POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A Thesis Field: English Language Code: 8220201 POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVEN

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A Thesis

Field: English Language Code: 8220201

POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH

AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016

CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ TRONG BÀI PHÁT BIỂU

CỦA TỔNG THỐNG DONALD TRUMP TẠI ĐẠI HỘI TOÀN QUỐC ĐẢNG CỘNG HÒA NĂM 2016

NGUYỄN TIẾN ĐẠT

Hanoi, 2018

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A Thesis

Field: English Language Code: 8220201

POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH

AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016

CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ TRONG BÀI PHÁT BIỂU

CỦA TỔNG THỐNG DONALD TRUMP TẠI ĐẠI HỘI TOÀN QUỐC ĐẢNG CỘNG HÒA NĂM 2016

NGUYỄN TIẾN ĐẠT Supervisor name: ASSOC PROF DR HỒ NGỌC TRUNG

Hanoi, 2018

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

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

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016 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

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung

Date: 19/11/2018

me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to the teachers at Faculty of Post Graduate, Hanoi Open University and many others, without whose support and encouragement it would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

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

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of authorship

Acknowledgements

List of tables

Abstract

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 1

1.3 Research questions 1

1.4 Methods of the study 2

1.5 Scope of the study 3

1.6 Significance of the study 3

1.7 Design of the study 3

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Previous studies 5

2.2 Theoretical background 6

2.2.1 Pragmatics 6

2.2.2 Discourse analysis 8

2.2.3 Conversational cooperative principle 8

2.2.4 Political speeches 9

2.2.5 Historical background of the speech 10

2.3 Theoretical framework 10

2.3.1 Face 10

2.3.2 Politeness strategies 14

2.4 Summary 25

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 27

3.1 Subjects 27

3.2 Instruments 29

3.3 Procedures 29

3.4 Statistical Analysis 31

3.5 Summary 31

Chapter 4: POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016 32

4.1 Realizations of politeness strategies used in Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016 32

4.1.1 Realizations of bald on record 33

4.1.2 Realizations of positive politeness 35

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4.1.3 Realizations of negative politeness 45

4.1.4 Realizations of off record 46

4.2 Functions of politeness strategies in Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016 47

4.3 Discussion 49

4.4 Implications 50

4.4.1 Result of the survey questionnaire 50

4.4.2 Suggestions for improving English textbook and testing - assessment of speaking skill/presentation skill 51

4.4.3 Suggestions for methods/techniques of teaching speaking skill/ presentation skill 52

4.4.4 Suggestions for methods/techniques of learning speaking skill/ presentation skill 53

4.5 Summary 53

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 55

5.1 Summary of the findings 55

5.2 Concluding remarks 55

5.2.1 Concluding remarks on the first objective of the study 55

5.2.2 Concluding remarks on the second objective of the study 55

5.3 Recommendations for further Study 55

REFERENCES i

APPENDICES iii

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LIST OF TABLES

1 Table 2.1 Sub-strategies of Bald on record 15

2 Table 2.2 Sub-strategies of Positive Politeness 16

3 Table 2.3 Sub-strategies of Negative Politeness 21

4 Table 2.4 Sub-strategies of Off record 22

5 Table 4.1 Realizations of politeness strategies 32

6 Table 4.2 Results of Survey questionnaire 51

7 Table 4.3 Sample matching table 52

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ABSTRACT

The reason for writing the research lies in two points The first one is to find out the politeness strategies and their functions in the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016 The second point is to apply the findings of the research to suggest measures to improve presentation skill of Vietnamese students The research problem is politeness strategies in politeness theory by Brown and Levinson The scope of the research is politeness strategies used in the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016 In this research, the author uses a pragmatic approach to a genre of discourse: political speeches Within this domain, qualitative method is chosen as the main method to carry out the research because this study focuses on understanding a linguistic phenomenon, politeness strategy used in a formal speech Besides, the author would like to also use quantitative method and statistical instrument in order to list all of the politeness strategies, their frequency Donald Trump uses all four politeness strategies in his speech at Republican National Convention 2016 Among those strategies, positive politeness is mainly used and has the highest rate of use The other three strategies only used occasionally due to their limitation and nonconformity The main reason for the difference in using rate lies in the function of each strategy The reason is positive politeness strategy helps Donald Trump to be closer to the hearers and therefore, Donald Trump will more likely gain sympathy and support from the hearers From the findings of the research, the author suggests to improve presentation skill of Vietnamese students via three measures First of all, the author suggests improving English textbook and testing - assessment speaking skill/presentation skill Secondly, the author suggests some speaking skill/presentation skill teaching methods/techniques The last implication is suggestions for speaking skill/ presentation skill learning methods/techniques

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

Politeness strategies are widely used in communication to maintain harmony

as well as to avoid conflict Those phenomena can appear in any speech In the situation of this study, Donald Trump was a candidate of the president of the United States and he delivered a speech in front of American people and the officials of the Republican Party Therefore, it was a must for him to use politeness strategies to have a successful speech This research focuses on finding out the politeness strategies that have been used, their functions and their implication in improving presentation skill

The expected result of the study is to give modest contribution to linguistics theoretically and practically Theoretically, the author would like to give scientific contributions especially in the Politeness Theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987)

Besides, practically, the study is expected to give a valuable source of information for readers and other researchers and Vietnamese students For the readers, by reading the research, they can gain useful information and understanding about Politeness Strategy The study can lay a firm ground for other researchers to carry out further research on Politeness strategy Then, this study will help Vietnamese students improve their presentation skill

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

The study is aimed at helping Vietnamese students have a better presentation skill by better knowing the politeness strategies used in Donald Trump’s speech in Republican National Convention 2016

The study has two objectives:

• Finding out the politeness strategies used in the speech and their functions;

• Suggesting some implications for improving presentation skill for Vietnamese students

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- What are implications of politeness strategies in improving presentation skill for Vietnamese students?

