Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ trong hội thoại đàm phán kinh doanh trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

This study has been conducted with the aim to provide an insight into the pragmatic features presented in business NCs in English and Vietnamese, especially functional features. The research was carried out using conversations collected randomly from variable sources. It firstly aimed at discovering the frequency of functions employed by the participants or negotiators. More than that, the study attempted to identify similarities and differences of functional features utilized in business NCs. And the study tried to uncover the reasons underlying negotiators‘ preferences in term of those functional features. Lastly, obstacles to the exploitation of business NCs are also addressed. To fulfill these objectives, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to analyze the functional features of business NCs. Results showed that although both languages in business negotiation have similar functions, differences inside each functions exist.

i

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

Graduation paper

A STUDY ON LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF

BUSINESS NEGOTIATION CONVERSATIONS IN

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

SUPERVISOR: MS NGUYEN THI MAI HUU (MA) STUDENT: QUACH TRUNG QUANG

YEAR OF ENROLMENT: QH2009

Ha Noi, May 2013

ii

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ TRONG HỘI THOẠI ĐÀM PHÁN KINH DOANH TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG

i

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I, Quach Trung Quang, group 09.F1.E25, a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Art (TEFL), hereby state that I accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor‘s Thesis deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library s hould be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction

of thesis

Signature:

Date:

In addition, I also want to send my sincerest thanks to Mr Nguyen Xuan Thom, PhD, for his supports during the time I conducted this research

Last but not least, I am truly grateful to my family and my friends for giving

me all the help I needed to complete this research paper

iii

Abstract

This study has been conducted with the aim to provide an insight into the pragmatic features presented in business NCs in English and Vietnamese, especially functional features The research was carried out using conversations collected randomly from variable sources It firstly aimed at discovering the frequency of functions employed by the participants or negotiators More than that, the study attempted to identify similarities and differences of functional features utilized in business NCs And the study tried to uncover the reasons underlying negotiators‘ preferences in term of those functional features Lastly, obstacles to the exploitation of business NCs are also addressed To fulfill these objectives, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to analyze the functional features of business NCs Results showed that although both languages in business negotiation have similar functions, differences inside each functions exist

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOG Y

v

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.3 Similarities and differences of pragmatic presentation of business NCs in

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

Vietnamese (VBNCs)

English and Vietnamese

List of abbreviations

NCs: negotiation conversations

EBNCs: English business negotiation conversations

VBNCs: Vietnamese business negotiation conversations

- 1 -

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the research problem and rationale for the study as well as its scope and significance The three research questions are clearly stated accordantly to the aims and objectives of the study The chapter concludes with an overview of the rest of the research paper

1.1 Rationale

In the past few years, although being faced with a lot of difficulties, especially experiencing the global financial crisis, the world economy has been taking steps to recover gradually and has good signals in growth Nevertheless,

in each country, the firms‘ business operations still have a trend of business cooperation, technology improvement, diversification of products and services and new potential market seeking In larger scale, the globalization is an ineviTable trend that requires firms to be well-prepared and be ready to encounter the challenges of this trend The question posed here is how to achieve agreements and sign the valued contracts Obviously, the business negotiation is namely the key to answer such an interesting question

Truly, it can be easily recognized that ―Negotiating‖ is a technical term used a great deal nowadays, in newspapers, on television, on radio and in many other kinds of communication in our society Each day, human beings frequently have to negotiate, even though they may not realize it Certainly, in business, negotiation is an indispensable activity that helps firms to achieve targets It can also be known as ―a lubricant‖ for any company‘s operation and lies at the heart

of any diplomatic policy The art and science of negotiation are fully employed

to promote companies‘ image, advance stakeholders‘ benefits in business areas Negotiation is also a key for parties (government, enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, etc) to open more doors of success

In both international and domestic business, the skillful use of negotiation can advance a party‘s interests and help companies to avoid a less attractive alternative, e.g., trade wars, litigation, or protracted dispute settlement

