A cross cultural study of giving compliments and responses in english and vietnamese

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT==== ==== A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO THOA VĂN HÓA VỀ CÁCH KHEN VÀ

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

==== ====

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF GIVING COMPLIMENTS and

responses IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU GIAO THOA VĂN HÓA VỀ CÁCH KHEN VÀ ĐÁP LẠI

LỜI KHEN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT )

I would first like specially to thank Mrs Bui Thi Thanh Mai (M.A), mysupervisor, for her whole – hearted help and invaluable advice Without herguidance, my thesis is far from completed

I would also like to thank Mrs Tran Ngoc Yen (M.A) for her kindlysupport She encourages me to have self- confidence to do this research

I want to acknowledge the help of Miss Sofia for her advice when Iconduct the list of questionnaire She provides important information that theauthor uses to have a suitable survey questions My gratitude goes to Mr Tinh(M.A) who teaches at ASEM Vietnam center for his essential materials andadvice

Last but not least, I give a very special thanks to my family andclassmates, who always stand by me, provide their emotional support throughout the process I do this paper

ABSTRACT

Many people who communicate cross-cultural boundaries have experiencedcommunication breakdowns with people from different first language backgrounds

It also happens to any one who wants to give compliment on a person from anothercountry The main purpose of this thesis is to raise the aware of culture gap It isdone, focused on the comparison of the ways of giving compliment and responding

to compliments between the English and the Vietnamese Using the authenticabledata from survey, which is conducted with 30 native speakers in each culture, thisresearch is carried out with three sub-aims: (1) to find out similarities anddifferences between two cultures in the way they perform speech act ofcompliment; (2) to investigate the culture factors that have influence on the wordchoice of interlocutors; (3) to enrich the knowledge of second language learnersabout the importance of culture factor in leaning target language The result alsoillustrates the fact that people in two cultures are very friendly They tend to givecompliments a lot However, what they compliment on, how they give and respond

to, it differs How detailed the information is it? The readers will find the answers inthe next chapters of the thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement i

Abbreviations iii

Part A: Introduction 1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Methods of the study 4

5 Data collecting procedure 5

6 Design of the study 5

Part B: Development Chapter I: Theoretical Background 1.1 What is Pragmatics? 6

1.1.1 What is Speech acts 6

1.1.2 Compliment as a speech act 11

1.2 Cultural communication 13

1.2.1 Notion of culture 13

1.2.1.1 Cross-cultural communication 14

1.3 Positive – negative politeness 14

Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents 2.1 Topics of compliment 17

2.1.1 Topics of compliment in English 20

2.1.1.1 Appearance 20

2.1.1.2 Skill or talents 21

2.1.1.3 Work accomplished 22

2.1.1.4 Possession 22

2.1.2 Topics of compliment in Vietnam 23

2.1.2.1 Appearance 23

2.1.2.2 Skill or talents 25

2.1.2.3 Work accomplished 26

2.1.2.4 Possession 27

2.1.3 A contrasive analysis 27

2.1.3.1 Major similarities 27

2.1.3.2 Major differences 28

2.2 Giving compliment strategies 30

2.3: Compliment response strategies in English and Vietnamese equivalents 32

2.3.2 English findings

2.3.1 Vietnamese findings

2.3.3 A contrastive analysis 38

2.3.3.1 Major similarities 39

2.3.3.2 Major differences 40

Chapter III: Some suggestion for giving and responding to compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents. 3.1 Some suggestions 41

3.1.1 What do we compliment on? 3.1.2 How do we give a compliment? 3.1.3 How to respond to compliment 3.2 Suggested teaching application Part C Conclusion 1 Review major findings 48

2 Suggestion for further research 49

References

APPENDIX

IA Inadvisable

CR Compliment responseVoE Vietnamese students of English

Interaction skill

Cultural knowledge Linguistic knowledge

Communicative competence

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Nowadays the increasing diversity of the modern classroom, in which

second language learners form a community, poses the need for language learnerscare for enriching the knowledge of the country where their target language is spoken

To have this knowledge, they have to master many factors such as: language, culture,economy, biography, history… Among those elements, culture plays an importantrole in widening the knowledge of language in use or context of conversation for thelearners

