperative way: they should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly while providing sufficient information The immediate objection is raised here that no one in the real life situation follows these rules and principles in speaking all the time Grice gives a proper answer to this doubt that one normally uses these guidelines in letter but in the verbal interaction, the speaker uses these principles and surprisingly, the hearer also can get the point/hint of the utterances

2.7 The Issues of Implicature

“Implicature” denotes either (i) the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else, or (ii) the object of that act Implicatures can be part of sentence meaning or dependent on conversational context, and can be conventional (in different senses) or unconventional Figures of speech such as metaphor, irony, and understatement provide familiar examples Implicature serves a variety of goals beyond communication: maintaining good social relations, misleading without lying, style, and verbal efficiency Knowledge of common forms of implicature is acquired along with one's native language at an early age Conversational implicatures have become one of the principal subjects

of pragmatics An important conceptual and methodological issue in semantics is how to distinguish senses and entailments from conventional and conversational implicatures According to Grice, there are two types of implicature as listed below

(a) Conventional Implicature:

Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its maxims A statement always carries its conventional implicature Consider the following statement: “Joe is poor but happy” This sentence implies poverty and happiness are not compatible but in spite of this Joe is still happy The conventional interpretation of the word „but‟ will always create the implicature of

a sense of contrast So, “Joe is poor but happy” will always necessarily imply “Surprisingly Joe is happy in spite of being poor” Conventional implicatures are generated by the meaning of certain particles like „but‟ or

„therefore.‟ Consider Grice‟s (1975) examples to see the difference among (1), (2) and (3):

1 He is an Englishman; therefore, he is brave

2 He is an Englishman, and he is brave

3 His being brave follows from his being English

According to Grice, a speaker has said the same with (1) as with (2) The difference is that with (1) he implicates (3) This is a conventional implicature It

is the conventional meaning of „therefore,‟ and not maxims of cooperation, that carry us beyond what is said

Grice's concept of conventional implicatures is the most controversial part of his theory of conversation for many followers, for several reasons According to some, its application to particular examples runs against common intuitions By using the word „therefore‟ the speaker does not mean that there is a causal connection between being brave and being English? Doesn‟t he imply that one's being brave followsfrom one's being English.Moreover, the category

of conventional implicatures blurs the distinction between what is said, usually conceived as determined by the semantic conventions of language, and what is implicated, usually thought of as a matter of inference as to a speaker's intentions

in saying what he or she does Conventional sentence meaning contributes crucially to what is said, which is considered essentially different from implicatures; but now we have the result that some elements of conventional meaning do not contribute to what is said but to implicatures (albeit conventional) Finally, it places the study of the conventional meaning of some expressions within the realm of pragmatics (study of implicatures), rather than semantics, usually conceived as the home of conventional meaning

Among conversational implicatures, Grice distinguishedbetween „particularized‟ and „generalized‟ The former is the implicatures that are generated by saying something in virtue of some particular features of the context, "cases in which there is no room for the idea that an implicature of this sort is normally carried by saying that” The above example of conversational implicature is, then, a case of

particularized conversational implicature A generalized conversational implicature occurs where "the use of a certain forms of words in an utterance would normally (in the absence of special circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature" Grice's first example is a sentence of the form "X is meeting a woman thisevening" Anyone who utters this sentence, in absence of special circumstances, would be taken to implicate that the woman in question was someone other than X's "wife, mother, sister, or perhaps even close platonic friend" Being an implicature, it could be cancelled, either implicitly, in appropriate circumstances, or explicitly, adding some clause that implies its denial

Particularized conversational implicatures have a wide range of applications that Grice himself illustrates: the informative use of tautologies, irony, metaphor, hyperbole, meiosis and, in principle, any kind of non-literal use that relies on special circumstances of the utterance can be explained in terms of them But generalized conversational implicatures apply to philosophically more important issues, in particular, to what, according to the introduction to “Logic and Conversation”, was Grice's most important motivation: the issue of the difference

of meaning between logical constants of formal languages and their counterparts

in natural languages, or the alleged meanings of verbs like „to look like,‟ „to believe‟ or „to know.‟