1.4 Methods of the study

In this research, the author adopts a pragmatic approach to a genre of discourse: political speeches Within this domain, qualitative method is chosen as the main method to carry out the research because this study focuses on understanding a linguistic phenomenon, politeness strategy used in a formal speech The first reason for this choice is that qualitative method helps the researcher to have a deeper look into the phenomenon than the quantitative method Secondly, the data source of this study is utterances, which makes difficulties in transforming them to numerical statistics In addition, because the data of the research is analyzed

by word other than by number, the researcher also employs descriptive method, which helps to analyze the data descriptively to gain deep understanding about politeness strategies used in the speech Besides, the author would like to also use quantitative method and statistical instrument in order to list all of the politeness strategies, their frequency

The data was collected from reputable sources from the internet about the speech of Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention 2016 The main

source is youtube.com This is an important speech, so the speaker has to be careful

with his sayings and therefore, the words, phrases and sentences are carefully chosen

to make sure that the speech is liked by the voters

In doing this research, the researcher collected, identified, analyzed and discussed the data collected During this process, the important data which contains politeness strategy was sometimes collected and noted down For the step of collecting the data, the researcher used the transcript from trusted source on the internet To assure the accuracy of the transcript, the author watched the video several times and changed the initial transcript accordingly Then the author highlighted the utterances which contain politeness strategy

In general, there are four main steps that the author follows in order to do the research Firstly, the researcher identifies the data containing politeness strategy based on Brown and Levinson’s theory Secondly, the researcher decides what strategy is used in each utterance among: positive politeness, negative politeness, bald

on record and off record Thirdly, the findings are analyzed and discussed by using the theory of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson Finally, the researcher

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comes up with application of the results and the conclusion is withdrawn

1.5 Scope of the study

The scope of the study is the politeness strategies used in Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016 from view of Politeness Theory by Brown and Levinson The approach that the author follows to do this research is discourse analysis and pragmatics

1.6 Significance of the study

The importance of the research lies in the reality of the research result Speech often conveys more than the writing Therefore, it will have more meanings, more attitudes and more underlying implicatures between the speaker and the hearer The main practical problem is that a lot of Vietnamese students find it difficult

to give a presentation The result of this study is expected to be able to give valuable contribution both theoretically and practically Theoretically, this study is expected

to give scientific contributions, especially in linguistics about the concept of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) Practically, this study is expected to give valuable information to researchers, Vietnamese students, and readers For readers, readers can use the study as a source of reading to broaden their knowledge about Politeness Theory For researchers, this study is expected to provide the basis for analyzing the politeness strategies more deeply For Vietnamese students, this study is expected to give useful information in understanding politeness strategies in order to improve their presentation skill

1.7 Design of the study

The study is structured into five chapters Chapter 1 is the introduction to the study This chapter provides information about: rationale for the study, aims and objectives of the study, research questions, methods of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, design of the study Chapter 2 deals with literature review This part includes review on previous studies, theoretical background, theoretical framework and a summary on these points Chapter 3 focuses on subjects of the study, instrumentation, procedures, and statistical analysis Chapter 4 is the core chapter of this study which answers the two research questions of: What are politeness strategies and their function used in the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016? From the findings of the study, and the information collected from the survey questionnaire, the author withdraws implications of politeness strategies in improving presentation skill for Vietnamese

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students The last chapter is the conclusion which summarizes the findings in chapter 4 to come up with the general conclusions for the whole study as well as provides recommendations for further study

The first one is Politeness Strategies Used by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey at the United State of Women Summit in 2016 The objectives of the study are to identify the types of politeness strategies used by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey in their conversation at the United State of Women Summit in 2016, and to describe the realizations of the politeness strategies used by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey in the conversation at the United State of Women Summit in 2016 After doing the research, the author concludes that: All four types of politeness strategies are found throughout the data The types are bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record strategy However, the use of bald on record and off record strategy is only found in Michelle’s utterances In this case, the choice of politeness strategies depends on the circumstances and the speakers’ wants related to maintaining the hearers’ face Concerning with the second objective which is to describe the realizations of politeness strategies used by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey in the conversation at the United States of Women Summit in 2016, the researcher could find 22 sub-strategies of politeness strategies As a consequence, there are some sub-strategies that cannot be found in both Michelle’s and Oprah’s utterances since they have limited time which do not support them to apply all the sub-strategies In addition, positive politeness strategy has the highest variation of the realizations achieving 11 out of 22 realizations of politeness strategy performed in the conversation It signifies that both Michelle and Oprah attempt to come closer or to be friendly even though the conference tends to

be in a formal situation The second study is An Analysis of Politeness Strategy in Barack Obama’s Victory Speech 2016 The two main objectives of the study are to know the politeness strategies are used in Barack Obama’s Victory Speech 2016

