A study of politness strategies in the conversational activities of the course book new english file – intermediate

List of tables and figures Figure 1: Ferrando’s diagram of culture Figure 2: Circumstances determining choice of strategy Figure 3: Strategies to minimize risk of losing face Nguyen Quan

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies

Faculty of post-graduate studies

ha noi – 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies

Faculty of post-graduate studies

Supervisor: Assoc Prof VÕ ĐẠI QUANG, Ph D

ha noi – 2012

1.1.3.3 Negative Politeness and Negative Politeness Strategies 14

3.1 Occurrence frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness

strategies

23

3.2 Positive politeness strategies in conversational activities in the seven

units of the course book “New English File, Intermediate”

25

3.3 Negative politeness strategies in conversational activities in the seven

units of the course book “New English File, Intermediate”

31

3.4 Summary 34

List of tables and figures

Figure 1: Ferrando’s diagram of culture

Figure 2: Circumstances determining choice of strategy

Figure 3: Strategies to minimize risk of losing face (Nguyen Quang, 2002) Figure 4: Frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness strategies

Figure 5: The frequency of positive politeness strategies

Figure 6: The frequency of negative politeness strategies

Table 1: The statistics of positive and negative and mixed politeness strategies

Table 2: The statistics of positive politeness strategies

Chapter I: Introduction

1 Rationale

At the great speed of developing and expanding, English has now become the most powerful language over the world and has been considered “a golden key

to every door” Therefore, using English to communicate is a must for everybody

As a matter of fact, to help learners attain the good command of communication, culture plays an indispensable role Nguyen Quang (1998:2) states that, “One cannot master a language without profound awareness of its cultural background and in both verbal and non-verbal communication, culture makes itself strongly felt” or Winstion Brembeck (1997:37) noted that, “To know another language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of oneself” Learners will truly succeed in using English when they must be aware of the relationship between language and culture, especially the hidden part of target culture including politeness strategies used commonly in daily social interaction

For these reasons, the author would like to carry out a small-scale study on investigating the positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational

activities of the course book New English File (Intermediate) by Clive Oxenden

and Christina Latham- Koeing with a view to improving the teaching and learning

of politeness strategies in this course book

2 Aims of the study

The aims of the study are:

 To raise Vietnamese learner’s awareness of how to use politeness strategies appropriately in order to achieve successful communication

 To put forward some suggestions for the teaching of positive and negative polite strategies to language teachers

3 Objectives of the study

- positive strategies employed in the conversational activities in the specified course book

- negative politeness strategies employed in the conversational activities in the specified course book

- possible implications for effective teaching of politeness strategies in verbal communication via English

4 Scope of the study

This thesis is focused on positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational activities of the course book “New English File- Intermediate” The investigation is based mainly on the theoretical framework of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Nguyen Quang (2002) Off record politeness strategies, politeness rules and politeness principles are out of the scope of this thesis

5 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study contributes to making explicit the important role of politeness strategies in verbal communication, especially in cross- cultural communication

Practical significance: This study helps gain an insight into the method employable for teaching politeness strategies in the course book “New English File- Intermediate” as well as in adjustment and application of teaching techniques

6 Structure of the thesis

In addition to the “References” and “Appendix” parts, the thesis consists of three main parts:

This chapter is divided into three parts:

I Literature Review

II Methodology

III Findings and discussions

Chapter III: Conclusion

Chapter II: Development

I Literature review

1.1 Theoretical Background

1.1.1 Culture and Communication

The term “culture” has been so far defined by many scholars and linguists In its simplest meaning, culture refers to a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviorism and material objects that members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another and is transmitted from generation to generation through learning Culture, in its broad sense, covers all aspects of human life

However, it must be noted that “the essence of culture is not its artifacts, tools or

other tangible culture elements but how the members of the group interpret, use and perceive.” (Banks, 1989:8) Therefore, Ferrando (cited in Nguyen Quang’s

Lecture notes) defined that “Culture is everything that people have, think or do as

a member of a society.”

