AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF MODALITY MARKERS USED BY TEACHERS IN LECTURES IN ENGLISH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF MODALITY MARKERS USED BY TEACHERS IN LECTURES IN ENGLISH

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesiscontains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole, or in partfrom a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree ordiploma

No other person's work has been used without acknowledgement in thethesis

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree ordiploma in any other tertiary institution

Danang, 2013

This thesis made a study into the linguistic features of webcomments

on American Idol by American and Vietnamese in order to discover sometypical linguistic features and then find out the similarities and differences interms of the grammatical features, pragmatic features, commonly-usedexpressions and paralinguistic cues between these two kinds of webcomment

on American Idol The research was conducted based on the combination of avariety of methods, namely qualitative, quantitative, descriptive andcontrastive analysis 810 samples of AWAI and 810 samples of VWAI werecollected from the internet for recent years The findings showed that alongwith some similarities, there were a number of noticeable differences

It is hoped that the results of this study will provide useful knowledge toenable better use of webcomment languages in cross – culturalcommunication in American and Vietnamese L2 learners interpretewebcomments and achieve effective communication on the internet

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 3

1.2.1 Aims 3

1.2.2 Objectives 4

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 4

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 4

1.5 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY 5

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8

2.2.1 Definition of terms 8

2.2.2 Netspeak 9

2.2.3 Conversational theory 11

2.2.4 Communication and cross cultural communication 16

CHAPTER 3: METHOD AND PRECEDURE

3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 23

3.2 RESEARCH RROCEDURES 23

3.3 SAMPLE POPULATION 24

3.4 DATA COLLECTION 24

3.5 DATA ANALYSIS 26

3.6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY 27

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1 GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF AWAI AND VWAI 28

4.1.1 Grammatical features of AWAI 28

4.1.2 Grammatical features of VWAI 46

4.1.3 Similarities and Differences in Grammatical Features of AWAI and VWAI 54

4.2 PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF AWAI AND VWAI 56

4.2.1 Politeness strategies of AWAI 56

4.2.2 Politeness strategies of VWAI 63

4.2.3 Similarities and Differences in Pragmatics Features of AWAI and VWAI 68

4.3 COMMONLY- USED EXPRESSIONS 70

4.3.1 Commonly-used expressions in AWAI 70

4.3.2 Commonly-used expressions in VWAI 83

4.3.3 Similarities and Differences of AWAI and VWAI in Terms of Commonly-used Expressions 92

4.4 PARALINGUISTIC CUES 94

4.4.1 Paralinguistic Cues in AWAI 94

4.4.2 Paralinguistic Cues in VWAI 95

4.4.3 Similarities and Differences of AWAI and VWAI in Terms of

Paralinguistic Cues 96

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS 5.1 CONCLUSIONS 98

5.2 IMPLICATIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY 100

5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 101

REFERENCES 103 QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI (Bản sao)

APPENDIX

LIST OF TABLES

2.1 Crystal’s spoken language criteria applied to Netspeak 102.2 Crystal’s written language criteria applied to Netspeak 112.3 Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair 14

4.11 Frequency of politeness strategies found in AWAI 574.12 Frequency of politeness strategies found in VWAI 634.13 Frequency of politeness strategies found in AWAI and VWAI 694.14 Commonly-used expressions found in AWAI and VWAI 92

Firstly, as ‘new forms of computer-mediated unrestricted as to content and form guidelines – allow users total freedom forindividual expression This makes webcomments the perfect choice forexploring linguistic expression of individual differences’.

Secondly, ‘ due to the global dominance of the USA in the later half ofthe twentieth century, American spelling is increasingly accepted and found inBritish publications’ (Crystal,2001) Moreover, USA had more Internet usersthan the UK (NUA Internet Surveys, 1999) This has a great effect on Englishlearners in Vietnam A linguistic study of webcomments on American Idol byAmerican and Vietnamese is preferred to bring about their basic linguisticfeatures so as to help (Vietnamese) American English learners, especially thosewho are increasingly online for writing, posting and viewing comments

Thirdly, the increased use and importance of internet has given rise to aconcern with proper stylistic protocols for writing comments The possibleemergence of new linguistic and stylistic conventions are neither welldocumented in academic research, nor widely covered in textbooks forstudents It has its own features and causes a number of problems to thosewho are unfamiliar with internet language thereby leading to a breakdown incommunication and makes L2 learners difficult to read and understand thesetext messages if they don’t use or study them.

Let us take some basic examples of webcomment languages:

American webcomments on American Idol

(1) natia beridze : D :D :D :D OMG!!!