- 2 -

procedures under the WTO An effective negotiation process can lead to positive outcomes that can result in the promotion of important objectives including economic development, business interests, environmental protection, labor rights, and political stability, all of which can minimize the adverse impacts of poverty that can lead to violence and war Depending on the subject matter of a negotiation, different skills must be employed and options exercised

to achieve agreement between or among parties However, negotiation is not as easy as pie and not a single utterance but a more complicated conversation To

be successful in negotiation, a negotiator needs to have a well -prepared strategies and knowledge of how to organize a negotiation beside s good capacity

of language communication

In reality, there are a large volume of studies relating to these issues of negotiation, techniques and negotiation strategies but very few researches exploit the field of linguistic features of business negotiation conversation

Hence, a Study on Linguistic Features of Business Negotiation Conversations (NCs) in English and Vietnamese is hoped to provide some insights highlighting the way of linguistic features preformed in business negotiation At the same time, the similarities and differences between business NCs in English and Vietnamese in terms of functional features are also revealed through the study This one is not a research about the techniques and strategy of negotiation; however, its results can be utilized to enhance the professional techniques in business negotiation

1.2 Aims and objectives

1.2.1 Aims

The research aims to investigate the pragmatic features in business NCs

in English and Vietnamese To be more accurate, the research exploits and analyzes its functional features In addition, the similarities and differences in NCs in English and Vietnamese in terms of the mentioned aspects are detected

- 3 -

1.2.2 Objectives

The objectives of this research are:

- To study the pragmatic features of business NCs in English and Vietnamese

- To find out and justify the similarities and differences between business NCs in English and Vietnamese in terms of pragmatics

- To suggest some implications for negotiators in business

- To facilitate students in translating collocations and understanding conversational implicatures

1.3 Research questions

These afore-mentioned aims are specified into the three following research questions:

- What are the functional features of business NCs in English?

- What are the functional features of business NCs in Vietnamese?

- What are the similarities and differences in functional features of

business NCs in English and Vietnamese?

1.4 Scope of the study

This research focuses on investigating the functional features in business NCs in English and Vietnamese Because the functional features of the negotiation are very complicated and varied; as well as the limitation of time and the ability of the researcher, the paper just analyses the functional features

of business NCs The thesis does not examine the Paralinguistic (the aspects of spoken communication that do not involve word; for example, body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone and pitch of voice, etc); extra-linguistic factors

in NCs Moreover, the study only exploited data from printed sources, not NCs from audios or videos

This study only concerns about the functional features of linguistics in face-to-face negotiation It does not aim at researching linguistic phenomenon of commercial letters, contracts, etc and does not mention the negotiation through

- 4 -

telephones, letters and other communication means It just researches the negotiation conversation in business, not politics or other fields

1.5 The significance of the study

With the aim to make a study on functional features of NCs in English and Vietnamese, the study will be able to provide useful knowledge to enable better use of NCs in cross – cultural communication and negotiation in English and Vietnamese The findings of the study can be the potential source for the teaching and learning of business and business negotiation in general and NCs

in English and Vietnamese in particular as foreign languages

1.6 Organization of the study

The rest of this paper consists of following chapters

Chapter 2: Theoretical background

- 5 -

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter provides a literature background to support the development of the research paper Basic concepts related to the study such as conversation, pragmatics, negotiation or business negotiation and will be compiled and presented, and previous studies will be critically reviewed for a better understanding of the research problems

is sometimes referred to

A subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970s, pragmatics studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation (conversation analysis)

It distinguishes two intents or meanings in each utterance or communicative act

of verbal communication One is the informative intent or the sentence meaning, and the other the communicative intent or speaker meaning (Leech, 1983; Sperber and Wilson, 1986) The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is referred to as pragmatic competence (Kasper, 1997) which often includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as politeness, and the linguistic knowledge explicit and implicit

