Using associative group analysis to investigate underlying cultural assumptions of American and Vietnamese

------ PHẠM NGỌC LIÊN USING ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE UNDERLYING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS OF AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP PHÂN TÍCH LIÊN TƯỞNG THEO NHÓM

- -

PHẠM NGỌC LIÊN

USING ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE

UNDERLYING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS

OF AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE

(SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP PHÂN TÍCH LIÊN TƯỞNG THEO NHÓM NHẰM NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC GIẢ ĐỊNH VĂN HÓA ẨN CỦA

NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT)

MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

- -

PHẠM NGỌC LIÊN

USING ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE

UNDERLYING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS

OF AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE

(SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP PHÂN TÍCH LIÊN TƯỞNG THEO NHÓM NHẰM NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC GIẢ ĐỊNH VĂN HÓA ẨN CỦA

NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT)

MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Hạnh, PhD

HANOI – 2017

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT

I hereby certify my authority of the Study Project Report submitted entitled “Using Associative Group Analysis to Investigate Underlying Cultural Assumptions” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Hanoi 2017

Phạm Ngọc Liên

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Best of thanks to all those who helped along the way

This paper investigates the influences of intercultural exposure on schema, or more specifically, underlying cultural assumption shifting by applying Associative Group Analysis on three groups of Americans, Vietnamese students in a group called Hanoikids in Hanoi with frequent international exposure and Vietnamese students in Lao Cai province with little to none exposure The results show that although there are a few similarities between Hanoikids and the other groups, those are not systematic and/or can be explained by factors other than cultural identity It suggests that people from the same culture or country might have distinctive schema on even everyday concepts Thus, assumptions about a person based on where he/she comes from might prove to be misjudgments To avoid that, it is advisable that we also pay attention to the aspect of individuality on top of cultural identity in intercultural situations

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

Table 1.1: Numbers of words and total weighted scores of the three groups for each

theme word 41

FIGURES SEMANTOGRAPHS Figure 1.1: Semantograph for the theme “Graduation” 15

Figure 2.1: Semantograph for the theme “A Good Job” 19

Figure 3.1: Semantograph for the theme “Ambition” 22

Figure 4.1: Semantograph for the theme “Moving out” 25

Figure 5.1: Semantograph for the theme “Parents” 29

Figure 6.1: Semantograph for the theme “Happiness” 31

Figure 7.1: Semantograph for the theme “Freedom” 34

Figure 8.1: Semantograph for the theme “LGBT” 36

Figure 9.1: Semantograph for the theme “Travel Around the World” 39

WORD CLOUDS Word cloud 1.1 & 1.2: Word clouds for the theme “Graduation” from Hanoikids and American respondents 16

Word cloud 2.1 & 2.2: Word clouds for the theme “A Good Job” from Hanoikids and American respondents 20

Word cloud 3.1 & 3.2: Word clouds for the theme “Ambition” from Hanoikids and American respondents 23

Word cloud 4.1 & 4.2: Word clouds for the theme “Moving out” from Hanoikids and American respondents 27

Word cloud 5.1 & 5.2: Word clouds for the theme “Parents” from Hanoikids and American respondents 30

Word cloud 6.1 & 6.2: Word clouds for the theme “Happiness” from Hanoikids and American respondents 32 Word cloud 7.1 & 7.2: Word clouds for the theme “Freedom” from Hanoikids and American respondents 35 Word cloud 8.1 & 8.2: Word clouds for the theme “LGBT” from Hanoikids and American respondents 37 Word cloud 9.1 & 9.2: Word clouds for the theme “Travel Around the World” from Hanoikids and American respondents 40

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Identification of the problem and rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 3

4 Scope of the study 4

5 Methodology 5

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

1.1 Literature review 6

1.1.1 Culture and intercultural competence 6

1.1.2 Schema and underlying cultural assumptions 7

1.2 Previous Studies 7

CHAPTER 2 ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS: METHOD AND PROCEDURE 10

2.1 Research groups 10

2.2 The Associative Group Analysis method and procedure 10

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 15

3.1 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Graduation” 15 3.2 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme

“(A) Good Job” 18

3.3 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Ambition” 22

3.4 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Moving out” 25 3.5 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Parents” 28

3.6 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Happiness” 31

3.7 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Freedom” 33

3.8 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “LGBT” 36

3.9 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Travel Around the World” 38

