A comparative study on conversational implicatures used in political electronic english and vietnamese articles on vietnam china island disputes

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ******************** A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

********************

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES USED IN SOME POLITICAL ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON THE EVENTS RELATED

TO VIETNAM-CHINA ISLAND DISPUTE

( ợc sử dụ

ị về các sự kiệ l q a ế a ệ

a - c trên m t s ện tử Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

********************

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES USED IN SOME POLITICAL ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON THE EVENTS RELATED

TO VIETNAM-CHINA ISLAND DISPUTE

( ợc sử dụ

ị về các sự kiệ l q a ế a ệ

a - t s ện tử Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dr ị a

HANOI - 2017

i

DECLARATION

I certify that this minor thesis entitled “A comparative study on Conversational Implicatures used in political electronic English and Vietnamese articles on Vietnam - China island disputes” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts is the result of my work, except otherwise acknowledge and that this minor thesis and any part of the same has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi, January 2017

Signature

V Thị Mai Ph ơng

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

After the past two years I have received the support and encouragement from many individuals to accomplish this research Therefore, I hereby would like to express my profound gratitude to all of them

Above all, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Doctor Do Thi Thanh Ha for all of her invaluable inspiration, assistance, critique, sincere guidance and encouragement as I was working on my study

Besides, I am grateful to all lectures and staff of Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their valuable lessons and precious help Thanks to them, I could get the essential materials for

my paper

Finally, my sincere thanks go to my family and my friends who always stand by me and support me when I was doing the research Without their encouragement, I would not have been able to complete this thesis

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ABSTRACT

The topic on politics has attracted many researchers in all fields and linguistics is not an exception, specially, the announcements of official politicians and commentary, judgments of the specialists informed on the media Nowadays, the political events of the global countries have been updated almost immediately by the assistance of internet Electronic newspapers play a very important role and grab much power in the modern life

In the world recently, the political movements in Asia especially between Vietnam and China island disputes have wasted the inks and papers of worldwide newspapers The study was conducted to compare the use maxim violation to generate conversational implicature of English and Vietnamese electronic newspapers on the coverage hottest events on Vietnam - China island disputes in the period from 2011 to 2015 The analysis includes examining the methods of generating implicature which consists of violating four conversational maxims based on Relevance Theory of Grice Based on the findings, it is concluded that both English and Vietnamese newspapers showed their creativity in using different devices to violate the maxims to generate conversational implicatures

In addition, the two types of newspapers share a lot of similarities Specially, the quality maxim is violated the most frequency among four maxims Besides, the study assumes that the language of politics and journalism affect deeply on the applying of maxim violation to generate conversational implicatures The study also contributes a new finding that conversational implicatures and Relevance theory of Grice both work effectively in not only oral conversations but also in indirect conversation such as in written texts whose speakers/ hearers interaction are writers/ readers interaction to convey the meaning and messages

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements .ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vi

List of tables vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the studies 1

2 Research questions 1

3 Aims of study 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Theories on conversational implicature 4

1.1.1 Implicature and Co-operation 4

1.1.2 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures 5

1.1.3 Violating implicature 6

1.2 Review of related study 9

1.3 Review of Vietnam - China island disputes in the period of time from 2011 to 2015 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURES 15

2.1 Data collection methods 15

2.2 Data source 16

2.3 Data analysis procedure 24

2.3.1 Data reduction 25

2.3.2 Data analysis 25

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 27

3.1 Conversational implicatures in Vietnamese electronic magazines 27

v

3.1.1 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quality in

English magazine articles 30

3.1.2 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quantity in English magazine articles 31

3.1.3 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of relation in English magazine articles 33

3.1.4 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of manner in English magazine articles 34

3.2 Conversational implicatures in English electronic magazines 34

3.2.1 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quality in English magazine articles 36

3.2.2 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quantity in English magazine articles 37

3.2.3Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of relation in English magazine articles 38

3.2.4Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of manner in English magazine articles 39

3.3 Comparison between English and Vietnamese electronic newspaper articles in English magazine articles 39

3.3.1 Similarities 40

3.3.2 Differences 43

PART C: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 44

1 Summary of findings 44

2 Implications 46

3 Limitations of the study 46

4 Suggestions 47

REFERENCES 48 APPENDIX I

vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CP: Cooperative Principle

CNOOC: China National Offshore Oil Corp

CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis

US: United States

USA: United States of America

ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nation

CI: Conversational Implicature

VN: Vietnam

CN: China

WEF: World Economic Forum

SCS: South China Sea

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.2 Vietnam - China island dispute timeline 9