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and reveal how the process to apply politeness strategies in the speech The results

of the study are: Politeness strategies are of importance to deliver speech in front of people Barrack Obama uses politeness strategies to influence the listeners about his leadership And finally, Obama uses positive strategies more often by joking, intensifying interest, exaggerating, giving sympathy, understanding and cooperating than negative politeness

The third study that the author would like to mention is Politeness Strategies

in Barrack Obama’s Speech in Democratic National Convention 2012 by Akbar Kusuma The study deals with realizations of politeness strategies used by former President Barrack Obama in Democratic National Convention Speech The context and the subject of the study is similar in general to the context and the subject of the study of the author The study of Akbar Kusuma comes up with the conclusion that Positive politeness is used at the highest rate among four politeness strategies In order to come to this conclusion, Akbar Kusuma employs qualitative and descriptive methods to screen the data which are taken from Youtube.com

The forth study the author would like to refer to is a thirteen-page Journal on

A pragmatic study of Barrack Obama’s Political Propaganda (2015) by Prof Dr Riyadh Tariq Kadhim Al- Ameedi and Zina Abdul Hussein Khudhier This short paper focuses on investigating pragmatically, the language of five electoral political propaganda texts delivered by Barak Obama with three clear aims: (1) identifying the speech acts used in political propaganda, (2) showing how politicians utilize Grice's maxims and the politeness principle in issuing their propaganda, (3) analyzing the rhetorical devices used in political propaganda

The difference between this study and the above referent studies lies in two main points First of all, there is obviously difference in the data of the study This study uses data from Donald Trump speech at National Convention Each person has a different way of communicating, so how he uses politeness strategies varies Secondly, the target of the study is to find out and link the politeness strategies with their function in the speech as well as to apply to communication skill

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 Pragmatics

In communication, what an utterance means may be different in different contexts Therefore, the hearers have to interpret the meaning regarding the

of what is unsaid is recognized as a part of what is communicated Lastly, pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance - the closeness or distance of the listener or the reader determines how much needs to be said

Researcher Mey (2001) adds to the notion of pragmatics that pragmatics is the study of language used by human communication considering a certain situation Meanwhile, Griffiths (2006) claims that pragmatics studies the meaning of the utterances of the speaker which is affected by the context

From these points of view on pragmatics of these researchers, the author would use the notion that pragmatics is a sub-branch of linguistics that studies the meaning of language determined by the context This notion contains how the speaker considers the context to use utterances to achieve the communication purpose, how the hearer interprets the speaker’s utterance by considering the context and how the context influences the producing of the utterances

There are several concepts in pragmatics worth studying, which are: deixis, presupposition, speech act and implicature These skeletal definitions are mentioned

as below

Following Yule (1996), deixis is a technical term which originates from Greek Deixis means “pointing via language” People use deictic expression to refer

to something in the immediate context

Presupposition is mentioned by Yule (1996) as what the speaker assumes before making an utterance There are seven types of presupposition, including: potential presupposition, existential presupposition, factive presupposition, lexical presupposition, structural presupposition, non-factive presupposition and counter-factual presupposition

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Implicature is defined by Yule (1996) as the meaning of an expression which

is more than the meaning of words, this kind of meaning is and “additional conveyed meaning”

Researcher Yule (1996) states that speech acts are actions performed by producing utterances Speech act varies due to type of action, such as complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request, apology, etc

2.2.2 Discourse analysis

Following Harris (1952), one of the founders of the theory of discourse analysis, discourse is a chain of linked sentences

A definition of discourse analysis is raised by G Brown and G Yule (1988) as

an investigation of what that language is used for

Discourse analysis as an approach lies at the interface of many disciplines such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy, text linguistics Discourse is defined as a socially situated communicative and interactional process It is purpose and action oriented The definition of discourse and discourse analysis comes close with some critical concepts for discourse analysis as context, coherence vs cohesion, the communicativeness, relevance of discourse, structure of discourse and how background knowledge is used in computing comprehension of discourse, as well as its semiotic nature (Nguyen Hoa, 2004)

There are many approaches to discourse analysis including pragmatic theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, conversation analysis, discourse analysis in social psychology, critical discourse analysis A discourse analysis of a genre is also given, which clearly recognizes the role of both functionalism and structuralism in discourse analysis (Nguyen Hoa, 2004)

By referring to this definition, the author would like to use discourse analysis theory to analyze the use of politeness strategies in the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016

2.2.3 Conversational cooperative principle

Conversational cooperative principle has provided a hugely influential framework for thinking about implicature (Grice, 1987) and Grice’s Maxims Implicature is first presented in a 1967 lecture series and published in 1987 “The core idea of the account is that the link between utterances and the implicatures they carry is not arbitrary or contingent, based on the speaker’s intentions or general conventions, but a rational one, grounded in general principles of cooperative