3.10 Finding Summary and Discussion 40

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 46

4.1 Findings 46

4.2 Implications 47

4.3 Limitations 47

4.4 Suggestions for further studies 48

REFERENCES 49 APPENDICES I

Appendix 1 English Survey Form I Appendix 2 Vietnamese Survey Form II

INTRODUCTION

1 Identification of the problem and rationale

Terms such as “the American culture”, “the Vietnamese culture” or “the Japanese culture” are ubiquitous in our daily life and even research articles These terms seem to indicate that each country has only one uniform culture, which, if not everyone, then at least the majority of people in it would share This kind of assumption often appears in intercultural situations, such as the one below between two Hanoikids members, the students who work as free tour guide in Hanoi, and their American guests The audio was recorded in an attempt to gather data for this research exclusively

American 1 (A1): Russians, they’re not that nice They're really cold

Hanoikids 1 (H1): Yes, as cold as their weather

A1: And then Vietnamese are as warm as their weather

(both laugh)

H1: Yeah, so Africans are the most… the friendliest in the world

A1: Uhm I think so We've been there a few months, they're very friendly

H1: I went to the south, Nha Trang and Phan Thiet That's the place in Vietnam where there're many Russian tourists

Hanoikids 2 (H2): To Nha Trang?

H1: Yeah, I went travelling but after that we had a kind of tourism presentation so we conducted a kind of survey to ask the tourists and ask if they could record But when we

A1: But Russians are also really pretty

A2: But of course they're cold

H1&H2: Yeah

[ ]

H1: You know, Vietnamese really like Russians because they helped us a lot during the war, they do

A2: Up until now?

H1: Yeah, until now, like people from my parents' generation

H1: Like US war, so they shared the same pain Oh, and we have something like, English

or British are really cold They're really cold

A2: They don’t talk much

H1: Yeah, they're kind of reserved, and then, but then there's a story that because England is so foggy, so we're this close, but because of the fog so we can't see each other So it appears they're cold but they're not really, because they don't see you (H Nguyen, M Nguyen, personal communication, June 19, 2016)

There are many generic country and cultural assumptions here, from the weather of

a country (“England is so foggy”), its people’s physical appearances (“Russians are also really pretty”), to their characteristics (Russians “are really cold”, British “are kind of reserved”) These assumptions often imply the homogeneity of characteristics or sharing of identity among people from the same country, or culture

However, would individuals really be shaped by only just where they come from? How are their personal values affected by their geographical dwellings and/or their native culture? How do international and/or intercultural experiences exert impacts

on their beliefs and values?

To seek answers for those questions, the research is carried out by studying the three groups of the U.S residents whose mother tongue is English, the Vietnamese from Lao Cai province, Vietnam, whose first language is Vietnamese, and Hanoikids club’s members, who are students in Hanoi conducting free tour guiding for foreigners visiting their city

2 Aims of the study

The first purpose of this paper is to investigate an often alleged assumption made in intercultural communications, that people from the same country or culture share a higher degree of similarity in identity than those from a different one

The argument is that, in this day and age of globalization, with easy access to various sources of up-to-date, all-over-the-world information, foreign music, reading materials and cinematography, and the development of transportations

leading to more convenient traveling, the intercultural exchange frequency is higher than ever and still increasing Thus, for people enjoying large intercultural exposure,

it is possible to develop background knowledge and values very different from those of the same nationality/culture with less exposure, while more similar to a foreign culture

The second purpose of this paper is to examine if the effect of intercultural exposure

on individuals of the same group is definitive, i.e., if it results in consistent outcome, such as tending towards being more similar to another certain culture, for each person

3 Research questions

The research is designed to offer answers for the following questions:

a, To what extent do people from each nation share the same set of cultural values? How does this affect its people in terms of underlying cultural assumptions,

or schemata?

b, How would exposure to international and/or intercultural situations impact

individuals?