Generalized conversational implicatures are also at the heart of Grice's Modified Occam's Razor "Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity," which has served as a criterion for distinguishing semantic issues from pragmatic uses and for preferring, in general, an explanation in terms of implicatures rather than a semantic one that postulates ambiguity

(b) Conversational Implicatures

One of Grice's most important insights is the difference between what the literal meaning of words is and what is implicated (1989) It is this distinction, which leads Grice to introduce, as terms of art, the verb 'implicate' and the related noun 'implicature' Implicatures are generated from various non-fulfillments of the Cooperative Principles In this section, the main part of the argument will focus

on the concept that Grice's Cooperative Principle needs to be property contextualized to realize its full power The concept of "conversational implicature" refers to inferences that are made by interlocutors to understand each other when what is uttered concerning its prepositional, literal, content apparently differs from what it would have been current on the speaker to say in order to fulfill the conversational demand at that moment

In short, while the existence of conversational implicature does not depend on the assumption that the speaker is observing the Cooperative Principle, the conversational principles may play a role in the recognition of implicatures In fact, the Cooperative Principle and associated maxims, together with the principles of Style and Politeness seem to play the same indirect role in implicature recognition that play in inductive inference generally

2.8 Speech Act of Comfort

Comfort has been of special interest to several scholars, who have gone beyond this definition to draw our attention to other important features Comfort is supposed to be a face-enhancing act for the hearer because the speaker undertakes in this speech act to show sympathy for and soothe hearer‟s sad or hurt feelings, to encourage him/her, to show speaker‟s willingness to help the hearer

The philosopher Austin pointed out that some utterances, such as comfort, are more than expressions of how the speaker feels Each is also an action in the social world, which Austin (1962) called a “speech act” He reminded us that we act through language, doing things through words Some activities in fact are only carried out as acts; comforting, for example, is not something you can do any other way – you must produce a particular utterance, “perform an activity to comfort”

As defined in Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (2005)as “an act of feeling sorry for somebody, showing that you understanding and caring about somebody‟s problem”, expressing sympathy is regarded as an act of giving others some comfort through utterances in view of speech act For instance, when

someone expresses their misfortune as follows, s/he may get the response as in the following example

In English In Vietnamese

A: I’ve lost all my money and credit card

B: Oh! Don’t be so sad Lost money saves

life!

A Tớ mất hết tiền và thẻ tín dụng rồi

B Ồ Cậu đừng phiền lòng quá Của

đi thay người cậu à

Pragmatically, B produces utterances containing an act of sharing unhappy feeling with A and comforts A by confirming the good side of the misfortune with a hope for a better future

Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person are deeply understood and even appreciated by another person In common usage, sympathy

is usually making known one's understanding of another's sorrows or suffering, but it can also refer to being aware of other (positive) emotions as well

In conclusion, when someone is in bad mood, an encouragement may be a miracle, a sense of humor to lessen the situations, to help them have more confidence to look at the greener side of the mountain The implicature of the speech act is to direct hearers to a better future with more confidence and optimism

2.9 Politeness in Expressing Sympathy

As all linguistic actions involve face-threat of some kinds, people have to resort

to politeness principles or strategies when performing face-saving acts (FSAS) Leech (1983) introduces a number of maxims, which are necessary as he urges,

in order to explain the relationship between sense and force in human conversation They range from those which are very extensive but by no means universal applicability, to the somewhat idiosyncratic

According to Leech (1983), there are five basic politeness maxims

Tact maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which employ cost to other

+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to other

For example, when someone says: “Won’t you tell me what happened?”, it means

this utterance is spoken to ask the hearer to share his sorrow in an indirect utterance to minimize the cost to the hearer The utterance implies that sharing bad things is benefit to the hearer