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behavior Grice argues that an implicature arises when an utterance would be uncooperative if taken literally, violating one or more maxims about how a cooperative speaker should convey information Since a presumption of cooperation

is essential to communication, Grice argues, in such cases the speaker must be understood to be conveying something other than the literal meaning of their utterance, and this is the implicated meaning Grice’s Maxims are an characterization of conversational principles that would make recommendations for achieving maximally efficient communication They are Maxim of Quality (speak the truth, be sincere), Maxim of Quantity (don’t say less than required, don’t say more than required), Maxim of Relevance (be relevant to the topic) and Maxim of Manner (be perspicuous, avoid ambiguity and obscurity) (Brown and Levinson, 1987) To understand conversational implicatures and Grice’s Maxims is of high importance because two of four main strategies in politeness strategies are related to this theory - off record strategy and bald-on-record

2.2.4 Political speeches

Political speech can be defined as “speech deals with matters of public concern when it can be considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community” Therefore, political speech is a broad definition It can be about any issues that are for public interest like: taxes, world events, immigration, healthcare, economy and candidate for office (http://ncac.org/project/youth-free-expression-program/political-speech-in-schools) Following Prof Nguyen Hoa, political commentary discourse comes with some general features First of all, the discourse is structured into three main parts: opening, development, conclusion which makes political discourse differ from news discourse There are five types of political commentary discourse, namely: short commentary discourse, daily commentary discourse, weekly commentary discourse,

fighting discourse and explanatory discourse Regarding the content, there is no

difference between commentary discourse and editorial

Moreover, there are some linguistic features of political speech The first feature is the introduction of a speaker and those who are present at the event as well as the use of repetition (reiteration) The first feature lies in the use of contrastive pairs and antithesis and rhetorical questions Secondly, the speaker uses inclusive strategy for self-presentation while uses exclusive strategy for other-presentation The third feature is the use of biblical and historical allusion and the

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last feature is rhetorical tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, etc.)

2.2.5 Historical background of the speech

The 2016 Republican National Convention was held on July 18-21, 2016, at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio This is the third time Cleveland was chosen as hosting site for Republican National Convention and the first since 1936 There were 2,472 delegates coming to the convention, in which most of them were bound for the first ballot of the convention based on the results of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries The convention formally nominated Donald Trump for President and Mike Pence - Indiana Governor for Vice President

On May 3, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus declared Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee after the drop-out of Ted Cruz The day after that, Ohio Governor John Kasich suspended his race Therefore Trump is the only delegate for the Republican Presidential nominee Trump is the first nominee

of major party since 1940 who does not have any political experience and holds neither political office nor a high military rank before

The Republican Platform 2016 was finally adopted by July 12 This 66-page long document reaffirms the principles that united the party with 6 main points: Restoring the American Dream, A Rebirth of Constitutional Government, American Natural Resources: Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment, Government Reform, Great American Families, Education, Healthcare, and Criminal Justice and America Resurgent

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cultures define face in different ways, it is general that face is generally accepted as

a person’s self-image which needs maintenance

Beside the notion of face, the notion of face want is also studied thoroughly by Brown and Levinson There are two face wants, such as negative face and positive face

Negative face is the want of every “competent adult member” that his actions

be unimpeded by others Positive face is the want that his wants to be liked, desired

by some other people In general, negative face, the notion comes along with imposition, is highly familiar in communication while positive politeness and its derivative forms are less obvious The most noticeable feature of positive politeness

non-is the desire to be ratified, understood, approved of, liked or admired

This definition of positive face is adequate only if the partner in communication can partly interpret at least some of the meaning of the speaker First of all, the positive wants may actually have been satisfied as they can be considered old wants in the past which are presented by present achievements or possessions Secondly, the wants can be for material or non-material things such as for values (love, liberty, piety), or for activity such as playing golf, singing, jogging, etc Thirdly, in general, people want their goals, possessions, and achievements to

be thought desirable not just by anyone, but by some particular others especially relevant to the particular goals, etc

From these points of view, Brown and Levinson (1987) come up with the ways wants can be interpreted in a simple way:

Hearer wants others (namely a1, a2, a3 ) to want the corresponding set of hearer’s wants (w1, w2, w3 )

Let a1 = people in hearer’s relation

a2 = people in social class that hearer is in

a3 = hearer’s husband or wife

Let w1 = hearer has a luxurious car; hearer is responsible and law-abiding w2 = hearer has a muscle car and a leather jacket

w3 = hearer is happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise

These specific facts are obviously highly culture-specific, group-specific, and ultimately idiosyncratic In spite of that, there are in general some common grounds between any two persons in the society If they are strangers this ground can be reduced to some highly safe topic like: interest in good/bad weather, if they are

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close friends, it can be extended to personal desires and lives However, these can cause affront by stating that “I am in the set of persons who will please you by commenting on your clothes” Due to this, the attention to positive face in a society

is often highly restricted

Regarding face threatening acts, those acts are defined as all acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker Acts here means verbal or non-verbal communication There are two distinctions of acts The first way is to distinguish them regarding the kind of face that is threatened by the acts Those acts that primarily threaten the addressee’s negative face want by indicating potentially that the speaker does not intend to avoid impeding hearer’s freedom of action include three main categories

The first one includes acts that predicate some future act A of the hearer, and

in so doing put some pressure on hearer to do (or refrain from doing) the act A: a) Orders and requests (speaker indicates that he wants hearer to do, or refrain from doing, some act A)

b) Suggestions, advice (speaker indicates that he thinks hearer ought to (perhaps) do some act A)

c) Reminding (speaker indicate that hearer should remember to do some A) d) Threats, warnings, dares (speaker indicates that he - or someone, or something - will instigate sanctions against hearer unless he does A)