Therefore, “language and culture have to be studied together, and have to

be brought into interactive relation in successful discourse” (Radolph Quirk) This

relation leads to the need of improving what we call “communicative competence”,

which contains sub-factors as shown in the following;

Communicative competence

Verbal factors Awareness of predominant

eatures in context

Social structures

Non – verbal factors Choice and interpretation of

forms, suitable to specificcontexts roles and

Values and attitudes

Stereotypes in specific

speech events

Communicative strategies inorder to gain oriented targets

That knowledge is so important with language learners Especially, nowadays,with opened- door policy, Vietnam enters the global stage, the importance of studytarget language is emphasized more than ever We tend to direct our teaching andlearning to modern way However, here and there still exists the traditional method

of learning and teaching language, which focuses on rote memorization ofgrammatical and lexical components of language The fact has proved that, it is notsuitable in the development of modern society It cannot help language learnersbecome effective language users

To promote the knowledge of the learners about this problem there are manystudies of famous theorists on kind of speech act such as: making request, asking forpermission, giving apology but not many of them focus on speech act ofcompliment This is also the interesting topic attracting the author’s interest because

it requires a great deal of pragmatic insight by the speaker and therefore are oftenrich with data that reveal the cultural orientation of language learners (In manylanguages, compliment responses require the language user to walk a delicate linebetween appearing too boastful or ungrateful depending on the way s/he responds tothe compliment.)

Hopefully, this paper with realistic data base will provide useful material forlanguage learners

2 Data collecting procedure

As one important part of this thesis, collecting data procedure took the author

a rather long period of time to do it This survey was conducted by 30 nativeinformants in each culture In this paper, the term “English” refers to the peoplewho speak English as their mother tongue such as English, American, New Zealand,and Australia

The questionnaire is the combination of open and close ended questions, whichcontain three main parts: The first one is to find some general information aboutinformants which are used to explain some unexpected findings during the process

of writing The second part, the author asks the participants to rank the topics ofcompliment given by researcher into the order from 1 to 4, which stand for four

groups “highly advisable, advisable, yes or no and inadvisable” And the last is

conducted with the aim to study in specific situations There are two main situations

set and ask informants to give their ideas about: How do they give compliment and

respond to it These compliments focus on two topics are: Appearance and achievement

Even though there are some inconveniences when completing this research, it isvaluable and deserved to be considered

3 Scope of the study

- This research focuses on the cross - cultural study to find out the similaritiesand differences between the English and Vietnamese in the ways they give andrespond to compliments Determined by its aims, this paper tries to find the answersfor three following questions:

*What do people in the two cultures often compliment on?

* How to give a good compliment?

*What kind of strategies do they use to respond to compliments?

- The analysis is only based on the authentic result collected from the

survey

- Furthermore, it is because of the variety of language, this paper is considered inrelative not restrict standard Moreover, with the limitation of a graduation thesis,sometimes some factors can be omitted such as: age, marital statue, area ofliving They are only taken into account when used to explain some information

In part two, only four popular topics are suggested, not the entire one in dailycommunication It is similar in part three, the most popular topics in use with

compliment in both cultures are appearance and ability.

Besides, this thesis only focuses on different cultural aspect which aims todevelop communicative skills It does not go into detail study of paralinguistic andsome other aspects of speech act compliment such as:

- Paralinguistic factors: intonation, pitch

- Non-verbal language: gestures, facial expression, voice

- Communicative environment like : place, distance, light

4 Aims of the study

This paper is carried out with the aims:

- Through the analysis, the researcher finds out some similarities anddifferences between the English and Vietnamese when they choose the ways ofgiving and responding to compliments

- With the difference, this study gives the explanation based on the of cross –cultural study

- With the result found, the research emphasizes the importance of studyingforeign language applied in culture context, which is to raise the awareness ofcommunication breakdown

- To be as the useful material for second language learners who want to becomefluent speakers

5 Methodology

To act such purposes, the author uses the following method:

- Firstly, the author makes a survey with a list of questionnaire conducted byherself After that, she collects the data and sorts it out into groups of information

- Secondly, the contrastive analysis method is applied when analyzing the datafrom the survey to find out the similarities and differences with the aim as statedbefore

- Thirdly, for the theoretical background, she applies some theory of somefamous theorists to set the base for her research

- The concluding and summarizing is the last one used to give finalconclusions and suggestions for further study.