[=oh my god]

[A-11, p 2]

(2) bhjhmh: Scotty deserved to win AI! great voice! love him!

[=Scotty deserved to win American Idol! Great voice! love him!]

[A-81, p.11]

(3) Seraphimon2000 : wat di i just wach _

[=what did i just watch]

[A-138, p.18]

(4) moonsoonlava : Laurenn- it was stu stu stu stunniiiinngg!

[=Lauren- it was stunning]

[A-182, p.23]

(5) darkreplive king : dude if you had to listen to someone who sounds like

a screaming donkey on fire wouldn't you tell them they are bad at singing

[A-186, p.23]

Vietnamese webcomments on American Idol

(6) Chỉ Là Một CáiTên: hat' nge chag? kh0p' nhau j ca?

[=hát nghe chẳng khớp nhau gì cả?]

[B-45, p.6]

(7) Ha Trinh: Lauren ! hát hay thiệc á ! êu Qá

[=Lauren …! hát hay thật á…! đáng yêu quá]

[B-46, p.6]

(8) hoang nhon Truong : Scotty tuyet Qá ah e Cố lÊn nhA

[=Scotty…tuyệt quá ah…e cố lên nha]

(10) minh: LAUREN PHẢI NGÔNG, NGÔNG MỚI LÀ LAUREN!

[=Lauren phải ngông, ngông mới là Lauren]

[B-131, p.17]

The three reasons mentioned above have encouraged me to choose the

title of the thesis “A Study of Linguistic Features of Webcomments on

American Idol by American and Vietnamese”

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

This study is carried out with the aim to examine linguistic features ofwebcomments on American Idol by American and Vietnamese and canpoint out their similarities and differences It is done so as to help L2 learnersinterprete webcomments in the age of computer-mediated communication and

enable better use of comment languages in cross – cultural communication inAmerican and Vietnamese.

1.2.2 Objectives

In order to attain the aims mentioned above, the study intends to:

- Describe and compare grammatical features, pragmatic features,commonly-used expressions and paralinguistic cues of AWAI and VWAI

- Point out the similarities and differences of American webcommentsand their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of grammatical features, pragmaticfeatures, commonly-used expressions and paralinguistic cues

- Suggest some implications and contributions of the study

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

- What are the grammatical features of webcomments on American Idol

by American and Vietnamese?

- What are the pragmatic features of webcomments on American Idol

by American and Vietnamese?

- What are the commonly-used expressions of webcomments onAmerican Idol by American and Vietnamese?

- What are the paralinguistic cues of webcomments on American Idol

by American and Vietnamese?

- What are their similarities and differences?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

We clearly realize that there are some aspects of linguistic featureswhich occur in AWAI and VWAI For example:

+ lexical features

+ directness and indirectness in the webcomments

+ formulas of webcomments

However, in the limitation of this thesis, we have no ambition to go farinto all of these aspects What we want to do is to focus on the written aspect

of giving comments by American and Vietnamese viewers on contestants’performance after live show in the latest season: the top 10 AI perform inseason 10 and we mainly focus on the findings of linguistic features; i.e.grammatical features, pragmatic features, commonly-used expressions andparalinguistic cues of AWAI and VWAI

1.5 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY

This study is expected to be able to provide useful knowledge to enablebetter use of comment languages in cross – cultural communication inAmerican and Vietnamese It also makes readers understand the kind oflanguage teenagers are using today, L2 learners interprete webcomments andachieve effective communication on the internet

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The thesis consists of 5 main chapters

Chapter 1: The introduction of the study, which includes the rationale,

aims and objectives, research questions, significance of the study, scope ofthe study and organization of the study

Chapter 2: Includes the literature review, presents the previous studies

related to the study, the theoretical background of the study

Chapter 3: The methods and procedures of the study It will mention

the research design, the data collection and the data analysis

Chapter 4: "Findings and discussion" will describes, deal with

analyzing, interpreting and finding out similarities as well as differences oflinguistic features of webcomments between 2 languages

Chapter 5: "The conclusion and the implications" summarizes the

results and provides some implications and contribution of the study

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

The growth of Web 2.0 has allowed many services to be created thatfacilitate collaboration in the World Wide Web They are defined as "web-basedservices that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile …articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view andtraverse their list of connections" [5, p.211] The affordances and reach of thisemergent phenomenon are increasingly attracting the attention of scholars to thestudy of social networking [5]

In the world, Hawisher and Selfe [16, p.3-19] acknowledge thatnetwork discourse employs a language that is somewhere on the continuumbetween spoken and written language but most of the researchers recogniseonline communication as “talk” or “dialogue”