Figure 1: Ferrando’s diagram of culture

Like culture, there are many definitions of communication with various emphases

on different factors As defined by Hybels and Weaver (2001:5), communication is

Materials object

(HAVE)

Ideas, values, attitudes (THINK)

Behavior pattern (DO) Culture

“any process in which people share information, ideals, and feelings that involve

not only the spoken and written words but also language, personal mannerism and style, the surrounding and things that add meaning to a message.” It is understood

that communication is a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding This process requires a vast repertoire of skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating And it is clear that without communication, people would stagnate and our society would not exist anymore

As the two terms “culture” and “communication” have been cracked thoroughly, another issue that comes to light is the relationship between them As Samovar

(1981:20) insightfully notes: “Culture and communication are inseparable

because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed or interpreted Culture is the foundation of communication” It is understood that the principles of

communication are culturally affected or communication practices are largely created, shaped and transmitted by culture In contrast, without communication, it would be impossible to preserve and pass along cultural characteristics from one place and time to another Needless to say, there is an intimate and complex relationship between culture and communication

Hence, to communicate well in one new language, learners ought to assist with learning a new culture

1.1.2 Communicative Competence

Spitzberg (1988) defined communicative competence as "the ability to interact

well with others" (p.68) He explains, "The term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness" (p

68) Communicative competence is measured by determining if, and to what

degree, the goals of interaction are achieved The function of communication is to maximize the achievement of “shared meaning.” Parks (1985: 174) emphasizes three interdependent themes: control, responsibility, and foresight; and argues that

to be competent, we must "not only 'know' and 'know how,' we must also 'do' and

'know that we did'” He defines communicative competence as "the degree to

which individuals perceive they have satisfied their goals in a given social situation without jeopardizing their ability or opportunity to pursue their other subjectively more important goals" This combination of cognitive and behavioral

perspectives is consistent with Wiemann and Backlund’s (1980: 188) argument

that communication competence is: “The ability of an interactant to choose among

available communicative behaviors in order that he (sic) may successfully accomplish his (sic) own interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line of his (sic) fellow interactants within the constraints

of the situation.”

Other applied linguists, notably, Bachman (1990) and Blum-Kulka and Levenston (1983: 120), have offered additional extensions to communicative competence Blum-Kulka view communicative competence as consisting of:

 Awareness of hyponym, antonym, converseness, and other possible systematic links between lexical items, by means of which, the substitution

of one lexical item for another can be explained in particular contexts

 Ability to avoid using specific lexical items by means of circumlocution and paraphrase

 Ability to recognize degrees of paraphrasic equivalence

According to Saville-Troike (1982: 22) there are three major components of communicative competence as follows:

 Linguistic knowledge

 Cultural knowledge

 Interaction skill

This idea emphasizes not only the learner’s ability to produce grammatically correct sentences but also the knowledge of what, when and how to produce these sentences That is the reason why “when we teach a language like English to speakers who already know another language, we must be aware that we have to teach more than sounds, words and grammatical structures” ( Warhaugh, cited from Nguyen Thi Tuyet, 2005:5)

1.1.3 Politeness

In daily conversations or social interaction, people tend to choose appropriate ways of using words to fit to the situation or communicating contexts It is generally believed that people act in such a way to show respect for the face wants

of their conversational partners The use of language to behave accordingly is called politeness

Linguistically, politeness is defined as “the interactional balance achieved

between two needs: the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness” (Blum-Kulla, 1987: 131) Meanwhile, in terms of cultural aspect,

politeness is viewed as “a fixed concept, as in the idea of “polite social behavior”

or “etiquette, within a culture”” (Yule, 1996:60) In another way, it is also

possible to specify a number of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture

Cross-culturally, politeness in communication is seen as “a system of interpersonal

relation designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange” As all linguistic actions

involve a potential face threat of some kind, it particularly requires the speaker to choose a proper politeness means so that the other’s face is respected As there are negative face and positive face, there are Negative Politeness (NP) and Positive Politeness (PP), respectively

1.1.3.1 Face

Brown and Levinson develop their notion of face from that of Goffman’s and from the English folk term which ties face up with notions of

being embarrassed or humiliated, or “losing face” “Face is the public-self image

that every member wants to claim for himself” Also in their account, face comes

in two varieties, positive face and negative face

Positive face: “the positive self-image that people have and want to be

appreciated and approved of by at least some people” (Brown and Levinson,

1987:61) In other words, it is the need to be accepted, even liked by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others This notion includes a person’s desire to be liked or appreciated

by others

Negative face: the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed by others This includes the idea that a person should not have

things unduly demanded of him Therefore, the negative face “is reflected in the

desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses”

(Thomas, 1995:169)

Face-threatening act (FTA): acts that by nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker To deal with FTA, Brown and Levinson (1987:60) suggest five strategies:

On record

4 Off record

1 Without redressive action, badly

With redressive action

2 Positive Politeness

3 Negative Politeness

Figure 2: Circumstances determining choice of strategy

(Brown and Levinson, 1978:74)

Nguyen Quang (2002) remarks that this point of view by Brown and Levinson is more or less decrease their diagram’s universal value Therefore, he proposes the following figure:

Figure 3: Strategies to minimize risk of losing face (Nguyen Quang, 2001)

Politeness is the behavior that can break down the face threatening acts into the harmony life, especially if the speakers use the appropriate politeness strategies, they may obtain success in cross- cultural communication Therefore, in the next

2 With redressive action

Positive Politeness Negative Politeness

1 Without redressive action

session the author would like to focus on negative and positive politeness strategies in particular and in the whole research in general

1.1.3.2 Positive Politeness and Positive Politeness Strategies

Positive politeness is used to satisfy the positive face of the hearer by approving on including him as a friend or as a member of an in-group In term of

definition of positive politeness, Nguyen Quang (2002) states that “positive

politeness is any communicative act (verbal and/or non-verbal) which is intentionally and appropriately meant to show the speaker’s concern to the hearer, thus enhancing the sense of solidarity between them”

According to Yule (1996:64), a positive politeness strategy “leads the requester to

inquire for a common goal, and even friendship” The tendency to use positive

politeness is to emphasize closeness between speaker and hearer It can be seen as

a “solidarity strategy” This strategy is usually used by people who have known

one another in order to indicate common ground and solidarity in which speaker shares hearer’s wants Thus, the usage of positive politeness is not only to redress the FTA, but also to indicate that speaker wants to come closer to hearer

In order for a speaker to minimize the FTA, Brown and Levinson specify the super-strategy of on record with positive politeness into 15 positive politeness strategies employed in communication According to Nguyen Quang (2003), there are seventeen positive politeness strategies, they are as follows:

 Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (her/his interest, wants, needs, goods, etc…)

This strategy suggests the S should pay attention to aspects of H’s conditions with compliments to create the harmony in interpersonal relations to achieve communicative point

E.g: You look beautiful! Have you had your hair cut?

 Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)

This strategy is often used with exaggerated stress, intonation, identifying modifiers to express agreement, high appreciation with the H

E.g: My God Your writing? It’s really fantastic!

 Strategy 3: Intensify interest to H

S includes H into the middle of the events being discussed to intensify the interest of speaker’s contribution by “making a good story”

E.g: I dropped in her house, and you know what I see? A huge mess over the

living room, the clothes are scattered over the room, and…

S uses of directly quoted speech such as the usage of tag questions that draw hearer as a participant into that conversation

S exaggerates facts to overstate

E.g: There are a million of people going to supermarket!

 Strategy 4: Use in- group identify markers

 In-group usages of address forms, it is to express such in-group

memberships into generic names and terms of address

E.g: Hey, buddy, let’s go out for a drink!

 Use jargon or slang:

E.g: Lend us two bucks

 Contraction and ellipsis: where S and H must share some knowledge about

the situation to understand the utterances, which is marked by elliosis and contraction

E.g: mind if I smoke?

 Strategy 5: Seek agreement

 Use repetition: S stresses emotional agreement, or surprise to show that he has heard correctly what was said and to satisfy H

E.g: - I am going to England this week

- To England!

 Use minimal encouragers: when someone is telling a story, the addressee often utters the agreement to indicate emphatic agreement

E.g: - I got the prize!

- Fantastic!

 Strategy 6: Avoid disagreement

 Token disagreement: S pretends to agree by twisting his utterances in order

to hide disagreement that is to respond

E.g: - So you haven’t heard a word?

- Not a word Not at all Exept Mary maybe

 Hedging opinions: S may choose to be vague for his own opinions, so as

not to be seen to disagree

E.g: -What do you think?

- That may be so, but…

 Strategy 7: Presuppose/ Raise/ Assert common ground

This strategy is used with gossip, small talk, personal center switch, time switch, place switch, avoidance of adjustment of reports to hearer’s wants and attitudes, which are the same as H’s value

E.g: I have a great time, you know, it’s very nice to go with him and people have same hobbies, you know, he’s good

 Strategy 8: Joke to put H at ease

It is a technique for putting hearer „at ease or minimizing an FTA or requesting

E.g: How about lending me this old heap of junk?