6 Design of the study

This thesis includes three main parts and three chapters:

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Development

Chapter I: Theoretical Background

Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to compliments

in English and Vietnamese equivalents

Chapter III: Some suggestion for gving and responding to compliments inEnglish and Vietnamese in equivalents

Part C Conclusion

Part B: Development Chapter I: Theoretical Background

1.1 1 What is Pragmatics?

Pragmatics is one of the main branches of linguistics According to GeorgeYule (1997: 3), pragmatics is concerned with the study of:

- Speaker meaning

- How more gets communicated than is said

- The expression of relative distance

- Relationships between the linguistics forms and the users of those forms

It is difficult to give a correct definition for the question: What is pragmatics?

We only know that it refers to the language in use And language in use has

connection with the term: “communication”, which is stated: “Communication is,

rather, the successful interpretation by an addressee of a speaker’s intent in performing a linguistics act” (Georgia M Green, Natural Language Understanding,

p.1) And “a linguistics act” is controlled by certain rules or norms that suitable

with different societies This interchange creates the differences of choosinglanguage among different cultures However, how does pragmatics vary across-culture? And how can the learners recognize this variety? Those question will beanswered easier when the term “speech act” is mentioned, because sometimestalking to pragmatics means talking to speech acts Therefore, we will continue thistalk with the talk of speech acts

1.1.1 What is speech act?

As above part, when mentioning pragmatics, we often think of speech acts.What is speech acts? For over the past years, many theorists have studied this term,but it has such a complicated scope that it is far from easy to give the satisfieddefinition The pioneer of this theory was the philosopher J.L Austin (1962) with his

famous book: “How to do thing with words”, and later, were some other well known

theorists such as: Hymes (1964), Searle (1969), Levinson (1983), Brown and Yule(1983) and Schmidt and Richards (1983)

From the time speech acts theory appeared, people have tried to think indifferent way At first, people assumed that the business of a “statement”can only

be to “describe” some state of affairs, or to state some facts which is must be do

either truly or falsely”( J.L Austin, How to do thing with words, p.1) In fact, there

are some utterances we cannot decide whether it is “true” or “false”

For example:

E.g Giờ muộn thế này mà họ chưa ra nhỉ?

(It is so late, why they did not come)

(Thạch Lam, Gió lạnh đầu mùa)

In this situation, when Mrs Ti talks to Lien, this question functions not only aswhat a question should do but also like a statement Although she knows why herguests come late, she still gives that question to keep conversation with the people

in a poor district

Or in Vietnam, we often ask this kind of question:

E.g “ Bác đi đâu đấy? (Where are you going?)

Although Vietnamese people do not really want to know where his friend isgoing to go, he only asks to tighten relationship with the hearer by showing his carethrough that kind of question Therefore, his question is easily accepted and it isconsidered as the Vietnamese greeting routine

Such types of examples have enhanced the theorists to give the completedefinition of speech acts It is J.Austin who gave the notion of speech acts firstly,

he stated that:

In general, speech acts are acts of communication To communicate is to

express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds

to the type of attitude being expressed For example, a statement expresses a belief,

a request expresses a desire, and an apology expresses regret As an act of communication, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, in accordance with the speaker's intention, the attitude being expressed.

When the notion of speech acts brought out, we have another outlook Most of

the researchers share the common view that: speech acts are acts performed via

utterances or speech acts are the actions that are involved when one says something

and in English these actions are given more specific labels such as: apology,

complement, invitation, request, promise or complaint…

As mentioned above, speech acts are especially concerned in real life In otherwords, it is language in use Thus, it is easy to see that there are no one utterance –one function relationship It is impossible to know exactly the speaker’s intention if

we only base on his statement without the context

For example: When a child talks to his mother: “Mum, I’m hungry!” If weclassify this sentence based on grammatical standard, it is a statement However, inthis situation, the child wants to ask his mother for something to eat In this case, itbecomes a request

This unseparated relationship causes both the speakers (S) and hearers(H)confused That is why there are some different classifications of speech acts At thebeginning, when carrying out the research on this field, J.L Austin divided speechacts into three acts: Locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionnary act

* Locutionary act: Are sentences that conform to the phonological andgrammatical convention of the language A Vietnamese production of “Bonjourmadam” will not normally be known as a locutionary act because this sound doesnot make sense in Vietnamese