Cherny [10] analyzes the language used in Mutli-User Dungeons(MUD), one kind of computer applications which allow users to communicatesimultaneously over a network She agrees that the language produced inCMC is a response to the limits of the medium as well as “a function ofcommunity norms for language use that are reinforced and displayed witheach utterance”, and can be regarded as a register [10, p.26-27]

Baron [3] inquires into email communication, which is a way ofcomputer mediated communication, and gives a detailed account on thelinguistics of email It is recognized that the emergence of this relatively newmedium has altered the community standard and expectations in the use oftraditional spoken and written language

Crystal [13] gives an overview of the language specifically used byInternet users It is believed that the variety of language used on the Internetdisplays features that are unique to the Internet [13, p.18]

Maynor [23] outlines that messages in 'e-style' are more likely to befairly causal, freely omitted subjects, modals or articles and beextremely informal which include clipped word, simplified spellings andthe use of conversational words such as 'yep' and nope

Speakers in daily life use language under different circumstances.Choices in language use are functionally motivated and depend on situationsThus, while people write “bb” to replace “bye bye” during an on-line chat, it

is very rare to hear people saying “bb” in oral conversation Werry [37]suggests that there are important limiting conditions when chatting onInternet, such as spatial, temporal and social constraints

The study “Linguistic Innovations and Interactional Features of Casual Online Communication in Japanese” by Yukiko Nishimura [27]

explores the linguistic and interactional properties of informal asynchronouscomputer-mediated communication (CMC) in Japanese Using BulletinBoard Systems (BBS) as the primary source of data, the study identifies

innovative uses of kanji, other scripts and punctuation, and examines the

incorporation of such informal spoken features as final particles YoungJapanese BBS users are found to employ colloquial language online andinteract appropriately with their fellow participants in their Internetcommunity

In Vietnam, Internet language attracts a great deal of attention of many

researchers Le Thanh Binh (2008) in his M.A thesis “A Study on the Language in English Blogs Written by American People” investigates the

language in English blogs writtten by American people to find out its

distinctive linguistics features over conventional diary writing In his study,

he analyzes the grammatical features and discourse features from Americandiary blogs

Another study worth mentioning is “A Study on the English Language

of English Business E-mail Composed by Vietnamese Business People’’ by

Tran Truc Le (2004) This thesis made a survey on the business e-mails infields of grammatical features and covered a wide range of discourse featureslike opening and closing salutions, paralinguistics cues and simplifications oflanguage However, it limited itself within business e-mails composed byVietnamese business people only, and the instances taken from the e-mailcorpus have not been able to mention some discourse features that appear inwebcomments, which are also in the effect of Netspeak as a computer-mediated communication

The researchers have made a considerate contribution to the light ofNetspeak However, the studies haven’t gone further to their detailedlinguistic features in order to make a clear comparision Also, no linguistshave been done about webcomment languages written by American andVietnamese

The present study, therefore, hope to give more details and makeVietnamese webcommenters understand the kind of language teenagers areusing today, L2 learners can interprete webcomments and achieve effectivecommunication on the Internet

On the website Wikipedia.com, there is another definition ofwebcomment A webcomment is generally a written remark often related to

an added piece of information, or an observation or statement

Comments exist in two main forms: spoken texts and written texts.Spoken texts are the texts which present the spoken description of an eventwhile it is happening However, in this thesis, we choose to do research intothe written form which authors show his/her viewpoint on a current event.Visitors may express their agreement or disagreement about an issue by “like”

or “dislike” or giving a comment

b Computer-mediated communication

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) refers to the communication

systems that use “computers and telecommunications networks to compose,store, deliver and process communication” [30, p.4] December [12] gives aconcise definition of CMC by saying that it is the asynchronous andsynchronous creation and transmission of messages using digital techniques.Surratt [34] provides a more comprehensive description of CMC as follows:Computer-mediated communication is “the communication that is mediatedthrough technology, which constitutes so-called real interaction (realinteraction is defined as meaningful to the participants as face to faceinteraction but this interaction only occurs through the computer Matrix) andthe establishment of real community is possible solely through electronictechnology”

2.2.2 Netspeak

Netspeak’ is a term coined by Crystal [13, p.19] defined as a type

of language “displaying features that are unique to the internet…arisingout of its character as a medium which is electronic, global, andinteractive” Computer-mediated communication focuses on the medium

itself Crystal selects the term "Netspeak" to describe the many forms oflanguage visible on the Internet His selection of this term clearly arises fromthe ephemeral neologisms common to digital culture in the mid and late1990s, evidence for which resides in the list of alternatives he considered "netlish," "weblish," and "cyberspeak."