Table 2.2 Data source 17

Table 2.3.2 Coding scheme 25

Table 3.1 Frequency of maxim violation in Vietnamese articles 28

Table 3.2 Frequency of maxim violation in English articles 35

Table 3.3 Data comparative 40

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, online newspapers have indisputably become one of the most useful and convenient source of information Along with the spread of internet, online news is increasingly popular due to the availability and convenience they provide With internet and computer, the readers have a chance to get a great deal

of diverse online newspapers Political news is always the hot area of information that attracts readers‟ attention Due to the fact that news are posted and updated simultaneously to assure the accurate of the news, especially the news related to politics Such news need to express the truth They are also governed by the state power for the political purposes Therefore, the writers have to use some kinds of pragmatic devices that implicatures are the most common one To reach to the understanding between the writer and the receivers or readers, using implicatures

as a useful linguistic resource is a useful way Realizing the importance and significant of implicatures in newspaper article, this study is carried out to investigate the use of implicature in transferring the information to in the language of Vietnamese and English newspaper articles

2) What are the conversational maxims that are violated in the English electronic newspaper articles on Vietnam- China island disputes to generate conversational implicatures?

3) What are the similarities and differences on adopting conversational maxim violation to generate conversational implicatures between English and Vietnamese electronic newspaper articles on Vietnam - China island disputes?

2

3 Aims of the study

The study deals with the exploitation of conversational implicatures in the Vietnamese and English political newspaper articles Therefore, the study is aimed specifically:

- To identify the conversational implicatures which are generated and the conversational maxims which are violated in the political Vietnamese electronic newspaper article on Vietnam- China island disputes

- To identify the conversational implicature which are generated and the conversational maxims which are violated in the political English electronic newspaper article on Vietnam- China island disputes

- To compare the similarity and differences of adopting implicatures in English and Vietnamese electronic newspapers on Vietnam - China island disputes

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on analyzing political articles in the press, not on television or radio or any other media The Vietnam-China island disputes lasted from a long time before However, due to the limit of time, this research is only concerned with the main events in the time from 2011 to 2014 The newspapers selected are doisongphapluat.com, vietnamnet.vn, vnexpress.net, dantri.com and three other English popular and reputed ones - cnn.com, reuters.com and bbc.com Those newspapers are chosen for the reason that they update and announce the official information from the government Moreover, they are the voice of the national law with high reliability and accuracy Therefore, the data collected are reliable to all readers

5 Methods of the study

The study is an attempt to carry out an analysis of English and Vietnamese newspaper articles on some of the most important events of Vietnam-China island disputes in terms of implicatures Specially, it focuses on how implicatures

is formed to convey the information about the island disputes between the two

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countries The research applies the theory of implicatures and cooperative principle which are proposed by Grice to identify the forming process of conversational implicatures

The study used descriptive qualitative approach and content analysis as the research design One can undertake qualitative in a natural phenomena where the writer works as the primary instrument of data collection that compiles words, analyzes then inductively, concerns with the meaning of participants, and describes an expressive language processes (Creswell, 1998) In this case, the writer collected the whole data related to sentences in electronic newspaper articles For a further description of the methods of the study, see chapter 3

6 Organization of the study

This study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, scope, aims and methods of the study Part B: Development: in this part, three chapters are present

Chapter 1: Literature Review deals with the theoretical framework relevant to the topic

Chapter 2: Methods and Procedure gives detailed description of data collection method and analysis procedure

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion of the results constitutes the main part of the study This part represents the results from the analysis on the utilization on conversational implicatures in the English and Vietnamese newspaper articles and discusses the findings

Part C: Conclusion and Suggestion summarizes the findings of the study with regard to the results of conversational implicature investigated some limitations, implications and suggestions for further research

4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

\

1.1 Theories on conversational implicatures

1.1.1 Implicatures and Co-operation

Up to now, there are some definitions of implicatures proposed by scholars and linguists Amongst them was Grice, who may be said to introduce the term of first time in his William James lectures in 1967 He defined implicatures as “a notion which is not explicitly stated but inferable from the conventional meaning of some linguistic unit in an utterance and taken to be communicated” According to Thomas (1995), Grice‟s theory is “an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of what you expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning.” To help the readers understand implicatures more, he gave an example of implicatures as stated below:

“We must remember your telephone bill”, she said, hinting that Louis has talked long enough “Good bye”, said Louis ringing off It takes the rich to remind one

of the bills, she though

In the example, we can see that when the speaker utters the words “We must remember your telephone bill”, she is implying that she wants to close the conversation It is necessary to distinguish between implying and inferring, or implicature and inference Implicatures are generated intentionally by the speaker and may be understood by the hearer whereas inference is produced by the hearer deducing something from evidence

Levinson (1983:97) mentions that the projection of the concept of implicatures in recent work in pragmatics is due to a number of sources First, implicatures stand as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena Second, implicatures provide some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is actually

1) Maxim of Quantity: Be brief Make your contribution as informative as required and no more

2) Maxim of Quality: Be true Do not say what you believe to be false and do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

3) Maxim of Relation: Be relevant

4) Maxim of Manner: Be clear Avoid obscurity and ambiguity

It is suggested that the inferences arise based on the observation of four mentioned conversation maxims With the implicatures in which speakers deliberately choose to flout one of the maxims, we call them flouting implicatures

1.1.2 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures

Thomas (1995:58) stated “To imply is to hint, suggest or convey some meaning indirectly by means of language” (Thomas 1995: 58) He indicates that Grice distinguishes between two kinds of implicatures: conversational implicatures and conventional implicatures

Conventional implicatures which convey the same extra meaning regardless of context and is always lexicalized Conventional implicatures are carried by a restricted number of words: but, even, therefore, yet

Grice gives the following convincing examples:

He is poor but honest

This is an utterance stating that honesty appears contrary to expectations

in relation to financial under privileges

John is an Englishman therefore he is brave

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And this is an utterance which triggers entailment built on the argumentative of reaching a conclusion based on a set of premises:

Premise 1: All Englishmen are brave

Premise 2: John is an Englishman,

Conclusion: John is brave

Conversational implicatures, which convey different meanings according

to different contexts, i.e are calculated afresh each time the Speaker and the Hearer interacts Take the following example:

A: Is that scotch over there?

c) The speaker means to observe the CP, but fails to fulfill a particular maxim through ineptitude For example, he may ineptly use words too technical for the audience and occasion, thus inadvertently non-observing the Maxim of Manner This is an instance of maxim infringement

d) The speaker presumably means to observe the CP, and yet s/he is blatantly not observing a maxim; if he is not inept, s/he must mean something additional to what s/he is saying

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For example, when asked what she thinks of a new restaurant, a woman who replied: „They have handsome carpets.‟ would appear to be flouting the first Maxim of Quality If there is no reason that she means not to be observing the CP and that she is not inept either, then her remark must mean something other than what it literally asserts - for example, that the food they serve is not the best in town When non-observance of a maxim is deliberate and intended to be recognized as deliberate, this is a case of Maxim Flouting (Hancher, 1978)

Paradoxically enough, more often than not, people fail to observe the maxims, be it deliberately or accidentally There are five major ways of failing to observe a maxim: flouting, violating, infringing, opting out and suspending

Violation is defined as the unostentatious or „quiet‟ non-observance of a maxim A speaker who violates a maxim „will be liable to mislead‟ (Grice, 1975: 49)

Violating a maxim is quite the opposite of flouting a maxim Violating a maxim rather prevents or at least discourages the Hearer from seeking for implicatures and rather encourages their taking utterances at face value These following examples were cited from Arif Suryo Priyatmojo; in his article namely Indonesia Political Language (page 4-6)

Violation of the Maxim of Quantity

Politicians often violate this maxim by giving too much information as the following political language discourses

“Of course, we will discuss over some topics,” (Megawati, Jakarta post 30 April 2009)

This utterance does not give sufficient information since there is no information that readers can get from it

Violation of the Maxim of Quality

"The electricity crisis is a consequence of the rapid growth, but I think that's not a valid excuse” (Kalla, Jakarta Post, 28 April 2009)

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The utterance does not give sufficient information because the first and the second clause are not related The second clause did not support the first clause for he was not quite sure about his information It is posibble that he was lack of evidence

Violation of the maxim of relation

“Golkar has been providing high quality entertainment in every general election since the reform era,” (Jeffri Winter, The Jakarta Post 29 April 2009)

The utterance violates the maxim of relevance because the addresser didn‟t give the relevant information The utterance also failed to address the goal

of the utterances The readers were confused in analyzing it because it didn‟t have any relation with the topic discussed