4 Scope of the study

Due to limited resources, the research focuses on investigating only three groups: thirty-two Americans, thirty-four Hanoikids members – Vietnamese students with high international interaction frequency and thirty-two Vietnamese students with low international interaction frequency It is to compare if the two Vietnamese groups demonstrate substantially higher degree of similarity than the group from a foreign culture U.S residents are chosen to be in this study as they are often regarded as a culture with values on the other end of the spectrum compared to oriental cultures like the Vietnamese’s, as well as because of their popularity and

greatest number of guests for Hanoikids (along with Australia, Singapore and Canada – number in 2016), therefore, Hanoikids members are more likely to be affected by their culture than others’

5 Methodology

The study employs the Associative Group Analysis, which is specialized on analyzing cultural background knowledge, and in this case, an indicator for underlying cultural assumptions of each group This is a method employing both psychology and linguistics approaches, most commonly used in intercultural studies, making the research an interdisciplinary one The method and procedure will be described in more details in Chapter II

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Literature review

1.1.1 Culture and intercultural competence

Ryan (2010) argues that people from different nations (“people at national level”) would take up upon different sets of values and beliefs that distinguish them from others, and those make up the concept of culture – “the glue that bonds individuals

to help them interact in an efficient and harmonious way.” (p 215)

However, while an exact definition of culture has not yet been agreed upon by the scholars, many works, especially recent ones, do not refer to culture as belonging to

a nation, instead, a specific group only The definition of Nieto (1999) suggests that culture is “ the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared and transformed by a group of people” (p.48); this view on culture is also shared by Moeller & Nugent (2014), that culture is an ever-changing entity

From this definition, in order to perform well in intercultural environments, a person needs to possess a specific set of skills and/or competence to deal with intercultural situations, which has been named intercultural competence by some scholars (Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2006) Intercultural competence can be defined,

in very broad sense, as the ability to interact appropriately with people from a culture foreign from one’s own (Sinicrope et al., 2012)

An exact definition for this concept has so far been elusive, but one of the more recent viewpoints by Arasaratnam (2009), similar to the model by Chen & Starosta (1996), states that there are three dimensions to this competence, namely Cognitive (or cognitive complexity), Affective (affective empathy) and Behavioral (both interculturally and interpersonally) This model follows the model of human competence in the field of cognitive psychology under different names: knowledge

(cognitive), motivation (affective) and skills (behavioral) dating back to the 1950s’ works of Bloom (1956) and Havighurst (1957)

The research focuses on the cognitive dimensions of intercultural competence It investigates specifically the knowledge about and attitude towards the same concepts of subjects from different groups, to be more exact, the schemata of one group of Americans and two of Vietnamese

1.1.2 Schema and underlying cultural assumptions

Schemata, as defined by Nishida (1999), are “generalized collections of past experiences which are organized into related knowledge groups and are used to guide our behaviors in familiar situations” (p.401) This term was coined by the psychologist Bartlett (1932) to refer to the previous knowledge that directs our behaviors under a new stimuli A person gains cultural schemata by storing certain information that appears repeatedly in interactions with people from the same culture Without cultural schema, people may have difficulties making sense of unfamiliar situations (Malcolm & Sharifian, 2000) In this research, the aspect of underlying cultural assumptions of schema is emphasized

After collecting the data about underlying cultural assumptions of the three groups, the research then compares and contrasts if the schemata of the two Vietnamese groups resemble each other, and if those differ from the American’s By doing so, the research hopes to determine whether individuals in each group share common schema, and if those of two groups from the same nation or culture would resemble each other more closely than another nation/culture’s

1.2 Previous Studies

Matveev & Merz (2014) noted that a wide range of intercultural competence assessment tools are being utilized for different purposes and in different contexts and disciplines Among these tools, a few aim at evaluating the performance of an

individual, specifically, the communication performance (McCroskey, 1982) or sometimes, both communication and behavioral performance (Byram, 1997), as an indicator of intercultural competence Other tend to focus more on the potential to perform well in intercultural context rather than on the performance itself (Arasaratnam & Doerfel, 2005; Dervin, 2010)

However, while attitude and behaviors are substantially easier to observe, implicit cultural perceptions and values are “methodologically more difficult to investigate” (Linowes et al., 2000, p.75) To tackle the issue, Szalay & Deese (1978) developed

a tool for cultural mental representations, which is the Associative Group Analysis (AGA) It is based on the argument that people sharing the same culture would have similar sets of concept associations, thus a mental map of concept representations would describe the culture’s dominant mindset and by extension, its belief as well (Szalay & Deese, 1978; Linowes et al., 2000)

The method has been employed in several studies, such as by Kelly & Szalay (1972)

to investigate the effect of an student exchange program to the United States on Korean students, Linowes et al (2000) to highlight the differences in patterns of thinking by American and Japanese, or by Ryan (2006, 2010) to give insights into the potential conflicts in specific intercultural contexts