Netspeak, the language of the Internet, can be seen in a unique way,however If one considers all the different varieties of written and spokencommunication to be the parent language of the human race, one can look atthe language of the Internet as the child of this union This language took onthe characteristics of the human mother tongue, written and spoken forms ofcommunication, and assimilated it into the constraints of a digitalenvironment Netspeak relies on both the criteria found in speech and writing

If we take the above criteria and compare it with Netspeak, in particularthe language of web, we can develop a working definition on which to base alinguistic study of webs Belows are what Crystal has found in his study ofspoken/written language criteria of webs

Table 2.1: Crystal’s spoken language criteria applied to Netspeak

Table 2.2: Crystal’s written language criteria applied to Netspeak

Written language criteria Web

Visually decontextualized Yes, but with considerable adaptation

2.2.3 Conversational theory

Among various types of daily commnunication, conversation isobserved as the most popular and familiar one The mutual talking of peopleobserved everyday in fact implies many interesting but rather complexproblems Conversation action is joint action (Clark, 1987), not to individualstalking, but a pair of people conversing, a speaker and an addressee, or morethan just two people interacting with each other, and the participantscoordinate on both context and process Many researches that have been done

in the field of conversations, have given many definitions as follows:

- Conversation is the means by which we draw near to one another withsympathy and pleasure it is the basic of our social activity [7, p.550]

- Conversation is the means by which we draw near to one another withsympathy and pleasure; it is the basic of our social activity [10, p.105]

- Conversation is an informal talk in which people exchange news,fellings and thoughts [18, p.302]

- Conversation is the language communication between people andpeople [10, p.105]

- Conversation is a friendly, natural talk in which people exchangeinformation, ideas and emotions to one another [10, p.612]

In Vietnam, there are some definitions of conversation

- Hội thoại là hoạt động giao tiếp căn bản thường xuyên, phổ biến của

sự hành chức ngôn ngữ Cách hành chức khác của ngôn ngữ đều được giảithích dựa vào hoạt động căn bản này [42, p.276]

- Trong giao tiếp hai chiều, bên này nói, bên kia nghe và phản hồi trởlại Lúc đó vai trò của hai bên thay đổi: bên nghe lại trở thành bên nói và bênnói lại trở thành bên nghe Đó là hội thoại [43, p.76]

- Hội thoại là một trong những hoạt động ngôn ngữ thành lời giữa haihoặc nhiều nhân vật trực tiếp, trong một ngữ cảnh nhất định mà giữa họ có sựtương tác qua lại hành vi ngôn ngữ hay hành vi nhận thức nhằm đi đến mộtmục đích nhất định [44, p.18]

a Conversational structure

As an activity, conversation proceeds in a structural manner Hence, thebulk of work on analysing conversation, which has been carried out bymany sociologists and anthropologists Levinson has great contributions tofield of conversational structure and organization Units of the conversationalstructure are Turn, Adjacency Pair and Sequence

* Turn and turn-taking

A turn, according to Quirk et al [30], is seen as everything one personsays before another speaker begins to speak

Conversation is said to be based on the coordination of the speakers andthe recognised with the appearance of adjacency pairs, so it is preceded by aseries of turns The control of this process is turn taking Schegloff [33] points

out that a conversation can have two turns, the usual sequence is ababab where a and b are the parties of the conversation The observation of turn-

taking system is that speaker-change always occurs, and a person does notcontinue talking indefinitely, instead one person stops talking and anotherbegins Wargh (1986)

* Adjacency pair

According to Schegloff [33], an adjacency is the smallest structural unit

in conversation that is a sequence of two adjacent utterances produced bydifferent speakers and related to each other in such a way they form a pairtype

The adjacency pair always consists of a first part and a second part Theutterance of a first part immediately creates an expectation that constrains thepossibility form a second part of the same pair

There is a class of first pair parts which include Questions, Offers,Greetings…For some first pair parts, the second pair part is reciprocal(Greeting-Greeting); For some there is only one appropriate second(Question-Answer), For some there are more than one (Complaint-Apology/Justification-negotiation)

Not all first parts immediately receive their second parts, however,Yule (1996) point out that a question-answer sequence will be delayed whileanother question-answer sequence intervenes This is called “insertionsequences”

An insertion sequence is one adjacency pair within another It is one ofthe strategies for delaying in response Delay in response symbolically markspotential unavailability of the immediate expected answer Delay representsdistance between what is expected and what is provided In order to see howdelay is locally interpreted, we need some analytic terms for what is expectedwithin certain types of adjacency pairs

The following table, adapted from Levinson [23, p.336], indicates ofthe consistent match between format and content found across a numberadjacency pair seconds

Table 2.3: Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair

First part Second part

* Cooperative principles

A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another

is that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningfulconversations This assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle As

stated in H P Grice’s “Logic and Conversation” (1975): “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” [14, p.45] In other words, we as speakers try to contribute

meaningful, productive utterances to further the conversation It then followsthat, as listeners, we assume that our conversational partners are doing thesame The principle can be described by the following four categories whichare called “maxims”

Maxim of quality: Say only what you believe to be true and adequately

supported Don’t say things that you believe to be false and do not make statement for which they have no evidence.