The other one refers to acts that predicate some positive future act of speaker toward hearer, and in so doing put some pressure on hearer to accept or reject them, and possible to incur a debt, which are divided into offers (when speaker indicates that he wants hearer to commit himself to whether or not he wants speaker to do some act for hearer, with hearer thereby incurring a possible debt) or promises (when speaker commits himself to a future act for hearer’s benefit)

The third category relating to acts that predicate some desire of speaker toward hearer or hearer’s goods, giving hearer reason to think that he may have to take action to protect the object of speaker’s desire, or give it to speaker Those acts can

be compliments, expression of envy or admiration (speaker indicate that he likes or would be something of hearer’s), or expression of strong (negative) emotions toward hearer - e.g haired, anger, lust (speaker indicates possible motivation for harming hearer or hearer’s goods)

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The other kind of face threatening acts are acts that threaten the positive face want by indicating that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feelings, wants, etc which means the speaker does not want hearer’s wants This includes three main types The first type is act that shows that speaker has a negative evaluation of some aspect of hearer’s positive face They can be expressions of disapproval, criticism, contempt or ridicule, complaints and reprimands, accusations, insults (when speaker indicates that he does not like/want one or more

of hearer’s wants, acts, personal characteristics, goods, beliefs or values) or contradictions or disagreements, challenges (when speaker indicates that he thinks hearer is wrong or misguided or unreasonable about some issue, such wrongness being associated with disapproval) The second type of act is act that shows that speaker does not care about hearer’s positive face It can be expression of violent emotions (when speaker gives hearer possible reason to fear him or be embarrassed

by him) or irreverence, mention of taboo topics, including those that are inappropriate in the context (speaker indicates that he does not value hearer’s values and does not fear hearer’s fears) or bringing of bad news about hearer or good news

about speaker (speaker indicates that he is willing to cause distress to hearer and

does not care about hearer’s feelings)

Considering this distinction, it is noticeable that there is sometimes overlap between face threatening acts when the acts threaten both negative and negative face, such as: complaints, interruptions, threats, strong expressions of emotion, and requests for personal information

The second distinction of face threatening act based on the target of face threat In conversation, the threat can be for hearer or can be for speaker face threatening acts that threaten speaker include those that offend speaker’s negative face or those that directly damage speaker’s positive face Six types of face threatening act that offend speaker’s negative face include:

a) Expressing thanks (speaker accepts a debt, humbles his own face)

b) Acceptance of hearer thanks or hearer’s apology (speaker may feel constrained to minimize his debt or transgression, as in “it was nothing, don’t mention it”)

c) Excuses (speaker indicates that he thinks he had good reason to do, or fail to

do, an act which hearer has just criticized; this may constitute in turn a criticism of

e) Responses to hearer’s faux pas (of speaker visibly notices a prior faux pas,

he may cause embarrassment to hearer; of he pretend not to, he may be discomfited himself)

f) Unwilling promises and offers (speaker commits himself to some future action although he does not want to; therefore, if his unwillingness shows, he may also offend hearer’s positive face)

Six types of face threatening acts that directly damage speaker’s positive face include:

a) Apologies (speaker indicates that he regrets doing a prior face threatening act, thereby damaging his own face to some degree - especially if the apology is at the same time a confession with hearer learning about the transgression through it, and the face threatening act thus conveys bad news)

b) Acceptance of compliment (speaker may feel constrained to denigrate the object of hearer’s prior compliment, thus damaging his own face or he may feel constrained to compliment hearer in turn)

c) Breakdown of physical control over body, bodily leakage, stumbling or falling down, etc

d) Self-humiliation, shuffling or covering, acting stupid, self-contradicting e) Confessions, admissions of guilt or responsibility - e.g for having done or not done an act, or for ignorance of something that speaker is expected to know f) Emotion leakage, non-control of laughter or tears

These two ways of classifying face threatening acts give rise up to four-way grid which offers the possibility of cross-classifying in some certain cases However, such a cross-distinction has a complex relation to the ways in which face threatening acts are handled

2.3.2 Politeness strategies

Regarding types of strategies, Brown and Levinson (1987) divide politeness strategies into four categories ie bald on record, off record, positive politeness and negative politeness In order to make it easier for reader to have an overview on

Table 2.1 Sub-strategies of bald on record

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Where maximum

efficiency is very

important and

both hearer and

speaker know the

no face redress is

necessary

Help!

Your pants are on fire!

Give me just one more week!

Listen! I've got an idea

Look, the point is Come home right now!

Speaker speaks as if maximum efficiency is very important He provides metaphorical urgency for emphasis

Where communication difficulties impose pressure to speak with maximum efficiency!

Bring me wine, Jeeves

Add three cups of flour and stir vigorously

Either because speaker is powerful and does not fear retaliation or non-cooperation from hearer

Your slip is showing

Your wig is askew; let

me fix it for you

Your headlights are on!