1.2 Review of related studies

Conversational implicatures (C.I) is a type of indirect communication, first described by the English language philosopher Herberb Paul Grice He proposes that in a normal conversation, speakers and listeners share a cooperative principle When a speaker appears not to follow the maxims, he implies a function different the literal meaning of form The speakers assume that the hearers know that their words should not be taken at face value and that they can infer the implicit meaning In the electronic newspapers and other political editors, conversational implicatures are used to get the understanding between the writer and the readers By using CI, the writer can express their own viewpoint as well as their feeling on the discussed issues Grice‟ theory has been the foundation of many studies about implicatures in linguistics In a study of

Wakhana Putri namely An analysis of implicatures as found in transcript of

interview between Barack Obama and Hisyam Melhem from Al-Arabiya TV, the

author has found that, implicatures may mostly occur in political conversations and speeches In addition, most of political utterances imply meaning Politicians tend to break the rules of cooperative principles and create conversational implicatures As in an interview, the politician may perform interestingly in front

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of the audience and the interviewer because he or she wants to catch the people‟s interest about what he or she talks In this study, by studying the implicatures used in the interview of the two presidents, the author assumed that during the process of interview Hisyam Melhem as the interviewer expects the needed response from Obama It fulfils the cooperative principle The result of analysis shows that Obama violates all of the maxims and this causes the occurrence of implicature and precisely, he violates Grice‟s cooperative principle Moreover, Obama‟s reasons using implicature during the interview is that he wants to show the power of the United State However, the statements are bias to one side only Nevertheless, he wants to be careful with what he says in commending the point

of view about the track between Palestinians and Israeli

The multidimensionality of political discourse has attracted a great deal of attention from discourse analysis Studies vary from the role of evasion in political talk (Harris, 1991), the relationship between politics, the government, and the media (Fairclough, 1998, 2000; van Dijk, 1998), ideology and political discourse (Hudson, 1978), political language in general (Wodak, 1989) have all been given some attention In addition, many studies take CDA‟s perspective to analyze textual data made by different political leaders from different political background, ages, gender, etc, in order to undertake a detailed investigation of the way political speakers negotiate and maintain face work, show their national power when interacting with each other in such contexts In the studies about political discourse in diplomatic relationship such as speeches of president Obama (Jurai), political press conferences (Aditi, 2006, Critical discourse analysis and political press conference), political editors (Hussain), political interviews (Dr Eba‟, Analyzing Political Discourse: Towards a Pragmatic Approach), researchers found that politicians mostly rely on pragmatic strategies

to grapple with the conflict between being uncooperative and truthful It is apparent that political discourse revolves around being manipulative and hedgy, giving less information about the truth of things A politician actually hides

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himself behind these skills so as not to attach himself to any kind of commitment

He may use certain pragmatic skills to attack other rival politician's face in order

to improve his; or simply to simulate the feelings of the population and get them

to believe in him or drive them to follow his beliefs According to Wodak (2007: 203) such pragmatic devices as implicatures can be analyzed in their multiple functions in political discourse where they frequently serve certain goals

The applying implicatures in political text has proved a fact that there is a strict relationship between language, political ideology and power relations Aditi‟s study gave a closer look at diplomatic talk to communicate political differences in a positive way to smooth out socio-political and ideological discrepancies that often divide prominent political figures Taking a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective, this article analyses textual data from press conferences involving the former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and the

US President George W Bush, who come from different ideological backgrounds, also sharing differences in other dimensions such as age, experience, economic status, socio-political influence and political objectives The findings reveal three major themes: positivity for the reinforcement of mutual trust, respect and progress; influence and power for subtle persuasion; and evasion to hedge or avoid responses to probing and inconvenient questions from the media

Mostly, the studies on politics collect data from politician speeches, interviews, conferences and on different media channels This work uses internet newspapers as a source of information The articles are collected from popular and reputed electronic newspapers From the studying, the writer targets on exploiting the use of conversational implicatures in the studied articles The study hopes to draw out the reasons how and why implicatures are used so often in political texts The analyzing process focuses on the utilization of conversational implicatures, the features and hidden ideology of each newspaper on the events

of Vietnam - China island disputes

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1.3 Review of Vietnam - China island disputes in the period of time from