Maxim of quantity: Be only as informative as required for current

conversational purposes It should be neither too little not too much.

Maxim of relevance: Make your contribution relevant.

Maxim of manner: Make your contribution brief, clear, present it in

an orderly fashion, avoid ambiguities and obscurity.

Grice’s principle and maxims actually form a fundamental part of anyunderstanding of conversation as a cooperative activity However, he pointsout that speaker do not always follow all of these maxims They may violate,exploit the maxim especially when implicature or a “white lie” iscommunicated In these cases, one may highly respect a maxim but ignoreothers It can be seen that the four maxims helps to sustain conversations, thespeech act of negotiation sequences as well as other speech acts also requiresthe above-mentioned maxims to be considered so as to maintain a harmoniousconversations

* Implication

Grice [14] gave out an approach which was called conversationalimplication that is a case in point what a speaker implicates is distinct fromwhat he says and from what his words imply

With cooperation and shared knowledge, other participants willrecognise the purpose of a speaker through violating or conforming to certainmaxim The participants base on the presumption to make a contextuallydriven inference from what the speaker says to what the speakers means.Grice proposed that implication like the second sentence can be calculatedfrom the first, by understanding three things:

The usual linguistic meaning of what is said

Contextual information (shared or general knowledge)

The assumption that the speaker is obeying what Grice calls thecooperative principle

2.2.4 Communication and cross cultural communication

a Speech acts

* Speech act theory

John Austin (1962) defines speech acts as the actions performed

in saying something When people produce utterances, they often performactions via those utterances These actions are called speech acts; forexample: complaint, compliment, invitation, comment or request The speechact can be investigated under three different headings: (1) as meaningfulspeech, (2) as speech with a certain conventional force, and (3) as speech with

a certain non-conventional effect These three related acts are calledlocutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act

● Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguisticexpression The locutionary act is performed with some purposes or function

in mind

● Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of

an utterance In engaging in locutionary acts we also perform illocutionaryacts such as informing, advising, offer, promise, commenting

● Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by sayingsomething, such as convincing, persuading, deterring perlocutionary acts areperformed only on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect youintended

Searle [19] assigns five types of functions to utterances: declarations,representatives, expressives, directives and commissives

● Declaratives: change the state of affairs in the world (weddingceremony) world-to-world direction of fit.

● Assertives or Representatives: describe states or events in the world(claim, report, assertion) world-to-world direction of fit

● Commissives: commit the speaker to some future action (promise,offer, threat, refusals) world-to-world direction of fit

● Expressives: express feelings or attitude to something (apology,complaint, greetings, sympathy…) no direction of fit

● Directives: get hearer perform or do something (request, suggestion,command, advice, etc) world-to-world direction of fit

A similar way of classifying speech acts is made by Yule [39] in thetable below:

Table 2.4: Ways of classifying speech acts

X = SituationDeclarations

classify “Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act.” Suppose, for example, that the request “Do you know the time?” have

both a literal meaning, here “I ask you whether you know the time”, and anindirect meaning “I request you to tell me the time.” Speech acts are universal

in all languages and governed by social-cultural norms That explains why

Wierzbieka [52, p.49] argues: “Cultural norms reflected in speech acts differ not only from one language to another but also from on regional and social variety to another”.

* Commenting as a speech act

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic, “commenting

is the act of expressing an opinion or reaction in speech or writing” Giving

comment to contestants’ performance is, therefore, defined as the act ofgiving an opinion or reaction to the performance of contestants Here, “give”literally means “offer” or “share” the understanding or experience ofothers In brief, audiences’ giving comments to contestants’ performanceafter their live show does not only mean the mere non-verbal words ofcommenting, but includes the way viewers comment.The what and the howare both strongly emphasized in this act

For example, American and Vietnamese audiences comment oncontestants’ performance:

(2.1) Andy456: Very nicely done! [A-23, p.3] (2.2) Viet huong: hat hay lem…< 33333333333 [B-29, p.4]

In the light of speech act, these utterances are regarded as the act ofexpressing surprise and praise The speaker here would like to give thefeeling of happiness and surprise to the success of the hearer’sperformance This is an expressive act

When the speaker makes an utterance, he also has an intention in hisspeech In term of commenting, the speaker uses variety acts of expressing hisopinion or reaction In this research, giving comments is analyzed in terms of

non-verbal stimulus, with which the utterances are expressed in the show:American Idol in season 10.