Compared to grammar which deals with the internal structure of various linguistics forms of the language system, pragmatics is truly different Pragmatics is more concerned with the function of the linguistic forms, particularly the function of sentences in linguistic communication, that is, the understanding or interpretation of utterances Without either grammatical or

a command or instruction

With regard to pragmatic features, particularly functional features, surveying, confirming, explaining, advising, warning and threatening, compromise, persuading and bargaining are key functions which play a truly vital role in conversation These functions are mentioned in a M.A thesis of Thu Huong (2011) The utterances or sentences contribute to form a conversation Each utterance can possess one kind of functional feature and serve for a fixed purpose The study is about pragmactic features of business negotiation conversations The researcher wished to dig out the application of pragmatic features

2.1.2 Speech Acts Theory

2.1.2.1 Speech Acts

Speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language The contemporary use of the term goes back to J L Austin's discovery of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts According to Searl (1969) and Crystal (1985), a speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance, including the following:

including the uttering of words (utterance acts), making reference and

Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating

About the classification of speech acts, there are two typical ways to category:

a Austin‘s Classification

into five categories: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, expositives and behabitives

b Searle‘s Classification

came up with the taxonomy of speech act types: representatives or assertive, directives, commissives, expressives, declaratives

2.1.2.2 Felicity Conditions

"Felicity conditions are conventions that speakers and addressees use as a code to produce and recognize actions Speakers use the felicity conditions for actions as a device for encoding their actions into sentences with a particular linguistic structure that speakers then utter (i.e they produce the appropriate utterance unit) Hearers, in turn, use the same set of felicity conditions for actions as a device for decoding the speaker's actions from the linguistic structure of the sentences the speaker produced (i.e from the speaker's utterance units)."

(Turnbull, 2003)

- 8 -

In pragmatics, the conditions that must be in place and the criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to achieve its purpose

Several kinds of felicity conditions have been identified, including:

(1) an essential condition (whether a speaker intends that an utterance be acted upon by the addressee);

(2) a sincerity condition (whether the speech act is being performed seriously and sincerely);

(3) a preparatory condition (whether the authority of the speaker and the circumstances of the speech act are appropriate to its being performed successfully) (Austin, 1962)

2.1.3 Conversation

Conversation has been defined by Cook in the following way:

audience

(Cook, 1990:51)

2.1.3.1 The concept of conversation

As Eric Miller (1999) demonstrated, the English word, conversation, is made up of a combination of two Latin roots, 'con,' and 'vers.' 'Con' means: with, together 'Vers' means: to turn about in a given direction Thus, to engage in conversation literally means, to turn about with others

And also in his research, the informational and the phatic are two elements that form conversation The term, phatic from the Greek word, to

- 9 -

speak was introduced into the English language by Bronislav Malinowski (1923): "Phatic communion is a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words Words in phatic communion fulfill a social function and that is their principal aim." In other words, "Phatic communication is used to establish social relationships r ather than impart information."

Conversation seems to appear everywhere, in every field in our life In business negotiation, the conversation is the core factor and the fix condition that makes a negotiation occur

Conversations are social creations They are produced one step at a time

as people carry out certain joint activities A joint activity is one in which two or more people have to coordinate with each other to succeed (Clark, 1996)

To be suiTable for the aim of this study, the definition by Finegan et.al is preferred more Conversation can be viewed as a series of speech acts – greetings, enquiries, congratulations, comments, invitations, requests, …To accomplish the work of these speech acts, some organization is essential: we take turns to speak, answer questions, mark the beginning and end of conversation, and make corrections when they are needed.‖

2.1.3.2 Features of conversation

Graham Williamson (2009) has given his opinion about the characteristic

of conversation and claimed that conversation is a unique human activity and there are several defining characteristics:

- ―No predetermined cognitive map‖ The possibility of predicting the actual utterances accurately is zero when two or more people converse Further,

we cannot predict the size of these utterances, their order of occurrence or their relative distribution amongst the participants When entering a conversation, we have no predetermined cognitive map of how the conversation will unfold An idea of what we would like to talk about, what messages we would wish to convey, and so on, may appear in our mind but there can be no guarantee that we will fulfill such aims

- 10 -

- ―Collaboratively achie ved‖ Conversation requires the active participation of at least two attentive people, each performing intentional acts designed to cause some effect in the other The participants thus collaborate to construct a cohesive and coherent conversation (Williamson G, 2009)

- ―Managed on a turn-by-turn basis‖ As indicated, conversation usually proceeds on an ‗I say something – you say something‘ scheme, with one participant taking up a turn at talk immediately following the talk of the previous speaker Thus, the roles of listener and speaker will continually alternate The structure of the talk with basic pattern ―I speak-you speak-I-speak-you-speak‖ is also mentioned in Yule‘s pragmatics book (1996) as performance of interaction This similarity makes his opinion become more trustworthy

- ―One-at-a-time talk‖ A general feature of conversation is that only one participant talks at any one time This is true of most people in Europe and North America However, there is some evidence to suggest that one-at-a-time talk may not be universal (Reisman, 1974) It would appear, however, that the general likelihood is that conversational participants talk one at a time

- ―Highly coordinated‖ When one speaker stops talking another takes over with little overlap and an extremely short pause between turns This so-called interturn gap between one speaker finishing his or her turn at talk and another participant beginning their turn at talk is almost imperceptible: it is so short that it has to be measured in microseconds

2.1.4 Negotiation

2.1.4.1 Negotiation

Christopher W Moore, Ph.D has said that negotiation is one of the most common approaches used to make decisions and manage disputes It is also the major building block for many other alternative dispute resolution procedures

Negotiation occurs between spouses, parents and children, managers and staff, employers and employees, professionals and clients, within and between organizations and between agencies and the public Negotiation is a problem-solving process in which two or more people voluntarily discuss their differences

According to Dwyer (2000) ―Negotiation is a process in which two or more parties try to resolve differences, solve problems and reach agreement Good negotiation meets as many interests as possible with an agreement that is durable‖

The formal negotiation process is divided into three stages: Pre - negotiation, Negotiation and Post-negotiation

2.1.4.2 Distinguish several negotiation strategies

Each negotiation has a specific purpose to reach agreement and it does not always achieve this aim, consider the differences between the following four strategies

a Win-win strategies

Win-win outcomes occur when each side of a dispute feels they have won Since both sides benefit from such a scenario, any resolutions to the conflict are likely to be accepted voluntarily The process of integrative bargaining aims to achieve, through cooperation, win-win outcomes (Spangler, Brad, 2003)

b Win-lose strategies or lose-win strategies

Win-lose situations result when only one side perceives the outcome as positive Thus, win-lose outcomes are less likely to be accepted voluntarily Distributive bargaining processes, based on a principle of competition between participants, are more likely than integrative bargaining to end in win-lose outcomes or they may result in a situation where each side gets part of what he

or she wanted, but not as much as they might have gotten if the y had used integrative bargaining (Spangler, Brad, 2003)

- 12 -

c Lose-lose strategies

According to Spangler and Brad (2003), lose-lose means that all parties end up being worse off An example of this would be a budget -cutting negotiation in which all parties lose money

2.1.4.3 Business negotiation

Today, along with the advancement in technology and the development

in transportation, the economic relationships between people are closer, economic communications are more frequent, and the harmonization of economic interests is also more complicated Therefore, amongst all types of negotiations in today‘s society, business negotiation is increasingly taking centre stage

Business is an economic activity, which is related with continuous and regular production and distribution of goods and services for satisfying human wants