2011 to 2015

The East Sea is a semi-enclosed sea in the Pacific Ocean, covering an area

of over 3.5 million sq km It is bordered by nine coastal countries, namely Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore It is abundant in natural resources, especially oil, gas and marine resources Recently, data suggest that the sea has huge reserves of natural hydrate

The sea is the second busiest maritime route in the world after the Mediterranean route, with 150 - 200 large-tonnage ships passing through its waters every day Imports and exports essential for such major economies as China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Chinese Taiwan and Hong Kong, depend largely on this shipping route Militarily, the East Sea is where naval fleets from many countries both inside and outside the region operate

All these factors have led to an inevitable and obvious situation that in the East Sea the interests of many countries are closely intertwined at different levels Peace and stability in the East Sea directly affect peace and stability in the region and the world China‟s recent aggressive acts in the East Sea has pushed escalation of tensions in the area and sparked concern that the area is becoming a flashpoint with global consequences

The Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos consist of a series of tiny coral reefs and banks in the middle of the East Sea At present, these two archipelagos are at the center of complicated disputes between several countries bordering the East Sea The dispute between Vietnam and China is a dispute over territory and sovereignty over these two islands China‟s claims on U-shaped line were the first case mentioned China claims by far the largest portion of territory - an area defined by the so-called "nine-dash line" which stretches hundreds of miles south and east from its most southerly province of

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Hainan In the next step, China did illegal and aggressive acts in the East Sea After implementing the closed door policy for a long time, this country began eyeing and encroaching into the East Sea The process has happened as in the table below:

Table 1.2 Vietnam - China island dispute timeline

Year Event

1909 China began to occupy Hoang Sa (Paracel) Archipelago This

nation continued its unruly hostility by drawing the U-shaped line in

1946, which covers around 80 percent of the East Sea However until May 2009 this line was public as China occupied eastern islands in Hoang Sa Archipelago and Ba Binh Island in Truong Sa (Spratly) Archipelago

1956 The People‟s Republic of China occupied the eastern part of Hoang

Sa while Taiwan held Ba Binh Island in Truong Sa

Two years later, the whole globe shocked with the official claim of China on its sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa

1974 The western part of Hoang Sa was seized by China Some other

islands in Truong Sa were gradually occupied in 1988, remarkably Vanh Khan Island of Truong Sa in 1995

1992 China stipulated unreasonable that the East Sea belongs to the

territorial waters of its Hainan province

1999 Vietnam and related countries have strongly protested China‟s

groundless and illegal U-shape line map when this map officially submitted to the United Nations China claims sovereignty over the whole Hoang Sa Archipelago Hoang Sa and the adjacent waters were considered as its natural territory It also claims sovereignty over the entire Truong Sa Archipelago and its adjacent waters, but admits to have disputes

2011 China has been taking more aggressive and provoking acts in the

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East Sea, including encroaching Vietnam‟s territories and cut the cables of Vietnam‟s sea surveillance and oil exploration ships named Viking 2 and Binh Minh 2 This country also issued ban on fishing in the East Sea, covering the traditional fishing ground of Vietnam

6- 2012 The information about China‟s establishment of the so-called

"Sansha" city, which includes the island district of Truong Sa (Spratly) of Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam and the Hoang Sa (Paracels) island district of Da Nang, Vietnam was released China announced the opening of international bids for 9 oil and gas lot within Vietnam‟s exclusive economic zone and Vietnam‟s continental shelf

8/2012 China again opened international bid for the oil and gas block

65/12, seriously violating Vietnam's sovereignty over the Paracel Islands The nine oil and gas lots that the CNOOC opened international bids for are entirely in the exclusive economic zone of

200 nautical miles and the continental shelf of Vietnam

10/2012 China held a flag raising ceremony to mark its National Day on Phu

Lam Island in the Hoang Sa archipelago

the Chinese navy‟s Nanhai Fleet held an exercise in the waters of the Hoang Sa archipelago and five days later, China set up a meteorological station in the so-called Sansha City

11/2012 China published a map of "Sansha," which includes the Hoang Sa

and Truong Sa archipelagos and the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam

3/2013 While Vietnam's Binh Minh 02 ship was conducting normal seismic

exploration in the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam, two Chinese fishing vessels deliberately obstructed and cut the ship‟s cable, regardless of the warning signal of functional