Yes, you may go

In doing the Face Threatening Act, speaker conveys that he does care about hearer and the hearer's face Therefore, he uses no redress Sympathetic advice or warning or granting permission for something hearer has requested may be baldly on record

bald-on-By redressive action, the action is giving face to the addressee, which shows the attempt to limit the damage to the face of addressee Based on this, we can easily know that redressive actions are divided into two types due to the kind of face

is saved

2.3.2.2 Positive politeness

Positive politeness is used to redress the hearer’s positive face Positive politeness indicates that in some situations, speaker wants what hearer wants “The potential face threat of an act is minimized in this case by assurance that in general, speaker wants at least some of hearer’s wants” For example, speaker can treat hearer as a member of a group or consider hearer to be important or like one of the hearer’s feature or things (Brown and Levinson, 1987)

Table 2.2 Sub-strategies of Positive Politeness

Claim common ground

What a beautiful vase this is! Where did it come from?

Speaker should take notice

of aspects of hearer’s condition (noticeable changes, remarkable possessions, anything which looks as though hearer would wants speaker to notice and approve of it)

2 Exaggerate What a fantastic garden

3 Intensify interest to

the hearer

I came down the stairs, and what do you think I see?

This may be done with vivid presents because hearer is in the center of the story being told

4 Use in-group

identity markers

Mate, buddy, pal, honey, dear, cutie, sweetheart, etc

Got any spare cash?

How about a drink?

By using in-group words like:

usages of address forms dialect or in-group language,

jargon or slang,

Contraction and ellipsis

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5 Seek agreement It’s hot today, right?

A: John went to London this week

B: To London!

A: I had a flat tire on the way home

B: Oh God, a flat tire

Speaker seeks for easy

“Yes” from hearer by talking about:

so-I’ll meet you, then

So when are you coming to see us?

It’s really beautiful, in a way

I kind of want C to win, since I’ve bet on him

Speaker avoid blatant “No”

by hiding the idea of “No” in:

It’s at the far end of the street, the last house on the left, isn’t it

Speaker tries to show that he

is spending time and effort

on being with hearer by just using Gossip and small talk, point-of-view operations: personal-center switch (speaker speaks as if hearer were speaker, or hearer’s knowledge were equal to

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Tome says he loves your roses

Here! You must come

in and have some tea

speaker’s knowledge) Time switch

Place switch Presupposition manipulations

8 Joke Ok if I tackle those

cookies now? Ok if I tackle those cookies now?

How about lending me this old heap of junk?

(hearer’s new Cadillac)

The speaker uses a joke based on mutual background knowledge and values

Convey that participants are cooperators

I know you can’t bear parties, but this one will really be good - do come!

Speaker and hearer are cooperators, and thus potentially speaker put pressure on hearer to cooperate with him This is

to assert or imply knowledge

of hearer’s wants and willingness to fit one’s own wants in with them

10 Offer, promise I will give you some

money

Offer and promise are the natural out come of the strategy of the speaker to claim that whatever hearer wants, speaker wants for him and will help to obtain

11 Be optimistic Wait a minute, you

haven’t brushed your hair!

Look! I am sure you

The speaker assumes that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, so the hearer will cooperate with him

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don’t mind if I remind you to do the homework tonight

12 Include both the

speaker and the

hearer

Let’s have a cookie, then

Let’s go Give us a break

By using “we” or “us”, speaker reduces the distance between speaker and hearer

13 Give (or ask for)

Fulfill the hearer’s want for some things

15 Give gifts to hearer

2.3.2.3 Negative politeness

Negative politeness is used to satisfy (redress) hearer’s negative face, which is related to the territory and self-determination of the hearer Negative politeness is essentially avoidance-based and the realization of this strategy tightly sticks to the speaker’s respect to the hearer’s negative face, shown by assurance that the speaker will not or will only minimally interfere with the addressee’s freedom of action and self-determination Face threatening acts are redressed with apologies for entering the hearer’s territory or transgressing, or with impersonalizing mechanisms that

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make distance between hearer, speaker and action, with linguistic and non linguistic deference, with hedges on the illocutionary force of the act, or other softening mechanisms that save hearer’s negative face (Brown and Levinson, 1987)

Table 2.3 Sub-strategies of Negative Politeness

Be direct

1 Be conventionally

indirect

I need a comb The intention of the speaker is

hidden by using indirectness

Don’t coerce the hearer

3 Be pessimistic Could you do X? The speaker explicitly

expressing doubt about whether the hearer will do it

or not Then the hearer is free

of choosing whether to do it

or not

imposition

I just want to ask you if

I can borrow a tiny bit

of paper

Imposition minimizers are used frequently in the sentences in order to redress the hearer’s negative face

5 Give deference Delegates and all of

America, I humbly and honorably accept

The speaker whether humbles

an abases himself or raises hearers

Communicate the speaker’s want to not impinge on the hearer

6 Apologize I’m sure you must be

very busy, but

I know this is my fault, but

I can think of nobody else who could

Speaker indicates his reluctance to impinge on hearer’s negative face and redress it

Speaker phrase the face threatening act as if the agent were other than speaker, or at least possibly not speaker of

not speaker alone

8 State the face

The speaker states a face threatening act as an instance

of some general social rule, regulation, or obligation

9 Nominalize It is our regret that we

cannot

The using of Nouns rather than verbs can reduce face threatening act because it doesn’t directly refer to the action

Redress other wants of the hearer’s

I could easily do it for you

Speaker claims in an explicit way that he owes/doesn’t owe

to hearer

2.3.2.4 Off record

Off record is used when the speaker wants to be “out” - irresponsible for the face threatening act It means the speaker often uses indirect speech with some intended meaning and the hearer is expected to get to know and to interpret that meaning The realization is shown as follows

Table 2.4 Sub-strategies of Off record

Invite conversational implicatures

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1 Give hints It’s cold in here (Turn

on the air conditioner)

That window isn’t open

The expression violates the Relevance Maxim The speaker says something that is not explicitly relevant The hearer needs to interpret the meaning of the expression

3 Presuppose I washed the car again

today

The speaker violates the relevance maxim by stating something that’s wholly relevant in context

4 Understate A: What do you think

The speaker violates the quantity maxim by generating implicatures by saying less than required

5 Overstate It’s thousands time I

told you to clean your rooms

You never do the washing up

Why are you always smoking?