* Illocutionary act: This one refers to the aim or the communicative purposethat is attacked or achieved by the utterance Normally, it is what the speakers hopethe hearers recognize The usual acts are “warn, request, promise ”

* Perlocutionary act: When a speaker utters, he hopes to transform hisintention to hearer and this effect is called perlocutionary act

Although there is such a classification , those three dimensions are notseparated They have a close relationship relating to each other whenever anutterance is produced An act performed via an utterance is successful if: it isrecognized when being pronounced correctly, felicitously, its purpose is conveyedand causes the effect to the hearer In conclusion, it is simple when understandingspeech acts as following ways:

* To say something is to do something

* In saying something, we do something

* By saying something we do something

And it is clear that in terms of speech acts, illocutionary force is the most

important force This view was shown in Yule’s statement: “indeed, the term

“speech act” is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance.”

However, the question given here is how this force can be realized easily Thereare many factors that have effect on the way S creates a sentence Thus it is necessary

to notice that: “the utterance must be said by the right person to the right person in

the right place at the right time in the right manner” (Jackson and Stockwell 1996:

140) Nonetheless, in what way we know that our speech are to right person and inright situation? That is also the question set by many theorists At the beginning,Austin divided speech acts into four subtypes: expositives, exercitives, behavetives,commissives, but it is so confused There were some others who also introduced theirviews about how to sort out speech acts into subtypes reasonably The authorconcerns the one of Austin’ students, Searle (1967, 1969), he claimed there are 5types as follows:

* Commissives: committing speaker to do something in the future such as apromise, oaths

E.g If you need a favor, I’ll help

* Declaratives: changing the state of affairs in the world

E.g (The Judge to a couple): You are marriaged

* Directives: getting the listener to do something such as a suggestion, a request

E.g It is so hot here! What about going around for a walk?

* Expressives: S expresses feeling and attitudes about something, such as anapology, a complaint, compliment

E.g I am interested in the Titanic film because it is so interesting

* Representatives: Describing states or events in the world such as an assertion,

a claim, a report

E.g The earth moves around the world

Besides that, we also have another category of Bach and Harnish’s, which isnot so different in sense from the one of Searle’s It is shown in following table:

Assertives Requestives Promises Apologize

Predictives Questions Offers Condole

Retrodictives Requirements Congratulate

Each type of speech act functions differently along with the illocutionary force

of the speaker In this paper, the author only focuses on the speech act of

compliment Specifically, compliment belongs to act of “Acknowledgement”

Speech acts

Congrat ulat e

Compliment

1.1.1.2 Compliment as a speech act

"I can live for two months on a good compliment."

- Mark Twain

Compliment is universal in all societies and languages, it is considered as majorpart of our daily communication It also plays an important role in moral life ofpeople Giving a compliment is thought as giving a valuable verbal gift Everyonelikes to receive compliment because it makes them happy, comfortable and self-confident However, not all of them have clear definition of compliment So, what iscompliment?

There are many notions being given According to Alle Patrica Wall,

“compliments are expressions of admiration, respect or praise” or another morespecific one of Holme’s: “compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitlyattributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, forsome “good” ( possession, characteristics, skill, etc ) which is positively valued by

S and H (1998a: 485) She also points out that even when a compliment appears torefer to a third person, it may well be indirectly complimenting the addressee asfollowing example:

R’s(recipients) old school friend is visiting and comments one of the

children’s manners:

C (complimenter): What a polite child!

R (recipient) : Thank you We do our best.

Most of theorists share the same idea that compliment belongs to the most “sensitive”area of language People apply it for many purposes such as: to break ice at the firstmeeting, to praise, to encourage someone, or to suggest something etc This also reflectsits variable functions As Wolfson claimed, the major function of a compliment is ‘tocreate or maintain solidarity between interlocutors”, and another one is “to reinforcedesired behavior, for instance in a classroom situation” It is used to replace other speechacts such as apologies, thanking, especially, to soften criticism with usage of “but” or

“though”, for example:

Teacher wants to remind student’s bad writing in his/her easy, he can say:

- “Your content is good but your writing is difficult for me to read”

The important roles of compliment cannot be denied However, it is notalways good whenever giving it Because, to give an appreciate compliment, it isnecessary to answer those questions: When, why, to whom we will givecompliment There are also many factors affecingt on this process such as: culture,age, sex, gender, social power…

Cross-culturally, giving and responding to compliment is affected by manycultural factors such as religion, value, taboo, norm, and lifestyle For example,the Vietnamese often give compliment on other appearance at the first meeting like:

“You look very beautiful”, but in Western nations, it is uncomfortable when

someone compliments them like that And this is one of the factors createmiscommunication, communication breakdown or culture shock.