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forces of Vietnam

5/ 2014 China deployed the mobile HD-981 drilling rig in the exclusive

economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam The drilling rig is escorted by many ships of the coast guard, the naval and fishery surveillance forces of China Chinese ships attacked vessels of the law enforcement forces of Vietnam in Vietnam‟s waters They also rammed fishing ships of Vietnam These acts have been strongly objected by Vietnam and the international community

This study focuses on the events in the period of time from 2011 to 2015

In fact, this is the significant period in the timeline of arguments For this reason, the witer decided to study all the events related to Vietnam- China island disputes

in this period of time

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CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURE

2.1 Data collection methods

In conducting this research, the researcher employs the descriptive qualitative method and content analysis The researcher focuses on the activities such as collecting data, classifying, analyzing, and drawing the conclusion Sutrisno Hadi (1983:30) states about descriptive method as a type of research, which only collects, analyzes, and concludes the data without concluding them commonly Meanwhile, qualitative method is a research procedure, which produces descriptive data in the form of written or oral words of people and behavior, which can be observed (Bogdan & Taylor, in Moleong (2006: 5).The research design was content analysis dealt with written texts According to Ary et

al (2002) content analysis deals with analyzing and interpreting recorded material within its own context such as public records and textbooks

This study based on some following criteria for data selection:

First, news discourse is chosen specifically for analysis, thereby, television news and radio news are not in the investigation The data are collected from official, reliable, popular and high-quality electronic newspaper They are included phapluatdoisong.com, dantri.com, nld.com.vn, vietnamnet.vn, vnexpress.net, reuter.com, cnn.com, bbc.com Such newspaper as phapluatdoisong.com, vietnamnet.vn are either the official daily newspapers in Vietnam or the voice of Vietnamese law and political power of Vietnam‟s government Whereas, reuter.com, cnn.com are trustworthy international newspaper with high global edition published in 180 countries

Second, all chosen articles from the newspapers have to contain conversational maxim violation to generate implicature

Third, researcher focuses merely on the articles related to the important events in the Vietnam-China island disputes in the period of time from 2011 -

2015

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Forth, researcher must sort out the sentences or phrases hold conversational implicatures and put them in the context The researchers should extract some neighbouring sentences if possible

2.2 Data source

The sources of the data in this study are the articles covered the Vietnam- China island disputes in both Vietnamese and English On this issue, there are such a considerable number of articles written in these electronic newspapers However, with the aim of the study to investigate the conversational implicatures, the study examines 60 articles which are believed to contain implicatures on the major events of Vietnam - China Island disputes focuses on the certain period of time from 2012 to 2015

The frequency of the articles about Vietnam - China island disputes in the four newspapers are different To assure an exactly finding for the similarity and differences of Vietnamese and English newspaper articles, the number of chosen articles are equal with 30 articles for each language

Population is all of individuals to whom the facts which being got will be generalized (Hadi, 1983) The population of this research was conversational implicature found in the articles related to the subject of the study There are a lot

of sentences that conversationally imply a meaning to the readers found in every article However, the researcher chooses them in random The number of conversational implicates chosen in the whole 60 articles in both language was

60, so the population was 60 The samples of this research are all the conversational implicatures in the investigated articles

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Table 2.2 Data source

No Article Date of publishing Source

su/tam-sa-trung-quoc-dem-dao-2 Canh bài giàn

khoan nước sâu

của Trung Quốc

August 30th 2012

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-cua-tq-86750.html

su/canh-bai-gian-khoan-nuoc-sau-3 Trung Quốc hung

hăng, Việt Nam sẽ

đáp trả

May 7th 2014

http://nld.com.vn/thoi-su-trong-nam-se-dap-tra-

su/dap-loi-asean-tq-van-khang-6 Trung Quốc lại

gioi/trung-quoc-pha-cap-tau-tham-8 Việt Nam phản đối March 3rd 2011

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-18

Trung Quốc tập

trận ở Trường Sa

tap-tran-o-truong-sa-11189.html

su/viet-nam-phan-doi-trung-quoc-9 Cắt cáp dầu khí

của Việt Nam,

Trung Quốc nói là

bình thường

May 29th 2011

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-trung-quoc-noi-la-binh-thuong-23121.html

su/cat-cap-dau-khi-viet-nam-10 Việt Nam phản đối

gioi/viet-nam-phan-doi-trung-11 VN thông báo với

thế giới mối đe dọa

TQ

May 25th 2014

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/vn-doa-tq-177318.html

thong-bao-voi-the-gioi-moi-de-12 Giàn khoan Hải

m/gian-khoan-hai-duong-981-13 Trung Quốc đã tính

sai chiến lược

June 15th 2014 http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/tuanvietna