Kelly & Szalay (1972) investigated the common assumption behind students exchange programs that these would promote cultural and political understandings Their research investigated the views of three groups, each consisted of fifty students from the U.S., South Korea, who had been enjoying American college educations and those who had never travelled abroad respectively, on four systemic themes, four social interaction themes and the United States The results showed that the Koreans having studied in the U.S demonstrated slightly higher positive correlations with American students than their counterparts from the home country

in the systemic themes, and indicated that exchange students had significantly more

positive attitude towards the United States compared to their Korean peers (75% positive response versus 45%)

The research by Linowes et al (2000) attempted to investigate and illustrate the differences of young American and Japanese patterns of thinking in the domain of international business by using AGA on 100 respondents from each national groups

It then came to the conclusions that the two groups indeed possessed different

“dominant mindset” (Linowes et al., 2000, p 95), in that Japanese youngsters were more collectivism-minded, while still showing explicit traces of “vertical conflict and peer rivalry” (p 95) The researchers also noted that the method offers a “fuller picture of different cultural understandings than traditional survey approaches have shown” (p 96)

The papers by Ryan (2006, 2010) aimed to explore the differences in the way American and Japanese perceived certain concepts in university and business contexts, but with no intentions to draw an extensive mental map for each culture The research in 2010 suggested that “culturally-based schemata are largely unrecognized and often disruptive in cross-cultural contexts” and that the differences in cultural schemata would lead to perception deviations and thus dissimilar interpretations of key concepts, possibly resulting in disagreements and conflicts

All in all, the aforementioned researches have used AGA to draw inferences about the understanding of certain concepts of different cultures and commented on the notable advantages of this method compared to traditional survey instruments

CHAPTER 2 ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS: METHOD AND

PROCEDURE 2.1 Research groups

The research was conducted on three different groups

The first group is Americans holding citizenship of the United States as well as English as their mother tongue There are thirty-two such respondents, with eleven males and twenty-one females, ranging from twenty-one to sixty-six years old with the average age being 32.63

The second one are native Vietnamese students from Hanoikids Club, a student-run organization in Hanoi with its main activity being tour-guiding for foreign visitors

to Hanoi, which conditions their members to extensive exposure to inter-cultural environment and good chances to build up their English vocabulary The research group contains thirty-four members from Hanoikids, four males, twenty-eight females and two of unstated sexes, from eighteen to twenty-five of age, the average being 23.12

The last group (hereby referred to as the Vietnamese group) consists of Vietnamese students from the same class in a university in Lao Cai province, a mountainous area in Vietnam, who receive from none to little education on English and hardly get exposure to inter-cultural environment and communication There are two males and thirty females in this group, comprising twenty-two members in total, with their age ranging from nineteen to twenty years old, and the average age for this group is 19.41

2.2 The Associative Group Analysis method and procedure

In order to gain understandings about the similarities and differences in schemata (in other words, background knowledge), as well as the mindset and attitudes of

different groups, the research employed the method of Associative Group Analysis (hereby referred to as AGA)

The Associate Group Analysis (AGA) method was originally developed by Szalay and Deese (1978) to identify differences in cross-cultural perception, then further adapted by Linowes et al (2000) for a more visually interpretation of these differences The general procedure can be described as followed

Participants from the two first groups were contacted first by an email asking for their acceptance to join the research by means of filling in the survey form Then, the survey, embedded with a note of consent, was sent to their email address The note of consent was also embedded in the printed form for the last groups

Each participant was presented with a survey form consisting of two parts: the first part is a demographical questionnaire to collect his or her basic personal information, as well as their frequency of international exposure and their level of English in communication, and the second is a list of theme words with spaces to write his or her free associations of the given theme words The first and second groups (Americans and Hanoikids) were presented with the theme words in English

in an online survey, while the last one (Vietnamese) were shown the Vietnamese equivalent in the printed form This was for the convenience of collecting responses,

as the first and second groups could only be reached via online survey due to geographical distance, whilst the last group study in the same class; even though it may create discrepancies in reply patterns as the last group sit close with each other, leaving a chance for them to copy each other’s responses