Linguistically, compliment is regarded as a speech act In table 1, theclassification of Bach and Harnish’s, it belongs to “acknowledgments” area,

“congratulates” group This group includes: congratulate, compliment and praise.Their function mainly shows attitudes, feeing of the speaker to the hearer

In the point of view of cross-cultural pragmatic, compliment also changesamong different countries, different circumstances Therefore, with second languagelearners, it is not enough if they only learn structures They should know how toapply language in real situations because language without culture, it will die

1 2 Cultural communication

1.2.1 Notion of culture

In above section, we mentioned term “culture”, What is culture? According

to many theorists, culture is a special phenomenon which is controversial topic There are many definitions were given by the linguists but it is difficult to decidewhich is a the most ssatisfying one For example, in 1952, Alfred Knoeber andClyde Kluckkhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of culture Among them, the

author sets her interest in the definition of Mr Edword B.Taylor’s : “Culture is that

complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom and any other capabilities and habit acquired by man as a member of society” From above

definitions, we can see that culture is something that appears, exists and connectsclosely to human life It exists despite of distance of time and space It is reflectedthrough much aspect of human life and especially language Thus, it also has theclose relationship with the values Similar to culture, each country has its ownculture and value systems, among them, people live This type of system issummarized in the list of rules or norms which control people behavior

1.2.1.1 Cross-cultural communication

It is normal if we mention the relationship between language and culture in onecountry because individual was taught how to fit their society’s norms when he was

a little child But what will happen if s/he goes abroad or contacts with person whocomes from a totally different culture? This is time for the need of knowledge of cross-cultural communication to appeare By understanding and knowing how to use thisterm: “cross-cultural communication”, people all over the world become closer andcloser to each others And Clarke and Sanchez gives us a useful way to understand thisterm by explaining from what is “cross- culture” to “cross-cultural communication” asfollowing:

“The term ¨cross-culture¨ implies interaction with persons of different

cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and age and class backgrounds ¨Cross-cultural communication¨ is a process of exchanging, negotiating, and mediating one's cultural differences through language, non-verbal gestures, and space relationships It is also the process by which people express their openness to an intercultural experience”.

(Clarke and Sanchez, 2001)

1.3 Positive – negative politeness

In any conversation, interlocutors tend to try their best to keep a goodrelationship with each others That is the way of showing politeness of people allover the world Since that, politeness has a close-knit relationship with the termspeech acts From above subparts, we know that speech acts is a kind of act whichperforms via utterance The most important purpose of any utterance is creatingillocutionary force, and this force can get its power or not, it is based much on howpolite the speaker is What is politeness? There were many linguists gave theirdefinitions for it, however, similar to speech acts, there is no satisfying one Weonly apply some aspects of them as references As the first ones who investigated

this field, Brown and Levinson (1987:66) stated that: “Politeness is a battery of

social skills whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction”.

And it expresses as the practical application of good manners or etiquette In otherwords, being polite, it means S is keeping her/ his face To understand more clearlyabout this phenomenon, we study the notion of “face” Also in their leading theory,

Brown and Levinson claimed that: “Face is something that emotionally invested,

and that can be last, maintained or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in

interaction” Another one gave his view, which modified this theory is Yule.

According to Yule, “face means the public self-image of a person” It refers to that

emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and aspects everyone else torecognize” To make it easier to be recognized, we have two subtypes of face:

Negative face and positive face Positive face is “the need to be accepted, even liked

by others, to be treated as member of the same group”, and to know that his or her

wants are shared by others Whereas, negative face is “the need to be independent,

to have freedom of action” From that we have two types of politeness: Negative

and positive politeness

Positive politeness is a kind of strategies which are attempts by S to treat the

listener as a friend or as some one to be included in discourse For instance, wecompliment other: “You look very nice today!”