The speaker violates the quantity maxim by generating implicatures by saying more than required

6 Use tautologies War is war

Boys will be boys

The speaker uses a tautology for making an inference by violating the quantity maxim

an interpretation that reconciles the two contradictory propositions

8 Be ironic John is really a genius

(after John broke a precious vase)

The speaker violates the quality maxim by stating what

is opposite to what he means

9 Use metaphors Harry’s really a fish

(He drinks/swim like a

fish)

The use of metaphor is perhaps usually on record, bur there is possibility that exactly which of the connotations of the metaphor speaker intends may be off record

Be vague or ambiguous

11 Be ambiguous “John’s a pretty sharp

(or smooth) cookie.”

(Brown and Levinson, 1987)

The speaker uses ambiguous words, expression

may have had too much to drink

I am going where

you-know-The speaker violates the manner maxim by being vague about who the object of the face threatening act is, or what the offence is

Speaker use proverb or instantiate rules

14 Displace hearer Mother: Could you

pass me the magazine?

Daughter: Ok, mom

But I need to spend my meal first

(Grandma is sitting near the magazine

Mother pretends that face threatening act is addressed to her daughter, but she hopes Grandma will the face threatening act is threat

to her

The speaker states indirect requests by pretending to address the face threatening act to someone whom it would not threaten and hope that the real target will see that the face threatening act is aimed at him

2.4 Summary

In this chapter, the author mentions the theoretical background and theoretical framework of the research The previous studies part review four studies about politeness strategies in different discourses Theoretical background provides the readers with notions about pragmatics, discourse analysis, conversational cooperative principle, political speeches and historical background of the speech Notions of face and politeness strategies are introduced in the theoretical

26 framework By this way, the author has formed a firm theoretical ground for doing the research in the following chapters, especially chapter three and chapter four

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Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Subjects

The first subject of the study is the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016 Therefore, the author would like to introduce the context

of the speech 2016 Republican National Convention is an event, in which delegates of the United States Republican Party chose the party's nominees for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States in the 2016 United States Presidential election, was held July 18–21, 2016, at Quicken Loans stadium in Cleveland, Ohio The event marked the third time Cleveland has hosted the event and the first since 1936 In addition to determining the party's national ticket, the convention ratified the party platform

There were 2,472 delegates to the Republican National Convention, with a simple majority of 1,237 required to win the presidential nomination Most of those delegates were bound for the first ballot of the convention based on the results of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries The convention formally nominated Donald Trump for President and Indiana Governor Mike Pence for Vice President Trump and Pence went on to win the general election with a majority of the electoral votes, although Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine received the largest number of popular votes

In 2016, both the Democratic and Republican conventions were held before the Summer Olympics instead of after, as was the case in 2008 and

2012 One reason the Republican Party scheduled their convention in July was to help avoid a longer, drawn-out primary battle similar to what happened in 2012, which left the party fractured heading into the general election and eventually led to Mitt Romney losing the election to Barrack Obama The Democratic Party then followed suit, scheduling their convention in Philadelphia the week after the Republicans' convention, to provide a quicker response On May 3, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus declared Donald Trump the presumptive nominee after Texas senator Ted Cruz dropped out of the race The next day, Ohio Governor John Kasich suspended his campaign, effectively making Trump the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump was the first presidential nominee of a major party since Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate in 1940, who has held neither political office nor a high military rank prior to his nomination He was also the first presidential nominee of a major party

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without political experience since General Dwight Eisenhower first captured the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 This was the first Republican National Convention to be held entirely in July since 1980 Twitter and CBS News live streamed the convention via Twitter Therefore, Donald Trump was nominated as the final runner for Republican presidency

This event is highly important because Donald Trump has no political experience before and now he is running for the highest chair in United States political system Then, the speech need to show the best of Donald Trump, which makes him a perfect candidate for the next president chair That is the reason why the speech is designed in order to help Donald Trump to gain more vote and to gain the highest rate of support from the speech Therefore, Donald Trump has to use every communication methods including using politeness strategies to achieve communication effectiveness

Besides, the second subject of the study is politeness strategies used in the speech Regarding types of strategies, Brown and Levinson (1987) divide politeness strategies into four categories i.e bald on record, off record, positive politeness and negative politeness

Bald on record is used when the speaker does the face threatening act in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way possible (for example, for a request)