Originally, there were nine theme words employed in the research Those were

“Graduation” (“Tốt nghiệp”), “A Good Job” (“Một công việc tốt”), “Ambition” (“Tham vọng”), “Moving out” (“Chuyển ra ở riêng”), “Parents” (“Phụ huynh”),

“Happiness” (“Hạnh phúc”), “Freedom” (“Tự do”), “LGBT” (“Đồng tính nam, đồng tính nữ, song tính và chuyển giới (LGBT)”), “Travel around the world” (“Du

lịch vòng quanh thế giới”) and “Friendly” (“Thân thiện”) These words were chosen because they demonstrate concepts that are familiar to both Americans and Vietnamese, so the chances that participants misunderstand the theme words are slim Also, the theme words consist of both less abstract concepts (“Parents”,

“Graduation”) and more abstract ones (“Happiness”, “Ambition”), as well as common items (“A Good Job”, “Moving out”) and more recently introduced ones,

at least to the Vietnamese society (“LGBT”) The variations are hoped to also contribute to the detection of possible deviations, if any, in association patterns of the research groups as regard to the mentioned aspects

Each research group’s participants then were asked to make free associations, or write down the first words that come to their minds, when reading the given theme word Each response receives a weighted score according to its order of appearance

in the participant’s theme word response list The original weighted score distributions follow “the differential stability of rank place, assessed by the test-retest method” (Kelly, 1985): beginning with the first association, the weighted score of each response is 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1 However, as regards to the scale of the research with the number of responses for each theme word from each participant fluctuates from one to six, this weighted score distributions are adapted to a rank order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1 for six responses from the first to the last For example, as a reply to the theme word “Travel around the world”, one American in the research wrote down the following responses: “Exciting, important, essential, education, growth, memories” in that exact order In this case, the first word, “exciting” gets a weighted score of five points, the second, “important”, gets

a four, “essential” – three, “education” – two, “growth” and “memories” both take a one The limit for number of responses was applied because it allows the participants to quickly and easily make associations, resulting in a compact list of associations most obvious to the schema of the theme word while checking the less apparent ones, thus showing most relevant and dominant definition and attributes of

The responses then were classified into categories of meanings and/or concepts, and each category was assigned a total weighted score of the words it contains In order

to boost the accuracy of the classification, the author cross-checked the meanings and implications of problematic words in several dictionaries, including the Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Collins Cobuilds, and Webster-Mariam The classification was then re-checked by a trusted American acquaintance Afterwards, these categories’ degrees of relative prominence were analyzed in the attempt to depict the image of the theme word in each research group’s mind, or its members’ attitude towards the theme concept This procedure was applied to all other theme words In the final analysis, only nine themes, excluding the theme word “Friendly”, are included, because too many among the responses for this theme are ambiguous and can not be classified into categories

After the dominant mindset of each research group for each theme word had been devised, further analysis was carried out to compare and contrast the groups’ schemata for the theme word, illustrated by a semantograph of weighted score distributions of the theme word’s categories of meaning and word clouds made by word appearance frequency Then, a comprehensive evaluation is offered to pinpoint the unique characteristics of each group regarding given concepts, thus creating awareness about possible deviations in the way certain groups perceive the same concept, which may help infer the underlying cultural values that each group have

In AGA, each theme word (“stimulus word”, Kelly, 1985) is regarded as the unit of analysis It can also be viewed as a trigger for research participants to think about the concept before working out its associations

AGA is commented to be “an unstructured method of research used to reconstruct people’s subjective images from the spontaneous distributions of their free associations” (Linowes et al., 2000) The research takes on AGA approach as it emphasizes the shared aspects of each group’s schema for the concept, given by

spontaneous associations, thus are more likely to be honest and/or precise than answers for traditional surveys (Ryan, 2010) Those tools are heavily based on the assumption that respondents answer the questions honestly with confidence and understanding about their own capacity, as well as the ability to grade themselves accurately This proves to be unattainable in most cases, which leads to inaccuracy

in one way or another in assessment results According to Ryan (2006), this methodology “offers a more in-depth content analysis of the overall data than that

of survey instruments alone”

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 3.1 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme

“Graduation”

Figure 1.1: Semantograph for the theme “Graduation”

The responses of the three groups in regards to the theme word “Graduation” are classified into ten categories, among which the six most significant (accounting for noticeably larger percentage of the response weight compared to the other four) are

the categories of education (diploma, learning, college, etc.), feelings towards the event of graduation (relieved, exciting, independent, etc.), employment (job, salary, career), transition (adulthood, future, finished, etc.), accomplishments (achievement, success, goal, etc.) and celebration (ceremony, cap, walk, etc.)