Richards [32, p.28] describes politeness as:

- how languages express the social distance between the speakers andtheir different role-relationships

- how face-work, which is attempted to establish, maintain and saveface during conversation, is carried out in a speech community

* The notion of face

Brown and Levinson [6] assert that face is the key motivating force underlying it The face is understood as something that is emitionally

invested, and that can not be only lost, but also maintained or enhanced

Every individual has two types of face, the positive and negative ones They define postive face as the individual’s desire that her/his wants to be appreciated in social interaction, and negative face as the individual’s desire

for freedom of action and freedom from imposition They maintain thatcertain illocutionary acts, such as requests, suggestions, offers and refusals areinherently face-threatening, and that speakers must select appropriatelinguistic strategies in order to mitigate this face-threat and hence be “polite”

* Face threatening acts (FTAs)

Participants’ face wants should be respected in social interaction,especially in conversations However, there are many aspects ofconversational interaction where face is at risk It may be the H’s face that isthreatened, or the S’s; and it may be either the negative or the positive aspects

of face that is concerned If the S says something threatening his partner’sface wants, he is said to perform a face threatening act Brown and Levinson[6] point out that certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face They divideFTAs into four groups:

1 Acts threatening the hearer’s negative face are those which indicate that the speaker does not intend to avoid impeding the hearer’s freedom.

2 Acts threatening the hearer’s positive face are those which indicate that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feeling, wants, that is, he does not want hearer’s wants.

3 Acts threatening the speaker’s negative face are those which offend the speaker’s negative face.

4 Acts threatening the speaker’s positive face are those which directly damage speaker’s positive face.

* Positive and negative politeness

● Positive politeness and positive politeness strategies

When a person has the need to be accepted by others or to be treated asmember of the same group, the need is called positive face The face savingact related to a person’s positive face is in turn named positive politeness

Positive politeness, according to Brown and Levinson [6, p.10] assume

that “positive politeness is redress directed to the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the action acquisition/ values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable.”

Brown and Levison introduce three mechanisms for the realization ofpositive face:

- Claim common ground

- Convey that S and H are cooperators

- Fulfill H’s want for some X

Here is the list of positive politeness strategies going on record

by Brown and Levinson [6] to minimize the face-threatening act (FTA)

Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (his interest, wants, needs, goods)

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

Strategy 3: Intensify interest to H

Strategy 4: Use in-group identity markers

Strategy 5: Seek agreement

Strategy 6: Avoid disagreement

Strategy 7: Presuppose/raise/assert common ground

Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity

Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons

Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity

Strategy 15: Give gift to H (goods, sympathy, understanding,

cooperation)

Strategy 16: Comfort and Encourage

Strategy 17: Ask personal questions.

● Negative politeness and negative politeness strategies

The notion of face is essential in the study of politeness When a personhas the need to be independent, to have freedom of action and not to beimposed on by others, it is known as negative face The face saving actoriented to a person’s negative face is relatively known as negative politeness.

Brown and Levinson [6, p.130] assert: “Negative politeness is specific and focused; it performs the function of minimizing the particular imposition that the FTA unavoidably effects.”

Brown and Levinson [6] introduce 10 negative politeness strategiesused in communication as follows:

Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect

Strategy 2: Question, hedge

Strategy 3: Be pessimistic

Strategy 4: Minimize the imposition

Strategy 5: Give deference

Strategy 6: Apologize

Strategy 7: Impersonalize speaker and hearer

Strategy 8: State the FTA as a general rule

Strategy 9: Nominalize

Strategy10: Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting

hearer

Firstly, the descriptive method is used in order to give a detaileddescription of some typical linguistics features of AWAI and VWAI.