Generosity maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs to self

+ Maximize the expression of cost to self

For instance, your friend‟s car doesn‟t work, and you can share your sympathy

and make offer like “Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that your car was broken down again I can lend you mine.” This offer is presumed to be polite because it

implies benefit to other and maximizes the cost to self

Approbation maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of others + Maximize the expression of beliefs which express approval of order For example, a neighbor is holding a party, and they are setting the music very

loudly You can say: “I know it’s your daughter’s birthday today, but I wonder if you could keep the noise down a bit I am finding it very hard to get enough sleep

to refresh myself for the next day.” The statement can minimize the dispraise to

the hearer

Modesty maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of praise of self

+ Maximize the expression of dispraise of self

When the speaker would like to maximize the expression of despair of self, s/he

can say: “Oh, how stupid I am I didn’t make a note of our lecture Did you?”

Agreement maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of disagreement between self and other

+Maximize the expression of agreement between self and other

The example below shows the agreement between self and other

A Hanging out may make you feel a lot better

B Yes, definitely Let’s go

Sympathy maxim:

+ Minimize antipathy between self and other

+ Maximize sympathy between self and other

For example, when your friend‟s father is seriously ill, you can say “I’m really sorry to hear about your father” to express your sympathy for misfortune

From face-saving view, Brown and Levinson (1987) formulate a theory in which politeness is seen as strategic choices that interactants have to make only when face interests are at risk The fundamental assumption of this theory is the combination of the view of communication as purposeful – national activity and the concept of “face” Instead of principles, they suggest a set of four strategies

in relation to face work The strategies and their examples will be highlighted below

Strategy 1: Bald on record

- An emergency: Help!

- Task oriented: Make me a coffee!

- Request: Keep quiet

- Alerting: Fasten your seatbelt

Strategy 2: Positive politeness

- Attend the hearer: You must be tired; you have been working since early morning How about some rest?

- Avoid disagreement:

A: How is she, small?

B: Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, and um, not really small but certainly not very big

- Assume agreement: So when are you coming to see us?

- Hedge opinion: You really should sort of try harder

Strategy 3: Negative politeness

- Be direct: I‟m looking for a pen

- Request forgiveness: You must forgive me but…

- Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?

- Pluralize the person responsible: We forgot to tell you that you needed to buy your plane ticket by yesterday

Strategy 4: Off record (implicature)

- Give hints: It‟s a bit cold in here

- Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible

- Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he‟s a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen Hawking, genius and so on)!

The greater the risk of face loss is, the higher-numbered strategy will be employed The use of these strategies are further explained by Green (1989:144)

as follows:

When a speaker contemplates an act which he believes may threaten the address the other person‟s face, the speaker is confronted with calculating how much he

is risking in performing the face – threatening act (FTA) The factors that enter into the calculation are the speaker‟s estimates of the social distance assumed to separate the speaker and the addressee, the relative social power of the speaker and the addressee and the extent to which the act contemplated is considered to

be imposition in the culture of which the speaker and the addressee are members

On the basis of this calculation, the speaker determines whether he can forgo trading in face and perform the act without apology or whether he should choose

a positive polite strategy of making a good feeling and feel that her values are shared or in more extreme cases This is a strategy that is mainly used in expressing sympathy When a person wishes to offer his sympathy to other, he wants to make sure that person feel good, be more optimistic In addition, he wishes to show understandings, to share the feelings and troubles

2.10 Summary of the Chapter

In summary, this chapter has provided a brief overview of speech act theory, politeness theory, issues of directness, indirectness, cooperative principle and the aspects of implicature Furthermore, the speech act of comfort has also been compared with other speech acts The findings of these researches have further illustrated the diversity in theoretical and analytical frameworks in DCT in speech act studies and how they are applied by different analysts in studying politeness sympathy expressions

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the writer will investigate and point out the research questions, data collection methods, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and outline the analytical frameworks

3.1 The Research Questions

To recognize the polite strategies preferably used by English and Vietnamese speakers in expressing sympathy, the three questions below are thoroughly researched

4 What politeness strategies are preferably used by English speakers in expressing sympathy in the certain contexts?

5 What politeness strategies are preferably used by Vietnamese speakers in expressing sympathy in the certain contexts?

6 What are the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese

in expressing sympathy in terms of linguistics in contexts studied?