Among those, the categories of education, celebration and transition are the three

unclassified

relationship

evaluation time employment

feelings accomplishment

celebration

transition education

VN HNKs US

most prominent for American respondents, earning respectively 18, 17 and 17 % of

the total weighted score, while those for Hanoikids members are the feelings towards the event of graduation, employment and education (31, 28, and 19%

respectively) This is also the case for the Vietnamese group, but with different ratio (10, 17 and 59% respectively), and thus, different standings in prominence as well The differences between the vocabulary used by the American group and the Hanoikids group is also illustrated in the word clouds below

Word cloud 1.1 & 1.2: Word clouds for the theme “Graduation” from

Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)

The word clouds are generated using the frequency of the words appearing in the response lists of the two groups The more a word appears in the response list, the bigger it is in the word cloud Only two word clouds from the American group and the Hanoikids group are created, as those are in English while the responses from the Vietnamese group are in Vietnamese, thus creating potential cross-language discrepancy, making the comparison among word clouds irrelevant

In the Hanoikids respondents’ word cloud, the most prominent words are job, freedom and money, and in its counterpart, college, success and completion Those for the Vietnamese group are translated to be distinction, credit and job

The semantograph and the word clouds indicate the different associative traits of the

respondents, the event of graduation means a turning point in life, and getting through college itself is an accomplishment worth celebrating; to the Hanoikids respondents, finishing college is more or less a medium to find a job in order to earn money, grow up and enjoy their freedom (most likely) from the influence of their families

It seems intuitive to assume that the Hanoikids respondents and the other Vietnamese respondents, who do not enjoy as much international exposure, would share the same associations as they are from the same country – however, the survey results show that the Vietnamese group actually view the very same item (Graduation) under a strikingly different perspective While finding a job appears to

be also quite important to this group, graduation is most essentially equal to earning

a diploma

The differences within each category of the three groups are also noteworthy

Within the category of education, the one earning a discernible percentage in

weighted score for all three groups, while for the American respondents, there is only one term indicating achievements made by graduating from college, which is

diploma, and this one item weights only six points and 9% of total weighted score

for education; there are seven such items in the Hanoikids’ response list comprising

forty-seven points in weighted score, occupying 62% of total This is definitely notable since the two groups demonstrate about the same extent of association to education from the theme word “Graduation”, but in different senses: the American

group tend to link it with the act of schooling (75% of total weighted score, including college, high school, school and education), while the Hanoikids group appears to favor the achievements (62% - degree, certificate, scholarship, etc.) This

seems-to-be-cultural difference is further deepened in the third group, as these

Vietnamese only link the aspect of education in “Graduation” with achievements,

earning an overwhelmingly high weighted score of 183 The difference might be explained by the commonly acknowledged distinctive set of values in the two

societies: while the American society seems to appreciate the act of learning in itself, the Vietnamese society puts much importance on degrees

However, it is not always the case that Hanoikids members share the same statistics with their Vietnamese counterparts in the research For example, they demonstrate

substantially more negative feelings (49 points – 39% in total weighted score for the

category of feelings) towards the event of graduation in comparison versus positive

feelings (58 – 46%) than both the American groups (15% vs 83%) and the

Vietnamese group (17% vs 83%) They also somehow associate graduation with

celebration, even with low weighted score (15), which has not been mentioned in

the Vietnamese responses, but appears to be quite significant to the American respondents (65 in weighted score)

It is observable that there is no quite noticeable resemblance in association pattern among the three groups In other words, the three groups have three evidently distinctive schemata for the same concept of “Graduation”

3.2 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “(A) Good Job”

The responses of the three groups in regards to the theme word “A Good Job” are

classified into twelve categories The four most salient ones are benefits (financial gain, benefit, holiday, etc.), emotional gains (joy, satisfaction, praise, etc.), career (work, professional, teaching, etc.) and working conditions/attributes of the job

(security, stability, flexible, etc.) Among those, the three top concerns for both