Secondly, the analytic method is also indispensable By using thismethod the researcher can clarifies and justifies a certain feature orcharacteristic In doing an analysis, we can use arguments, specific examples

or relevant issues to support our viewpoint

Thirdly, the comparative method is conducted to find out thesimilarities and differences between AWAI and VWAI in terms of the aspectsmentioned in the aims and objectives

In addition, because of its emphasis on in-depth knowledge andelaboration of concept as well as description of frequency of occurrence ofeach linguistic feature, both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used

as the major research design of this study

- Second, finding out the grammatical, pragmatic category, used expressions, paralinguistic cues and functions of comments they belongand perform then put them into distinctive groups.

commonly Next, using qualitative and quantitative approach as well as analysis,descriptive approach, contrastive analysis to demonstrate linguistics features

of AWAI and VWAI

- Then analyzing and discussing the results and comparing thesimilarities and differences of the issues in both languages

- Finally, from the generalized conclusions about the comparison wesuggest some implications for Vietnamese webcommentators

3.3 SAMPLE POPULATION

The corpus comprises 810 samples in AWAI and 810 in Vietnameseones Because the linguistic feature is the key of this study, we extract thecontent of the comments only Addresses and retrieved dates have beenmentioned in reference part

3.4 DATA COLLECTION

The comments to be collected and analyzed will be taken fromfacebook and blog so as to bring about the distinctive linguistic features Thisstudy is based on content analysis of 810 AWAI and 810 Vietnamese ones atroughly six month intervals, from December 2012 to May 2013 They wereobtained by using the random selection method

To collect the required webcomment samples, American webcommenterswhose geographic location is the United States must be tracked I randomly

choose comments from http://www.facebook.com/AmericanIdol?fref=ts where

the frequency of comments written by Americans is very high Vietnamesecomments were taken from http://www.facebook.com/AmericanIdolFanClubInVietnam and

http://robbeydeptrai.wordpress.com/.

I did choose facebook and blog to collect samples because facebook

and blog are created "as a cross between a tool for meeting new people and a platform for networking with people you already know" [3, p.84] On this

social site, users create an online profile by listing personal information andinterests, link up with other users and share updates of the information posted

on a daily basis (cf Hargittai/Hsieh 2011) This information can not beinferred from the nicknames of facebook or blog authors It is often claimedthat computer-mediated communication encourages anonymity, however,according to a survey made by S.C., Scheidt, L.A., Bonus, S., and Wright, E.[17], ‘more than half (54%) provide some explicit personal information (e.g.,age, occupation, geographic location) Thus the identity of the author isapparent to some extent in most facebooks or blogs’

However, facebook or blog authors often use a pseudonym (28.7%) andfirst name (or transparently derived nicknames (36.2%) [17] and have avatars,the personal information given by facebook or blog users is not trustworthy tosome extent

To make the identity trustworthy, we use the facebook or blogapplication to interact with people I already know or to meet new people that

are called friends, that is, participants "who can post comments on each other's pages, and view each other's profiles" (Ellison et al 2007) Therefore, the

location of its commenters is trustworthy and eligible for our data collection

Because of our research goal about linguistic features of webcomments

on American Idol by American and Vietnamese, pictures and videos about AImusic show inserted in posts would be excluded

3.5 DATA ANALYSIS

The data for analysis in the study were from three sources The first

source was collected from https://www.facebook.com/AmericanIdol?fref=ts

-one of the most popular facebook about American Idol programme Thesecond source taken from http://www.facebook.com/AmericanIdolFanClubInVietnam

and http://robbeydeptrai.wordpress.com/

First of all, the data are categorized into four main groups: grammaticalfeatures, pragmatic features, commonly- used expressions and paralinguisticcues and each of these contains different types of structures and features thatare considered major criteria for classification

Grammatical features: the classification of the data is mainly bases onthe different types of sentences, phrases, tense and voice The result of thiswas put on the tables in percentages terms From that the frequency of eachcategory was determined and the results were discussed

Pragmatic features: investigation into giving comments with bothpositive and negative politeness strategies in term of exaggerate, joke, assertconcern for hearer’s wants, comfort and encourage, show optimistic feeling,giving (or asking) reason, use in in-group identity markers in speech andbeing pessimistic

Commonly- used expressions include contractions, abbreviations,cases, spelling practice, repetition and other cases

Paralinguistic cues include expressives and smileys

The same tasks were also carried out with Vietnamese webcomments.Finally, the analysis result of AWAI and VWAI would be examined andcompared in each of the above categories in an attempt to find out thesimilarities and differences between the two languages