Business has many definitions, one of which is trade Business negotiations are activities in which people discuss and consult with one another to achieve the objective of trade (Cheng, 1991) Here, business negotiation has two layers of meaning One is business, the other is negotiation Adachi (1996) mentions the former establishes the objective of actions and the nature of the content, the latter establishes the process and the method of action During business negotiations, the specific objectives of negotiations and the nature of the content cannot be established without business, and the process of business as well as the method of activity cannot be established without negotiation Therefore, as Bangert (1993) states business negotiation can be defined as an activity in which both parties discuss and consult with one another to trade off conditions in order to achieve the objective of trading of commodities

- 13 -

2.2 Related studies

Although negotiation and business negotiation language have long received great attention internationally, particularly at the University of Languages and International studies, its prominence has not been fully recognized There has been

no graduation paper or lecture‘s research on this issue In higher level; however, there was doctoral dissertation (2001) of Mr Nguyen Xuan Thom PhD about linguistic features of international trade negotiation conversation in English and Vietnamese (written in Vietnamese) The dissertation gives a new theoretical framework; consider negotiating discourse on both the macro level (the interaction with context) and micro level (internal organization of discourse), taking account

of the professional and cultural characteristics of characters and object in communication Yet, the above research is not truly related to this study because it

is deeper in other field of negotiation conversation Besides, a M.A thesis also mentions the linguistic features of negotiation conversation (2011) but mainly research the syntactic features of negotiation conversation in general

To address this major gap, the researcher has carried out a study on the pragmatic feature of business negotiation conversation which will be elaborated more vividly

in next chapters

2.3 Summary

In this chapter, theoretical backgrounds for the research have been provided, from basic concepts of pragmatics and conversation, negotiation and business negotiation to the definition, classification functional features Related studies have been pointed out, and a literature gap in Vietnam‘s context has also been revealed

- 14 -

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOG Y

This research aims to finding out the similarities and differences in the pragmatic features of collected modals A descriptive method is used to describe the NCs in the two languages The quantitative and qualitative methods are resorted to analyzing the data collected Then a contrastive analysis is conducted

to find out the similarities and differences between English and Vi etnamese Ns in terms of the aspects mentioned in the aims and objectives

The researcher utilized following data collecting method, data analysis method and procedure to find answers for three research questions

3.1 Data collecting method

This study is a kind of the secondary research that data of research are available and already published The researcher tried to collect qualitative data from reliable sources The data will be mainly collected 125 samples of business NCs in English and 120 samples business NCs in Vietnamese from books, famous stories (short stories, folk joke) and novels For data from books, the research mainly employed conversations in transcripts of listening parts from English books for student learning business such as Market Leader, English for Business, etc Other conversations from stories, novels need to be related the business The researcher will not mention the literature value of these conversations in works Similarly, Vietnamese business NCs are picked up from

books of negotiation and business

Criteria for selecting conversations are:

- Conversations should be 3-4 sentences or more in length and be placed in a specific context

- Conversations that simply introduce simple greeting or introducing are not selected

- The selected conversations should contain certain functions and clear purposes

related to business

3.2 Data analysis

- 15 -

The data are grouped into categories depending on their structures, the types of function that NCs performing so that we can draw out the similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese for the discussion section The frequency of structures used for NCs was totalized basing on the quantitative analysis The pragmatic features of NCs were then summarized in some Tables The contrastive method was applied in to analyze the similarities and differences

in the pragmatic features of NCs in the two languages

In general, the collected data are analyzed following the below steps:

Step 1: Collecting the data in negotiation from different sourc es in Vietnamese and English

Step 2: Finding out the functions of negotiation they belong and perform then put them into distinctive groups

Step 3: Analyzing and discussing the results

Step 4: Comparing the similarities and differences of the issues i n both languages

Step 5: Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning language for avoidance of culture shocks in negotiations

- 16 -

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this chapter, all collected data will be thoroughly analyzed and discussed to provide the answers for the research questions Moreover, previous literature backgrounds will be related to the findings in attempt to reveal the underlying reasons behind the patterns Last but not least, suggestions for an effective exploitation of NCs will be provided