Then a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was used to tackle these questions

3.2 Issues in Data Collection

This section gives reasons for the choice of the DCT as data collection method for the study and discusses the strengths as well as the weakness of the use of DCT for data collection

3.2.1 Reasons for the Choice of Using the DCT

There are several methods like role play, multiple choices, ethnographic which have been used in researching speech acts Each of which has the upsides and downsides In this study, for the collection of data within the time and available resources, the benefits of the DCT seem to outweigh its drawbacks

Cohen (1996) describes two options for the method Written Completion Task, the open-ended elicitation and the DCT which is used in this study In the DCT,

space is provided for subjects to supply the speech act under investigation, but the response is provided to cue the respondent as to the appropriate nature of the speech act realization, the level of formality and a description of the roles and relationship of the interlocutors

However, Beebe (1985) states that the DCT offers several important advantages

It allows elicitation of data from a large sample of subjects relatively easily, using the same situations where contextual variables can be controlled Moreover, the DCT is an effective means of studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a socially appropriate response and is a good way to gain an insight into social and psychological factors that are likely to affect speech and performance In addition, Cohen (1996) argues that the DCT and other written approaches save time and provide comparable data to that collected from oral role play

3.2.2 The DCT in Speech Act Studies

A major difficulty in using DCT for research of this kind is that the researcher who designs a questionnaire and the subjects may perceive social contexts differently Blum-Kulka and House (1989) and Spencer Oatey (1993) found that there were cross-cultural differences when different groups rated the social dimensions is specific situations Therefore, it is necessary to establish the validation of the data elicitation instruments in the studies of this type to be sure that the investigator and the subjects, whatever background of culture they have, share common perception of the diversity of context to which the subjects are asked to respond

The suitable validation of data elicitation instruments has been considered in the research design for this study It is essential to carry out validity tests of the data elicitation instruments, and then use valid and reliable situations for language elicitation The design of the DCT used in this study is a full version of the questionnaire used for validity tests consisting 12 situations on all the subjects to elicit sympathy expressions However in the analysis section, only situations that were valid and reliable were analyzed A questionnaire called the Meta-pragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) was used to validate the constructs manipulated

in the data collection instruments The results of the MPQ are used to determine which situations were valid and reliable

3.3 Data Collection Instruments

3.3.1 Variables

To do the research of this study, the writer has applied two questionnaires: pragmatic questionnaire (MPQ) and Discourse Completion Task (DCT) The purpose of MPQ was to find out how the subjects assessed variables in certain situations and to see how frequent the situations occurred in actual situations Moreover, data from DCT‟s situations reveal the sympathy strategies, internal modifications and supportive moves to realize the differences between English and Vietnamese subjects on the use of strategies, types of internal and external modifications in the politeness sympathy expressions Hence, the situations built

Meta-in the MPQ questionnaires, satisfied the constellation of power, distance and ranking values as required for analysis

Brown & Levinson (2007) pointed out three important factors for the choice of linguistic strategies for a speech act including three variables: the relative power (P), the social distance (D) and the ranking of seriousness of the sympathy (R)

The variable power (P) in Brown and Levinson‟s (2007) terms is defined as either by the authority of one interactant over the other, or by the lack of authority The variable power is classified into: +P, =P and –P If +P refers to situations where the speaker has greater power than the Addressee while –P refers to situations where the speaker has less power than the Addressee, and =P refers to situations where the speaker and the Addressee are equal in power However, the variable power will be controlled in this study which means the variable P is equal across the situations studied Therefore, the two variables D and P have been paid much attention to

The variable social distance (D) refers to the closeness or familiarity between participants According to Brown and Levinson (1978), the variable D is also divided into: +D means the distance between speakers and hearers is high; it means they are not intimate or close However, -D means the distance between