Negative politeness is an attempt by S to save H’s face by engaging in someformality or restraint For example: when your friend asks you that” “Do you like

my presentation? you answer: “I like it a lot, it is perfect!” although you think that it

is not good

Even though we have such classification, it is so difficult to categorize it, so wedirect our attention to a more detail saying of Leech (1983).He developed a list of rules

or politeness Maxims to help classify speech They are:

 Tact maxim: Minimize cost and maximize benefit to other

 Generosity maxim: minimize benefit and maximize cost to self

 Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise and maximize praise of other

 Modesty maxim: praise and maximize dispraise of self

 Agremeny maxim: minimize disagreement and maximize agrementbetween self and other

 Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy betweenself and other

Chapter II: A cross-cultural study of giving and responding to

compliments in English and Vietnamese equivalents

2.1 Topics of compliment

Because of culture boundaries, sometimes the misunderstanding happensfunnily and thoughtfully In his study about compliment,Wolfson gave an examplethat becomes more and more popular nowadays when people learn others’ culture:

This is unexpected situation: in a small restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, a

complete male stranger addressed one of the women on his way out of the restaurant, saying “I have been watching you all through lunch You have a beautiful smile It lights up the whole room” (Wolfson, 1984, p 242) It is a nice but

not right compliment The problem here is not that compliment itself, it is depended

on the addressee It is normal and popular in English that a man can compliment on

a girl’s beauty In contrast, a Chinese girl, especially, a strange girl, that isimpossible The Chinese is famous for it’s Confuctional belief and they areinfluenced by the proverb: “men and women should keep distance in case of theoccurrence of love affairs”

Compliment is one of the most sensitive areas in communication When acompliment is produced, the speaker has to think a lot of the relationship with thehearer This is in line with the aim of the speaker to make sure that theircompliments to the right person in the right situation

And this research will give you the answer that in English speaking countrieslike England, New Zealand, Australia what they often like to compliment on andwhether it is similar in Vietnam The answer will be studied, based on the result ofrealistic survey by native speakers In the first part, the informants are required tofill in the suitable column with their own idea which standed for by “highlyadvisable(HA), advisable(A), yes or no(Y/N) (means: we can give compliment or

not), inadvisable(IA)” equivalent to the topics: appearance, skill or talents, worked

accomplished, possession” It should be noticed that, topic of communication is

such a large term, therefore, only four typical topics are studied Some illustrationsare detailed below:

* Appearance: refers to one’s looks, including haircuts, clothing, and

ornaments, such as necklace and so on

* Skill or talents: refers to the “quality of something produced through the

addressee’s skill or effort: a well-done job,

a skillfully played game, a good meal (Manes, 1983, p 101)”

* work accomplished: refers to one’s acquired skill,

esp social; completion; thing achieved

*Possession: refers to homes, furniture, automobiles, and other material

possession

The data of the survey is shown in the following table:

Column 1 means “highly advisable”

Column 2 means“advisable”

Column 3 means“yes or no”

Column 4 means “inadvisable”

Table 1: The different choice of topic compliment by English and Vietnamese.

S/he is good at communicating 50% 14% 37% 43% 13% 43% 0% 0%

S/he has a nice necklace or shirt 10% 7% 30% 40% 50% 43% 10% 10%Her husband is kind, handsome and intelligent 7% 3% 47% 27% 43% 30% 3% 40%His wife is kind, beautiful and intelligent 10% 3% 40% 30% 50% 37% 0% 30%His/her children are successful at school or at work 40% 10% 47% 40% 13% 43% 0% 17%

2.1 1 Topics of compliment in English

It is said that, the English are so enthusiastic in giving compliment They cancompliment on a girl’s beautiful smile, her body However, this does not mean thatthere is no exception Surrounded by individual culture norms, they also have thetaboo that interlocutors should avoid mentioning such as compliment on age,possession Those findings will be illustrated more specific in the next sub-sections

2.1.1.1 Appearance

As being seen from the survey, “appearance” refers to one’s looks, includinghaircuts, clothing, and ornaments, such as necklace and so on In general, TheEnglish consider the appearance as the thing can be easy to give a compliment.Statically, the result shows that, the English take care of some characteristics such

as lovely smile, beautify eyes (37% HA, 60% A), soft voice(33% HA, 53% A) or

new hair style (7%.HA, 50% A) They are ones which get the highests rate of

compliment in daily conversation

E.g "Tóc gì tuyệt diệu, dày, mềm mại và chói rực lạ thường!”