4.1 THE PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF BUSINESS NCS IN ENGLISH

The study focuses on the functional features of business NCs in English with 8 main functions which are surveying, explaining, confirming, advising, warning & threatening, compromise, persuading and bargaining

In business NCs, there are many signals to find out the sentences with functions in which the types of sentence by purpose are one of the convenient ways to figure out appearances‘ functions Those four types are declarative, interrogative, e xclamatory, imperative sentences Those types of sentences will contribute to form conversations and when they are used in business NCs; certainly, those types convey and perform functional features of business NCs The study will research on these signals to make functional features of business NCs more meaningful and useful

The following Table 4.1 will show frequency of functional representation

of business NCs in English with figures which the researched analyzed The analysis of numbers in Table will be integrated into each part of functions

Table 4.1: Summary of relative frequency (%) of functional representation

of business NCs in English (EBNCs)

Through the statistics of this research, in English business NCs, 44% of total samples of conversations contain the existence of surveying function (See Table 4.1) The highest figure of surveying in total shows its dense frequency and extreme importance in business negotiation

The suiTable structures are mainly interrogative sentences and through it, the speaker can search the hearer‘s plans, intentions, attitude, hope, etc And then,

- 18 -

with information got from negotiation, they are able to give right decisions

quickly

The frequencies of these types used in 55 conversations with surveying

function are calculated in Table 4.2

Table 4.2: Types of sentence structures in surveying function of EBNCs

As shown in Table 4.2, the interrogative and imperative sentences are

more preferred when forming conversations with surveying functions In

interrogative type of sentences in business NCs, the interrogative sentences still

have more important and dominant position with 70.9% than imperative

sentences (29.1%) Because, in business, the asymmetric information always

exists, that surveying function of business NCs aims at exploiting partner‘s

information, points of view or attitude is truly important to help negotiators

succeed in their work There are many structures with specific purpose applied in

business negotiations in both interrogative and imperative sentences

Could you please…?

Would you mind…?

What do you know about…?

Do you have…?

ASK FOR

EVIDENCE

Could you provide…?

Can you illustrate that?

Why don‘t you ?

Could you elaborate on…?

Could you add…?

Could we have more particulars?

Could you give us further details?

Is there any additional?

What else?

Do you have any more …?

For instance, in small business case of Rhett and Scarlett in works ―Gone with the wind‖, Rhett takes use of short questions with ―how/what-phrase‖ and wh-clause to get information Then, the speaker gains a lot of necessary information from the hearer-Scarlett These two questions possess the surveying function

Example 1: Rhett: Well, let‟s get back to business How much and what for?

Scarlett: I don‟t know quite how much I‟ll need, But I want to buy a sawmill—and I think I can get it cheap And I‟ll need two wagons and two mules I want good mules, too And a horse and buggy for my own use

Rhett: A sawmill?

Scarlett: Yes, and if you‟ll lend me the money, I‟ll give you a half -interest

in it

Rhett: Whatever would I do with a sawmill?

Scarlett: Make money! We can make loads of money or I‟ll pay you interest on the loan—let‟s see, what is good interest?” “Fifty percent is considered very fine

(Mitchell, 1936) Besides direct interrogative sentences, indirect questions are also employed to survey information from hearer in conversations, for example, ―I wonder whether/how/why… ‖

- 20 -

In conclusion, surveying function of business NCs play a vital role with the most frequent appearance compare d with other functions And the most typical signals to identify surveying function in business NCs are interrogative and imperative sentences

4.1.2 Explaining

Explaining is another pragmatic function of conversation and aims at giving information in the way to be easy and clear to understand In business negotiation, asymmetry information occurs regularly That is why negotiator has

to ask for information and want to hear the detailed explanation from their partner about relating issues Yet, explaining too much in business NCs is not good negotiation strategy A professional negotiator often highly appreciates his/her to hearing" from partners and then, negotiators can make right decisions

in business Long utterances are created to meet the demand of explaining The explaining utterances are often used to answer ―how and why-question‖ and consist of structures performing causes and effects