American respondents and Hanoikids’ are emotional gains, working conditions and benefits, though differing in order of concern, as emotional gains come first for the Americans (23% total weighted score), then benefits and working conditions respectively (17 and 16% total weighted score), while benefits top for Hanoikids respondents (26%), followed by working conditions (21%) and emotional gains (12%) While that, more or less, suggests a certain degree of like-

mindedness between these two research groups, the case is hardly the same for the third group, the Vietnamese one The three most significant categories for this

group include contributions a worker makes towards others (24% total weighted score), then career (21%) and judgments toward having a good job (14%)

Figure 2.1: Semantograph for the theme “A Good Job”

From the categorical weighted score distribution illustrated by the semantograph, it can be observed that all three groups seem to share very little as regards to the association of the theme word In fact, they appear to picture the concept in dissimilar perspectives

unclassified contributions relationships feelings towards the job

judgments advancement achievement attributes career working conditions

benefits emotional gains

VN HNKs US

Word cloud 2.1 & 2.2: Word clouds for the theme “A Good Job” from

Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)

The word clouds also demonstrate the differences, though it sheds on a different

light Salary, money, colleagues and environment are the most outstanding terms in

Hanoikids’ word clouds, indicating the high degree of concern for the materialistic aspect of a job, as well as the exterior environments where they work Those for the

American respondents are happiness, money and success, which seem to highlight

more the inner feeling of satisfaction a person acquires when doing a job The most prominent items in frequency for the last groups are quite different: those are

charity, (offering) help, happy, wonderful and teacher While the notable high frequency of the word teacher can be accounted for by the fact that the surveyed group comes from a college specialized in education, and the two terms happy and wonderful demonstrate the expected positive reaction to the theme word, which also appear in the other word lists; the two terms charity and help are peculiar to this word list only Whereas help is a relatively vague term that can be interpreted whether as the help one receives to get a good job (which happens fairly regularly in the Vietnamese society), or as the help from colleagues, or the help one lends to others; charity introduces a concept totally absent in the remaining two lists – which

is the contribution, more or less frequently seen as an act of returning the favor, one should make to the society as the “lucky” person who has a good job which allows him or her to lead a comfortable life

The less prominent categories and subcategories also offer another perspective to the similarities and differences among the research groups One such is the category

of working conditions/attributes of the job, regarded to be one top priority to be

considered by both the American and the Hanoikids group (16 and 21% total weighted score respectively), while less so for the Vietnamese one (only 6% group

total weighted score) Its three subcategories are stability, environment and other conditions/attributes Among those, stability is the most to be concerned by

Americans (64% category weighted score), while for Hanoikids members,

environment (international, flexible, competitive, etc.) seems to be of more

importance to them The latter group are also more aware of other aspects of the job,

such as the work load, working hours, or the motivation they need to do their jobs

The Vietnamese group, on the contrary, shows little concern for these aspects They

mention mostly the location of the working place, which should be near the family,

or convenient to commute to and fro (10 and 5 weighted score in that order)

Another notable category is the relationship This one does not appear to be of

much association for the American and Vietnamese groups, yet proves significant for the remaining one, as it gains forty-six weighted score in total for Hanoikids group (11% total weighted group)

The above analysis leads to the following conclusion about the three groups’ different mental images of “A Good Job” The American respondents seem to think

of it as a success, which does not only provide financial stability, but also inner feeling of satisfaction The Hanoikids group imply more the financial aspect, and instead of their inner feelings, they value more the working environment as well as their relationship with colleagues and work connections The Vietnamese group provide an interesting insight here, as they are substantially different to the other two groups They see a good job as a bliss, they have very specific idea of which

would be a good job (teacher – 34 accumulated weighted score, and doctor – 28),

and on top of that, they appreciate the act of giving back to society once one

3.3 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme

“Ambition”

The words associated with the theme word “Ambition” are sorted into ten categories Among those, there are four categories with notably higher weighted

scores than the rest, which are gains that people yearn to acquire (or put another

way: their ambitions, including words such as power, money, accomplishments,

etc.), the personal attributes of an ambitious person (eagerness, strong will, competitiveness, etc.), the judgments towards the act of having ambitions/an ambitious person (challenge, important, dislike, etc.) and motivation (drive,

aspiration, dream, etc.)

Figure 3.1: Semantograph for the theme “Ambition”

The distribution patterns of weighted score are more or less different for each group

unclassified feelings advance(ment)

actions career effort judgments motivation personal attributes

gain

VN HNKs US