 Strategy 9: Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge of or concern for H’s wants

It is a way to indicate that speaker and hearer are cooperators and to put pressure

on hearer to cooperate with speaker

E.g: I understand fully well that you are looking a new house

 Strategy 10: Offer/ promise

To redress the potential threat of some FTA, speaker claims that whatever hearer wants, speaker will help to obtain, to show speaker’s good intentions in satisfying hearer’s positive faces wants, even if it is false

E.g: I’d give you a lift some time

 Strategy 11: Be optimistic

It is another kind of cooperative strategy to show that the H wants what the S wants

E.g: Let’s me try a bit to see how well you made it

 Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity

Speaker uses an inclusive when speaker actually means, you or me, to call upon the cooperative assumptions and thereby redress FTA

E.g: Let’s stop for a drink, then

 Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons

Speaker gives reason as to why he wants what he wants and assumes (via optimism) that if there are no good reasons why hearer shouldn’t or can’t cooperate, he will

E.g: Why don’t you help me with my ironing?

 Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity

Speaker asks hearer to cooperate with him by giving evidence of habit or obligations obtained between speaker and hearer Hence, they are locked into a situation of helping each other

E.g: If you help me do washing up, I will lend you my new notebook

 Strategy 15: Give gifts to H

S may satisfy H’s positive face wants but actually satisfying some of H’s wants Hence, people have the classic positive politeness action of gift-giving, not only tangible gifts

E.g: Have a glass of excellent Champaign, Jim

 Strategy 16: Comfort and encourage

This strategy is done when H wants to comfort or encourage S as they get into troubles or bad news

E.g: It’s not a big deal!

 Strategy 17: Ask personal questions

Personal questions are sometimes considered impolite in certain situations, but this strategy can be used to show S’s concerns or interest to H when necessary

E.g: Are you paid well?

1.1.3.3 Negative Politeness and Negative Politeness Strategies

Negative politeness is “redressive action addressed to the addressee’s

negative face: his want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded” (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 129) The tendency to use negative

politeness forms emphasizing the hearers’ right to freedom That is why negative politeness strategies are called deference strategies While positive politeness narrows the distance between interlocutors, negative politeness keeps a distance between them or avoids interfering with other’s personal affairs

The main focus for using this strategy is to assume that speaker may be imposing

by the hearer, and intruding on their space Therefore, these automatically assume that there might be some social distance or awkwardness in the situation

According to Nguyen Quang (2003), there are eleven negative politeness strategies, of which the initial ten ones are adopted originally by Brown and Levison, they are as follows:

 Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect

In this strategy a speaker is faced with opposing tensions: the desire to give hearer

an “out” by being indirect, and the desire to go on record These situations could

be solved by the compromise of conventional indirectness, the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from

their literal meaning, such as “could you”, “can you”, “why for God’s sake?”, etc E.g: Could you give me the book on the table, please

 Strategy 2: Question/ hedge

This strategy derives from the want not to presume or coerce H In literature, a

“hedge” is a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a

predicate or noun phrase in a set, such as “sort of”, “rather”, “kind of”, etc

E.g: I suppose that Harry is coming I wonder if (you know whether) John went

out

 Strategy 3: Be pessimistic

This strategy gives redress to hearer’s negative face by explicitly expressing doubt that the conditions for the appropriateness of speaker’s speech act obtain This strategy can be done through namely, doing indirect requests with assertions of

felicitous conditions like: “Couldn’t possibly”, “by any chance”

E.g: I don’t imagine there’d be any hope of you

 Strategy 4: Minimize the imposition

This strategy indirectly may pay hearer defense This strategy will let the H understand that there is no imposition even whether the H could do something for

S or not

E.g: I just want to ask you if I can borrow a tiny bit of paper

 Strategy 5: Give deference

Speaker humbles himself, his capacities, and possessions, namely that which

satisfies hearers wants to be treated as superior This strategy occurs between S and H who have different social status, and normally S is at a lower position

Giving deference can be realized with the use of such phrases: “excuse me”, “sir”,

“sorry to bother you but… ”, “please to accept my apology”, ect

E.g: Sorry to bother you but it’s time for dinner

 Strategy 6: Apologize

By apologizing for doing an FTA, the speaker can indicates his reluctance to impinge on hearer’s negative face and thereby partially redress that impingement

S can use this strategy with some phrases, such as: “I’m sure you….but… ”, “I

wouldn’t normally ask you but….”, “I hope this doesn’t bother you too much”