For instance, i n the Godfather novel (1987), the explaining utterance appears in the conversation between Don Corleone and Sollozzo Talking about his business, Sollozzo tries to explain why Don Corleona is truly important and deserved in his work After using many reasons and showing out the needs in his career with series of ―I need‖, Sollozzo wishes to conclude that he need and want Don Corleone to work for him

Example 2:

Don Corleone: Then why do you come to me? How have I

deserved your generosity?

Sollozzo: I need two million dollars cash Equally important, I

need a man who has powerful friends in the important places

Some of my couriers will be caught over the years That is

ineviTable They will all have clean records that I promise So it

will be logical for judges to give light sentences I need a friend

who can guarantee that when my people get in trouble they

- 21 -

won't spend more than a year or two in jail Then they won't

talk But if they get ten and twenty years, who knows? In this

world there are many weak individuals They may talk; they

may jeopardize more important people Legal protection is a

must I hear, Don Corleone, that you have as many judges in

your pocket as a bootblack has pieces of silver

Utterances with explaining functions account for 9% The percentage is calculated from a quantity of 12 samples per the total of 120 samples This frequency indicates that in English NCs, explaining utterances are not truly popular in use; however, in conmparison with utterances‘ other functions, this percentage is still higher than that of advising, warning/threatening and compromise

In the explaining functions, the combination of sentence types is undeniable; however, the main one is the declarative sentence In one turn-taking, the speaker creates a lot of arguments and gives a lot of information in one turn

of explaining The research decided to analyze small division of declarative sentences instead of giving the occurrence of sentence structures‘ 4 types

Table 4.3 Declarative sentences performing explaining function in EBNCs

As illustrated from Table 4.3, it can be seen that affirmative statements have the highest percentage of occurrence with 58.34% and the conditional sentences is also vital in declarative sentences The negative statements and comparison keep fix position in declarative sentences used in business NCs

-I want to let you know…

-I‟d just like to…

- I‟m here to

-We‟re going to

- I‟ll put it simply

In short, explaining function in English business NCs is quite important although its frequency compared with others is not high In explaining function, the declarative sentences appear most and also play the main role in forming sentences with explaining function

4.1.3 Confirming

Confirming function in business NCs is one of the most considerable pragmatic functions because of its usefulness and importance in any negotiation‘s success The speaker may pose questions, re-identify requirements

or mention the same given information for the hearer, namely the negotiation partner, although the speaker knows exactly what the answer is The hearer will take a responsibility to reassert the accuracy of given information With effective confirming utterances, negotiators can minimize their mistakes in process of discussion Speakers are able to repeat the whole mentioned information and request hearers‘ confirmation or use rhetoric question and yes/no question Interrogatives structures are often utilized to demonstrate confirming function

Example 3: The conversation between 2 characters ―the Don‖ and

Sonny‘s confirmation about his view of future job The structure ―Don‘t you want to…‖ is employed effectively

- 23 -

The Don: Well, then I can't talk to you about how you should behave

Don't you want to finish school; don't you want to be a lawyer?

Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks

Sonny: I want to enter the family business; I can learn how to sell olive oil

The Don: Every man has one destiny, Come in tomorrow morning at nine o'clock Genco will show you what to do

In real business conversation, sometimes, speakers request hearer to confirm information instead of answering their question These following structures are often used to identify confirming function

It can be seen from the Table 4.1, that its occurrence is fairly popular with 16.8% conversation containing confirming function in the total of 125 samples In 8 types of functions issued in this research, the confirming ranks the second This proves that confirming has a significant meaning and is one of the most favorable functions that speakers using English make use of in business negotiation

Regarding the types of sentences that perform confirming functions, we can see figures from Table following 4.4 that the declarative sentences The Table indicates that the declarative sentences (47.62%) and interrogative

- 24 -

sentences (42.86%) are used most popularly in confirming functions The

imperative sentences are used in small area

Table 4.4 Types of sentences structures in confirming function in EBNCs

The confirming function of business NCs can be performed in two ways

One is to request confirmation for others With this kind of confirming fucntions,

the interrogative sentences are employed and yes/no questions or declarative

question as well as tag questions are utilized For instance, That‟s it? That‟s

your solution? , isn‟t it?