luoc-180938.html

m/trung-quoc-da-tinh-sai-chien-14 75 ngày giàn khoan

phi pháp trong

vùng biển VN

July 17th 2014

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/75-vung-bien-vn-186427.html

gioi/trung-quoc-di-chuyen-gian-16 Không có chuyện June 27 2014

http://vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/thoi-19

tàu Việt Nam đâm

tàu Trung Quốc

dam-tau-trung-quoc-3009808.html

su/khong-co-chuyen-tau-viet-nam-17 Truyền thông

Trung Quốc đang

bôi đen Việt Nam

July 26th 2012

http://vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/thoi-boi-den-viet-nam-2237851.html

su/truyen-thong-trung-quoc-dang-18 Nội bộ Trung Quốc

m/su-tich-duong-luoi-bo-hoang-21 5 kịch bản cho biển

Đông

July 3rd 2014 http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/tuanvietna

183965.html

24 Biển Đông, Hoa

Đông - vùng nóng

December 20th

2013

su/bien-dong-hoa-dong-vung-

hoa-tu-canh-sat-bien-tq-26 Âm mưu biển

36 Chinese oil rig

moved away from

disputed waters off

Vietnam

July 16th 2014

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-idUSKBN0FL00Y20140716

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-42 South China Sea

44 China oil rig to

southchinasea-china-vietnam-46 South China Sea

Boils: China Sends

Oil Rig Near

Vietnam Again

May 17th 2014 Cnn.com

47 China-Vietnam May 16th 2014

southchinasea-vietnam-52 Vietnam boat sinks

after collision with

2.3 Data analysis procedure

There were also some stages on how to analyze the data, Miles and Huberman (1994) reveal three current flows of data analysis, namely data reduction,

25

data display, and conclusion drawing/verification Data reduction is the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting, and transforming data that exists in the real transcriptions Data display is organized information including the final conclusion Conclusion drawing is meant to state a temporal result of the study

2.3.1 Data reduction

In this step, the writer reread the whole articles from the newspaper found The writer only focused on the sentences which violate the conversational maxims Therefore, the writer reduced the data which do not violate the conversational maxims since the data would give no contribution and result to implicature analysis

2.3.2 Data analysis

The writer then classified these sentences based on the type of conversational maxim that being violated, the type of conversational implicature The data will be classified based on the type of conversational maxim that being violated as follows:

Table 2.3.2 Coding scheme

China‟s actions are legal

Their life is really tough

Relevance The rig movement comes weeks Vietnam is going to

26

before Vietnam's top leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, is expected to visit the United States, in the first

boost a strategic tie to The US as a allies and supporter In a chance this move can falter China

Manner "In these seas, China's ships were in a

defensive mode who was it who took the initiative for the clash? Who was it who created tension on the scene? This is very clear," Hong said

Vietnam deserved to

be blamed but China

27

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the research findings and discussion In this chapter, the analysis of the data is in line with the formulated research questions In findings, there are four stages to analyze the data, namely data reduction, data display, data analysis and conclusion drawing However, the data analysis is written in separate way which then investigates the implicatures that raises as the result of violated maxim and the types of conversational implicature The discussion part will globally be explained after presenting the data analysis based on the theoretical frameworks and the previous studies

The author illustrates the findings derived from the research problems in which the first question concerns on the forming of conversational implicature and the violation of conversational maxims based on Grice‟s theory of implicature (1975) in Vietnamese electronic newspaper articles, the second one questions the same matter as the first one in English electronic newspaper articles and the third one concerns the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese electronic newspapers in adopting conversational implicature

Since there are three stages of finding the result used in this study, the writer starts reducing some sentences that violate the cooperative principle maxim which result conversational implicature After that, the real data are displayed using table and particular The whole data are finally analyzed based on the types of lconversational implicature in English and Vietnamese electronic newspapers

The writer only took the sentences that containing implicature or violating the Gricean maxim Because conversational implicature can be calculable by maxim of conversation, the writer found 60 sentences containing conversational implicatures or sentences which are indicated to violate maxim of conversation After that all studied sentences are categorized following the table 3 in appendix

3.1 Conversational implicature in Vietnamese electronic magazine articles

After obtaining the data, the writer discusses the findings in order to clarify the answer of research questions In this part, the writer presents the results from