3.6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

In my thesis, every attempt to establish the validity and reliability of thestudy has been made, from collecting and analyzing data to producing theresearch results All the data has been collected from the most popular andprestigious facebook and blog in America and Vietnam Additionally, in thisstudy, the researcher sets out her work from the analysis of evidence,statistics, frequencies, then comes to conclusions; the objectivity of the study

is assured

CHAPTER 4

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF AWAI AND VWAI

4.1.1 Grammatical features of AWAI

In this section, I will deal with phrases, sentence types, tense and voice.Using Textanz, we calculated 2530 sentences and the average length ofAWAI is about 6 words

a Phrases in AWAI

According to Richards J.C [32, p.34], “A phrase is a group of words which form a grammatical unit A phrase does not have subject – predicate structure Phrases are usually classified according to their central word or head” A calculation done by the software Textanz reveals that noun phrases,

verb phrases, adjective phrase, adverbial phrases and prepositional phrasesoccur in AWAI With the highest rate 47.7% belongs to noun phrases, followed

by verb phrases with 29.6% and adjective phrases with 17.6% Averbialphrases and prepositional phrases are least frequency used with 2.9% and2.2% This can be shown in the following table:

Table 4.1: Phrases found in AWAI

one of the characteristic features of AWAI Most of the noun phrases in Americanwebcomments contain a head noun and a modifier or qualifier Rarely do we findthe webcomments that consist of only the head noun, they are usually qualified ormodified by a phrase or word preceding and/or following it For example:

(4.1) Jswerv3: An old-fashioned voice by a young girl

[A-260, p.32]

Pre modification Head noun Post modification

(4.2) Aaron Williams: Worst contestants performing on the stage

[A-274, p34] Pre modification Head noun Post modification

In example (4.1), the head noun “voice” is one of the most important

components of a noun phrase The head determines concord with the portion

of the sentence outside the noun phrase and controls the overall meaning of

the phrase The adjective “old-fashioned” and preposition clause “by a young girl” modify this head noun.

(4.3) JulianTheGreat01 : Love them or hate them, you could not say the

winners from Seasons 1-8 couldn't sing or atleast weren't in the the Top 5

[A-71, p.9]

(4.4) zach campagna : turn my volume off

to describe, or give more information about contestants’ performance Asshown in the table, apart from noun phrases and verb phrases, AWAI alsoappear adjective phrases with 478 sentences occupying 17.6% For example:

(4.6) Patr1ckk3ll3y: He’s so talented!!

components of an adjective phrase American commenters use the intensifierwords “so” or “very” to make the meaning of adjective stronger

adverbial means a word or group of words that say when, where, how, etc.something happens They may consist of an adverb (e.g quietly), aprepositional phrase (e.g through the door), a noun phrase (e.g last week), or

an adverbial clause (e.g before she flew to Japan) They act like adverbs that

is, they modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs Adverbials answer suchquestions as “How?”, “Where?”, “When?”, “Why?”, “How far?”, “Howmuch?”, “How often?”, “How long?” In AWAI, adverbial phrases appearwith 81 sentences occupying 2.9% Below are some adverb phrases in AWAI

(4.8) stricken1991: hahahahahah he is the only one who could actually sing like how many kids at 16 can sing country with a voice like that honestly i would

say he sounds better than most country artists that r out today the only reason

u like hailey is cuz she has ass n tits haha but still she could sing as good as Scotty

conclusion about the function of a preposition which is it is used to connectnouns and noun structures with other structures in a sentence Prepositions

that we often use in everyday life are: with, at, by, to, in, for, from, of, on It is

estimated that these prepositions make up for ninety percent of preposition

usage Table 4.1 clearly shows that prepositional phrases in AWAI are usedless often with a quite low frequency of occurrence 59 sentences with 2.2%

(4.10) Leslie: I think he had to trade in the Brady Bunch Silver Platters outfit for the 80's era Rob Halford homage outfit Probably had to run off stage for costume change

[A-299, p.29]

(4.11) Jonathan: Scotty and Lauren are both winners in my book Both deserves to be on the top 2 so I could careless who wins this season!!!!!

[A-473, p.62]

b Sentence types in AWAI

It can be seen from the observation of the data collected that, besidesthe usual complete sentences (simple sentences, compound sentences,complex sentences, compound-complex sentences), webcommenters have astrong tendency to use sentences with short and simple structures such aselliptical sentences and nonsentences as shown in the table:

Table 4.2: Sentence types found in AWAI

* Complete sentences

With the first rank, complete sentences occur with 1398 sentences occupying

55.3% This type of sentence is defined as “The complete sentence must contain at

independent subject and verb and expresses a complete thought” [29, pg 289].

Complete sentences can be classified into four types: simple sentences, compoundsentences, complex sentences and compound-complex sentences as shown in thefollowing table

Table 4.3: Complete sentences found in AWAI (1398 sentences out of 2530 sentences of all types observed)

+ Simple sentences

According to “Longman English Grammar” of Alexander [1, p.4], thesmallest sentence-unit is the simple sentence A simple sentence normally hasone finite verb It has a subject and a predicate There are five simple sentencepatterns found in AWAI

(1) Subject + verb