E.g: I’m sure you must be very busy, but

One way to indicating that speaker does not want to impinge on hearer so to phrase the FTA as if the agent were other than speaker, or at least possibly not speaker or not speaker alone, and the addressee were other than hearer, or only inclusive of hearer This results in a variety ways of avoiding the pronouns I and You

E.g: It seems to me that

 Strategy 8: State the FTA as a general rule

One way of dissociating speaker and hearer from the particular imposition in the FTA, and hence a way of communicating that speaker does not want to impinge but is merely forced to by circumstances, is to state the FTA as an instance of some general social rule, regulation, or obligation

E.g: I’m sorry, but late-comers cannot be seated till the next interval

 Strategy 9: Nominalize

In English, people tend to use more nouns to be polite The more S normalizes an expression, the more he dissociates from it

E.g: Your regular attendance gives you bonus mark

 Strategy 10: Go on record as incurring a debt or as not indebting a hearer

Speaker can redress an FTA by explicitly claiming his indebtedness tohearer, or by disclaiming any indebtedness of hearer, by means of expressions such as for requests and for offers

E.g: I’d be eternally grateful if you would (for request) I could easily do it for

you (for offers)

 Strategy 11: Avoid asking personal questions

This is a good strategy in communication, especially in cross-cultural

communication to avoid causing FTA to H, to show respect to H and to create distance between S and H

E.g: How are things?

1.2 Previous Studies

Over the last three decades, interest in politeness has become one of the central discussions in pragmatic, sociolinguistic and cross-culture researches The fact that a large number of theoretical, empirical books and articles about linguistic politeness have been published indicates that politeness has become one of the most active areas of research in language use

Chen (2001) tried to classify the researches on politeness into three categories: (1) work that constructs theories of politeness, such as Lakoff (1973,1977), Brown and Levinson (1987), Leech (1983), Fraser (1990), and Escandell-Vidal (1996); (2) work that investigates cultural-specific concepts and strategies of politeness, such as Hill et al (1986), Gu (1992), Lindenfeld (1990), and Sherzer (1983); (3) work that applies existing theories to data from various cultures, such as Scollon and Scollon (1983), Chen (1993,1996), Garcia (1989), and Holmes (1990)

According to them, it is possible to define generic types of politeness strategies to explain and predict the adoption of politeness in oral or written discourse

A multitude of studies on politeness strategies have been devoted to identifying the different kinds of politeness in both written and spoken discourse

Hermanto Kodyat (2001) conducted a study in order to find out what politeness and negative strategies are used by the interviewers in the light of theoretical framework put forward by Brown and Levinson The findings show that the interviewers use more positive politeness than negative politeness He also discussed the tendency or the reasons why the interviewers used certain expressions showing the certain strategies

In terms of written discourse, Fanny Meliana (1995), in her research which dealt with the conversations in the novel, entitled Love Match, by Barbara Steiner, indicates that the politeness expressions that are mostly used are the ones that follow Maxim of Quality and Agreement Maxim

These researches truly contribute to the awareness of communicators in using politeness strategies, especially positive politeness strategies in conversations to achieve communicative purposes

In Viet Nam, to the researchers' knowledge, there have been considerable researches concerning about finding out politeness strategies in different kinds of course book

Do Thi Thuy Mai (2000), in her research, focused on four politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson, Leech and Yule with reference to both English and Vietnamese The results indicate that the politeness strategies employed in the

course book “Interchange” fall into three main types: Positive, Negative and

Off-record politeness strategies

Nguyen Thi Hoa (2010), who was also interested in Politeness, conducted another study on politeness Her study is aimed at investigating the performance of positive and negative politeness strategies under the pressure of S – H role

relationship in the conversational activities of the course book “Inside Out”

(Pre-Intermediate) The findings revealed that the roles of S and H in conversations

affect the use of politeness strategies of the communicators And in almost cases, the positive politeness strategies are more frequently used These contributions also indicate that politeness strategies play an important role in communication in general and in English language teaching and learning in particular

And in this study of which the main topic is also on the politeness, the author only focuses on two types of politeness strategies, positive and negative strategies The

data of the research are from the course book “New English File, Intermediate”

which is popularly used in many universities in Vietnam but has it not been put into investigations of any researches

1.3 Summary

In this chapter, we have reviewed the major issues of culture and communication, politeness and politeness strategies theories Since different languages and cultures have different norms for appropriate realization of politeness, language learners need instructions so that they can communicate appropriately in the target language The following chapters are spared for the presentation of the employed methodology, the findings established and discussions on politeness strategies detected in this course book