(Quoted in “Tiếng chim hót trong bụi mận gai”, Phạm Mạnh Hùng)

(How equivalent her hair! It is thick, soft and so bright.)

(Colleen McCullough, “The thorn bird”)

As regard the point: “She is a sexy girl”, it also receives the marks for “HA”(13%) and “A” (57%) It is rather so surprising to the author because at first, shethought that it is one of the most ‘sensitive” point that S avoids recommending to

In contrast, the point “s/he looks well-built though her/his ages (above 30)” is

not so popular ( 0% “HA”; 3% “A”; 40% “Y/N”; 57% “IA”)when complimenting.This can be understood when standing at the view of culture concept of English,

which stated clearly by Esther Wanning (102, 78): People think that when they

belong to the elder group of community, they seem to do nothing for society.

Especially, in a society where achievement is highly acknowledged, all of the elderbecome redundant As he claimed, in the individual environment like English,people suppose that when they are old they had better go to live in Special HealthCare That is why, they are afraid of age, they do not want to tell about their age

(especially when they are above 30) This finding is also proved by a real concept:The English like holding birthday party, on their cake they often put the samenumber of candles to their age, but this behavior will be omitted when they areabove 30.

2.1.1.2 Skill or talents

The second type of topic that the author does research is “skill or talents” In

this case, most of the criteria are “HA” or “A” except the point that: “s/he can earn

money easily”(“A”: 10%; “IA”: 54%) Those percents reflects the fact that, the

English like talking about their skills or talent such as playing instrument (“HA”: 10%, A: 67%; “IA”:0%) or “good at communicating”(“HA”: 14%, “A’: 43%, “IA”:

0%) not about their money It is easy to understand because we know that theEnglish are the ones who are so consistent in individual values They think thatasking them about their salary, their work are such personal questions That is why,there are up to 54% of ideas are “IA” However, 10% ideas of “A” appeare.Looking the information of the informants, the author sees that, most of the subjects

of those ideas are male, who are above 30 and live in urban area Although most ofthe English do not like mentioning their money, sometime it is acceptable with menbecause they want to show their achievement

One more remarkable notice here is the subtopic: “s/he is humorous” There

are up to 53% informants support for the idea of complimenting others humour, noone considers it as “IA”

From above analysis, it is clearly to see that, beside the topics of workingday, if the speaker acknowledges their friend’s skill they can compliment on.Remarkably, this is one of the ways to solid relationship between interlocutors

2.1.1.3 Work accomplished

This is only one topic receiving no ideas “IA” for the whole subtopics: gets a

scholarship for a well known university or a good job, is promoted, passed an important exam or presented successfully at a meeting , and the highest rate of

‘HA” Generally speaking, English speakers tend to compliment on the addressee’sachievement which was obtained through efforts For example: “Well done! You

did very well” Therefore the point that “s/he is promoted” has highest percentage

as “having a nice house or car” or “having lovely pets” becomes neutral speech.

As seen from data, they have many approval ideas for ‘A” The others such as her

husband is kind, handsome and intelligent or his wife is kind, beautiful and intelligent, are avoided when complimenting others, because there are 40% and

30% informants put their choices on column of “IA” for the two of them in order

2.1.2 Vietnamese findings

In above section, we have just studied the topics of compliment in Englishthrough the work of sorting out subtopics based on criteria of “HA, A, Y/N andIA” The next one will be done with the same form but different subjects Theinformants are Vietnamese The findings will be observed in specific situations:

2.1.2.1 Appearance

The first sub-topic which is so popular to give comment here is appearance.

It can be observed from the table that the personal characteristics such as: “a lovely

smile or beautiful eyes or soft voice”tend to get the highest support from the

speakers, 57% highly supportive ideas for each This numeral reflects the fact thatthe Vietnamese are very interested in some outstanding features like “smile” or

“tone of voice” It is their opinion that the way people smile, the way they speak arethe inflections of their fates

Affected deeply by traditional values, the Vietnamese care much for people

who luckily have lovely smile or beautiful eyes or soft voice Thus, it is easy to

understand that most of participants chose the column of “HA”(50%) and

“A”(37%), no one chose “Y/N” column or “IA” one