From Table 4.5, the interrogative sentences have occurrences of 9 (equal

to 42.86%) The other is asserting what has mentioned before The declaratives

sentences (47.62%) achieve the highest frequency In English, they often use

strong verb in the declarative sentences For example, I assert that…, I strongly

confirm that…

4.1.4 Advising

Utterance with advising function makes hearer realize what they should

do In negotiation, the use of advising utterance is not truly clear because

negotiators often try to get their targets, keep their advantages and give fewer

concessions for partners In three types of negotiation strategy, advising

utterances are mainly in the win-win negotiation strategy in which both speaker

and hearer aim at two-side benefits

In a business negotiation, Barbara gives her partners the best option to

improve the performance She gives advice with the assertion tone And the

- 25 -

structure ― if…., the best option….‖can be regarded as a effective way to advise and persuade others

TAN: Outsourcing? Well, it does take the problem off our hands But

we lose contact with our customers

DENISE: What about the bottom line?

BARBARA: Outsourcing is the cheapest option, and the easiest - in the short term But if we want to keep the operation in-house, the best option is automating our system The only down side is, we're taking a risk that our business will keep growing

(Australia Network) Apart from the above structure, negotiators can take other forms to create advising utterance such as

-You should (Các ngài nên)

- It‟s your duty to (Các ngài có nghĩa vụ)

- It‟s your responsibility to (Các ngài có trách nhiệm…)

(Xuan Thom, 2001:108) The statistics calculated from data collection shows that conversation with advising function covers a small percentage of collected samples There are two cases in total of 125 English NCs It can be seen from t he occurrence of advising with modest percentage (1.6%) that in English business NCs, negotiators often restrict the disclosure of their advice and does not appreciate this

Advising function just has 2 examples of conversations; therefore, the researcher only categorizes directly into declarative sentences in which yes/no question or affirmative statements are employed

- 26 -

4.1.5 Warning and threatening

Warning and threatening belong to negative face-threatening acts (FTAs) (Searle, 1969) and can cause the damage to hear Warning and threatening create

a pressure on the hearer to either perform or not perform the act In business, the win-lose and lose-lose negotiation pay attention to these more because of their affection to two side‘s s face The imperative and interrogative sentences are often picked up to speak with warning and threatening implies In business NCs, speakers with aggressive goals often seeks chances to undermine, deprive, damage or otherwise injure a rival or opponent There are a lot of structures that negotiator might utilize to make implicit threats such as

-You had better… (Tốt hơn là các ngài nên )

- If you don‟t (Nếu các ngài không thì )

(Xuan Thom and Hong Van, 2001)

- If you dare…/ If you do…

Example 5: In White Fang (London, 1906), with his anger, Scott utters

a threat Beauty Smith -the white master of White Fang, who trains him for dogfights, abuses him and makes money at White Fang‟s expense Before Scott‟s threat, Beauty Smith has also give warnings for him Beauty Smith: But I take the money under protest, The dog's a mint I ain't a-goin' to be robbed A man's got his rights

Scott : Correct, a man's got his rights But you're not a man You're a beast

Beauty Smith : Wait till I get back to Dawson, I‟ll have the law on You

Scott : If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I'll have you run out of town Understand? (London, 1906)

Regarding the frequency of English warning and threatening in business NCs, just 2 cases in 125 collected samples possess these functions These also account for 1.6% as much as advising function With low percentages of