Positive politeness is used to redress the hearer’s positive face Positive politeness indicates that in some situations, speaker wants what hearer wants “The potential face threat of an act is minimized in this case by assurance that in general, speaker wants at least some of hearer’s wants” For example, speaker can treat hearer as a member of a group or consider hearer to be important or like one of the hearer’s feature or things Negative politeness is used to satisfy (redress) hearer’s negative face, which is related to the territory and self-determination of the hearer Negative politeness is essentially avoidance-based and the realization of this strategy tightly sticks to the speaker’s respect to the hearer’s negative face, shown

by assurance that the speaker will not or will only minimally interfere with the addressee’s freedom of action and self-determination Face threatening acts are redressed with apologies for entering the hearer’s territory or transgressing, or with impersonalizing mechanisms that make distance between hearer, speaker and action, with linguistic and non linguistic deference, with hedges on the illocutionary

From the findings in politeness strategies used in Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016 the author of the study would like to imply them into improving presentation skill of Vietnamese students This leads to the third subject of the study, presentation skill of Vietnamese students Presentation skill is the skill you need in delivering effective and engaging presentations to a variety of audiences This skill covers a variety of areas such as the structure of your presentation, the tone of your voice and the body language you convey Presentation skill of Vietnamese students is not appreciated by most employers This study will helps them to better up this skill by politeness strategies

3.2 Instruments

The instruments of this study are the author himself, the data sheet and the questionnaires It means that the researcher directly involved in collecting, identifying, analyzing, and discussing the data In addition, note taking is another instrument in this research It was used in the process of collecting the data by identifying them according to politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson

The second instrument is data sheet which is used to collect the data from the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016 The data sheet was in the form of a table and is used to note the utterances indicating politeness strategies uttered by Donald Trump The model of the data sheet is shown in appendix 1

The third instrument is the survey questionnaire This is a collection of six questions for Vietnamese students to assess their understanding about politeness strategies and their presentation skill The model of the questionnaire is shown in Appendix 2

3.3 Procedures

In order to make it easier for the reader to follow the study, the author would like to restate the two research questions of the study as follows:

Firstly, the researcher identifies the data containing politeness strategy based on Brown and Levinson’s theory In collecting the data, the researcher finds the transcript of the speech from internet Furthermore, researcher does several steps to get the thick description of the data such as watching the video, listening carefully and also re-watches the movie more than twice and reads the transcript Then finally, the researcher determines the utterances which may contain politeness strategies by the data sheet above

Secondly, the researcher decides what strategy is used in each utterance among: positive politeness, negative politeness, bald on record and off record To be more specific, the criteria for these categories lie in two parts Theoretically, the author based on politeness theory of Brown and Levinson Practically, to ensure the validity

of the data, author rechecks the utterance spoken by the speaker and analyzing everything done by the speaker during delivering his speech including gestures and intonation The data sheet is also used in this step in order to decide which utterance belongs to which politeness strategies

Thirdly, the findings in the second step are analyzed and discussed by using the theory of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson Every realization of politeness strategies used in the speech will be screened with the theory of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson

Finally, the researcher comes up with application of the results and the conclusion is withdrawn With the survey questionnaire, the author knows students’ understanding about politeness strategies and their presentation skill From this understanding, the author can apply politeness strategies in order to better up presentation skill of Vietnamese students After that, the author comes up with conclusion for the study by reviewing all key points of the study

About the procedures applied to the data from the survey questionnaire, the author uses three steps as follows

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First of all, based on the purpose of the study, the author creates the survey questionnaire in order to know the awareness and understanding of Vietnamese students about politeness strategies and their presentation ability, their willingness

to apply politeness strategies to better up their presentation skill

Secondly, the survey questionnaires are filled by Vietnamese students in Hungyen University of Technology and Education 132 survey questionnaires are filled

Thirdly, the choices of students are showed in percentage in order to compare and assess based on the purpose of the study

3.4 Statistical Analysis

Regarding the data from the speech of Donald Trump in Republican National Convention 2016, after collecting the data from the speech of Donald Trump, the author filters them using politeness theory by Brown and Levinson and data sheet to find out which utterances contain politeness strategies and classifies them into four categories of politeness strategies

Regarding the data collected from the survey questionnaire, the data are transferred into percentage of choice for each question to reveal the awareness and understanding of Vietnamese students about politeness strategies and their presentation ability, their willingness to apply politeness strategies to better up their presentation skill

3.5 Summary

To sum up, in this chapter, the author provides readers with the context of the study, subjects of the study, instruments, procedures, statistical analysis These parts help the author to step by step carry out the research in the right way and to collect the subjective data for the study These data is of high importance for chapter four and chapter five, in which the author answers the research questions and withdraw conclusion for the whole study

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Chapter 4: POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH

AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION 2016 4.1 Realizations of politeness strategies used in Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016

This chapter analyzes Donald Trump’s speech at Republican National Convention 2016 based on Politeness Strategy Theory by Brown and Levinson using pragmatic approach Considering the objectives of the study, the author categorizes the data source of the speech into four types of politeness strategy The speech is in the form of a political speech, so there is only Donald Trump to speak and use politeness strategies and their realization to get support from hearers

In general, based on the consideration of maintaining other’s face in public, Donald Trump uses various realizations (sub-strategies) of politeness strategy The findings of the types and the realization of politeness strategies are showed in the following table

Table 4.1 Realizations of politeness strategies

No Politeness

strategy Politeness sub-strategy

No of realization Percentage

Exaggerate (interest, approval,

Include both speaker and hearer